I keep my club close at hand as I step around the bodies strewn across the tunnel floor. Maybe one of them is only injured, maybe I was not as thorough as I thought. So I place my steps carefully between the misshapen Marrops as I cross the tunnel floor where I retreated and they died.

I wonder if I can eat them, their scaled limbs at least. I quit my part time job a week back. That’s how I was getting all those old tins of food to eat. Gennady, the shop owner, is in his forties. Says he was an orphan when he was young, but who knows if that’s true. His little shop has a basement where he stores long life goods and I saw him occasionally having to go down and bring boxes up, or carrying the occasional delivery down. Around a year and a half ago I asked him if I could work there. He was not interested at first, a subtle shake of his head before I even finished. But towards the end when I said I want to be paid in food, his mind changed. We spoke a little after that and he said he sympathised with my situation.

I’ll ask Delusion about the Marrops later. He didn’t seem to want to talk once I started killing the Marrops.

I must be two-hundred meters deep in the tunnel by now, no end in-front or behind me when I direct my torch. I would be worried about becoming turned around if there were no guides, but the tubular cable and scar of paint keep me sure. In truth, I have no idea how far this tunnel goes until the next basement or crossway or junction of other tunnels. It could even be a dead-end where the tunnel has collapsed.

The darkness down the tunnel begins to shift. More Marrops. I quicken my pace, intent to have this over sooner rather than later; I still need to find a place to stash the plastic bag and return home before it gets too late.

-

I don’t notice the recess at first, the concrete tunnels grey on grey makes sure of that. The meters and meters of same old tunnel I’ve walked through don’t help either. It’s only as a sliver of something is revealed in the recess because of my approach that I notice it. The possibility of Marrops being around makes me stop, but only for a moment. It has to be a door or some kind of panel, a few more steps confirm that as I spot what are probably hinges with my beam.

Finally a place I can leave this plastic bag. I move closer hoping it isn’t locked or the lock or jammed.

I point my torch at the door. It’s rusted, though streaks of a cream undercoat remain. One of the doors top corners is bent out of shape, but that’s not what I find most surprising. It’s the rust and the fact that the door isn’t aluminium. I take a step towards it when the sounds of scaled hide slithering on concrete reaches my ears. It’s close. I’m about to turn around and shine my torch behind me when I realise the sound is not coming from behind. Hesitantly I raise my torch upwards as I begin stepping back. A huge Marrop is perched on the concrete ceiling, its snakelike limbs supporting it as they press against the walls on either side, and above me a lone scaled appendage reaches for me, the tip finessed in a grasping curl.

I quicken my steps back and drop the club. No chance I’ll be able to beat that thing in a club fight, it’s way too big. My free hand begins clawing at the plastic bag on my belt loop, trying to rip it open as I continue to retreat. I look down for a split second, trying to see why the plastic bag still has no holes.

I hear a walloping thud. The massive Marrop has dropped down onto the concrete floor and begins to propel itself towards me. I rake my hand down the plastic bag, nearly yanking my pants down as I do so. I force my hand into the tangle of the plastic bag and rip the pencil case out. I bite down onto the metallic zipper and bring my torch hand up to support it as reach in for cold metal.

The tunnel is filled with echoing tinkles as unspent cases fall and bounce from the newly dropped pencil case. I cock the gun and point the barrel towards the huge slithering Marrop. It’s 15 meters away, but much faster than the other Marrops. I try to make sure I’m lined up with its bulbous head and squeeze the trigger.

My ears feel like they pop from the burst of sound and the Marrop flinches, but I can’t tell if I’ve hit it or not.

I squeeze the trigger three more times, becoming more desperate with each impact on my ears. The Marrop has slowed, and I finger the trigger, hesitating on the fifth, and perhaps final, shot the gun has.

Three meters from me, it slumps to a standstill and I notice for the first time a jet of liquid spurting onto the wall below the tubular wiring.

I take a few more steps back, not trusting this thing to be dead yet.

“Delusion, is it over, is it dead?” I ask trying to calm my voice. The adrenaline spiking through me makes it difficult.

-Everything is dead but the ambit has not been fully completed-

“You didn’t say they could get that big. I asked you, Delusion, I asked you if there was anything else dangerous about them that I need to know. If I had known I would have had my gun at the ready, instead of ripping my plastic bag open like an idiot.”

-You want things to be simple, don’t you, Aleks?- He replies with a disinterested drawl.

I keep silent for a while, thinking over Delusions words as the adrenaline drains from me. Is Delusion mocking me?

I don’t think so. I get the feeling I should take Delusion at face value.

Was the Marrop waiting there to ambush me, or had it been following me on the ceiling for some time?

“I want to understand the dangers, Delusion. I like this, I like what you’re offering me here, killing these things. I think I need this, the violence. But I also want to understand the danger.” It’s true, I do need this. The violence and action and stress will make me better.

-Remember how I said information is not free? It’s time to learn how to trade for the information you want-

Delusion doesn’t seem to understand. Or he does, but doesn’t care. “How much time is it going to take, and the rest of the Ambit. I need to hide this gun and go home.”

-You are halfway there, Aleks. You have killed everything, now you must only reward yourself for your labour. In the future there will be some questions I can answer. Other questions and their answers will take many more Ambits to reveal-

“The only way I can think of rewarding myself is by eating a few the Marrops.” I’m starting to feel drained. It must be quite late and I missed lunch earlier.

-You must dump the Marrops in a body of water-

I’m not shocked, it’s more the futility of this action. This is going to waste my time and effort but Delusion seems oblivious.

“Delusion, I’m underground in a tunnel. You are asking too much. Me dragging forty-plus bodies around, along with the huge Marrop here, is not rewarding. Nothing about that is rewarding towards myself.”

-A baker bakes a few dozen loafs of bread. He then leaves them where they are. The bread overcooks, the crust turning to rock in the cooling oven. A few days pass and still he has left the bread in the now cold oven. After a week the inedible bread begins to mould. The baker has put the correct amount of effort into creating his bread, but he never rewarded himself once they were ready. Do you understand, Aleks?-

“I’m not at school where I need to solve imaginary problems.” I grumble. Talking to Delusions at least gives me an excuse to rest a bit longer.

-Your town uses these tunnels as a clean water drainage system. Further down this tunnel you will find a crossing where tunnels converge. The bisecting tunnel has a water channel down its centre. Dump the bodies in there. This is called trading, Aleks-

“That’s going to take twenty or thirty trips at least, Delusion. I told you I’m busy right now, I don’t have time. What “trade” is going to be worth that effort?”

I stand still in the tunnel for a few moments, a handful of meters away from the huge Marrop that I’m not sure I can even move, waiting for Delusion's reply.

Silence.

Time to hide the money and the gun then. Hopefully I didn’t rip the plastic bag up too much. I gingerly approach the huge Marrop and give its closest appendage a kick. The limb shifts from my blow but no more. Being closer now I can tell its colour is off, as though its rolled every scale against the concrete walls, dusting itself grey.

It takes me a few minutes to gather up the pencil case and all the unspent casing that bounced around before being pushed aside by the Marrop’s slithering bulk as it came after me. The plastic bag seems okay. It has a large hole in the side and some of the plastic is badly stretched from my clawing and ripping, but I think it will keep the wet out if I twist it closed.

I reach for the rusted doors handle, and surprisingly, with the creak of a rusted spring, the handle turns without much difficulty. The door however is shut fast. I keep the handle down and begin shouldering into the door. It’s slow work with the rust screeching in echoes down the tunnel, but the door does slowly give way. I shoulder it one final time, putting more weight behind myself. I expect to have the door swing open and to fall into the room, but it only opens a hand-width. I jam myself into the gap and shine my torch at the sliver of room available.

A row of battered metal cupboards - lockers? They show patches of rust and a few have severe denting. Some kind of workroom or storeroom? Leaving the plastic bag in one of the lockers is fine by me. This place is out of the way enough.

I step back and prepare to fall into the room with my final rush at the door.

With an echoing slam and the scream of abused metal, I push all the way through and stumble to my hands and knees.

The room has the stink of musty mould. Probably coming from the box of newspapers in the corner, the cardboard box showing water damage. The wall running perpendicular to the row of lockers is empty aside from a metal desk, also showing signs of rust. Pointing my torch further up I see the same tubular wiring nailed to the top of the walls, trying to make a circuit of the room.

I push myself up and brush off the concrete dust from my hands and knees. I’ll have to try all the lockers for a shelf at the top of them, or maybe on top of the lockers altogether if none of them open.

-Aleks, why do you downplay the value of your labour, why do you believe that the rewards you trade for will not be worthy of your effort?-

Stolen novel; please report.

“I don’t know why you’re here, Delusion. I don’t know why you’re talking to me or what you want.” I say while tugging on the first locker door.

-There are a lot of questions in those sentences, Aleks-

“Delusion, I didn’t kill the Marrops because you asked. I killed them because it suited me, because I wanted to. If I came down into the tunnels and found the Marrops without any warning, I still would have killed them, eventually. Now you’re asking me to do something that does not suit me.” I put my irritation into tugging on the second locker door. The first was jammed so tight that I nearly pulled the locker down on top of myself.

-You like proof, don’t you, Aleks? Let us practice my “means justify an end” proof again, only this time it will be next week after the next Ambit-

I try to dampen my interest before responding “The next Ambit?”

-Your efforts this week will earn you two tools and a minor gift, a minor power-

I wait a few moments for Delusions to carry on and explain the tools or the power. I wait alone as I begin tugging on the third locker’s door.

“Well, what are they?” I finally ask after finding an empty but rusted locker. At the bottom of the locker there is a mouldy coil of rope but at the top of the locker is a shelf. I stash the plastic bag there.

-You must complete the Ambit and dump the Marrops in a body of water. Remember, Aleks, the means will justify the end-

Reaching down to grab the musty coil of rope, I grunt in reply. Somehow the rope doesn’t disintegrate or pull apart as I check its strength.

-The rope is exactly what you need, Aleks. Now moving the Marrops won’t take as much time-

-

I have to move the huge Marrop first because that’s the direction I have to trawl the other Marrops. I tried tying the rope around its limbs at first, but I’m no sailor with a mind for knots. So now I have a scaled appendage over each shoulder as I struggle my way further along the tunnel looking for the crossing Delusion spoke of.

I miss having the weight of the gun on my hip, on the belt loop of my pants, already. Though I might only feel that way because of the huge Marrop’s limbs draped over my body.

The hardest part is done now. Or maybe hiding the gun and the Kruna was the easiest part? I can start to fix things with Lera. But how?I still shouldn’t leave the house yet but I’ll need to eventually if I intend on talking to Lera. Giving her some time to calm down should help as well. I’ll need to reassure her, but also be her friend.

Lera was my first friend and still is my only friend. It was all her choice at the start, with her being older. It’ll feel good to win her back.

-Your first tool is within this Marrop, Aleks, so don’t push it in yet-

Delusion’s strange gift for being in my ears breaks me out of my rambling thoughts. The water channel running through the crossing is just ahead. It’s covered by some kind of walkway grate but I should be able to pull a section of it up to push the Marrop in.

“Within? You mean like food?” I’m feeling fatigued, a reminder that I need to eat even if I’m not able to feel hunger. “Delusion, can I cook and eat some of the Marrops?”

-It is possible, but their true value is in the information you could get in return. Do you understand this, Aleks?-

“The food I have isn’t going to last. Maybe just one or two of the large Marrops limbs?” I say, dropping the limbs I’m thinking about to the floor with a fwop.

-Take three of the adolescent Marrops and make sure to remove the digestive tract in the seventh appendage. The meat will make you ill otherwise-

I nod to myself and reach back for my knife. “So what’s inside this one’s body?”

-While you were clubbing the Marrops did you feel sprays of liquid?-

“There seemed to be a lot of juice in them.” I say nodding.

-Do you remember after shooting the large adult Marrop too many times liquid began to gush from its body?-

“I thought I must have hit its heart.” I nod again.

-What you will be searching for here, Aleks, is the Marrop’s water gland, where it purifies and stores water. Due to its secondary stomach being used to digest bones, the Marrop’s main body has a very high level of acidity. Because of this the Marrop keeps a separate water source, its water gland. As you cut in, Aleks, you too must avoid the acidity of its main body as the gland has-

“How do I do that?” I ask, already wishing I could just push the Marrop into the water channel. “I don’t know where the gland is or where the acidity is.”

-Make your incision at the top most portion of the Marrops head-

I hesitate with the hows and the whys of it. Am I doing it right? Is this the “top most portion?” Are the scales meant to be this hard and thick? A knife cutting through scales is an unmistakable sound, perhaps like dragging a knife through a bowl of uncooked pasta. I peer into the white and pink gash of a wound I’ve created.

-You need to cut in deeper. The pale flesh is the scale bed-

I drag the tip of my knife back and forth across the wound carefully, steadily slicing deeper and deeper until flesh parts fully from pale to pink. The Marrop’s insides have the smell of meat marinated in murky waters. I’m sure cooking it will change that.

-Now you have reached the little muscle it has here. You must cut deeper until you find a pale purple membrane. Beneath the membrane is the gland-

I do as instructed and start cutting through the muscle. After Delusion has labelled it muscle, it becomes very obvious that the meat I’m cutting through is muscle. I see the individual strands part and shrink back as I sever their length. A few more careful slices with my knife and I spot the membrane but only for a moment. A small nick of my knife, the size of a finger nail, is stretched and pulled wide by the membranes own elastic tension. Soft grey spongy flesh of the gland is revealed.

“What am I looking for in this gland, Delusion?” I ask, with the point of my knife testing the flesh’s toughness.

-You will find a small corked glass bottle. Do you know why, Aleks?-

“I have no idea why I would find a small corked glass bottle inside the Marrop’s water gland.” It’s the growing feeling of listlessness that’s getting to me. Everything with Delusions is a lesson.

-For the same reason you will soon be pushing this Marrop and the others into the water channel, Aleks-

“How do I get the bottle?” I ask. “Do I slice the gland open and push my hand in to feel around?”

-Yes, you have avoided the acid by going through the top of its head-

The gland is somehow both spongy and rubbery. After struggling to find purchase with the blade of my knife, I slash at the gland, hoping the extra force will do the trick. It does, and I flinch as water suddenly beings to well upwards from inside the wound. Quickly putting the knife aside, I dunk my hand in and push through the cut I’ve made in the gland. The water is cold and would be refreshing if not stored in a Marrop’s body. I swivel my arm this way and that, rotating my wrist as I try to feel out the smooth surface of glass instead of the spongy walls my fingers keep poking. I’m about to ask Delusion just how small this bottle is when I feel it between my fingers. My hand clamps on it and I pull my fist out.

The bottle is tiny, the size of a nail polish bottle though with a wider neck and a cork instead of a twist lid. But the most curious part about the bottle is what is inside. A clear liquid, possibly water, keeps suspended a bright neon pink nub of flesh no larger than a finger nail.

-This- Delusion says, speaking for the first time in a while. -will allow you to contact me, or I you-

“But we’re already talking, Delusions. What’s the point of this?”

A disappointment.

-Only because we are in the Ambit. Leave the Ambit and communication becomes what it was before-

“Oh, so it’s good for letting me know when the next Ambit is?”

-Among other things-

“How do I use it?”

-Some, dry it out in the sun or an oven and then use it as an earphone. Others place it behind the ear, where it temporarily numbs all sensation before assimilating with the back of the ear, though that takes more time to heal-

“After drying it out can it still… assimilate later?” Numbs and assimilates sounds like a nice way of saying dissolves flesh and merges.

-Re-hydration is necessary, a soaking in water will suffice-

“I don’t know, Delusion, can’t I just come down here in a weeks’ time? I don’t trust this thing and I’m not even sure if I trust you.”

-You will come to rely on it in time. Everyone does-

Now what do you reply to that?

“Can I push the Marrop in now?” I ask, dreading trawling the other Marrops here with the old rope.

-Push it in-

I plant a shoe on the Marrop’s bulbous head and push its weight over the edge of the tunnel walk space. My torch is glued to the Marrop as its own weight drags its limbs into a free-fall down the water channel. I’m curious, I’m more than curious, about why Delusion has been so insistent on me dumping the bodies in the water channel. If he said hygiene reasons I might have believed him. I could imagine trying to come back for the plastic bag and emptying my stomach several times because of the scent and juices all the decaying bodies would be spewing; I would have to pass them on my way to the storeroom.

The huge Marrop makes a big splash into the dark waters and I wait for white bubbles and froth to clear so my torch can try penetrating the water’s surface. I point my beam around the location, trying to pick up a shadow, a shape or anything to identify the Marrop’s presence. But the spot I dumped it in looks the same as any other along the water channels surface.

“Where is it?” I ask dumbly.

-I already told you, Aleks, water is the method of exchange. The Marrop is gone-

-

I’ve just dumped the closest group of Marrop’s bodies. I trawled them through the tunnels, the end of the rope in each hand and their scales dragging on the concrete. I kicked them in one by one and watched them vanish in the water. Their splash was much smaller than the large Marrop so I had an easier time seeing them vanish or dissolve or fuzz or whatever happened, but by the end of it they were all gone.

-What minor power do you want, Aleks? I can give you a list to choose from or you can pick what you desire-

It doesn’t take much thought at all, no thought really. I’m too drained from missing meals to be concentrating on anything right now. “Being a bit faster would be good. I could finish these Ambits quicker and drag all the bodies around quicker too.”

-You will be faster-

Delusion’s statement hangs in the air for a few minutes before I can muster the effort to reply out of curiosity “Am I faster now, or how does it work?”

The walk back to the first group of Marrops is going to be a long one. I really should have brought food with me.

-Over the coming week you will notice yourself becoming slightly faster, but only when you try-

“That sounds… That sounds okay.”

-It is a minor power, so while noticeable, it is best to… manage ones expectations-

I’m not disappointed. I could get home, go to sleep, and wake up tomorrow finding this whole thing was, well, in my head. A little part of the delirium many people are suffering from. It comes down to trust, and even respect. Whether it’s people around you, strangers in the street or possibly voices in your head and alien visions, all of them can be treated the same. You have no trust for them and therefore no respect for their words, for their opinions. So whatever they say, they might as well have not spoken at all, because in the end you’re going to wait and see for yourself.

“You said two tools and a gift. The minor power is a gift and the pink thing is a tool, so what’s the last tool, Delusion.”

-Image training. Do you know what that is?-

I think for a moment as I pace down the tunnel. “Never heard of it.”

-The last tool is knowledge, in the form of image training. When you are tired, when you are confined, when you cannot find sleep, face a problem you cannot solve, face a time when you cannot train physically, then it is time to retreat into your mind. Image training is a form of training that is nearly on par with its physical counterpart. It makes use of visualisation to create scenarios where you will be able to learn and improve-

I try to formulate a more interested reply, but really I just need to go home and eat. “That sounds a bit like superstition, Delusion.”

-An understandable response, Aleks. When first starting image training, being dressed in the associated attire and having the associated equipment on hand for the scenario you choose can help embed you in the visualisation. The term training wheels for a novice comes to mind-

“I can’t really see the use of it. What scenario am I even going to visualise to try and train with, clubbing Marrops so I become better with the club?”

Delusion makes no reply for a few moments too long. I begin thinking he’s gone silent on me again but then his voice is in my ears.

-What is it that you want, Aleks. You’re human so at your very centre, at your core, there must be something you want-

I find such a personal question coming from Delusion strange. Awkward even, that he expects me to divulge something so personal. But I do still feel that I should take Delusion at face value.

What I want…

I want a lot of things. Everyone does, I’m sure. My most important want, my most unrealistic want, my most childish want? I want my dad back. I want to have a father and I want him to provide for our family. Lera wouldn’t have fallen off a cliff and into a drug den if he were alive, mom wouldn’t work so hard either. And that brings me to my next wants. I want Lera back and I want mom to have a better life than working multiple jobs and eighteen hour work days. Anyone can see it, that first crack in the glass pane that was our family. Through the years cracks spread slowly until the pane could take no more, and it had shattered. Who would have thought one absent father could be so catastrophic. That’s where it all started, that’s where it all went wrong, when I lost my dad and then began losing my family.

I want the world to be better, I want it to be like the days mom and dad would speak about; safe enough to leave your doors unlocked and windows open, a house or more likely a flat being sold through a loan by the bank for a pittance of 130 Kruna a month, no interest or some other scam bleeding you dry for the decades. Government initiatives to inspire innovation in their young men, the sense of community that could be seen anywhere from the countryside families to micro-districts in the blocks, banks with their car lotteries, giving them away until everyone had one (even if they were all the same model), companies who cared and looked after their workers, subsidising their wants and needs. Somewhere along the way it all went wrong. Somewhere along the way there was a mistake. No, there were many, many, mistakes. Somewhere out there someone is responsible for all those mistakes.

I want more of this too, these Ambits and the hope they’re not a delusions. I want the violence in them, the practice.

But I guess Delusion isn’t asking about those kinds of wants and those kinds of problems. No. Delusions has something specific in mind when he asks that questions, something physically actionable and graspable.

I want to kill Stosha Dostoyevsky and her group of friends. But to kill them is to die; police, prison, sentences. Suicide is the preferable option of that outcome. And that brings me to my current situations, with Delusion appearing, school being cancelled, Lera walking in when she was never meant to and me running around like a headless chicken.

“There’s a girl I want to kill. Maybe I want to kill Radovan and his drug operation too, I don’t know. But the important part, Delusions, is that I’m not ready to face the consequences for those wants.” At least I didn’t tell him about dad. That would have been pathetic.

-Then you have time to prepare and image training will serve you well. Visualise different scenarios and reactions. Make it so when the time comes there is no hesitation, no thought. Only action-

“I’ll have a lot of time over the next week, so I’ll try it.” My reply is neutral, mostly numbed due to having no energy. I’ll end up trying it rather than being bored, I’m sure.

-The last group of Marrops is up ahead. Pick three and set them aside-

I only manage to give a nod before uncoiling the rope for the last trawl through these tunnels.