Piotr had left in order to find Thomas and Blair and check back up on the apartment. He had wanted their perspective on meeting up with his child. He yearned to see them again. A decade of parental neglect had taken a toll of guilt on his soul. He wanted to be there for his child, but would he make their life better at all? Could he?

Piotr arrived at Blair’s apartment that night after a long day of exploring Neonight City. He had knocked on the door but received no answer. He wasn’t given a key, so he was stuck in the hallway. He hadn’t yet procured a Unit in order to make phone calls, and so he had no idea where Thomas and Blair were or when they’d be back.

It was getting dark outside again. Piotr had stepped outside the building and bought a sandwich from a nearby supermarket. He had missed Edith’s cooking just a bit, but he wanted to wait for Thomas and Blair to return. Piotr took his meatball sub in his hands and brought it to his mouth as he sat on the doorstep of Blair’s apartment building. The lights were beginning to dim, and the pair hadn’t yet returned. But just as Piotr took a bite, he lost his grip on the sandwich, and the meatball sub fell out of his hands and onto the ground. Piotr shrugged and was leaning down to pick it up when a horde of rats suddenly scurried out of a nearby drain, lifting up his sandwich before bringing it down with him. Piotr leaned his head down in disappointment. “Oh.”

Piotr purchased a second sandwich and walked into the apartment building to eat it safely away from the rats. He leaned back in to take another bit and got a mouthful of meat, which he began to chew as he closed his eyes and relished the taste. Then, he felt a sharp pain in his fingers, and as he opened his eyes he saw the sandwich in his left hand, unbitten, and three of his fingers torn off of his right. Piotr spit out what was in his mouth onto the linoleum, not swallowing any of it, staring at the bloody stumps where his fingers once were and back down at his mangled, saliva-covered fingers on the ground. He had somehow bitten off his own fingers in an attempt to eat his sandwich.

Piotr was really getting hungry now. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He thought of Edith’s chocolate pancakes and how filling they were. Piotr ran back outside to the supermarket in the late-night air and went to buy something else, but the store closed just before he could walk through, causing him to slam into the locked door at full force, dropping his sandwich. He leaned back down to pick it up and take a bite, and he thought he did, but when he looked down, he found that he’d bitten the head off of a squirming rat and his sandwich was still on the ground. Piotr shouted, throwing the corpse and spitting up the head. Again, he swallowed none of it. He was still hungry. What the hell is going on? he thought.

Piotr ran to a nearby fountain on one of the main walkways and tried to drink some of it, attempting to wash his mouth out with the water from it. But the instant he did, the water flowed away from him, and he saw Sauro Beaudoin standing on the other side of the fountain in a police uniform. “When I was promoted to the role of official officer, I realized I would be missing our little conversations together. Our chats . . . which I’d cherished so much.” Sauro was slowly walking around the fountain’s perimeter towards Piotr. He was speaking with a long drawl, purposefully being sarcastic as he threateningly sauntered toward him. “Did you miss me, Piotr? ‘Oh, I missed you very much, friend’. Oh did you? Well, how come you fucking shot me?” Sauro mocked Piotr’s accent before gesturing to the patched-up hole in the side of his head. “You could have killed me if it weren’t for my Umbrella. God, you’re such a pain. I take it back. I was glad to never see you again.”

“MOVE THE HEADSTONES!” Piotr shouted, raising a marble from his pocket and pointing his arm at Sauro. Suddenly, his arm seized up, though, and he couldn’t move his fingers to activate his Civ.

“Have you forgotten what Umbrella is capable of? Have you forgotten that you can’t lay a fucking finger on me or even get near me?” Piotr was hungry, thirsty, and tired. He was in no position to fight Sauro—not without help. But he didn’t have that, so he needed to try. He knew Sauro wouldn’t take the first opportunity to kill him; he was far too sadistic. He knew how his ability worked as well. The only thing keeping his arm in place was the blood in his body. And that was partially expendable. He just needed the right moment to strike. “I’ll say that I feared for my life. I don’t, but they’ll believe me anyway. And you’re a wanted criminal, Piotr. Consider yourself lucky you found the one police officer in the city who would be kind enough to kill you instead of bringing you in.” Sauro jeered, flashing a crusty smile at Piotr.

And then Piotr fired. Using all of his strength, he had managed to tear his finger open, and the immovable blood in his arm left an after image of red fluid hanging statically in the air. The marble struck Sauro’s diseased teeth, filling them with kinetic energy and reshaping them into sharp incisors which curved backwards and up into the roof of Sauro’s mouth, sending blood spilling through his open wounds, but ultimately leaving him unphased as the blood flowed back into his body. “That should shut you up,” Piotr said, running back away from Sauro until he felt his left shoulder explode as he moved it back behind him to set up his next step.

“You moved towards me. Umbrella.”

The pain became agony as his arm filled with blood and exploded, sending him crawling behind a nearby wall leading into an alleyway. He looked back at Sauro’s mangled face as a bullet rang out from his gun, striking the wall Piotr was hiding behind. Pieces of debris from the wall were sent scattering over the street as Sauro fired again, Piotr barely managed to dodge it and retreated deeper into the alley, hiding behind a sleek black garbage bin that was about the size of a small car. Sauro had stepped into view, looking down the alleyway.

“Where are you hiding, Piotr? Don’t try to get me with a ranged attack. It isn’t going to work.” He sneered, before craning his neck and watching the dumpster speed towards him, its wheels letting off frenetic lightning bolts. It was spinning out of control, bouncing around the small alleyway towards Sauro. “Pathetic.” Sauro held out his hand and the dumpster immediately reversed direction, flying back down the alleyway as the water and meat juice inside propelled it back. But it didn’t hit Piotr. Instead, the dumpster went over a large hole that had appeared inside the floor of the alleyway, the energy from the wheels warping the ground to create a hole into the sewer, which Piotr had realized was nearby after watching some rats drag his sandwich down there. Sauro walked over to the dumpster and looked down the hole that it had left. “Does this idiot really think hiding in the sewers would work? He knows I’m a water manipulator, right?” A moment later, Sauro jumped down, landing on the water which he had slowed into a platform for him to walk on. “Where did he go?”

Suddenly, a piece of debris pierced the top of Sauro’s head and travelled through his entire body before exiting through his groin. Blood was leaking into the water, and Sauro couldn’t move. He was convulsing slightly as he stood on the stopped water, only able to look up through the twisted hole in the ceiling to see Piotr, silhouetted by the purple light. “I’d used some of the debris from your gunshot to open a hole in the dumpster and crawl inside. Then, all I had to do was make you think I’d gone down into the sewers and you’d follow like a rat after a meatball sub. Speaking of which . . .”

Sauro looked around him to see dozens of rats congregating around the edge of the waterway, smelling his blood which had leaked into the water. “The Neonight Sewers are full of rats.” Piotr smiled, walking away from Sauro as he heard him scream, sealing up the hole and listening contentedly to the sounds of his tormentor struggling to kill the rats that were swimming towards him, nibbling on his flesh.

* * *

How did Sauro find me? And why can’t I eat anything? Piotr asked himself as he walked back into Blair’s apartment building. He had found his way up to Blair’s room, and prepared to knock but heard them speaking inside. Most of the words were garbled beyond recognition, but a few of them stood out to him. “Piotr?” he heard Thomas say. Then garbled words. “Old man,” came the response—followed by more garbling. “Nasty,” Blair answered. Then some more garbling—like static. “Stupid,” Thomas concluded as Blair seemed to walk away. Is that really what they thought of him? No, they were his friends. And something seemed to be intervening, but he didn’t know what. Piotr considered the possibility that people just didn’t like him. Maybe he had thought they were his friends but they simply weren’t. And why would they be? He was a killer. A convict. An old man. Nasty. Stupid. Piotr thought these things were true, even if he was missing a crucial part of the conversation. Maybe that’s what his child would be like.