Three figures stack behind each other just before a hallway's bend. At the back, Thea's heart races. It threatens to burst free from her chest and take off screaming back toward the loading dock. She keeps a hand planted over her mouth: afraid to breathe despite the sound of retreating footsteps; afraid she'll puke from the vertigo of teleporting.

Ivan leans out and swipes a ball off the ground: an orb made of plastic faces, all set in between shifting seams wide enough to glimpse its hollow insides. Seams that moments ago sent salt spiraling through the air.

Thea shrinks into herself and manages a whisper through nervous chatters. "I-I'm sorry."

With a nod of his pompadour laden head, Ivan slips the ball into his green overalls. "Ain't a problem."

Waylon jerks down two unruly flaps of his wool coat. "It—" His throat convulses in a dry gag and he claps a hand over his mouth. "It isn't a problem?" He finishes.

Each beat of Thea's heart sends a new, anxiety-riddled thought stampeding through her mind: she's not going to get paid; she'll get ditched here, left to fend for herself in a place she barely knows; or they'll kill her and toss her in a lake.

Waylon's eyes land on her's, angry and unforgiving. "She almost just cost us—"

Ivan barges in between them. "With all due respect, keep your shit together. We're fine. Did you at least see which one it was?"

Thea cowers behind Ivan's considerable frame and a few, quiet seconds pass. Should I say something? Apologize?

The urge grows; it tickles her throat and fills her head with an insistent buzz. But Waylon cuts it all off with a huff. "The intern." He says.

Ivan snorts. "Really going to be this upset over a small fry like that?"

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Waylon doesn't respond: he just swivels round with a shake of his head and works his way back through the mess of obstacles. Back toward the door.

Ivan pokes a thumb after the man. "He can't take much, can he."

The comment leaves an odd feeling near the crest of Thea's head. An instinctual rejection that turns her mind inward in disgust, almost like a dizzying nausea. Why does he have to antagonize him? It was my fault, right? Should I say something?

Upon making it back without any further stumbles from her, Waylon cracks the door open. Thea's heart freezes in that moment. But, the intern isn't there to scream and police aren't waiting to ambush them.

A door with an "Employees Only" sign stands on the opposite wall; their next destination. Propping their door open with his foot, Waylon waves the others on. "Go!"

Ivan slips through and Thea scrambles after him, cane flailing from one perch to the next. Fish tanks blur past in her periphery. Tingles perk her neck hair on end, she hesitates; she darts her head both ways down the arcing corridor. In the dark of the lobby to her right, stalking near the ground... are those eyes? She blinks and they disappear. No, it's nothing... I don't smell anyone else.

Waylon claps a stinging hand onto her back. "I said go!"

They both stumble past Ivan into an unlit maintenance area and the door latches behind them. An invisible cloud of salt and fish and whatever they feed them engulfs Thea's sense of smell. Her throat seizes and wretches; pain strips it raw. She doubles over and coughs through her words. "Goodness. Do you all smell that?"

The other two appear unaffected, indifferent. Waylon pauses in the middle of retying his spikes of black hair into a high bun. "You said it won't affect your power."

Ivan drops the salt sack off his shoulder and takes a step toward Waylon. "Can you lay off her for one—"

"It— it's fine, Ivan!" Thea blurts out. "The smell won't cause a problem. I promise."

"Good." Waylon finishes the bun off with a snap of his hairband. "This way."

Thus they move through the space alongside a row of tanks of varying sizes. Light from the hallway seeps through the glass and water, outlining floating blobs of shadow. Each with a pair of glinting eyes that follow the three of them through the room.

An odd cold settles into Thea's stomach. A heavy ball, devoid of warmth and pulsing with her heartbeat. She takes a measured step around a stray cleaning brush. "C—could we have gone a less creepy way?"

Ivan weaves his head in front of one tank and the fishes' eyes follow the bouncing tip of his pompadour. His arm tenses around his burlap sack. "Yeah, somethings up with these damn fish. Looking at us like that."

Waylon pushes through a door into another hallway cluttered with pipes. "We're almost there. Keep up."