"Stop!" I yelled, loudly enough that István actually jumped a little. He'd been reaching for a box that supposedly had an Artifact in it, but I could tell from where I sat that there was something very off about it. He turned back towards me wordlessly, as if waiting for me to elaborate. But he didn't continue.

I stood up and speed walked over to him, still staying at a distance from the box. It was very nondescript, and I wouldn't even have paid a second glance to it except for it felt like some perversion of nature the second I laid my eyes on it. Honestly I had no idea how I hadn't felt it before. At this distance, it had a sense of wrongness that was overwhelming.

"Yeah, I wouldn't touch that," I reiterated, suddenly realizing what it was. "That's probably whatever they broke into the building for."

"How do you figure?" István asked.

"You know how I say Artifacts have 'deep vibes'?"

"Yes, I am familiar with your expressiveness."

I wasn't sure how to take that, but I continued anyway: "Well, this is the exact opposite of that. It feels like it's actively trying to mess with my head." It really was, like it was trying to convince me of something. "Very bad juju." Then I realized that 'juju' probably meant as much to István as 'vibes' did.

Luckily he didn't need to understand the language I was using in order to understand that what was in the box should probably stay there. He grabbed another, larger and fancier box from somewhere and put this little one there. It was a box in a box.

"I'll talk to Viktor about what to do about this," he said, "You can probably call it a day for now."

"Sounds good," I replied, nodding. We'd gone through a ton of the unidentifiable ones until we ran out of those and had to go back to our original task, which István seemed disappointed by. For some reason staring at them all that time had been quite draining.

I put some of my lab gear away in my little locker - I'd been given some protective stuff and a nice lab coat that made me look all science-y and cool. I folded it and tucked it away.

I was on my way down the stairwell when Alex popped out of one of the doors. I was surprised to see him and not entirely because I'd sort of forgotten he existed.

"Hey, Alex!" I said, with the cheer in my voice that only comes from the end of a workday. "Glad to see you didn't get turned into a shrimp!"

"A shrimp?" He asked, clearly confused.

"Yeah, the things with all the arms," I replied, pantomiming tentacles.

"You mean an octopus?"

"Yeah, a that," I replied. I'm an adult, I swear, I reassured myself internally. Just one that sucks at identifying animals.

"That would make more sense than a shrimp."

"Yes, it would."

He got silent for a moment, probably having forgotten what exactly it was he'd popped out into the stairwell to talk to me about. Not that I cared a lot, and having secured my escape from work I just kept descending the stairs, eventually forcing him to follow me down in order to keep me inside non-awkward conversation range.

Eventually he seemed to figure out what it was that he wanted to talk about. "So yeah, about those, uh, things that showed up outside the building today. We think we might know who sent them."

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"Uh, cool," I replied, "Not really interested."

I was getting the sense he wanted to involve me in whatever his group had come up with and honestly really not caring a ton about it at the moment. I'd already damaged a good shirt (and pants!) today and wasn't interested in further fighting, intrigue, or any combination of the two. Fintrigue? Ighting? Either way, it seemed like István and Viktor definitely knew who sent them, so I wasn't about to stick my nose where it didn't belong.

Which, I know, belies belief considering my actions these past few days, but yeah, that's how it was.

He seemed a bit disappointed, but that was too bad. I was heading home to some premium, top shelf, high quality Gran hugs and he wasn't about to stop me. I felt like he had gotten the idea in his head that I was the kind of person to run out after the next adventure.

What did he think I was, some gung-ho heroine in a book?

So, yeah, the hugs were exactly as good as advertised - made out of 100% Grade A, top-notch good feelings. That said, immediately after I got a decent tongue lashing from Gran; a lot of "I told you just this morning to take care of yourself" type things.

Which, I mean, fair. I did promise to take care of myself, then damn near get split stem-to-stern by a strange abomination only a few hours later. I'd try to better next time, and told her as much. Gran never was one to remain mad, and she pointed at the stove.

"Fine, your turn to cook then," she said, handing me a wooden spoon. "Soup, if you would."

"Yes ma'am," I replied smiling, then got to work.

I might not be the amazing cook gran was but I wasn't too shabby, and proved that by whipping up what wound up being a rather sturdy vegetable stew, using an old recipe from my grandfather that I knew Gran was really fond of, partially because it was written in his handwriting, and partially because she had functioning tastebuds and it was a great soup.

The smell drew the rest of the family into the kitchen before too long. Even mom showed up, which was a rarity, and I wasn't about to complain.

Filling up their bowls, I handed out some toasted bread I'd purchased on the way home. Well, the bread, anyway, the toasting I did myself. I might have gotten some more pay, but I wasn't that decadent yet. That and the new pay hadn't hit my paycheck as of yet. We were living a bit higher on the hog, but that was mostly off my existing savings.

Dumb, I know. But I'd watched this family suffer for years and wasn't about to let the logistics get in the way - I had decent cause to believe that we were going to be fine in the future. It wasn't like my savings were getting any bigger just sitting around. What were they going to do, have the bills get together and make some baby coins? That'd be pretty awesome if you could just park your money in some dark corner and wind up with more of it in a few months.

The soup tasted as good as the smell advertised - Liam actually shut up long enough to finish his bowl, which was high praise indeed.

I spend the time after supper mending my clothes. I might stretch for some bread, but I wasn't about to lose my mind and go out buying a wardrobe of items. So I sat crosslegged on the bed and stitched carefully. After a while, I realized that I could probably make better use of the time than just the mending, so I started working on moving my energy into my right leg, similar to how I had done with my arm.

It was much harder to do with my eyes open and while concentrating on something else. It was clear from the day that I wasn't about to be given time to close my eyes to bring out my maximum ability when I really needed to use what I had - so this sort of practice could only improve myself. Even if I only made it down one leg or something, it'd still be better than nothing.

At first it didn't go so well. I was either stabbing myself with the needle or losing any semblance of control over the power itself and having it dissipate into my leg. It seemed rather harmless, but after a few mistakes like this, the whole thing was starting to get tender and warm, which led me to believe that the energy was getting held up in there somehow. So I set my patchwork aside for a while, and closed my eyes, pushing my concentration into my extremities.

Once I did it was blatant what the problem was, I could see a murky mist of energy aimlessly floating throughout those tissues, more or less as expected from the symptoms. I focused on small areas, gathering it up and pulling it back to my Core. It was tedious work, but I didn't want to melt a leg or something by just leaving things as they were.

By the time I finished, I was more than ready for bed.

Ever had one of those nights where you just can't sleep? That was tonight for me. I was stuck wondering what exactly all this was called, staring out the window at the reddened Moon rising through the crud in the atmosphere. Like I can't be the first person to have a Core and this mystery energy. Right?

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