90. Error

“Why’re there so many cake pops?”

Isaac pointedly did not wince at the suspicious look his current client was giving him. She looked fairly young, probably not out of high school yet, and she carried with her the full, blatant judgmental force that was unique to teenagers.

Personally, if it were Isaac, he would’ve just accepted the free stuff without complaint. Not that he hadn’t been cynical when he was younger (and admittedly he still was), but he’d at least been opportunistic enough that he wouldn’t have outright mentioned the extras bundled in with the order on the off chance that they were a mistake. The teenager standing in the doorway in front of him, however, clearly operated on different rules.

“I have too many, so every customer gets extra,” he said as diplomatically as he could.

“Hmmm.” She didn’t look completely convinced, but at least the explanation seemed to be enough for her to drop the line of questioning. Instead, she pulled out a crumpled wad of bills from her pocket and half-threw them at Isaac, who caught them on pure reflex. She’d already slammed the door shut before he even had a chance to count the bills.

Isaac sighed. After a brief survey of the empty hallway, he counted the money in quick motions. The amount, at least, was correct. There was no tip, but he hadn’t really expected one.

Shaking his head, Isaac turned and stepped down the hallway to head back to his apartment. Thankfully that had been his last delivery for the day. Maybe he was imagining it, but Isaac felt like he’d had more difficult customers than usual lately. Such were the consequences of taking on more jobs than usual, he supposed.

Well, he thought, at least it was over. This was the last of the large batch of orders he’d accepted, and he was going back to his regular schedule after this.

Slightly less perturbed, Isaac continued on his way, making his way back to his apartment at record speed.

—

The 108th street apartment building appeared particularly grey that day. After a series of cloudy, half-drizzling days, the sky was a rare pale blue. The Chrowall City sky was incapable of producing true blues—the air was much too polluted for that—so the faint, slightly ashy current shade was about as good as it got. It was certainly nothing compared to, say, the Woodlands, but it was just enough to make the architecture look especially dull.

Isaac hurried up the stairs to the fourth floor, giving a passing nod to one of his neighbors as he passed by. The man returned the gesture by looking at him like he was crazy. Small steps, Isaac reminded himself as he fumbled with his keys. The elderly woman, at least, had started returning his head nods in the hallway, so he figured it couldn’t be too difficult to achieve the same thing with the other floor four residents.

The doorknob turned with a soft click, and Isaac quickly stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Now that he finally was back inside his apartment, he released a sigh of relief. He double checked his calendar just to make sure there wasn’t something he was forgetting about. It felt particularly satisfying to cross another order off his to-do list.

Of course, while he had no more cake orders, “work” wasn’t technically over yet. Isaac pulled out the tablet, stashed away in his coat, and tapped the screen. It lit up with a golden flash, and he scrolled over to pull up the new stat update requests. Lilith really hadn’t lied when she’d said a lot of requests had piled up. There were some from what looked like nearly every realm, and there was a mix of both the usual names and a good deal of unfamiliar ones. Maybe the tournament had inspired more people to get their stats checked.

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Isaac found he didn’t mind the amount of requests as much as he thought he would. He’d just take his time with them, and it would be nice to see some of these realms again.

His eyes drifted over to a small white box sitting at the edge of the counter. He stepped over and lifted the lid, peering down and checking its contents. Inside was a small blue and green cake, a few cake pops, and a painfully awkward card that he’d tried his damnedest to write neatly.

Isaac sighed and shut the lid again. Halfway between baking the cake, he’d realized he had no idea if merfolk even ate cakes. Still, it felt wrong to visit without a gift. Then there was the issue of how he’d even get it to Seaton, considering Isaac couldn’t exactly breathe underwater, but he figured he’d take things step by step. Maybe the merfolk had healed enough to meet up on the shore. He’d been able to travel on land, after all.

Once he’d slid the tablet securely into the inner pocket of his jacket again, Isaac grabbed the box and, with a final sweep of his still apartment, shut the door and made his way over to the subway station.

—

There was an Abyss creature floating in the subway car. Or, rather than floating, it would perhaps be more accurately described as “swimming through the air.” The creature was quite a bit smaller than Isaac was used to seeing from the Abyss, and its body had no defined edges, instead dissolving into wisps of dark smoke that roughly formed an overall shape. Only a single large, round eyeball provided any solidity to its appearance. Said eyeball blinked over at him when he stepped onto the train before resuming whatever else it had been doing.

Isaac took a seat on the other side of the train car, giving the creature ample space to continue its floating. He settled further into the hard plastic, though he kept a careful grip on the cake box resting on his lap. There would be a few stops before he reached the Woodlands, so he didn’t mind closing his eyes for a bit.

The subway train continued its familiar bumpy rhythm, chugging along the rails as it passed through the darkened tunnels. The Abyss creature made no noises, and the only other sound in the train car was Isaac’s own breathing.

A particularly sharp jolt forced his eyes awake, and he blinked a few times, realizing that he’d fallen asleep. He must be more tired than he realized. Isaac frowned and peered out the window to see if he’d missed his stop, but it was hard to tell when all that was visible were identical dark stone walls. His eyes shifted over to the other end of the train car, and sure enough, the Abyss creature was still there. Probably just a brief dozing off, then.

Minutes passed. Isaac tapped his finger along the surface of the box, continuing to stare out the window, but there were no visible markers anywhere. He furrowed his brow. Shouldn’t they have reached one of the stations by now? He glanced at the Abyss creature.

At some point, it had stopped swimming around. Instead, it simply floated in front of one of the windows, its singular eye fixed on the walls outside, nearly touching the glass, while its smoke-like body continued to billow out in the air around them, coiling and expanding in inky wisps. Isaac swallowed and looked away.

He shivered slightly and tugged his jacket closer. Had it always been so cold in the train car?

He could feel the weight of the tablet pressing against his side. Frowning down at it, after a moment of consideration, Isaac carefully pulled the device out and used the cake box to partially obstruct it from view.

There was still no change in the windows, no station in sight.

Could he have slept so long that the train had reached its last stop and was now looping back? That didn’t explain why the Abyss creature was still there.

He’d just pull out the map and see where he was, Isaac decided. That was an easy enough solution. He stared down at the tablet’s black screen. It felt oddly cold in his hands. Slowly reaching a finger out, he tapped the ‘on’ button.

No response.

Frowning, Isaac hit it again, using more force this time.

Still no response.

His grip on the device tightened. He tried hitting the button longer, then short, consecutive presses. He tapped the screen directly. He even attempted different patterns, nearly knocking the cake box over in his growing frustration.

But no matter how many times he tried, the screen remained perfectly blank. There was no golden glow, no sign of motion, no flash of light.

There was only an empty, unwavering stillness.