Chapter Text
“Little brother.”
Kyouka hovered over his shoulder in the mirror, her eyes a brilliant, blood red. She was not smiling, but when had she ever smiled? Zanka certainly couldn’t remember.
His hands were trembling as he gripped the edge of the sink, tight enough to damage the porcelain if he lost himself.
He couldn’t afford the fees the landlord would charge if it broke.
It took all his strength to force himself to inhale. Force himself to exhale. His grip loosened.
“Little spider,” Kyouka corrected herself. Her tone was not affectionate, nor was her gaze. Zanka couldn’t see her hands, but if he could, he imagined that her nails would be sharp. She had always favored long stilettos, an invisible weapon that any woman could wield.
She was a Black Widow, after all. The pride and joy of her class, the only one left standing. Twenty-eight to one. Kyouka had survived when twenty-seven of her peers had not, and she stood alone, victorious.
Just like Zanka had.
“We miss you. We want you to come back to us.” The words Kyouka spoke were caring, the words of a gentle older sister, but her voice itself was not. There was no emotion there at all. Zanka still made the mistake of looking up at her, meeting her eyes in the mirror.
It really seemed like she was actually there. Like she was truly standing behind him, looking at him in the bathroom mirror. Maybe Goka was in the other room, cleaning his gun. Maybe-
Zanka’s gaze dropped back to his hands. His cold, white-knuckled hands were clenching the edge of the counter like it was the only thing tethering him to the present. He could almost feel icy water rushing around his ankles. If he let himself keep drifting, it would rise and rise and rise until it swallowed him whole.
Kouyka was still hovering over his shoulder, just a step behind him. He could feel her presence.
“You’re not real.” Zanka did not let himself look back up at the mirror.
Just as he could feel her presence, he could tell that there was no one physically in the room with him. There was no additional warmth, no sensation of being watched creeping up his spine. Only one person in the room was breathing, and it wasn’t Kyouka.
Someone inhaled sharply.
Zanka’s eyes jerked back up to the mirror, and he looked over his shoulder—to emptiness. No one stood there.
Because there had never been anyone there in the first place. It was only a trick of his fractured mind, trying to lure him back to his own destruction. Unfortunately for his mind, Zanka had taught himself better than that. The Room had taught him better than that.
The mind might be a monster when left to its own devices, but Zanka was just as much of a monster as his mind was. The Room had made sure of that when they took him apart and put him back together. It had made him stronger, faster, better.
It hadn’t been without damage, as the hallucinations proved. If he were still a part of the Room, they would have treated him for it. Like they treated all injuries the Spiders and Widows returned with, there was no use in a broken tool. They would have had him in working order regardless of what they would’ve had to do.
The large gaps in Zanka’s memories proved that.
He still didn’t know which of the gaps were jobs that had been wiped from his mind, blood metaphorically wiped from his hands, and which were simply memories that the Room didn’t want him to have.
Wiping unwanted memories was hardly unusual for the room. Any hint of rebellion, any signs of disobedience, were wiped just as quickly as they had appeared. The Room couldn’t afford to have its assets flee, or worse.
They took other memories too. Softer ones. The memory of a trainee who smiled at you during ballet practice, the memory of a boy who offered you half of his dinner so you wouldn’t starve—the Room took those. Connections like that made you soft, and the Room’s job was to harden its assassins. To freeze them over, like ice, until there was no hint of gentleness left.
Zanka had watched them do it to other recruits, and he was sure it had been done to him. He just.
Couldn’t remember.
The Room saw everything. The Headmaster saw everything. But they hadn’t seen through him.
It was almost ironic. The Red Room trained their Spiders and Widows to be invisible, to walk unseen among the chaos of the world. Their assassins were the best of the best, and what good was an assassin who could be seen?
They had trained him a little too well. Zanka had taken the Room’s training and turned it back on them, until they were unable to see the plans lurking just behind his eyes—all they could see was the Wolf Spider they had built and his empty soul.
Snuffing out the spark in a human’s soul was a delicate art, and for the most part, the Room had mastered it.
That was why they had been caught so off guard when Zanka had set the building ablaze.
In the mirror, he could still see the spark in the back of his eye. Dull and barely flickering, with just enough oxygen to keep it from smothering, but alive. The Room had tried to smother it, and Zanka had fought to keep it alive out of sheer spite.
Fought to keep himself alive.
The Room tried its very best to kill its trainees, and only the ones who were strong enough to survive earned the honor of graduating. Unfortunately for the Room and its Headmaster, some of the ones who survived were strong enough to fight for more than just their life.
Rumors were always flying about a Spider who tried to hide a lover, or a Widow who attempted to maintain a secret life for herself outside the room. Some of the Red Room’s assassins fought for little things like that, small secrets they kept tucked close to their chest, kindling for their spark.
Zanka had chosen his freedom.
Nothing came for free, and the cost of his freedom had been even more blood and death, but Zanka’s hands had been dripping in it for years before he graduated. What was a few more corpses to earn his liberation from the Room?
The carpet was soft against his bare feet when he stepped out of the bathroom, flicking the light off behind him. It muffled the sounds of his footsteps, but in the moonlight from the window, the white plush of it gleamed softly. Small stars were embroidered into it, too, surrounding a large crescent moon in the center. It had been one of the earlier purchases Zanka had made with his first paycheck.
Maybe it had been an irresponsible decision. He hadn’t needed a rug, but it was just so pretty in the store, and it had been so soft when he touched it. When a worker had asked him if he was interested in buying it, Zanka had replied that, yes, he was, before truly processing what he had said.
The rug had come home with him that day, and he had spent nearly an hour lying on it.
It was still one of his favorite things in the room.
Unlike the rug, his bed was plain. The mattress was hard as a rock when Zanka settled into it, pulling a thin blanket over himself. He didn’t need much in the way of bedding; it was luxury enough not to be handcuffed to the bedframe every night. Being able to toss and turn while falling asleep was a novelty he would never get used to. It was nice waking up to an unbruised wrist, too.
Underneath his pillow, there was a gun. In the drawer of his nightstand, there was a stack of books, one of which was fake and held a butterfly blade in its hollowed-outcore. Under his mattress, there were three more daggers, which Zanka took care to keep sharp.
He might have left the Red Room behind, but he hadn’t discarded the lessons his teachers had drilled into him. Though he was not a Wolf Spider anymore, and would never be again, not everyone believed that.
Certainly not the Room, or the enemies he might have made while out on missions.
Some of them he remembered. The face of a politician on the news, mourning his husband, a man Zanka had killed three days prior. The elderly grandmother of a family who had died in a fiery explosion, set by Zanka, who also happened to be in an influential position of power in a foreign government. He couldn’t remember which country he had been in for that assassination. A little girl, bleeding out under his knife, as a warning to her father. His memory of that particular death was incomplete, but when it was dark and he was trying to sleep, he could recall flashes of it.
Those were only the ones Zanka could remember. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, more that had been wiped from his mind, in the chair. That was dangerous.
He might not remember their faces, but they might remember his. If an old enemy ever wanted to hunt him down, he would need to be ready.
They weren’t even the most dangerous foes he might have to face.
That honor went to the Red Room itself.
They thought he was dead, sure, but if they ever found out he was alive? If he ever slipped up, and the news made it back to them? There would be a Widow or a Spider on his doorstep before he could blink, and Zanka would have to be ready to fight for his life.
Graduates of the Red Room were no strangers to killing, even the people they loved. They were good at it.
A part of Zanka hoped they would send Goka or Kyouka if the Headmaster decided they wanted him dead. His siblings would not hesitate to kill him, but at least he wouldn’t be dying at the hands of a new graduate or a complete stranger.
He had graduated just over a year ago, and even if it had only been for a day, that meant Zanka had been a fully fledged Wolf Spider. As much as the Room must hate him for his escape, for outsmarting them, he was good at what he had been trained to do.
The Room truly had taught him too well. If Zanka didn’t hate them so much, he might’ve even found it impressive: just how well they had managed to train a completely average child into an elite killer, one who had outlived twenty-seven of his classmates. Several of them had died at his own hands.
He didn’t want to remember that.
He didn’t remember the name of the boy he had killed on the eve of their graduation. Maybe the Room had wiped it from his mind with the Chair. Maybe he had done that himself.
The moon was beginning to peek over the horizon, full and bright, but Zanka couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed and close the curtains. His warmth had sunk into the mattress, and even though the blanket was thin, it was enough to keep him tucked away for the next few hours. He needed all the sleep he could get.
⌖
The moon had risen high in the sky by the time Zanka opened his eyes, and though he had managed to fall asleep earlier, the light was enough to wake him. The alarm on his cheap phone hadn’t gone off yet, but the time—12:04—flickered across the screen, and Zanka flicked the alert away. Waking up a minute early was perfect.
Though Zanka couldn’t see Lovely Assistaff, he could feel her. She was all but an extension of his soul, and even when he wasn’t touching her, he was aware of her. Right now, she sat tucked away at the back of his closet, hidden behind the singular coat Zanka had hung up.
His hands yearned to hold her, his soul reaching for her, and he wanted to take her out and run, as he had during the days of training with the Room. She had been his only companion for the three days he had spent at the bottom of the well, and Zanka hated leaving her behind in the closet. It felt like he was being torn apart. But it was the only way to keep himself safe.
He couldn’t be running around using a giant staff with a forked end—word would get back to the Red Room. They heard everything; they had contacts all over the world. They would hear about the vigilante who used a Y-shaped staff as their Vital Instrument, and they would know it was their missing spider.
Zanka couldn’t afford to draw their attention. Not when they finally believed he might be dead, not when he had flown the bloody coop and left a fiery destruction in his wake.
If they found him, they would hunt him down and drag him back, kicking and screaming.
They would reprogram him, wipe his memories, and torture him until he was their perfect Wolf Spider. Just as he had been all those years ago, before they had begun to lose their hold on him. Before their brainwashing had started to slip.
Not even Kyouka or Goka had realized it, and they had all but raised him.
As far as everyone in this city was concerned, the new vigilante was not a Giver. Anyone who looked in his eyes a little too closely might figure out the lie, but was it even a lie if Zanka hadn’t been confirming or denying the rumor?
It wasn’t hard to avoid the topic; Vital Instruments were such a volatile subject. No one wanted to continue that conversation when Zanka turned their questions back on them. He could ask invasive questions just as well as they could—he could rip them to shreds with his words if he wanted to, but he would play nice. He’d only taunt them a little.
His uniform—he refused to call it a costume—was simple. Pants, a well-fitted jacket, and blue fabric draped over his hips, the sole decorative part of the outfit. It wasn’t the most practical, but it did look nice. Though Zanka tried to avoid reporters and their incessant cameras as much as possible, they managed to catch a photo of him every once in a while, and he’d rather look nice in them. If they published a bad photo of him online, he might actually have to fake his death a second time and flee the city.
The draped blue fabric added to the oversized, flowing appearance of his clothing, distancing it from the uniform he had worn in his old life. The photos the reporters had managed to grab of him had mostly been silhouettes, capturing very little detail, so Zanka had focused on them. The less he looked like his past self, the better.
His mask sat on the top shelf in his closet, half hidden behind a stack of clothing. A blue, demonic-like mask, with a singular horn curving from the forehead. It only covered the top half of his face, but that was all he needed. No one would recognize him from his smile, not when his old look had covered his jaw.
Wolf Spiders and Black Widows wore tight, form-fitting uniforms, made from flexible fabric. While the Widows’ faces were bare, the Wolf Spiders uniforms had covered Zanka’s neck and the lower half of his face. None of it was baggy or draped. It was ideal for both mobility and combat—there was no fabric to restrict your body, because your body was your ultimate weapon.
As a Wolf Spider, Zanka had been taught to kill just as easily with his bare hands as he could with a knife. You were useless if you couldn’t complete a mission without a weapon.
Yes, the Spiders and Widows were trained in the use of a Vital Instrument, but they were not allowed to rely on them. Relying on anything was a weakness.
Zanka was sure that the Room would have executed all their Giver trainees if they had been able. The mere fact that Givers were so attached to their Vital Instruments? It must have been repulsive to the headmaster. Unfortunately for them, Givers were so much more powerful than a regular human, and they were easier to train.
You had to be broken in some way, shape, or form to be a Giver, after all. Being a Giver only made the Room’s job easier. They didn’t have to break you before they remolded you.
Not that it was difficult for the Room to break you. Not even the most rebellious of the trainees could last through more than two or three of the practice torture sessions with the graduated Widows or Spiders.
Failing physical pain, there was always the Chair.
Stabbing ice raced up Zanka’s spine. The cold nipped at his nose.
He could almost hear the rushing water of a frozen river. His fingertips were blue. The waves were loud. The snow was bright and the ice was sharp and-
Zanka exhaled.
This wasn’t the Red Room, and there was no ice. Nor was there snow. But it was cold.
Not the cold of the Chair.
Slipping the mask over his face, Zanka tightened the straps, letting muscle memory guide him. The first few times he had worn it, he had taken nearly ten minutes trying to adjust the damn thing, to make sure it wasn’t pressing too sharply against the bridge of his nose. The pain didn’t bother him, but it had been mildly distracting, and he’d rather spend the time to make sure the stupid mask was sitting properly.
Now, it only took him a few seconds to have it secured, covering his eyes and hiding his identity.
Zanka’s gaze flickered to the coat Lovely Assistaff hid behind, and he dug his nails into his palm. He wanted to pull her out, to leap across rooftops with her, run in the coldness of the night air with her at his side.
He couldn’t.
She wouldn’t want him to. She hated being trapped in the closet; he could feel it, but she wouldn’t want him putting himself in danger for her wishes. No matter how much she fought for him, no matter how much Zanka felt like he owed her, she didn’t want this. Respecting her wishes was what he owed her.
Stepping away, Zanka shut the closet door, and the click of the handle sounded like his heart cracking in two.
The freezing night air was a welcome balm when he swung the window open. Bracing one foot against the windowsill, Zanka lifted himself into the frame and perched there, gazing out at the city.
The night seemed peaceful.
It wasn’t. That was why he was needed.
Zanka leapt from the window, arcing into the night. For a moment, he was airborne, completely untethered. Untouchable.
He hit the ground running, like Hell itself was at his heels, and the cold air burned his lungs. This was nothing compared to what the Room had put him through, but Zanka welcomed it regardless. Any exertion was soothing to his aching soul, even something as simple as scaling the side of a building and vaulting over the railing.
The stars gleamed above him, quiet and empty. When the rest of the world slept, they were his only company, his only witnesses.
If it wasn’t for the feeling that crawled up Zanka’s spine, a creeping sensation that told him he was being watched.
Zanka paused, his shoulders tensing as his gaze flickered across the nearby buildings, scanning the rooftops. He spun slowly, hands twitching, missing a familiar staff, until his eyes finally landed on the roof directly to his right, and the three figures who stood there.
He recognized them, their silhouettes. Only an idiot would mistake several of the most iconic members of Team Akuta.
Three Givers, belonging to one of the most well-known teams of the Cleaners. A group nearly as powerful as the government, with the power they wielded over the streets and the people in them.
Enyalius stood in the center of the trio, leaning against the railing on the edge of the roof like he might grow wings and fly away. His Vital Instrument, an umbrella, leaned against his shoulder. Unawakened, but Enyalius drummed his fingers against it like he might wake it up at any moment. The top half of his face was covered by a gray mask that fit closely to his skull, his hair pressed down by it, and his eyes were each covered by a large X. Zanka had no idea how he managed to see through that thing, but he still managed to fight well with it on.
To Enyalius’s right, Pallas sat on the railing, kicking her legs back and forth. Her fiery red hair was pulled up into her usual style, messy and wild, and half hidden under the half-face gas mask she wore. Her eyes gleamed as she twirled Reaper, a pair of scissors, around her fingers.
Then, to Enyalius’s left, the last known giver of Team Akuta crouched—Tisiphone. He held nothing, and uniquely enough, his Vital Instrument was the set of gloves he wore. It was certainly on the unique side, though it wasn’t all that odd. Not really. Zanka had seen odder.
Tisiphone balanced on the balls of his feet, swaying back and forth in an invisible breeze, and unlike Pallas and Enyalius, his full face was hidden by the mask. His hands were loosely curled around the railings, and through them, it almost looked like he was behind prison bars.
Fitting, for the absolute hooligan he was.
From where he stood on the opposing roof, Zanka raised a hand in greeting. Enyalius mimicked him, grinning widely.
Zanka took a few steps back, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and then sprinted forward, flinging himself across the roof. In the back of his mind, he heard Tisiphone gasp, heard Pallas’s delighted laughter, but all he could focus on was the rushing wind in his ears as he catapulted through the sky.
He slammed into the railing, his hands wrapping around the metal bars, and his feet braced against the edge of the building.
If he let go, he would fall. Stories and stories, several dozen of them, until he hit the ground.
Enyalius grinned like the sun, and he grabbed Zanka’s upper arm, pulling him up. Zanka offered a small, soft smile of his own as he clambered over the railing, letting Enyalius haul him over.
It didn’t feel weak to take his help, even if he didn’t really need it. He could run for hours, jumping from building to building, if he needed to. He didn’t need Enyalius to help him climb over one simple railing.
Zanka still let him.
In the East Ward, the Cleaners were well-known, somewhere between a crime ring and a vigilante group. During the day, they were nothing more than a mutual aid center—and as far as Zanka knew, the group actually did some good. They had centers around the city to help out the homeless, people looking for shelter for whatever reason. The Cleaners didn’t question why people needed help, and simply offered assistance to anyone who came to their doors.
At night, though? The Cleaners took on the role of enforcers, helping to keep the city clean of anyone who might try to upset the delicate balance of power.
The government and its enforcers, the Hellguard, knew about the Cleaners.
Of course they did. There was nothing that the Hellguard didn’t know about.
Yet, for whatever reason, they left the Cleaners alone. Personally, Zanka suspected that, just as the Cleaners didn’t target the Hellguard, the Hellguard knew that targeting the Cleaners would leave a power vacuum, which could be filled by a much worse group.
Not to say that the Cleaners never targeted the Hellguard. They were known to do so on occasion, but only when there was an especially corrupt member of the guard. A few months ago, the news headlines had been all about a series of documents that the Cleaners had released, documenting the human rights violations committed by a high-ranking member of the Hellguard.
The member in question had been court martialed and imprisoned after much pressure from the public, all thanks to the information the Cleaners had published. No one knew how they had given the papers and documents, but Zanka suspected that at least a few journalists and editors were secretly members of the Cleaners.
He had only been working with them for a couple of months, so it wasn’t like they were telling him anything important yet. Duh. If they had been leaking important information like that to complete newbies, Zanka would think much less of them.
They did have their failings, of course. Enjin had spilled all the details about Team Akuta, the members’ names, what their Vital Instruments were, which supporters worked with them, and so on. He had even detailed the members of other teams! All because of Enjin, Zanka knew that Team Eager consisted of Delmon and Tamsy, Team Child was supervised by Bro Santa, and made up of Guita and Dear Santa, or Dio, as he was sometimes called, and Team Danger was the twins who didn’t work well with others.
If Zanka had been trying to get information on the Cleaners, all he would’ve needed to do was join them and get assigned to a team. It was genuinely quite stupid how easy it had been.
Luckily for them, it seemed the leader of the Cleaners was smarter than that. Zanka hadn’t even met him; all he knew was the man’s name: Corvus.
Past that? He knew nothing.
The Room would’ve had his head if he had been working with the Clenaers for this long and had learned nothing about them.
He didn’t need to know any more, though. He was comfortable right where he was.
⌖
The chair was metal. Against his skin, it was freezing.
Like ice.
He could almost hear the water rushing under it, the fast waves of a river that wasn’t frozen all the way through.
Russian winters were cold enough to cut you to the bone. Sometimes they weren’t cold enough to freeze a river solid. Sometimes the water was swift enough to steal you away when your foot broke through, dragging you underneath a thick sheet of ice before you could fight the current.
Sometimes it was cold enough to freeze a river solid.
Zanka hoped it hadn’t been cold enough that winter. He hoped that Hyo’s body had been swept out to sea, not frozen in a block of ice.
“The ceremony is necessary for you to take your place in the world,” the man murmured, turning to the medical tray standing next to the chair.
“I have no place in the world,” Zanka responded, his voice empty. His mind was empty. His hands were braced against the arms of the chair, though he did not clutch at it. There was no need to. Why would he?
Zanka did not look at the medical equipment. He did not watch the man raise his hand, nor did he look to see what the man might be holding up.
The chair was allowed to fall back, and Zanka fell with it.
On his back, he stared at the ceiling, at the bright lights gazing back at him. Their harshness reminded him of Goka’s eyes. It was almost comforting.
He didn’t need comfort.
“Good.” The man grinned down at Zanka, reaching across his body for a strap on the other side of the chair. He pulled it across Zanka’s chest, pinning him down.
The chair was metal. He could feel the chill against his spine.
He could feel the pinch of a needle as it slid into his vein.
Rationally, Zanka knew he could not feel the medication, but it did not stop the feeling flooding him. From the needlepoint, ice raced over his skin, lacing through his bones like intricate needlework—a network of strings, tethering him to the Red Room.
Tethering him to its headmaster.
Numbness followed the ice, like the feeling of immersing his arms in cold water for too long. Except the feeling did not remain in his arms. It crept through his entire body, weighing his limbs down like stones, until there was nothing left but frozen water, and Zanka was swept away in the rushing currents of the winter river.
⌖
Enjin had asked him to be at the Cleaner’s HQ at 12:30 sharp, and Zanka was running late. He had overslept his alarm—he was growing so soft in the company of the Cleaners, when had that happened?—and his hair had refused to cooperate. After that, it had taken ten minutes to find his other tassel earring, and he had left his apartment nearly fifteen minutes after he had originally planned to leave.
The morning was not going well.
And immediately, because of course it did, it proceeded to get even worse.
A hand slipped into his pocket.
Just as quickly as Zanka felt it, it was gone, pulling away as if it had never been there, and taking his wallet with it. Because duh. What else would a creep on the street be doing with their hand in his pocket?
Quick as a whip, Zanka whirled around, grabbing the stranger’s wrist in a bruising grip. They yelped, trying to pull away, but Zanka kept a tight hold on them.
He needed that money. Rent was high in this stupid city. And he had worked hard for it! Being a member of the Cleaners wasn’t exactly easy.
“Give it back,” he hissed, nails digging into the stranger’s wrist, eyes on their hand, where they were holding his wallet. It was like they were trying to get caught, and when Zanka looked at their face, he could only scoff.
The man whom Zanka locked eyes with was. Actually somewhat pretty. With dark skin and neatly twisted locs, accented with bright gold jewelry, he’d catch anyone’s eye. Zanka would almost think it was the first time he tried to pick someone’s pocket, if it hadn’t been for the lightness of his fingers when the stranger had lifted the wallet from his pocket.
“Are you an idiot?” Zanka scowled, his nails pressing deep imprints into the man’s wrist. It seemed like the question caught him off guard, and he blinked, pausing his struggle for a moment.
“I mean-”
“Dressed in those clothes?” Zanka interrupted, incredulously. The stranger scowled, brow furrowing, and he took a quick look down at his outfit.
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” He echoed, his tone almost pouty. Like he hadn’t been the one to engage Zanka by trying to pick-pocket him.
“Drop it, hotshot, and take a better acting class.” While he was distracted, Zanka snatched the wallet from his hand, curling his fingers around it possessively. “Don’t dress like you’re trying to be scouted or some shit. Everyone’s gonna look at you the second you make a scene.”
“It’s Jabber, actually,” the man replied, peering at Zanka with narrowed eyes. Like hell that was his real name. It was probably some stupid alias. If he was going to lie about his name, he really should have chosen something more realistic. He was so overconfident that it made Zanka want to laugh. Or cry. He couldn’t quite tell. Anyone naturally gifted was the absolute worst. The man—Jabber—glanced down at his outfit again, silent for a moment. “Huh. You’re right.”
Zanka couldn’t help the small kernel of pride in his chest, even if the praise was coming from a complete stranger. He was right.
Until Jabber’s eyes dropped to Zanka’s hand, still holding his wrist in a grip so tight it must be painful, and grinned widely. Cocking his head, he crooned, “Is that the strongest you’ve got?”
“Hell no!” Zanka jerked away, holding his wallet to his chest possessively. Jabber cackled, his smile wide with glee, and there was something about his eyes that made Zanka want to back away. “What is wrong with you?”
“Aww, come on, Mr. Bad Attitude,” Jabber snickered, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Lighten up a little.”
“Go screw yourself.” Scowling, Zanka took a step back, and then another. “Keep your problems away from me. I’m not interested. Got it?” Without giving Jabber a chance to answer, he whirled around and stalked away, dodging oncoming people until he could melt into the crowd.
Through the roar of strange conversation, he could faintly hear Jabber’s voice, laughing something incomprehensible. He couldn’t make out the words. Nor did he want to.
The East Ward was a big place. This was the first time he’d seen Jabber. With any luck, it’d also be the last.