Discount Dan

I lounged in the breakroom across the cheap, circular table from Temperance the Murder Bunny.

The gentle hum of voices drifted in through the open Employee’s Only door, accompanied by the squeak and scuff of distant feet. The store was busy with the hustle and bustle of new customers. We had fresh meat from the Lobby as well as a handful of veteran Delvers, who’d trickled in from other floors. Half of our cots were rented out for the night as well as two of the three private tents.

One by Jakob and another by a grizzled level 18 from the fifth floor who had the thousand-yard stare of a man who’d seen some truly disturbing shit.

Taylor, the college girl from Oklahoma, was back, and she’d picked up another stray along the way. A twenty-year-old named Stephanie from Fort Lauderdale. The two of them both wore haunted expressions and looked almost as shell-shocked as the level 18, but they were alive. That was the important thing. Apparently, they’d made it down to the second floor, and were still recovering from the unfortunate decision.

They had moved on to the third floor since then, which was an infinitely better choice.

Taylor had acquired some riot gear along the way and had a hockey stick wrapped in barbed wire. Her friend was sporting baggy sweatpants along with a pair of hockey pads, looted from a sporting goods store. Taylor shelled out three silver Loot Tokens for one of the Molotov Cocktail Relics, while her friend used a combination of Shards, Relics, and Tokens to purchase a Basic Camo and the Complimentary Upgrade I’d scored off the Receptionist in the Lobby.

And though I was rooting for ’em both, they were by no means unique. There were at least half a dozen Delvers with similar stories and experiences.

Despite the Skinless Court’s attempt to stifle my efforts, business was booming. Baby Hands was keeping the place neat and tidy and Princess Ponypuff was holding down the fort like a champ—mostly because everyone was too terrified to cross her. Whenever someone tried to haggle, she would just shriek at the top of her lungs like a possessed bullhorn until they relented and paid the full sticker price.

We’d need to upgrade the facility before too much longer. Especially if I could get a foothold with the Delvers of Howlers Hold.

I pulled my thoughts away from the store and back to Temperance, who was staring at me like I owed her money and she was about to collect by breaking my legs. The lady was weird, and it had nothing at all to do with her being a furry.

Well, mostly not that.

The quiet stretching between us was intense and unnerving and I felt an intense need to break the lingering silence.

“How do you and Jakob know each other?” I asked over a cup of coffee that smelled like happiness.

“He rescued me from a temporal distortion pocket,” Temperance replied. “One of those classic boy-meets-girl, boy-saves-girl-from-the-maddening-torture-of-a-frozen-eternity scenarios. A tale as old as time.”

That wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting to hear.

Temporal distortion pockets were nasty traps with a wide variety of strange and horrifying effects. Some accelerated time, causing victims to wither away to nothing but dust and bones in a matter of seconds, while others froze time completely. Years or even decades could pass while the victim was imprisoned. Croc and I had even stumbled across one on the seventh floor that actually caused the victim to revert back to a baby.

But only their head.

Big ol’ adult body, little itty-bitty baby head. Super fucked up.

Needless to say, we had given all of the time distortion pockets a mighty wide berth. Since Temperance was A) alive, B) looked to be in her late twenties, and C) didn’t have a baby head, I was guessing she’d gotten stranded in frozen-time version.

“How long were you stuck inside?” I asked, genuinely curious.

She frowned, her brow knitting in thought.

“Time is hard to track in the Backrooms, but Jakob and I did the math once. By his estimation, I was trapped for around three hundred and thirty years, give or take a decade or so.” She spoke offhandedly, as though she hadn’t just dropped a nuclear-sized Truth Bomb.

Three hundred and thirty years, frozen in a time pocket?

I just stared at her in open-mouthed astonishment, the numbers tumbling around in my head. “I call bullshit,” I blurted out. “There’s no way.”

“Oh, that you were right,” she said, a dash of anger and a hint of sorrow in the words, “but I can assure you it’s quite true. My grandparents arrived at Naumkeag with the first English settlers in 1626, and my family helped build the Massachusetts Bay Colony outpost from the ground up.”

“So you’re like a settler or something?” I asked.

“Weren’t you listening? My grandparents were colonial settlers. My parents were farmers. As for me? I was a witch. At least that’s what everyone in Salem said before they tried to hang me by the neck for consorting with the Devil.” A dark shadow flickered across her face, here then gone. “Not that they managed to kill me. Not like the others. My parents gave me up to the church and my own fiancé swore he saw me communing with a familiar. The traitorous twat.”

She faltered, drumming her fingers restlessly on her mug.

“I ran before they could kill me or force me to confess,” she said, the words a sneer of contempt. “Better to die cold and hungry and alone in the woods than be tortured and murdered by all the people I trusted most in the world.” She looked at me, a deranged smile on her lips. “That’s how I ended up here. I got lost in the woods, but instead of dying I wandered into the Backrooms. They saved me,” she said with a feverish intensity.

I wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth or lying through her teeth, but one thing was obvious. This lady wasn’t playing with a full deck of cards. She was kinda hot, too—though not even remotely hot enough to make up for the sheer level of crazy that was radiating off her in waves.

If the Marine Corps had taught me one thing, it was keep your dick away from crazy.

“So why did you and Jakob part ways?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation back onto slightly steadier ground.

“Nothing so complicated.” She took a long sip of coffee. “Our personalities clash. He’s thoughtful and doesn’t like to kill things, while I’m impulsive and strongly believe in indiscriminately murdering anything that crosses me for any reason. We’ve always had something of a contentious relationship, as you might imagine. He and I decided it was better for everyone if we went our separate ways after he dropped me off with the Howlers.”

“How long have you been with the Hold?” I asked, finally circling around to the one topic I was keenly interested to learn more about.

I didn’t want her to feel like this was an interrogation, but this was the first chance I’d really had to ask someone about the elusive Safe Harbor down on the seventh floor and I was dying for some more information. After all, information was power, and this lady—crazy or not—had intel I badly needed.

“I’ve been with them for the better part of three years,” she said. “Some of the best years of my life.”

“What are they like?” I asked. “The Howlers, I mean. I’m hoping to get a foot in the door and establish a trading network with them, assuming they’re open to the idea. One of those, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine type deals.”

She pondered my question for a long beat. Then a crooked grin spread across her face.

“Misfits and weirdos and outcasts and degenerates. Each and every one of them. Just like me. Well, maybe not just like me. Most of them are generally less stabby, though they aren’t weak like Jakob. They’ll do what needs doing. They’re all wonderful. Except the ones I want to kill.”

“How many of them do you want to kill?” I asked.

“I have a list to help me keep track.” One hand darted into her skintight bunny suit and came back out with a worn and heavily creased piece of paper. She unfolded it with reverent fingers, as though it were a sacred text. Both sides were covered in names. Some scratched out, others underlined or written in all caps. It was a very long list. She tapped a finger against a small clump of names. “Less than ten,” she said, scanning the sheet.

“Maybe I’m wrong, but ten still seems like a pretty big number.”

“For Temperance that is an extremely small number,” Jakob said, slipping into the breakroom from the hallway. The soft squeak of rubber followed as Croc trailed in just behind the Cendral.

I felt a weight lift off my shoulders that I hadn’t even been aware was there.

I’d poured a Zima into one of the mimic’s many mouth orifices as soon as we’d made it back to the store, but the elixir hadn’t done much for the Dweller. Even using the Pharmacist’s Scales hadn’t done shit. Turned out, Croc had been afflicted with a slew of nasty diseases and debuffs that actively prevented healing elixirs or Relics from working.

Thankfully, Jakob carried an entire pharmacy worth of salves and potions around with him. He’d managed to dig up a specialty brew called Super-strength Almond water, which dispelled the bulk of the most harmful ailments. The mimic was back in its very human dog form and looked significantly improved, even though it had only been a scant few hours.

“There are about two hundred or so members of the Hold,” Jakob continued, “so that makes up less than five percent of the total population.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t make it sound any better,” I replied. “Pretty sure wanting to kill five percent of a people group is a war crime.”

“When you consider that Temperance wants to murder ninety-nine percent of all people she meets, it’s actually a rather impressive statistic.” He grabbed a beer from the fridge and collapsed into the seat beside me.

Croc padded over, dropped onto his haunches, and rested his head on my knee, googly eyes staring up at me.

“Glad to see you’re doing better, buddy,” I said, scratching behind one of his rubbery ears. “Thank you,” I said, shooting the Cendral an appreciative glance. I still didn’t fully trust the man, but he’d saved my only real friend and for that I owed him a debt.

“Kein Problem,” Jakob replied, absently waving away my thanks. “It is the least I could do, considering you saved this delinquent here. She and I may have radically different moral philosophies, but it would pain me to see something bad happen to her.” He frowned at Temperance. “Not that I truly believe there is anything nasty enough on this floor to kill you, kleine Hase. Not even the Aspirants.”

Temperance beamed and a small blush crept into her cheeks. “That might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, Jakob.”

“I didn’t intend it as a compliment,” he replied tersely, “though I am glad you are alive.” He paused, frown deepening as he regarded her. “But I do wonder why you were wandering around all by yourself when the Red Hands are obviously out in force.”

Temperance wrinkled her nose and scrunched up her face. “They kicked me out again,” she said.

Jakob looked utterly unfazed by the revelation. “What did you do this time, I wonder?”

“Hardly an offense worthy of expulsion. It’s not even really my fault. Jackson got a little handsy with me, so I cut off his hands to teach him a lesson,” she said nonchalantly as though she were discussing the weather and not maiming another human being. “He survived and the Skin Scribe managed to reattach both limbs, so I’m not sure why everyone made such a fuss.”

“I’ve learned that people can be funny about that sort of thing,” Croc agreed, slipping into the last open seat. “A while back, I was helping this Delver named Francis and Francis had one of his arms ripped off in a machinery room on the second floor. I ended up eating the limb, because it was right there, and it was just going to go to waste. But with the way Francis reacted, you’d have thought I was the one that ripped his arm off.

“Long story short, Francis freaked out, called me a ‘fleshy abomination’—whatever that’s supposed to mean—then ran headlong into a ravenous pack of Skitters, who finished the job. It was a very confusing experience, overall, though I did learn some valuable lessons about human sensibilities and boundaries. Turns out they are extremely attached to their limbs, on account of the fact that they can’t spontaneously regrow them the way a mimic can.”

“I can also regrow my limbs,” Jakob noted.

“This is why no one likes Cendrals, Jakob,” Temperance said, tossing her hands up. “They always make everything about themselves. We all know you can regrow your bloody limbs and no one is impressed.”

“I’m a little impressed,” Croc mumbled.

Jakob stoically ignored her needling. “How long did they excommunicate you for this time?”

Temperance soured and folded her arms across her chest. “Indefinitely, not that it’s any of your business. Wraith was not at all pleased by my ‘antics,’—she air quoted the word—“especially since Jackson happens to be his biological brother. Though how two people ended up Noclipping together is beyond me.” She scowled at the table as though it had personally offended her. “But it doesn’t matter. I have a way back in. Wraith gave me an assignment and said all will be forgiven if I can resolve a tiny issue they’re dealing with.”

“It sounds like this Wraith guy is the person I need to talk to about setting up shop in the Hold,” I said idly, swirling my coffee.

Temperance snorted. “If that’s what you’re after down on seven, you might as well cut your losses and move on to a different floor. You’ll never make it through the front gates.”

“Why is that?” Jakob asked, leaning forward, his interest piqued. “It’s been several years since I paid the Hold a visit, but I remember them being rather welcoming to outsiders.”

“Things change,” Temperance replied. “Especially lately. Everyone is on edge. There are whispers of war brewing between the sovereigns. They’ve locked down the Hold. No one in, no one out. Not for the foreseeable future, anyway. They might bend the rules for you, Jakob, but they’ll never let him in. Especially since he’s the one stirring up all the trouble.

“They hate the Aspirants as much as anyone, but Wraith isn’t going to risk starting a war for an outsider. Although…” She trailed off, and I could see the wheels turning in her head. “Maybe there’s a way we could help each other.” A cruel, conniving smile stretched across her face and she steepled her fingers in a way that reminded me strongly of an evil villain about to start monologuing. “Tell me, Discount Dan, what are your feelings on the Blight?”