Andrew rolled onto his back and pointed the gun at the doorway. His ears were ringing and his hand felt horrible. Did he win? Did it eve- The bathroom door opened and hit him in the head. He cried out and sat up.

“Oh my God Andrew I’m so sorry!” Sylph brought her hands to her face. Andrew rubbed his head with the back of his hand then got to his feet. He stared blankly at her for a moment then slowly turned away. He walked to the doorway with his gun raised, then stepped outside. She stayed behind, half afraid that the Frogman was still alive. A moment later Andrew returned holding a partially melted and torn rubber mask. “You…” She trailed off.

“You don’t want to see what’s left of him.”

“We… We did it!” Her eyes lit up and her mouth broke out into a wide smile. Andrew nodded at her and dropped his gun on the floor. It landed muzzle first on the carpet and bounced once. He threw the mask on the bed, then looked into Sylph’s eyes. “When we get back, we’ll be treated as heroes! We’re legends, we’ve done what nobody else could do.”

“Beaten, stabbed, shot, gassed, then blown up... this Frogman’s like a modern Rasputin. If I recall correctly everyone remembers him and not his killers.” Andrew said.

“What are you saying?” Sylph asked.

“Well, maybe we should downplay how hard it was to kill him.”

“Andrew you’re new. You need to make a name for yourself. I’m in the shit. I need to get back in The Merchant’s good graces. It won’t do us any favors to act like what just happened didn’t.”

“Okay but can we somehow leave out the whole gassing and bombing bit? I thought we came to the agreement that-”

“We can’t keep that under wraps and you know that. You flooded a room with poison gas, and if it’s as bad as you said it is out there he’s probably all over the ceiling. People will know when they come here.” Andrew examined the wall as she spoke, nodding every few words. It was odd. The inside of his head was swimming, like he had just gotten off of a roller coaster. After she stopped talking he realized she expected a response from him. He hadn’t listened to what she had said, so instead he changed the subject.

“Do you think they’ll turn this into luxury housing or something?”

“What?”

“I mean there’s like bathrooms nearby, so you don’t have to pay for a shower, you can shit outside of a pot...” Andrew took a step forward then paused, staring blankly off into space. The wall paper had a series of flowers on it. Were they tessellations? He couldn’t remember. His hand hurt when he moved it or held it in certain positions. Maybe not doing anything with it was the best policy. Gunshots faintly echoed in his head. He closed his eyes.

“Hey um, Andrew, the mission’s basically over, you can start calling me Amelia now.” He slowly turned to look at her. Two women in his bed, holding him in his sleep. That’s why he wanted her. Was that past tense? He couldn’t tell. She remembered her promise and even reminded him. Did she want it too? Did she know what he was? She… She was expecting a response.

“Okay.” His head ached on the inside. On the outside there was a duller, more concrete pain. Did he have a bruise? He had to check. Appearances were very important. Weren’t they? He walked past Sylph and into the bathroom. The lights were off and he instinctively flicked them on with his left hand. The switch went right into a ruptured blister and let out a trickle of blood. He stared at it. There was part of him on the wall. All of the Frogman was all over the walls. That’s what he did that to another human being. He looked at the mirror and saw himself. Or what other people saw anyways. His forehead was bruised a dark purple and Sylph-- no, Amelia-- was watching him over his wounded shoulder. She looked concerned. Andrew moved his mouth until in the mirror it resembled a grin, then turned around. “We still have to get the guns out of the safe before we celebrate.”

“Alright! Let’s go!” She put on an equally fake smile and walked to the edge of the door. She stopped and looked over her shoulder. Andrew was still watching her from the mirror. She gave up the act and went into the bathroom with him. Amelia was going to put her hand on his wounded shoulder to turn him around. His wounded hand reached over his shoulder and lightly grabbed her wrist before she could.

“I’m wounded. Please be careful.” He spoke to their reflections. She apologized, but then was still. Andrew let go of her, leaving a little blood behind. She led him out of the bathroom by his other shoulder. Her touch was so soft and delicate, even through the leather jacket. Once they got to the main room she scooped up the pistol and dropped it in her bag. Andrew stood still. Amelia didn’t know about his scars. Yui didn’t either, and neither did any of his other new… coworkers. Ezra knew though. He was going to kill Ezra, but Yui stopped him. He couldn’t keep hurting her like that, letting her see what he did. She needed to stay sequestered. Amelia walked over to the bed and deposited the mask in his bag, then carried it over to him. She put it over his left shoulder, then left the right strap hanging. She led him out into the doorway by the hand, then covered his eyes.

Andrew didn’t mind much being in the dark, especially when he could feel her touch. Amelia’s hands were cool, almost cold. Although his sight was obstructed he remembered the scene vividly.

“Did you see?” As soon as the question popped into his mind it came out of his mouth.

“I’d rather not see.” The image of the mask close to his face returned to him. If Sylph hadn’t come to save him his head would’ve popped like a squeezed balloon. Was it Sylph that saved him or Amelia? Did he need to keep talking? He spoke just in case.

“That was probably the smart thing to do.” The hand left his eyes and he felt… disappointed. Whether more for the lack of touch or the lack of dark, he couldn’t say. He looked over his shoulder and saw the curving tunnel behind them. There was no indication of the confrontation here. It was out of sight, but not out of mind. They were approaching a door at the end of the passage like the one they entered through, but a different color. Andrew stopped. “I want to vomit.” Amelia looked at him and wrinkled her nose.

“I’m going to keep going. You do it here then catch up.” Andrew nodded at her, then turned away. He squatted and hung his head. The acidic taste let him know he could vomit, but nothing came up when he retched. He needed to clear the burning feeling from his stomach though. He tried several more times, then stood up and bent over. A crashing sound followed by screaming cut him short. He turned around and sprinted towards the now open door. On the other side of it was an overturned bookshelf with her legs sticking out from under it.

“Help! Agh! Getitoff getitoff!” She broke down into a mix of inarticulate screaming and crying. Andrew knelt next to the shelf and grabbed it by the edge. He stood up with it, lifting it as he went. The books formed a heap on top of her by the time he was holding it at waist height.

“Get out from underneath!” He said with a strained voice. She just laid there crying. The pain in his hand was immense. He had probably ruptured half the blisters at this point. Blood was starting to dribble from where he was holding the shelf. He couldn’t abandon her though. Summoning all his strength, he raised the shelf up to his shoulders, then pushed it so that it landed on its other side. He looked at his hand and saw it was almost completely covered in blood. He had undoubtedly fucked it up. Still, he got down on his knees and started clearing books off of her.

“I don’t want to die!” She whimpered. Andrew moved a dictionary off her arm and she screamed in pain. The shelf must’ve broken her it. Among the books covering her, Andrew found a rope with some hooks attached. They must’ve somehow connected to the shelf and turned it into a trap. Once he removed enough books, he reached down and picked her up. She was limp in his arms, only alternating between whimpering and sobbing. He carried her out of the room and back into the passageway, then sat down against the wall with her. Andrew whispered gentle reassurances to her as she buried her face in his jacket. After a long while she grew quiet and stopped stirring.

“Are you alright?” Andrew asked quietly.

“I… I think I’m mostly better. Mentally. Arm’s busted though.”

“Are you good to keep moving?”

“Y-yeah.” Andrew started to move. “W-wait. I’d like to… rest like this a bit longer.” Andrew nodded and closed his eyes. Rest sounded appealing right now.

Amelia popped two pills in her mouth then started tracing the contours of the safe with her hand. Andrew had recovered some gauze from a bathroom and was busy wrapping up his hand. He ran water over it to clean the wound, but he knew he would need to use an actual antiseptic eventually. That kind of pain was just too much right now, though. It felt better now that his hand was shielded from the outside. He glanced over to Amelia, who was doing something with a stethoscope. The way she had clung to him… She made him feel wanted. Andrew smiled a bit and stood up.

“Amelia, I’m going to go check the neighboring rooms, will you be good in here?” He asked.

“Thankfully I’m left handed. Don’t worry about me, I got this. Please be careful out there, Andrew.”

“I will.” He grabbed his pack and stick, then headed out. Now acutely aware of the possibility of traps, he used his pole to test everything he touched. With it, he opened doors, swept floors for tripwires, and moved piles of junk to search for ground traps. At times his caution bordered on paranoia. On one occasion he avoided an entire room because there were too many electrical wires on the floor. With a tangle like that it would be impossible to tell whether anything was a trap or not.

Andrew went from bathroom to bathroom, raiding the medicine cabinets. For being in the middle of an opiates crisis he had to check quite a few rooms before he found some Oxycontin. He put a pill in his mouth, then washed it down with water from the sink. It occurred to him that he could refill his bottles from the sink, so he topped them off. He was going to have to review the pills he collected once they made camp. All of them would definitely be valuable, but some would be more useful as medicine than merchandise.

Andrew went a little further outside the area the gun safe was in to the hallway just before the gas. He pushed a door open with his stick and a moment later an ax on a rope swung out at neck height. He nearly pissed himself out of fear, even though he was a good five feet from its arc. Once the trap stopped swinging he cautiously stepped inside. After spending a while scanning the room and finding nothing suspicious, he resolved to poke everything with his rod just to be safe. The entire bedroom proved safe, and he repeated the process with the bathroom. Finally coming down from his alert, he checked the medicine cabinet and found an extra large bottle of Vicodin.

He initially considered telling Sylph about it, but then realized it would be more useful if kept secret. If they ever came into conflict with The Merchant, he’d be able to sustain her for a while. She didn’t need to know, and The Merchant certainly didn’t need to know. There was one more room in the hallway, near the door to the bathroom. Andrew almost wanted to pass on looting it because of how close it was to the gas, but in the end his curiosity got the better of him. He tried the doorknob, but for the first time in the caves the door was locked. He frowned, then broke down the door with several well placed kicks.

On the other side was a simultaneously disgusting and beautiful scene. All along the room’s shelves was a large, lovingly arranged collection of colorful figurines and mecha models. The walls were covered end to end in anime style posters, ranging from cute to downright obscene. On the floor however, were piles of trash and dirty clothes. Poking out from under the bed were several bottles with yellow contents he didn’t want to consider. Inside the desk drawers he found a few small bottles of liquor. Sam would like those. Andrew scanned the room. Whatever he took now would be free, and whatever he wanted later he’d have to pay for at a huge markup. The only thing that made sense was to take everything remotely interesting. Whatever else he found he’d just have to get a separate bag to carry. Over the course of an hour he stripped the room of DVDs, figurines, posters, bottles, and even the computer’s hard drive. Just when he was about to check out the bathroom he heard a voice.

“Andrew? Where are you?” It was Amelia. He walked out of the room and answered her.

“I’m over here!” He started walking to the sound of her voice, then saw her after rounding a corner. They walked closer to meet each other.

“What’d you spend so long gathering? Your pack looks full.”

“Items for medicine and recreation.”

“You got drugs?”

“And anime.”

“Seriously? You’re a fucking weaboo?” Sylph started laughing. “The guy who casually reads Hitler watches anime.”

“It’s more common than you think.”

“Heh… You really crack me up. Anyway, the safe’s open. There’s a lot of guns so I got you a second bag to carry your share.”

“How did you learn how to do that?”

“Deal with safes? I was a professional thief on the outside.”

“Ever kill anyone on the outside?”

“Me? No way. Some of my partners did, but I only ever stole. Of course the second I showed up here that all changed.”

“Well, I guess similar story with me, except I didn’t get into too much trouble on the outside.”

“I guess that’s just another thing we have in common. Now lets grab these guns and get back home.”

“Yeah about that...”

“What?”

“Well, you said that we have to tell The Merchant about the bombing and gassing because he’s going to find out eventually anyways.”

“Right.”

“So this whole secret trade thing doesn’t really work out anymore.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Did you see any .45 auto rounds in the safe?”

“Yeah a bunch. There was another gun just like the one you used in there.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking, you let me take half those rounds and the gun I already used. Neither of us say anything about it to The Merchant.”

“I’m sure he’s going to check our bags.”

“There were some of those black alcoves along the way to this place. I say we stash a gun and some ammo there. That way the next time one of us gets sent on a suicide mission we can make the odds better for ourselves.”

“But if anyone checks the alcove it’s right there for the taking.”

“That’s why we’ll duct-tape it to the wall seven feet off the ground in the alcove.”

“Okay.… And you promise to never mention anything about my condition?”

“I promise. Oh! I just remembered I found some pain killers. Here.” He fished the bottle out of his pocket and offered it to her. She took a pill and dry swallowed it.

“Thanks Andrew, this arm’s a bitch.” They went back to the safe and stuffed their bags with weapons. They walked back through the corpses with lighter hearts and heavier sacks. For a brief moment as they went down the ramp their hands accidentally touched, but neither of them pulled away.