Egon stared at the grandfather clock with a chime, hidden and shrouded in the darkness of this place. The only sounds of the decaying room passed through this ancient and forgotten mechanism, echoing with the faint ringing of church bells. And if they counted someone's time, then, as Egon suggested, this time belonged to Homer and only to him. And while the clock is ticking, while the ringing is happening, his friend will not die. It wasn't true, but at this time, he wanted to think that way. The others stared at the ceiling and sniffed. Outside the window, from time to time, shots were heard, sometimes an explosion. The sky turned a light orange, then faded again, shrouding Agernox in primordial night and murk - the genuine light that it deserves.

Ofir got up from the bed, stretched his back, shoulders and neck, looked at his friends and said:

"Egon, none of us asked, but I can no longer ignore this huge elephant in the room."

"All I see here are mice and worms."

"It's not funny."

"All right. What do you want to ask?"

"What happened in the torture chamber?"

Egon sighed and lowered his head and looked at the decrepit wooden floor, which looked at least a thousand or even two thousand years old, according to his estimates, and which reminded him of the torture chamber and the events in it. He began to tell in an uncertain voice, constantly stammering, thinking of more appropriate words. He barely told about the events at the beginning, about the choice of Metyr and Thomas' cunning plan. He stopped and thought about it. Everyone was waiting, surrounded by the beating of the clock with the chime and creaking of the mattress springs.

"I don't know how, but Metyr made an additional clause in the contract. Apparently, he found a loophole. The condition was something like this: all the metovis used by Thomas against me will be applied to him. All inquisitors who wish to harm me and act on Thomas' orders will die."

"Some kind of protective mirror?"

"Yeah, kinda. I honestly admit, I thought until the last moment that Metyr would kill me. He signed a contract, said his parting words. I wasn't ready to accept death, but I was sure that IT was standing behind me, my body was shaking, I was vomiting. And after a while, I suddenly realized that I wasn't dying. I looked around the room and saw Metyr lying on the floor, and Thomas was looking at me. So, fucking angry. He tried to kill me and almost killed himself. He took the contract, reread it, and ... let me go. The end of the story."

"You're the only survivor of Thomas' torture chamber. They should make you a monument!"

"Yeah. And not a single bastard in the newspapers will write about it."

Egon replied that it was Metyr's merit, not his. He turned his head and saw a faint light in the gap between the floor and the door to another room. He wondered how Homer was doing, if he was alive and what was going on there.

"I think I'm at the limit," Egon continued. "The whole situation with Homer, it's... I don't even know how to say it. It seems to me that a better part of me has died."

"Why?" Ofir asked.

"If we killed anyone, it was to save ourselves. Self-defense. But those two revolutionaries. A different feeling. Some kind of unbridled anger, which I hadn't noticed before. And I'll tell you honestly, I'm scared of myself."

Ofir put his hand on Egon's shoulder and said that this was normal.

"You saved Homer, bro. When Homer gets out and finds out how you fought for his life, he will be more than grateful. We’ll all fight for his life, even Guillotine."

"If you were lying down instead of him," said Guillotine, " I would be drinking in a bar right now and having fun with whores."

"Who would doubt it."

Ofir got up from the bed and began to look around the room, in a dark corner, near the front door, he found bedside tables that were not immediately noticed when they entered, opened the drawers, looked at what was inside – nothing. He went up to the grandfather clock with a chime and wondered if there was some secret compartment in it, also nothing. Ofir himself did not understand why he was doing this. A thieving habit? Unlikely. Rather, to kill time. Yes. That's exactly why.

"Are you still thinking where you would like to pee?" Guillotine asked.

"I'm thinking of something to break your head with, but I can't find anything except worms."

Ofir walked around the room in circles, Egon asked him not to loom and calm down. Then he took the map out of his pocket, put it on the decrepit table and moved it to the bed.

"Show me where Metyr's house is on the map."

Egon showed it.

"And where is the gate through which he leaves work?"

Egon showed it. Ofir took a white pencil out of his pocket, drew a few lines along the streets and said:

"The first line is the way Metyr would take, if he used public transport. The second line – if he was walking. The rest are variations of how he could move around."

"And why do we need this?"

"Because when we'll search for information about events related to Metyr, we'll know for sure whether we're being fucked or not. If they point out to you the place where he was probably seen, outside of these lines, it means that you are being fucked. If the place that they will tell you about is on one of these segments, then it is most likely true. Metyr mentioned a warehouse. Along these roads, with small deviations, there are not so many real warehouses."

Ofir marked all the warehouses on the map, they counted seventeen in total.

"But that's not all," he continued, "look here, do you see it? This is a street where there are old houses in which hardly anyone will live. Such houses are very often bought by common people and used as a warehouse for their junk, so that there is more space at their own home."

"Richy-bitches."

"What are you talking about? The apartments in these houses worth as much as your shoes. If we'll find out where the incident with Metyr happened, we'll understand to which place he turned from. This way we will completely avoid lies and misinformation."

"Thanks," Egon said.

The three of them stared at the map and studied it. In the room where Homer was, there was a heart-rending barking of a dog. Then there was a sound as if something had fallen, although everyone understood that there was absolutely nothing to fall. Egon got up, ran around the table and a couple of seconds later was at the front door, hesitated for a moment, but pulled himself together, grabbed the door handle and opened it.

"Holy fuck!" Guillotine shouted and hiccupped in fright.

Ofir also twitched.