Levi glared at the floor as he laced up his hiking boots.

It had been three days since he and Rosa had lay under a sorbet sky, three days of tranquility. But that tranquility was at an end.

“I’m sorry, Rosa, it’s an emergency.”

“I can’t believe you’re standing me up!” she shouted into the phone. Levi winced. Her voice sounded distorted and mechanical through the speaker. “Did I do something? Levi, I have spent two hours getting dressed up to go to a fucking crab-shack-!”

Levi grabbed the phone and switched off the speaker. He pressed it to his head, as if the force would make her understand. “No! No, of course you didn’t do anything Rosa, it really is an emergency, I’m sorry. You know I would be there if I could, you know I would. There is nowhere I would rather be than with you, Rosa, but I have to take care of this.”

There was a pause, and then a soft sigh issued from the other end of the line. “You’re being all mysterious again. I hate it.”

Guilt and shame curled up in Levi’s belly.

“I’m sorry…” He rubbed his forehead, feeling a bit ill. “Let me make it up to you. Let me take you out tomorrow. Something simple. Somewhere… Somewhere you can get revenge!”

“Revenge?” Rosa asked, voice sounding cautiously optimistic through the phone. “You mean Laz-”

“I mean Lazer World,” Levi confirmed. "I'll let you kick my ass at laser tag and arcade games all night. No makeup, no fancy dress, none of that. Just fun."

Rosa paused for a few moments and then, at last, Levi heard her laugh, and it felt like sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds.

"... For the record, there's no 'letting' involved when I beat you at laser tag," Rosa said. "Fine, Levi. Tomorrow, you can make it up to me. I’m trusting you, Levi. And whatever you've gotten yourself into this time, please be safe."

"Sweetheart, I'm practically invincible," Levi managed.

Rosa hung up. Levi sat in the silence, in the dark, for a few moments.

“That went well,” Arthur noted.

Levi stood from the foot of the bed.

His blood pounded in his ears, a steady rhythm, a train on tracks.

He grabbed the first thing in reach. His toaster. He slammed it to the ground. It blew apart in a shower of metallic shards, internals sliding across the linoleum of the kitchenette.

“Fuck!” he snarled.

He stared, panting, down at the ruins of his toaster. The crumbs from inside of it had scattered across the floor. That was going to be a bitch and a half to clean up.

Levi sighed.

“Well, that was something,” Arthur said quietly.

Levi didn’t reply.

“You’re lucky to have her. She’s an amazing woman.”

“... I know.”

“I know this isn’t what you want. I know you’d rather be spending your time with her. If it’s worth anything at all, I’m sorry.”

“It’s nobody’s fault but my own,” Levi said quietly.

Arthur grunted.

He sat on the foot of Levi’s bed, dressed for a hike. He leaned back and sighed, letting his eyes slip shut.

“Derrick’s doing his best,” he said.

“Yeah, right,” Levi huffed. “Look, I know he’s your friend and everything, but it feels like I’m getting dragged off for this shit more and more lately.”

“He’s protecting you,” Arthur asserted.

“I’m not living if I can’t have a life away from… all of this.”

Arthur looked up at him, an odd expression on his face. “I managed it okay.”

“I’m not like you!”

Arthur chuckled, and it was a warm sound. “No, you’ve always been exactly yourself, Levi.”

And Levi… Levi didn’t know how to respond to that.

He went and grabbed a broom.

Levi’s footsteps crunched softly along on the gravel drive. Hands tucked away in his pockets, he still wore his clothes from his date. Now, however, he had a bulletproof vest over his torso. It wasn’t anything that would stop more than a small handgun round, but it was really only a precaution. Or, well, a courtesy, depending on how one looked at it.

Derrick, a few paces behind, made a shuffling noise as he readjusted his vest for the fourth time. Levi huffed, pressing the receipt to his nose again, scowled, then sniffed at the air. He could just about make out that scent. A touch of oil, the salinity of sweat, maybe... a steak dinner? He squinted at the van as he and Derrick approached it.

It was a nondescript thing, faded white body panels, tires that were ten thousand miles overdue for a change, windows covered with cardboard from the inside. Yup, about what Levi had expected of a man in hiding who had no idea how to be in hiding.

Seriously, did this guy not realize his house on wheels looked like a pedophile’s playground? There had to be at least half a dozen government agencies religiously tracking the thing everywhere it went.

Levi tugged at the handle to one of the rear doors. Locked, as he’d expected. He motioned Derrick forward. The man pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, then burned it, watching it puff to smoke incredibly quickly. Then they each grabbed one of the doors by the handle, braced their legs against the frame and simply... Tore it open. Like a tin can. Or... or a van. They tore it open like one tears open a van.

Hm.

Levi peered inside, nose twitching. The scent was stronger here, thick and potent and... well, kind of gross. But it was distinct, which was good. No sign of the actual runner though. Derrick climbed inside regardless. It was a sad space, a sleeping bag set up against one wall, a few plastic containers full of, quite likely, everything the man owned scattered around the space.

This was Levi’s job. His other job. The one that paid him in blood money and just a few more days of peace at a time.

Skilled labor was always in demand, and Levi was very much in demand. There was no mechanical replacement for him, no animal who could do the job like he could.

“Got anything?” Derrick asked, leaning against the outside of the van to keep lookout.

“Well, I’ve definitely got him. There’s a bit of another person, but it’s very faded. Didn’t smell it outside, so we can assume they aren’t wherever the runner is. Something’s tickling on the back of the scent, some kind of bite, I just can’t identify it yet.”

“Search his things,” Derrick provided. “Maybe you’ll figure it out if you see what it is.”

Levi nodded, climbing all the way into the van. It groaned and leaned as he pulled himself inside, Levi’s boots, still red with the mud from their last hunt through the woodland outside of town just two nights prior, thudding on the metal flooring of the van. He started pulling open bins, sifting through their contents and sniffing experimentally at anything odd he found. A notebook. A pair of earrings. Two calculators... glued together?

Well, everyone did weird stuff when they had too much privacy and free time and not enough to occupy their minds.

“Nothing of particular note. Whatever it is I’m picking up, he might have it on his person, or he might have dumped it,” Levi sighed, resigned. He hopped out of the van, arms crossed.

“Enough to track him?” Derrick asked.

“Enough to track him,” Levi nodded. “But cautiously I’d think. Everything outside the van is very feint, I’d imagine he’s gained some distance. Knew we were coming maybe?”

Derrick shook his head.

“Not likely. No one to warn him.” Derrick’s face looked frustrated for a moment as he turned over the problem in his mind. “Well, I guess it doesn’t change too much one way or another. We’ll just have to catch up to him. Lead the way, bloodhound.”

They proceeded down the darkened road, Levi’s head turned slightly skyward as he tracked the scent. It led them to a small 24-hour pharmacy, the signs in the windows still flickering to pronounce the place open. The pharmacist, a young man with deep bags under his eyes and crooked glasses, looked at them from behind the glint of the glass wall. His eyes were alight with suspicion as they moved through the aisles.

Derrick approached the counter and the pharmacist shrunk back slightly from the barrier.

“Can I... help you gentlemen?” he asked warily.

Derrick frowned, looking the kid up and down. Then he nodded.

“Yeah, I’m on the hunt for one Richard McCarthy, supposed to have passed through here earlier today,” Derrick said. “Middle aged white male, balding, slightly overweight, brown hair where he still has it. Probably sweaty and anxious.”

Derrick leaned on the counter, face just an inch from touching the glass. The man behind the counter leaned back a touch, subconsciously.

“Sir, this man we’re looking for is very dangerous. If you know anything about him or his whereabouts, I need to know. People could get hurt.” Derrick said this with a low menace, and Levi was reminded of someone hunched over a campfire to tell a scary story.

The older man gripped the counter a touch tighter, eyes darting between Levi and Derrick.

“I-I don’t think...”

He trailed off, and Derrick allowed the silence to linger. Levi rolled his eyes at the dramatics of it all, averting his gaze so the pharmacist wouldn’t notice.

“Are you... police or...?”

Derrick gave that cold, intense stare, head slightly cocked, waiting. Like an inevitability. The man must have seen something in Derrick’s eyes. He flinched.

“He usually comes in to pick up medication every other week. Looked nervous tonight,” the man mumbled, looking away from Derrick’s penetrating gaze. “I don’t know anything else about him.”

Derrick nodded, stepping back from the counter, and gestured to Levi. The shaggy-haired man proceeded down the aisles of the pharmacy, sniffing at the shelves and trying to block out the sickly smell of medication. There was something on the corner of one of the shelving rows and he leaned in close to sniff it. Like... Oil. Hydraulic oil maybe? He wasn’t terribly familiar with it, but he’d worked in an automotive shop for a time. He rubbed his thumb across the smear and drew it to his nose, then sneezed. Too much.

“Got it,” he said, headed towards one of the doors on the side of the pharmacy. He grabbed a handkerchief out of his back pocket to clear the oil out.

“Thanks for your help, sir. You’re making the world a safer place,” Derrick grunted to the pharmacist as they walked outside. Levi just about caught sight of the man visibly relaxing as they left.

“Works every time,” Derrick mused.

“You do that on purpose,” Levi huffed.

“What?”

“Scare the shit out of people.”

“It seems to work for me,” Derrick replied with a shrug.

Levi rolled his eyes and sniffed the air, hands in his pockets as he walked. There it was again, that twinge of... something. So familiar, so close to recognizing it, but just out of reach.

What the hell was it?

A soft sprinkling of rain began to patter down onto them, just a misting. Levi cursed. Oh, that was going to make this just an absolute joy. What was harder than following a distant, obscure scent through a populated area on a relatively chilly night? Following it through rain, of course! What else?

The street lights flickering at each corner cast odd, skewed reflections on the glimmering, dampened roads, figures shifting and warping on the ground. Like red eyes, blinking in the-

He gritted his teeth and pushed the image rather forcefully from his mind. Stupid brain, conjuring garbage out of nothing. If he focused hard on them, they poofed out of existence, one at a time. All of them.

Except... that one. That one with a piercing gaze that was following him as he walked. He couldn’t seem to get that set of eyes to disappear, icy blue. He was reminded of the LED street lights in the Bullseye parking lot.

Levi averted his eyes from that particular nightmare and hustled across the crosswalk. Not quite a coyote.

Their search came to an end at an industrial park, grey concrete buildings looming overhead as silent sentinels in the night. Black windows, hollow eyes, peering into the muggy darkness.

The scent was strongest here, and the source of the reek of industrial oil was obvious. It made everything smudge and smear to Levi’s nose, making each scent harder to pick apart from the others. That was without mentioning the number of people that moved in and out of the area during the daylight hours, adding to the cacophony.

It was just past midnight now, and Derrick was growing a touch impatient with their hunt. Levi couldn’t fault Derrick for that, but whoever they were hunting wouldn’t likely get off with a slap on the wrist after making the man search this thoroughly.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Besides, it was rainy and cold. They were both soaked through, who wouldn’t want to get out of the rain?

“Think we’re close?” Derrick huffed. “I’d rather not be out here all night if I don’t have to.”

“We’re close,” Levi confirmed, frowning at the grey environment before him. That scent was still itching at him, some missing piece. Why couldn’t he place it? It was so familiar...

The high, featureless walls of these industrial buildings distorted all sound, warping it and throwing it back at them as they moved. The crunching sound of their footfalls through gravel, their muted conversation, their shuffling as they righted their clothes, the pattering of rainfall on tin roofs, all of it came back to them as twisted echoes.

It didn’t help their paranoia, and it made it impossible to pinpoint the precise origin of any given sound. Dammit, this was the worst possible environment for a hunt. Scent was shot, hearing was shot, visibility was low... calling the conditions dangerous was an understatement. That scent still itched at Levi's nose, unidentified, just out of his reach. What the hell was it?

“We should turn back,” Derrick sighed begrudgingly. He proceeded to, without intent, nearly exactly echo Levi’s thoughts on the conditions of their hunt. “This is, obviously, an ambush. He knew we were coming, it’s the middle of the night, the oil and the rain are going to muffle your sense of smell, plus make it generally hard to catch our bearings. We’ll come back tomorrow, when it’s dry and he’s had time to get lax.”

Levi almost agreed. Then he thought about a flushed face with rosy cheeks and teary eyes. He thought of the way she had looked at him when he left. No, no, not tomorrow, today. He was not going to be walking out on Rosa again for whoever this jackass was.

“No, we’re not turning back,” Levi grunted. “It’s fine, we’ve got this guy. Sure, he’s got the drop on us a bit, but we also know it’s an ambush. The fact that we’re aware of it means it’s a particularly bad ambush. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s sloppy, he’s nervous, and if we can keep the pressure on him he’ll make a mistake. If we wait, he might just flee the city.”

Derrick glanced at him for a moment, then shook his head softly and looked back towards the warehouse. “Puppy love.”

“I...” Levi crossed his arms. Of course, Derrick had seen straight through him. “Shuddup.”

“Fine, but if we get hit by a truck or something because neither of us could hear the engine over the rain it’s on you.”

“... Everyone always has something to say,” Levi grumbled, lips twisting into a petulant little scowl.

“Levi, you are a positively open book,” the big man chuckled softly. “Come on then, let's step on a bear trap and see if we get to keep our foot.”

Following Levi’s nose, they wound up hopping a chain-link fence, bringing them into a set of industrial warehouses all owned by the same company. A great blue logo sat on a sign at the front of the foremost building, although the “a” flickered uncertainly in the name. Truth be told, the sign was faded enough that it was hard to tell the actual word it was trying to spell out. Brand recognition did its job though, and he identified the big box store that owned these warehouses on color scheme alone.

Levi took the opportunity to turn over that outlier of a scent in his nose some more, stumped by it. A puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. It was incredibly frustrating.

The warehouse on the right seemed the best candidate. It had catwalks inside and out, which made it an ideal place for an ambush. Plus, the scent seemed a touch stronger in this corner of the fenced-in area, though it was hard to tell with all the moisture in the air. The rain had died down somewhat and that earthy smell of the world after a proper soaking swirled in Levi’s sense. How he longed to just breathe that in, to let it overwhelm his sharpest sense, to bask in it.

The smell of dirt and oil and rust, the smell of smog and clean rain swirling down the storm drains. The leaves overflowing the gutters, moss and rocks and pleasant rot...

Ah, but he was working.

“Odds?” Derrick asked.

Levi chewed on his lower lip as he thought.

“Chances are he’s in this one, yeah.”

“Great, the worst place he could be,” Derrick mused. “Ideal spot for an ambush. Counted four exterior doors on this one. One on the top catwalk, the other three ground-level.”

Levi looked up at the shimmering panes of glass, the crooked reflections in those black eyes. The moon hung heavy in each one, reflected, brilliant, like a glaring pupil in a dark space.

“I think there’s probably another one too, near the offices. But we didn’t walk around that side, so I didn’t see,” Derrick grunted.

“That,” Levi said dryly, “is a lot of escape routes.”

“It is. Question is, what was his point of entry?”

Levi looked over the building’s exterior with a thoughtful expression.

“No clue.”

Derrick thought for a moment, then nodded and gestured to one of the side doors. “Window above that door. Looks like it got left open. He probably hopped in that way.”

“... Unless he has a key.”

“Unless he has a key,” Derrick granted. “I know he’s on the heavyset side.”

“What’s our avenue of approach?”

“Well,” Derrick mused, “I would say not to be too obvious, but judging by the fact this is an ambush I don’t imagine that matters. I propose we walk right into the trap and see what he does.”

“And by we you mean...?”

“You, of course. Given your durability. That and the fact that it was your idea to stay out here despite the conditions.”

Levi sighed. Of course.

“You trigger the trap, you buy time,” Derrick said, “I come around back and secure the target.”

“And if I get killed by whatever exactly is waiting inside?”

Derrick contemplated this for a moment, then nodded. “I say give the guy a medal, that’s quite the feat.”

“Fuck you, Derrick,” Levi said simply, without any real venom. He climbed through the window.

The space was silent, empty. Dust sat on the handrails to either side on the slightly elevated catwalk that he’d hopped onto. Above, more prominent walkways hung suspended in the air, chords crisscrossing the black sky. He felt damned exposed, looking out into the dark of the unknown.

The room smelled of old timber and wet wood, and of rusty nails, and of that hint of grease and sweat a person made, as if it were ground into the place.

And that hint he couldn’t identify, that tingling, like the Fourth of July, chemical and soothing at once.

His feet, padding softly on the corrugated metal, made gentle metallic twangs as he proceeded. The sounds were whisper-quiet, but every footfall still felt like a thunderclap as he went in that dead space.

Empty air, stretching above.

Exposed.

Vulnerable.

Nothing.

Levi shook his hair out of his face and proceeded to a side staircase, moving to the second level of scaffolding. At least here he had a bit of a better view of the place. There were rows of shelving on one side of the building, sturdy, though mostly emptied of stock. Some inbuilt offices sat on the opposite end, each one a doorless walled space with a thin tin roof that slanted up to the wall to give the rooms more of an illusion of separation.

He stayed low as he walked along the railing, his eyes fixed on a gentle pulsing blue light from one of the office windows. A monitor, sleeping, but not turned off. At least, that was his guess. All the while he turned that scent over and over, again and again. Something passed in front of the light, obscuring one of its flashes.

He smelled warm afternoons, the last wildflowers before the heat killed them off. He smelled chlorine and barbecues and... and...

God dammit, what the hell was it?

“On your left,” Arthur whispered. Levi spun just in time for the crack, the deafening crack, the flash of lighting and the roar of thunder as something buzzed past his head and pinged off a catwalk support.

Ah.

Fourth of July.

Fireworks.

Gunpowder.

Well, that was one mystery solved.

Levi was dashing across the catwalk, the thing groaning in protest under him as he shot through the warehouse. Another round pinged the railing in front of him. Had to keep moving, had to see-

There, on his left, in that office window. Just barely visible in the darkness, Levi saw the blinking blue light reflecting off the glint of the steel in the stranger’s hand. That slowly pulsing light, the only thing giving him a sense of direction as it thrummed on, then off again.

He stumbled. Losing his footing may have saved him. A projectile slammed through the air where Levi’s head had been a moment before, sheering through it with a high keen.

One foot in front of the next, desperate, a mad dash.

And then he leapt.

For a few beautiful, terrifying moments, he was suspended in the air. Silence. Sweat dripping off his body. The moonlight through the windows.

Feet left steel, left earth, floating in the void of empty space.

The unknown was under him, the darkness, the vague shadows and silvery outlines of steel scaffolding that meant death, and change, and darkness.

His body crashed through that thin tin roof, a surface that was never meant to support weight, and slammed down into the stranger in the dark. He didn’t even register the impact at first, but he registered his own screaming from the pain in his throat.

Bones grated and crunched, snapping under their flesh. Levi let out a broken cry as pain slammed through him. The stranger was screaming too, though the words were a mess in a language he didn’t know, a language that hurt his head. Lead crashed through his right arm as the handgun went off again.

More pain.

It burned, an intense, searing sensation that seemed to leak into his bloodstream and send his whole body aflame.

A great pale hand reached out, grabbed the stranger's skull from under Levi, and crushed it into nothing with one swift squeeze. It exploded like an old, rotten grape, like a fragile gore-filled garbage bag. Levi wretched on the floor, a puddle of bloody bile, elbows sliding in the mess as the stranger tried to climb atop him.

The hand was gone, and Levi could make out the details of the man's face now as they struggled. Not crushed, that had been an echo. It was alive and whole, alive, whole, and very angry. His teeth flashed white in the moonlight. He was an older man, perhaps his mid-fifties, with angry green eyes and a snarl painted across his face. He grabbed at Levi’s throat with long, strong fingers, digging his nails into the flesh. Levi could taste the blood in his mouth, smell it on the air, a heady, intoxicating mixture.

His blood.

He wished he wasn't quite so familiar with the scent.

A scent that wound its way through everything else, mixing with the fear, and the rage, and the hate in the air. Mixing with the dust, and the smell of hydraulic oil, and the sweat.

His soul.

The moon looked through the windows of the office, that bright white eye. Levi's head spun, and it seemed to blink. Levi cried out and drove his elbow into the man's face. His left arm, his dominant arm, still serving dutifully now that his right was a shattered mess.

It was a terrifying amount of force that went into that blow. It would have rendered a normal man unconscious immediately, if not outright killed them. It would have rendered Levi's elbow broken as well. Instead, the man let out a shout in his terrible, unrecognizable language and fumbled with his gun between them, trying to let loose another shot. Red eyes watched them struggle from all around. Levi threw himself atop the stranger, digging his knees into the man’s sides. The lump of metal clicked ineffectually in the stranger’s hands, and Levi drove another blow into the man's face.

And another.

And another.

He reeled back for a fourth but was stopped by Derrick, who threw his bleeding, broken body off of the stranger and climbed atop himself. He pinned the man down with relative ease, flipped him over, and locked thick handcuffs made of a dark brown metal around his wrists.

Levi watched, crumpled in the corner like a discarded newspaper.

He walked along the train tracks, feet meeting each wooden tie in turn. One after another. To either side of him, a line of pine trees loomed up. The rail line, however, continued in the empty space between the twin tree lines, proceeding off to the horizon ahead.

He saw Derrick’s sympathetic look, the man watching his body twitch and seize and convulse.

He was nude, but he wasn't cold. His hair seemed more in his face than usual, and he had to keep brushing it aside with his hand. Each time he did so, he smeared more blood across his forehead and brow, clumsily wiping away at the fluff as it drooped into his eye-line.

He watched Derrick drag the bloody man to his feet, swollen lips cursing in a language that wasn’t spoken anymore

.

The moon sat ahead, precariously balanced on nothing, right at the edge of the horizon. It was a full moon tonight, and its pearlescent brilliance provided plenty of illumination for him to see by. His eyes were, just now, fixed on the tiny imperfections in the steel. A notch here. A divot there.

"Don't you miss it?" Arthur asked, strolling alongside him.

"Miss what?" Levi asked, frowning ahead. Something didn't feel quite right as he skipped from plank to plank. It itched in the back of his head, like he was forgetting something. Or maybe remembering something? Either way, it irked him.

"The walks. That's what I miss the most. Walking, running, having dumb conversations that I couldn't have with anyone else," the man said next to him, hiking boots scuffing the gravel that lined the rails. His footsteps crunched with each step.

Levi huffed dismissively. "We can still go on walks, technically.”

Arthur chuckled at that. "I guess we can. But it's not the same. I wouldn’t feel the breeze on my face or smell the creek water in the air. I wouldn’t be able to run and run and run. I’m tethered to you in a way I never was before. Not the same."

"No," Levi granted. "It's really not."

The tracks began to vibrate under Levi's feet. A great beast was hungrily prowling behind them both, and Levi could almost feel the heat of its breath on the back of his neck. It was churning down the tracks, but it wouldn’t run them over. So long as Levi made sure the beast was fed, it would stay away,

At least, it had so far.

"When I go, really go, I think you’ll be there,” Arthur mused. He had his hands tucked in his pockets, leaning back in a relaxed posture and looking up at the moon on the hill.

“I don’t want you to go,” Levi whispered.

“Everything ends eventually. I should have ended a long time ago now. But I’m here, hanging on, somehow. Haven’t decided if it’s a blessing or a curse yet.”

Levi wrestled with the thought. His best friend was trapped, trapped here. But the idea of losing him forever, of it being all his fault in the first place, was so terrifying-

The aisles of the Bullseye were lined with dog toys, of all things. They walked down the central aisle, looking at row after row of the things in their blue and red packaging. The rails vibrated underfoot. The dull buzz of fluorescent bulbs hummed through the air. The place felt stale.

Arthur chuckled when he saw the contents of the shelves.

“You’ve got quite the sense of humor,” Arthur noted.

The shelves went on forever, off, off, until fog obscured the end of the place. The beast padded along behind, panting, breathing, hungering. But it would listen to him.

As long as it was fed.

"How do you stomach this place?" Arthur asked. His voice seemed to echo out for ages here, an infinite sentence that simply got softer as time went on, never fading completely.

Red eyes looked out from the fog at the ends of the aisles. Red eyes, then brilliant pale blue, then red again.

"It's peaceful in a way,” Levi said quietly. He was still struggling with the idea of Arthur disappearing for good. Arthur knew him well enough to know that, and was changing the subject. Levi would humor him.

“Nothing ever happens here, nothing ever changes," he continued. "My friends are here, and sure, there are new customers every day, but when enough people pass through a place they might as well all be the same."

The rails vibrated a little harder under his feet.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Arthur as he picked up one of the rope toys from the shelf, fingers toying with its frayed synthetic fibers.

Levi was struggling to put his thoughts into words. How did he describe his relationship with Bullseye, with places like it?

"Well, it's like... Look, a single human is smart, right? But people, people are dumb on mass-"

Arthur interrupted him with a finger. "You stole that from Men in Black."

"I did not STEAL it," Levi insisted with a raised chin. "I just... adapted it to my own use. That's not theft, it's creating something new with old parts. Recycling. Save the planet and all of that. Anyways, one person is exactly that, a person. A complete thing. Like a puzzle or a book, all there..."

Levi paused to make sure his counterpart was following, and Arthur gestured for him to continue, though he didn’t seem like he really understood.

"Right, but when you see ten, twenty, thirty people in an hour, you don't see people. You see faces and bodies and an impression, like trying to read the whole book from one page or guess what the puzzle is a picture of by one piece," he gestured to the infinite shelves. "Bullseye is a place designed for the puzzle piece, not the puzzle. It doesn't matter who comes in or who leaves, in Bullseye you're just that face in the crowd, that representative. You’re not a person, you’re an impression of a person. You’re the little chess piece that's supposed to represent a king. Now, it doesn't look anything like a king, save the fact it has a crown on its head. But that's all you really need. It’s pure, in its own way."

Arthur rubbed his brow. "Levi, where are you going with this?"

Levi's hands batted his hair out of his eyes, leaving a new smear of blood across his forehead. "Well, you asked what's good about working at Bullseye, how I stand it. It's good because it's simple. Because it's self-contained. Nothing that exists in Bullseye ever exists outside of it unless you buy it, and you don’t really exist inside of Bullseye either, just a representative there for a transaction."

Levi thought of his little meetings with his coworkers, standing outside. Always christened with a beverage from that vending machine, with a purchase.

"So... What I'm hearing is," Arthur posited, "you like it because it's soulless and meaningless."

"... When you say it like that it sounds kinda pathetic but, yeah, I guess."

Levi was a firm believer that places had souls, souls made of the memories, the thoughts, the events that took place there. Bullseye did too. But Bullseye’s soul was so plain, so shallow, so meaningless, that it had a kind of purity of essence. Everything blended into a comfortable beige, where every day was the same and life was predictable, normal.

They walked in silence, now, along the beach, Arthur's footsteps leaving gentle impressions in the cold midnight sand as Levi balanced on the rails. The beast behind them let out a sigh, growing restless, claws scraping at the tiny particles of stone under it.

Arthur stepped ahead of him now, leading the way down the beach. There was a cliff in the distance, the moon balanced precariously atop it, a stone at the top of a hill. But they would never reach it, no matter how long they walked. The moon began to dip lower, deeper, sinking behind the cliff. The night was ending.

Blood dripped from Levi's right arm into the sand, fizzling with quiet blue flames like gasoline.

"Be safe Levi," said the Beast, slavering and mad.