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Helly R snapped back into existence, holding a glass of champagne. For the second time in her very short life, she was waking up alone, in an unfamiliar, alien environment. This time, she was prepared. Helly did not drop her drink.
She was talking to a woman and that woman had a daemon, a bright green grasshopper the size of a finger trap. It sat on her shirt like an ornate brooch, watching Helly with interest and intent.
Her eyes trailed down, at her own daemon. Based off Dylan’s experience with the Overtime Contingency, she already knew she would have a daemon up here, the same daemon her outie had. Helly knew the connection would be novel, innate, and magnetic.
Without thinking, she knew her daemon was named Constant. Constant was a lion with horizontal, goatlike pupils. He was a soft gold, mane and fur alike. Constant was six feet long, inching on inconvenient. She knew all of this automatically, like she was looking at her own arm. Helly’s blood chilled at the sight of him. She didn’t know if it was in spite of the familiarity, or due to it.
Dylan said that looking at his daemon made him feel complete. There was a camaraderie there, a wholeness. Deep in the bowels of Lumon’s basement, they had always speculated about their outie’s daemons. Wondered if their daemons would be different. Dylan had always asserted his soul took the form of a lion, a grizzly, a wolf, a tiger, but he wasn’t the slightest bit disappointed with the opossum he’d met in his outie’s closet. He had compared the feeling to meeting his son, which had happened a few seconds later.
Helly felt like Constant was sitting on her. He knew. He knew she’d swapped out, she could feel it.
Then the bomb struck her, her outie was a fucking Eagan. That explained the daemon, actually. It explained the cruelty too. It all slotted into place like a children’s puzzle, the cause of all her suffering was a horrific, chimeric monster. She’d wondered why she couldn’t see her outie’s daemon in the response she’d recorded. She wondered no longer.
When she excused herself, Constant padded after her, predatory.
Helena Eagan’s father entered the restroom, as she gathered her bearings. Helly played her part as best she could. Jame Eagan’s daemon was a black goat with slitted, catlike eyes.
To Constant’s credit, he made no attempt to alert Jame to the deception. He tucked his tail around his paws as sat by the stalls, a silent sentinel.
He didn’t say a word. Not to Helly, not to Jame, not to Ms. Cobel. Constant lived up to his name, steady, unflinching, a statue made of solid dust. The reticence felt normal. It felt right.
When armed guards tackled her, he did not growl, he did not roar. He did not flinch. Truthfully, Helly had stopped paying attention to him the moment she stepped out of the restroom. He was nothing but another limb.
——
Irving felt his daemon before he saw him. Irving didn’t need to look down to know the shape of his soul. An eastern indigo—an iridescent black snake as long as he was tall—wrapped around his shoulders in a lazy embrace. The snake tensed, then relaxed. Irving felt the serpent sigh, he knew the voice before he heard it.
His name was Nadisqu, and his smooth, cycloid scales felt like an answer. His body was all muscle, all bone, but the weight around his neck was easy, like it had always been there.
Nadisqu moved, slow, careful, maybe cautious. He lifted his head to meet Irving’s gaze. His tongue flicked out from his rostrum, moving fast through the air, but not aggressively so. The snake’s expression shifted, it would’ve looked unnatural on an actual animal. Daemons were different.
“You’re the other one, aren’t you?” Nadisqu asked.
Irving nodded.
“I have to tell you-“
“I need to find someone. I need your help.” Irving interrupted.
Lacking eyelids, Nadisqu’s eyes did not narrow, but his mouth tightened to a similar effect. His neck drew back, pulling his head away, then down, onto the easel in front of them. “Right. Alright then. Who are you looking for?”
Irving didn’t know how to answer that, but he tried his best. Nadisqu was helpful, and eagerly so.
——
Mark awoke in the middle of a hug. His whole frame went taut as he returned to his body, ruining the embrace. Whoever was hugging him pulled away.
Oh. That was Harmony Cobel. What the fuck did his outie get up to out here?
Mark did his best to keep his countenance illegible, but he could feel the wild-eyed dread seeping through his eyes.
Meli landed on his shoulder, and he sensed her indignant bluster. Mark did his best not to flinch as the crow hiss-whispered into his ear.
“Are you-? What even? How?” Her voice was sharp, strained, inching on frightened.
The echidna at Cobel’s feet went very still, Mark could see a change in its regard, cold black eyes boring into his very being. He still didn’t know its name. He stepped back, into the din of some kind of party. Where was he? Nothing here looked Lumon.
Meli leapt onto a countertop, her feathery ruff standing at attention. “Your chip’s gone haywire, hasn’t it? I warned you- I hate being right. Do you know what’s going on? Do you know where you are?”
The emotion had drained from her voice, replaced by a careful condescension, like she was speaking to a scared child.
“My house?” Mark answered. When Meli’s face fell, he knew he’d supplied the wrong answer. “This isn’t an accident, it’s called an overtime contingency, I need to talk to you.”
It was probably a bad idea to waste his precious time in the world above speaking to his own daemon, but he didn’t know who else he could trust.
“Shit. I’m going to get Devon and Basban, don’t wander, please.”
Before Meli could get into the air, Mark blocked her with a hand, careful not to brush against her feathers. Technically, she was his daemon, but it still felt horribly wrong to touch her. She was a part of him but not his own, separate in more ways than he understood. To grab at her would be laying claim to a life he had not lived.
“Wait. Why is Ms. Cobel here? Who is she to you—us—to us?”
“Who’s Ms. Cobel?” Meli did not wait around for an answer, she pushed past Mark’s hand and he shuddered at the contact, stumbling backwards, into a partygoer. Mark scanned the crowd, looking for his boss, but she was already gone.