~~~

A small, pentagonal room.

Pale green tiles on a floor with the slightest of sinkhole slopes, brick-sized drainage stones near the middle, darker green tiles laid out in uniform rows on the wall, each one on the middle line decorated with a series of strange triangle-plus-lunatic-squiggle icons.

Tendrils of vapour rising up from the sixteen vents below to the eight vents dug into the ceiling.

An enclave that looked kind of like a jacuzzi, only without the seductive bubbles.

Triangle tubes that may have been bottles of shampoo.

Orb containers that may have been filled with conditioner.

A window made of a material duller than regular glass, the scenery beyond too dark and obscured by the steam to make out.

Background music coming in that sounded like a schizophrenic adder attempting Chinese opera.

To a human, the whole thing would’ve appeared vaguely satanic, or occult Hungarian, or a film set on a Tarsem Singh production, but to the yellow figure walking in through the sliding door on the left, it was pure comfort-cave.

‘Seventeen different addresses…’ they muttered, moving through the steam without defence, sucking it in, blowing it back out, muttering, ‘seventeen different addresses,’ again.

They stopped in front of the triptych mirror and glared. Mentally whipped the reflection. Burnt the robe it had on.

‘All over it…’ they said, glancing at the pool of neon blue liquid to the right, then grabbing what looked like a box-shaped sponge and starting to scrub at the stains on their robe.

Was it really a robe?

Probably not, but it made a pretty convincing substitute, and the yellow demon was right, the whole thing was covered in splats of blue paint.

And scrubbing wasn’t doing much to get rid of any of it.

‘Complete fucking mess,’ the demon blurted out in their own native language, which to the human ear sounded something like junna ek tanno.

They threw the scrubbing sponge at the right-wing mirror and then spat at the glass [missing and hitting one the symbolic tiles]. Then coughed as too much steam seeped into their throat.

‘Junna, junna, junna ek.’

After recovering a little, the yellow demon switched to using their fingernail on the robe and gave up almost immediately as it did nothing but spread the blue shit onto their hand.

‘Soaking time,’ they said to their own blurred reflection, peeling off the tainted apron. With a hospital sigh, they picked up one of the triangular bottles, poured the oil-like contents over their head and shoulders, then dropped sideways like a falling movie extra into the pool.

The liquid acted just like human water, parting seamlessly to let the huge yellow mass in then quickly rushing to close the void back up again.

Minutes passed and things stayed the same.

Hissing music, dense vapours, no rupture of the pool surface.

Another five minutes and still nothing.

Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty…

Then, after almost half an hour of submersion, something did happen, but not in the pool.

Up above, in the ceiling.

Four of the vents started to vibrate, then fade, then disintegrate completely as a circle of nothingness appeared, depositing a lot of wind, some water from Lake Suwa, a few dazed fish, wet flakes of Kanae DNA and, finally, a male corpse and a soaked Sessskat.

As luck would have it, they both landed on the tiles – the liquid in the pool would’ve melted off the outer layer of their skin – with Aya managing to mess up her sense of direction so completely that she rotated the body of Miho upwards instead of the other way to act as a landing cushion.

Or perhaps that was her plan, it was hard to know as she didn’t move for a whole minute after landing, and when she did finally reboot, she rolled left, patting the floor like a blind beggar in an attempt to find Miho’s arm.

Due to portal-drop physics, it wasn’t far and, when she got hold of it, she pulled the wet flesh in tight to her mouth and kissed it. Then bit into the skin.

No scream.

She bit again, harder.

Nothing.

But he’s still in one piece, she thought, keeping hold of his hand and sitting up, studying each of his limbs for signs of degradation. How is this possible?

Unless…

Her brain went inwards for all of two seconds, before some rogue steam slipped up her nostrils and provoked a reflex coughing fit.

As she tried to slap at her own chest, and wipe away the lake water coming out of her nose, the rest of the room started to colour itself in. Green tiles, ritual symbols, triptych mirror…

Before she could say kuso out loud, the surface of the pool broke, some of the liquid splashing over the side and landing close to Aya’s foot. Ordinarily, that would’ve been alarming enough, but it was usurped by the fact that she’d only just noticed the pool, and now that there was a yellow-skinned head sticking out of it, things were clearly a hundred times worse.

Huxx, she thought, staring back at the yellow demon’s eyes, hoping he wouldn’t rise up far enough to show the rest of his body. Not that it would mean much to her. Huxx genitalia, based on the porn she’d watched as a teen, was just a bush of coarse indigo hair knotted together. And Huxx as a type weren’t innately violent or suspicious. Unless someone had just dropped through the ceiling vents into their private steam chamber…

‘Sessskat…’ the yellow demon said finally, lowering his face back down until the chin was resting on the surface of the pool. ‘And the Vohyangah child…’

Aya blinked, running through a hundred different theories, a thousand different escape plans, a million ways of saying please bring back my dead friend, all the while trying to ignore the turquoise wisps coming out of the Huxx eye sockets. And the cold, wet drops of Lake Suwa dripping onto her neck, bringing her close to a full body shiver.

‘You can relax, I will not harm you.’

‘Huxx…’

‘Though perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me how you came to drop through my ceiling. And why the Vohyangah child appears to be dead.’

‘Vohyangah…Miho…’

The Huxx demon groaned then dipped his head under the pool oil, disappearing for about twenty seconds before re-emerging.

‘You’re saying he…this body…is not human?’

‘Finally, a question. Albeit a little disjointed. Yes, obviously he is not human, I think you can discern that much yourself.’

‘His body…is still intact.’

‘Exactly.’

Aya looked down, feeling confused for a moment that Miho’s drenched hand was still generating warmth, then took a breath and remembered the steam.

‘Now, this is quite a delicate situation. I have no desire to stand up and parade myself naked in front of a stranger, so you’re going to have to assist me.’

‘Assist? To do what?’

The turquoise mist stretched out of the Huxx eye sockets, getting paler with each inch gained…then whipped to a stop and quickly retreated into general, localised swirling.

‘Sorry…I don’t-…I’m not sure what-…’

‘Your friend…and also my acquaintance, I may add…is dead, correct?’

Aya squeezed Miho’s fingers, nodding.

‘Within the last hour or so by the looks of it.’

More nodding, more squeezing.

‘Good. Then there’s still a chance.’

‘What…’

The Huxx reached out a dark yellow arm, with flecks of blue dotted over it, and pointed at a panel next to the triptych mirror. ‘Tap the largest triangle on that tile. Pass me the device inside.’

‘I don’t understand. He’s…’

‘…dead, yes. And he’s going to remain that way unless you prod your brain back on and do what I say.’

Aya nodded again, understanding the words on a superficial level and overlooking the condescending tone. Was this Huxx crazy? Did they really have some device that could bring Miho back?

Her body followed orders, crawling over to the designated tile, while her brain tried to access tech news she’d half-glanced at the last time she’d been on this side. Far as she could remember, there was no machine that could revive someone. Only conceptual nanobots in Vohyangah sci-fi serials. Which was apparently Miho’s type. Wah, a Vohyangah, all this time. Acting out the greatest performance of a naïve village fool she’d ever seen…no, that she’d ever imagined.

‘Not that triangle, the other one.’

‘Where? I don’t-…’ she stuttered, coming back to the task at hand.

‘The other one.’

‘This?’

‘The. Other. One,’ the Hux barked, face and tone quickly becoming a lot more like the Hux stereotypes she’d seen on TV. Gruff police captains. Stern nationalists. Parents who never let their kids go out past seven. Kids who thought going out past seven was immoral. ‘The largest triangle…’

‘There’s about twenty of them and they all look the same size.’

‘Use your eyes, Sessskat. Focus.’

Aya muttered to herself, her finger moving along the triangle iconography, no idea as to what any of them represented.

‘The one on the top-left. With grooves down the right-hand side.’

‘This?’

‘Yes.’

You could’ve just said that at the start crossed her mind and was quickly flushed out as Miho’s corpse popped up in her peripheral vision. He’s right, focus. For my amazing acting friend. The amazing liar. Miho the not-really human.

Pressing what still didn’t look like the largest triangle, she arched back as the tile slid across and, when nothing shot out, reached in with a dripping sleeve and gripped onto the first machine-like thing she touched.

‘Okay, bring it here,’ said the Huxx, shifting point duty to their left arm as the other dropped from fatigue.

Aya did as she was told, trying to make sense of the screen on the device as she carried it over, then asking again if it could really bring someone back from the dead when she handed it to her yellow-skinned host.

‘If you believe in the marvels of modern Huxx technology.’

‘But…how?’

‘Nanobots, of course.’

‘That’s-…you mean, they’re actually real?’

The Huxx finished jabbing the screen, and the mild electronic beeps it had been making stopped too. ‘How long exactly have you been in the human world, Sessskat?’

‘A while.’

‘For what reason?’

Aya sucked in a larger mass of steam, not quite enough to make her cough, but enough to make it seem credible when she started doing exactly that.

‘A poor attempt at distraction,’ said the Huxx, watching her slap her own throat in simulated discomfort.

‘Your device…nanobots…does it work or not?’

The Huxx waited for Aya to eke out a few more fake coughs then went back to the device, jabbing several times, swiping a little, possibly keying in commands for nanobots, possibly playing one of those old moon jump puzzles games. After about five minutes of silence punctuated occasionally by electronic beeps and mutterings in native Huxx, as well as some curses in the shared Yap-ohk standard, the yellow demon jabbed his last jab and handed the device back to Aya.

‘What do I do now?’ she asked, hand wet from wringing water from her sleeves.

‘Sit back and wait.’

‘For what?’

‘Our delivery to arrive.’

‘And this?’ she asked, holding up the device.

‘You may hold onto that for the time being. Ah, I suppose you better hand me that robe as well. My skin is starting to crease.’

Again, Aya followed the orders, relieved that the Huxx tone was back to being genial - or not like a police captain at least - but also anxious that her hand would not stop shaking. She’d covered it well, so far, but the last few minutes, as her brain had begun to load the environment she was in, turning on the lights of the old memories of this world that she really would’ve preferred to keep in the dark…or shoot into a black hole, if possible…and the fact that they now had to wait for nanobots to come and maybe save Miho, her and a naked Huxx stranger, together with so many unanswered questions to ask…

‘Are you okay?’

Aya blinked, looking left at the Huxx in his blue-stained robe. She’d handed it to him already?

‘Your hand…’

‘It’s nothing,’ she answered, hiding it behind her yukata. ‘Residual stress from the portal.’

‘I see. It’s been a while since you’ve used one, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long exactly? A year? Two?’

‘A while.’

The Huxx smiled, pulling their robe in tight around the legs - or apron, as Aya’s gut told her – then sitting down on the rim of the pool tub. The turquoise eyes flicked over to scan mode and aimed right at the Sessskat intruder, giving her no choice but to deflect again.

‘How much longer till the nanobots get here?’ she asked, feeling her way down onto the tiles, reaching for Miho’s weirdly well-heated hand.

‘Depends on the signal. Another minute or so.’

‘Okay.’

‘Just enough time for you to tell me a story.’

Aya pulled Miho’s hand onto her lap, adjusting her sitting position so her yukata could stretch out and dry a bit more.

‘Or perhaps several stories. The first one, how did the Vohyangah boy manage to end up with such a vicious stab wound?’

‘Knife attack.’

‘By?’

‘Ninja.’

The Huxx tilted their head, chuckling through the steam. ‘That’s it?’

‘We were being chased, one of them caught up. Stabbed Miho. Killed him. Then the lake opened up somehow and…now we’re here.’

‘I’m glad you’re using we. Shows great faith in Huxx technology, which is rare coming from a Sessskat. Thank you. And as to your somehow…it was my summoning stone that was used…without the summoning part, of course. I suppose the boy was too weak to manage that part…’

‘Summoning stone?’

‘A relative term, for the humans to understand. In truth, another example of pioneering Huxx technology. Can open a portal up almost anywhere.’

‘And…you gave it to Miho?’

‘Before he died, yes. Though I did not expect him to use it so soon. Or perhaps that was your doing…borne of desperation…fear.’

Aya glanced through the steam, able to see just enough of the door to know that it was still shut. To kill time, she went back to wringing lake water out of her yukata, this time the lower parts.

‘So…to clarify…the boy was dead before the portal opened?’

‘Miho? Don’t know. Yes. I think so.’

The Huxx fixed their head back into a straight position, whispering something in their own language.

Aya already had her mouth open to ask again about the nanobots, how exactly they were getting there, what they looked like, how it all worked, many other things that were starting to crystalise in her mind, when the steam nearby swirled abruptly, making way for the sound particles pushed out from the door sliding open, and then the subsequent arrival of four, floating headlamps.

No, wait, not just headlamps…a robot, on hover strips, with four green lights attached to its main body in a diamond formation. Three of them were quite dim, maybe in battery-saving mode, while the top light adjusted itself until it was facing the direction of Miho’s body. With a sharper beep, it moved forward and bumped straight into drainage stone. Whirred and buzzed a little, redirected course by minute angles a dozen times, either refused or was incapable of floating over the stone, whirred a bit more then, finally, got around the stone and made it to its collapsed target.

‘I assume I don’t need to tell you about robots,’ said the Huxx, pretending to analyse the blue stains on their apron-robe thing.

Aya didn’t respond at first, she was too busy gawping at the robot claw descending towards the stab wound on Miho’s chest, but the words eventually filtered through. ‘We have robots in Nheen.’

‘Ah, that’s where you’re from. Land of endless metal alloys.’

‘The claw…is that how the nanobots get in?’

‘And, of course, poet-nihilists. Gods, I hope you’re not one of those. You’re not, are you? Ah, it doesn’t matter if you are, I’m a tolerant type. Unlike others of my breed. Though, now that I give it more thought, it is odd that a Sessskat from Nheen would find herself over in the human world. The preliminary visa alone would be almost the price of a small moon.’

Aya heard the words but pretended it was coming from a TV serial, not even bothering to nod in retaliation. The robot claw was far more important. She had to focus on that, make sure it didn’t do anything clumsy. Even though she had no real idea what it was doing…or if the nanobots had been inserted yet.

Possibly giving an answer to her thought, the top light flashed green on the robot’s body as the claw reeled itself slowly back in. ‘Insert complete,’ it said in a surprisingly smooth voice, the language of course Huxx common, but, like the words of her yellow-skinned host, translated automatically into Sessskat due to the childhood implant lodged somewhere in her ears.

‘Now it’s waiting time again,’ said the Huxx, moving over to the robot and patting it on the head. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘How long?’

‘Initial repair, about a minute. The wound itself, a day, maybe two. Another three after that for psychological adjustment.’

‘It definitely works?’

‘Six out of ten times, as long as it’s within three hours of death. And most of those failures happened in the development stage, very early. In fact, I believe, the only verified incident in the last two years happened when an Atashhka inadvertently sliced their own head off…then tried to program the nanobots while they were in a death haze…obviously, it did not end well.’

Having no idea how to respond, Aya instead scratched at some of the water drops on her neck, flinching a little when she brushed against one of her feelers. Bio-readaptation. Wah, she’d almost forgotten. The old things almost instantly grow back.

‘Shouldn’t be long now. Are you sure you won’t have a drink? Some of our exotic teas are quite passable.’

‘Our…’ Aya ran a finger down the length of her feeler. ‘Actually, where exactly is this place?’

‘Ah, the interrogation turns.’

‘Xanxxal City? Mahndo?’

‘And accelerates. How curious. Are you no longer interested in the recovery of your Vohyangah friend?’

The question came with a vague gesture from the Huxx arm, pointing down at Miho and, by coincidence or not, the sharp intake of steam that his chest had just performed.

Wah, it worked? That fast?

Huxx nanobots?

Aya stared at the yellow-skinned fingers for an extra second, telling herself that it was real, those were real breaths from real lungs, then slowly turned.

And let out her own breath.

‘Miho…’ she whispered, crawling closer, grabbing his hand again. ‘It’s okay…the nanobots…don’t try to move.’

‘Wet…’ came out of his mouth, followed by a chorus of post-death coughing, while his eyes opened about a tenth of an inch, just enough to catch the way-too-bright green light from the robots torso.

Aya put her hand in the middle of the light beam, forming a mostly ineffective shield, and squeezed various parts of Miho’s arm with the other.

She thought of saying that they were safe, no one was dead, Japan was gone, the Huxx was an ally, but then there was a beeping noise behind her, and a rise in volume of the hissing music that had been background level for so long that she’d almost forgotten about it.

‘Really wish you had taken the drink,’ said the Huxx, the odd regretful tone of their voice prompting her to turn and look up at them.

But the Huxx wasn’t standing in the same place anymore, they’d been replaced by the robot and its four green lights, the edges of the bottom one rotating in staggered clicks until there was a triumphant beep and a jet of dry gas shot out upwards to the mirror.

‘What…’

The robot adjusted quickly, a few more clicks, another beep, and then a new burst of dry gas shot out, this time directly at Aya’s face.

Despite the accidental warning, there was no real way to avoid it, and Aya didn’t really try.

She just swiped her left arm through the gas.

Coughed a bit.

Muttered Miho in two coarse syllables.

Then dropped unconscious [in a still wet yukata] onto the pale green tiles.