He was seated in a folding chair, wearing zip-tie cuffs, with only Tollya guarding him. She nodded at me as I came in, and I nodded back. “Hey, Tollya, why don’t you take a break, go get some food?”

Tollya nodded again and motioned for me to follow her back up to the kitchen. I did, closing the door behind myself as I exited the stairwell. When I turned around, Tollya gave me her report. “Kay, boss. He threaten a lot. But otherwise, no try anything. So I no rough up. Seems want talk to you, otherwise just threaten.”

“Thank you Tollya. I’ll be alright with him alone, you can go get some food,” I told her. She nodded and left, casually slinging her shotgun over her shoulder. When she reached the front door, she turned back and looked at me.

“Save you some yarsp bacon?” The tall hobb smiled as she asked me. When I flinched at the suggestion, she started laughing. “Boss no eat bugs? Ha-ha-ha! What you eat then?” She left, still laughing. I shook my head and returned to the basement.

As soon as the door clicked shut behind me, the man in the chair started yelling. “Where are my men? What did you do with them?”

I sat down heavily on the third step from the bottom, resting my forearms on my knees. “They’re dead,” I announced matter of fact. “I killed them.”

He got quiet then and started looking around the room with narrowed eyes. As though he were studying it.

“Stop. You won’t need to mount a daring escape,” I told him as I leaned back and waved a hand at him.

“It’s my duty to try,” he snapped back.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Duty, right. Was it your duty to sneak in here and assassinate me too?”

His eyes narrowed again, but he didn’t respond.

“What’s your name? I’m Tyson, which you already knew.” I stared at him from inside the helmet.

After a long moment of staring at me, he blinked and looked down. “Zach.”

“Well, Zach. We’re in a situation, you and me.” The exhaustion of my long night and annoying morning crept in, and all I wanted was to be done with this entire problem. Maybe laying it all out for him would help. “Your poorly named militia full of dumbasses is becoming something I can’t just ignore anymore.”

He glared at me but didn’t respond.

“So.” I raised a hand and pointed at him. “What do you suggest?”

Zach’s glare deepened. He blinked rapidly, then looked at me and scowled. “The fuck you talkin’ about?”

I sighed. “I’m talking about what I’m supposed to do with you, Zach. You tried to kill me. So did your friends. You know, it’s telling that you referred to them as your men, and not as your friends. They died for your stupidity, the least you could do is admit you liked them.”

“Fuck you, civilian. You couldn’t understand the bond between soldiers.” He finished his statement by spitting on my boot.

“Well, we have that much in common at least.” I stood up and scuffed the spittle from my boot onto the underside of Mr. Sada’s basement staircase. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with you, Zach,” I muttered to myself.

He answered by charging me when my back was turned. Zach came up out of the chair and rammed into my back, knocking me sprawling onto the stairs. As I was trying to stand up, he stomped on my ankle, and then again at the base of my spine, as he ran up the stairs.

I felt the painkiller before I felt the pain this time, and the cartoon starfish appeared beneath the stairs to look up at me and waggle a hand. The Dutch accented “Damage detected user!” didn’t even register as I tried to haul myself upright.

Zach hit the top of the stairs and rammed the door with his shoulder. The door held as the starfish suit popped out a portion of my spine and replaced it. I reached back and gripped the handgun at my waist, drawing it from the holster. My suit started working on a new ankle joint for me next, which heavily involved the tendrils, and some nasty sawing sounds. More painkiller flushed through me.

I had locked the door when I came down to talk to Zach, but it was a simple turn button lock. He was standing at the top of the stairs, facing me and trying to manipulate it with his zip-tied hands. From my still mostly prone position on the stairs, I pointed the gun up at him. “Stop!”

He didn’t. Zach saw the gun, and his eyes went wide. He jumped, from the top of the stairs, in an apparent attempt to land on me. I rolled to avoid him, and he landed badly on the stairs where I had been. I heard his ankle snap on impact, and then he fell past me with a scream.

The screaming continued as I rolled over to try and see what had happened. Zach had landed on his chin, hard, with both hands still zip-tied behind himself. He had a big patch of bleeding skin on the underside of his chin, and his mouth was also bleeding profusely. His breath came in ragged sobs, and anguished moans as I slowly stood and turned to face him.

“Well, that was stupid. How bad’s the ankle?” I asked, returning to my seat on the third step.

Zach spit out a small chunk of his own tongue and rolled over to look at me, moaning in pain as an answer. I nodded.

“Right. Well, good work kickin’ your own ass. I was going to let you go, was even considering giving you a ride part way back to Prescott, up the chances of you surviving the trip on foot.” I cradled the handgun again and shook my head. “Guess that’s out the window.”

My eyes flickered from the gun to Zach. It was a nice piece. An H&K USP, if the barrel engravings were to be believed.

I stood as my suit finished repairing my ankle. Zach stopped groaning and squirming long enough to stare at that process with wide eyes. I shrugged at him with the gun in my hand. “Look, here’s what I see. You’re a threat, so you can’t stay here.” I tapped my own chest with the gun, rapping the barrel against the boxy starfish suit. “I don’t want to kill you, so I would rather just send you away and hope you don’t come back. Tell you what, that Garthrust idiot has an appointment for today I bet. I’ll send you back home with them. Sound good to you?”

“Fuck you!” he squealed. “You killed Arms Keepers!”

“Who were trying, albeit incompetently, to kill me.” I holstered the gun and crouched. “You’re the errand boys for a multi-versal megacorp, nothing else. They’re using you to do violence against me in order to avoid doing it themselves. It’s a PR concern, that’s all. Once they’ve spent all your lives in futility, they’ll come for me in some other way.”

The painkiller started to ease up, and I realized I was just thinking out loud. I looked down at Zach and flicked open my knife. “None of that is your problem. You need to start thinking about how to stay alive once I hand you over to your bosses. Something tells me they won’t like your failure.”

In the silence that followed, I went around behind him and cut the zip ties binding his hands. He clutched at his ankle, then hauled himself into a sitting position. I grabbed my phone and called Rayna as I sat back down on the stairs.

She answered again, still at the barbeque. “Yeah, boss?”

“Hey, our prisoner needs medical attention, are you available?” I asked, still staring at Zach. He inched his way carefully toward the chair, trying not to jostle his broken ankle.

“Yeah boss.” Rayna immediately stood and gestured at a nearby hobb. “How bad hurt?”

“Broken ankle for sure. Probably some mouth wounds you won’t be able to help with.” I shrugged.

She stopped walking and looked into the phone, narrowing her broad eyes at me. “Get my kit. Will be fun practice. Not used to work human.”

With that she hung up the phone. By the time she arrived and knocked at the basement door, Zach was sitting in the chair again. He was dazed, probably concussed, and drooling a little stream of blood from his lip.

Rayna came in, looked between us, and then moved over to the man. “Here to help. Do not try anything, understood?”

Zach glared up at me but nodded. Rayna got to work, and I turned to leave. “Put a guard on him please, make sure he doesn’t use BuyMort. He can keep his hands free if he behaves.”

As I opened the basement door, I heard her voice grumble, “Yeah, boss.”

Ordo stood on the other side of the door. His face and any other patch of exposed skin was discolored, and peeling. I raised my chin in greeting, and Ordo nodded back. He looked me up and down and nodded again. “You survive down there, alone. Tough.”

“I guess,” I answered. “Felt like running for my life most of the time.” I turned and pointed to the basement door. “Hey, you guarding this guy?”

Ordo nodded. He patted his gut. “Thanks for yarsp. Good breakfast. Not mind guard duty.”

I laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, as I moved past. “Well, keep an eye out, this guy likes to do stupid shit. He’s hurt, so he should be quieter now, but still.” I turned back and shrugged at the hobb.

Ordo laughed and raised his sidearm. A blocky High Point. “No worry, boss. Guard duty easy job.”

“Thanks Ordo! I’m gonna try and get rid of him later today.”

I waved over my shoulder as I entered Mr. Sada’s garage and got in the golf cart. I was sick of walking everywhere and was getting antsy to go pick up our Knowles. When I slid out into the driveway, a hobb was already opening the compound gates, and I drove right out of the parking lot. The gobbs chattered as they worked on the Tesla’s windows.

The clock ticked over onto nine AM as I passed through the second gate into the campground proper. A hobb on guard duty stood in the road and raised a fist to their chest as I passed by. I returned the gesture. Molls and Phyllis were still on the porch, but Doofus had wandered off. He seemed happier now, with BuyMort.

No longer was the giant Malamute just stuck. Uncomfortable and trapped in his back yard. The hobbs recognized Doof as an equal, and treated him accordingly, opening gates and allowing him free access to the compound like any other person. The exception was that he was allowed to go visit Mr. Sada’s compound if he liked, and nobody else was if they weren’t on duty. Even Rayna and Tollya seemed to avoid Mr. Sada’s mansion, though I assumed that was merely because they didn’t like him very much. Not many of us did.

I spotted Doofus as I drove the golf cart into the parking lot and parked near the entrance. He was lounging in the shade of my new pickup truck and watching the remnants of the barbeque. Most of the humans had been fed and were returned to whatever they did with their lives now that BuyMort had come, and they lived at my campground. Presumably being useful in some manner, but that could just be staying out of the way on some days. The campground’s picnic area was right off the parking lot and consisted of a large patch of desert hardpack with a scattering of old wood and metal tables, and a row of basic charcoal BBQ standing grills.

Most of what was left was hobbs, but there was one human still lingering. A young woman I hadn’t seen before, clutching a pad of paper and sitting at the outside of the gathered hobbs. None of them interacted with her, but they were all clearly aware of her presence. She appeared to be drawing a sketch of them, by the movement of her hands.

When she turned and saw my black helmet staring at her, she hurriedly gathered her notebook and left, walking stiffly toward a cluster of tents in the old RV section.