The material reminded Henrik of a insect’s carapace; black and hard as stone, but with an iridescent sheen like the surface of a bubble. Slight imperfections in the surface made it appear unmistakably organic. He’d felt for a while now like he was exhuming some monstrous invertibrate.

“They won’t buy your story,” said Helli. She’d already downed tools, and was standing over Henrik with hands on h...

In less than an hour, he’d likely be dead. And yet all he could think about were his boots. *Why*, he wondered, *had they taken his boots?"

The guards were frogmarching him through the cave. Every few steps one of Otis’s bare feet would slip on a deposit of algae or slime, and the guards would haul him upright again and bark insults or instructions in his ear. “Get up, traitor. It’ll be worse for...

Eventually, the wreckage had become his obsession.

It had started harmlessly enough. A lunch break spent working through the scanner reports. An air of distraction over dinner, as if something visible only to him were catching his eye. But as the weeks progressed, her brother’s preoccupation had slid into darker territory.

“It’s not just a signal,” he had whispered to her, eyes darting cautiousl...

"Pop on down for a chat in the morning", the note had read. No request or agenda, no clue as to precisely *what* Hades wanted to chat about. Just "a chat".

In the century Warren had known him, Hades had never been quite so vague in his summons. Nor indeed, so friendly. These kinds of requests - infrequent as they were - usually tended towards the grandiose. The last time he'd received a summons f...