Part VII: A Clouded Horizon

Had the others not followed their fearless leader into the abyssal hell of the tunnel system, Wolf was fairly convinced that he would have lost his goddamn mind. The darkness ebbed like a tide, uncanny images scurrying in the shadows like vermin. When his violet eye shot in their direction, the shadows stilled. His heart raced a little faster than he would have liked to admit. He tried to hide the tremble of his hand by forcing a shiver through the rest of his body, grumbling very pointedly about the cold. But he was not cold at all.

He was afraid.

Fear was something Wolf had come to understand was a natural part of life. Existence yielded fear because mortal hearts always found things to fear. Somewhere in his pirating days, Wolf had learned to embrace his fear and manifest it into other things—begrudged resolve, in some instances, and in others, excited enthusiasm. His fear had saved him many times. The one time he did not fear, he ended up in Macbeth's Chasma Penitentiary. The rest was history.

Since arriving on Eladard, Wolf had become afraid. He had embraced it, clutching it as tightly as he could with his claws… but it had slipped away. The darkness did not let him embrace it. Instead, it whispered things to him, tormenting his mind with the silhouette of a broad-shouldered bear. He could hear something dripping in the distance, its slow, thick sound reminding his notched ears of blood seeping from a corpse.

I'm not afraid of the dark, Wolf said to himself, hearing something skitter along the wall to his left. He whirled in its direction, shining light onto the dark rock wall. Nothing was there. It's just this place brings back memories. And they were not pleasant ones.

"Are we there yet?" Andrew whined.

I'm not even dignifying that with a reply.

"Wolf?" Andrew pestered.

One of the ex-pirate's ears flitted to the side. He glanced at the ape with his sole functioning eye. Why the world gave him fancy as fuck mind powers and not me is a cruel twist of fucking fate.

"Bit longer," Wolf said shortly.

"Okay," Andrew replied sullenly.

"I'm gonna take a leak. Be right back," Wolf announced bluntly and wandered a ways ahead of the slow-going trek to relieve himself. When he had finished his business, he turned away from the wall and felt something drift close to him. Instinctively, he lashed out with a clawed hand, seizing it by the arm.

When he pulled the unknown closer to him, he realized it was Leon. His ears pinned back, nose wrinkled with suspicion. The lizard quivered in his grasp, looking up at his leader with wide eyes.

"What the hell you doin'?" Wolf demanded in a low voice.

"I wanted to speak with you for a moment. Without the other two," Leon whispered back. "I… I apologize… I could see no other opportunity…" He looked away.

Wolf frowned but released him nonetheless. "And what's so urgent?"

"This pathway is… dark. Very dark. Easy for a body to be lost in…" The lithe assassin explained, his tone growing more and more quiet with every syllable. "Pigma…" He need not say any more.

"We're not killing Pigma," Wolf said at once and watched Leon's shivering hope melt with the order.

"W-why?" Leon asked.

"What we're about to do, we need every gun on our side," Wolf replied. "Once we're off Eladard… well, that's a different story."

"Wolf… I do not think he gave Andrew the guns. I think… I think he hid them," Leon whispered. "He is very clearly trying to undermine our attempts at leaving Eladard."

"He gave Andrew the weapons to have him cause shit. Pigma's a creature of chaos, always has been ever since we met 'im. But at the end of the day, he'll help us. He has to," Wolf answered. "He'll die here if he doesn't."

"And how do you figure that?" Leon asked with narrowed eyes.

"Because he knows that the Cornerians will be tipped off eventually. And it won't necessarily be by him," Wolf shrugged.

"And how do we know it won't be by him?" Leon asked, eyes narrowing even further.

"If he'd tried to tip the Cornerians off, they'd be crawling all over the region lookin' for us. But they ain't," Wolf shook his head. His ear twitched and he could hear Andrew and Pigma coming. "Trust my judgment on this, Leon. It'll work out."

My old crew trusted my judgment and now they're beyond dust, adrift in space. But Leon doesn't need to think about that right now.

"If you say so," Leon said, but his doubt rang heavy in his words.

"Please tell me you're done," Andrew said. Even in the dim lighting, Wolf could see the white-furred simian was covering his amber eyes with a hand.

"What do you think?" Wolf asked him with a raised bushy brow.

Andrew peeked between his spidery fingers, seeing the fully-dressed and decent Wolf standing before him with his hips on his hips. The would-be prince gave a dramatized sigh of relief, wiping away fake sweat from his brow.

They walked onward into the damp, desolate void beneath Corona's outskirts. As the path sloped downward, they were greeted with black water, it surface holding an uncanny sheen. Wolf felt its cold touch beyond his boots, letting it lap against the middle of his shin. It reeked and he did not want to know why.

"I found something," Pigma said after they had trudged for some time. He clutched a miniature, emergency flashlight. Its narrowed, blue-tinted beam was focused upon a collection of white, misshaped rocks scattered in the corner of the crossroads. They protruded from the water like rocks in the midst of rapids… but Wolf knew better.

"Don't think too hard on it," the gruff ex-pirate advised them.

"That looks like a ribcage," Andrew began uncertainly.

"That is a ribcage, Andrew," Leon replied nonchalantly.

"People died here?" Andrew asked Wolf with stretched-wide eyes.

He's still so green that it hurts.

"Why are you surprised?" Wolf asked.

Andrew did not answer. His golden eyes merely stared at the set of bones, expressionless save for his gradually furrowing brow. Wolf took in his demeanor in the dim lighting, tracing over the bitterness that was beginning to radiate from the young would-be prince. He sensed familiarity. Even the hardest criminal started off somewhere. Even the hardest criminal began as a wide-eyed novice, still blanching at corpses.

"Oh..." Wolf heard the hog say and looked at where Pigma was shining his meager light upwards, onto the faces of a few grime-ridden skeletons dangling from the ceiling. They had been strung up what appeared to be ages ago, their toothy smiles caked with dirt and mysterious black ooze.

"Jeez!" Andrew squeaked.

"They have certainly been here awhile," Leon remarked calmly.

"This place has seen a… variety of faces," Wolf explained darkly. "Some are nicer than others."

"Gods… is that a fucking child?" Andrew pointed at a much smaller skeleton.

"Don't think too hard on it, Andrew," Wolf advised him. The simian's amber gaze fell on him with disbelief. His eyes cut like daggers, but the ex-pirate's apathy reflected their blades. The dead were dead. They could not cry. They could not scream. Wolf could not summon up enough energy to care about nameless skeletons strung like lights from the ceiling. A sigh frosting his breath, the ex-pirate dragged his gaze away from the stale corpses.

"Let's keep goin'."

An hour passed and Wolf felt his stomach churn. His nostrils had gradually become accustomed to the rank stench of death, stale water, and grime. The back of his throat burned softly as he thought of what they were stepping in, but he did not let himself throw up. He kept his jaw set and walked onward.

The abyssal tunnel system had almost gnawed his senses to shreds by the time they reached the end. A ladder's steps had been embedded into the wall of the cave, leading up towards a hatch. Wolf's unfocused gaze traveled up the ladder and then back down. He stepped forward, testing the first foothold before committing his weight to it.

"Is this it?" Andrew asked and Wolf gave a silent nod in reply as he began up the ladder.

When he made it to the hatch, he cautiously pushed up on the handle to open it. It shuddered before yielding to him, thrusting upward and showering the battered team in the sparse moonlight. Wolf pulled himself out, his blaster in hand as he looked about the deserted alleyway. Ears swiveling, he listened for any prying bystanders before turning to help Pigma up. He offered his hand, a grim expression on his face as the hog gripped his arm. With a heave, Wolf pulled Pigma up, the momentum carrying him back two steps.

"Heh, smells good to be out here," Pigma remarked with a cheeky smirk.

"First things first. We're hittin' the goddamn showers," Wolf ordered in a gravelly voice. He helped Andrew up, then Leon. The hatch closed with a hefty thud that he was almost certain awoke the entire neighborhood.

"Do we really have time for showers?" Leon asked, shaking a glob of something unknown and brown off of his boot.

"At this rate, Archie could probably smell us coming. Let's go back to Lenny's and regroup," Wolf replied.

"Won't he suspect we'll go there?" Pigma snorted, scratching his nose and smearing goo onto his snout carelessly.

"You got another place for us to go?" Wolf asked, quirking his brow. When Pigma did not reply, Wolf shook his head, sheathed his blaster, and started walking.

The alleyways of Corona were scarcely attended to, as evidence by the cans and other trash that lay scattered about the asphalt. Puddles lingered in potholes on the road. A cluster of storm clouds rumbled in the distance that Wolf could not see for the decrepit buildings that surrounded his feeble team. A raindrop plopped onto his nose, then another onto his forearm. His pace quickened.

Quiet streets greeted them. A few store signs were illuminated in the darkness, their neon pinks and greens glaring starkly against the grey backdrop of the once proud city. They passed by a bar, its interior lit with a warm yellow glow from the lights. From the window, he could see a group of men shooting pool with fat cigars poking from their lips. A lady sat in one man's lap, draped over him like a limp linen. The next building they passed was a store, an old wrinkle-faced rat sitting on her rocking chair with a rifle poised in her lap. Her toothless smile to them was savage enough to make Wolf keep walking with his gaze set on the horizon. Two hobos sat under the lip of an aluminum window that had been strapped on to serve as an impromptu ceiling to a short shack of a house. They stared at Wolf, eyes like daggers upon him. He did not spare them any pity.

By the time Lenny's shop came into sight, a light rain had begun to fall over them. Wolf's boots squeaked with each step. The four found their way to the shop's porch and Wolf grabbed the door handle. He tested it, expecting it to be locked but found that it was not. The door opened and he let go of it, letting it creak wide. His gut churned; something felt off.

"Ugh, can you please hurry up?" Andrew groaned. "It's starting to really come down out—"

"Shh!" Leon said and Wolf silently thanked him for it. Andrew indignantly folded his arms and scowled at the hog, but he cooperated.

Silence emanated from the shop. Lights off, it dwelled like a corpse, a husk without its shop keeper and its begrudged employees. Closing his maimed eye, Wolf focused his single violet eye into the maw of the dark abode, feeling his slate fur raise with building nerves. His hand rested on his blaster's handle. Ears perked, he studied the high pitched ring of deathly quiet, feeling its sound wash over him. His nose twitched. With how disgusting the others around him smelled, he could scarcely make out any other scents adrift in the air.

He took one step forward. The floorboards whined. Wolf's ears swiveled. Nothing. He breathed out. More worries dissolved into the stale air. As he stepped to the side to let the others through, Andrew let the door slam shut behind them.

"Easy there, don't wanna have to repair that when we're done with this job," Wolf remarked to the youthful heir, who stuck his tongue out in reply.

The canine rolled his eye and proceeded towards the vacant front desk. A few papers sat atop the desk—poorly scribbled out instructions for the scrapper crew if they should return before Lenny did. Wolf felt his insides twist into a knot at the thought of them coming back to find their boss missing. Some of them wouldn't care. Others would. Blood would line the streets. It was an age-old tale in Corona.

"Well, this place seems untouched so far," Andrew remarked, leaning against the front desk. "So, think he's got any real food in his kitchen? This… place has a kitchen, right? You Eladardians eat, right?"

"I'm not Eladardian," Wolf growled, but his eye caught movement in the hallway behind Andrew—the hallway leading to Lenny's shop. The man's silhouette manifested from the shadows. In the span of a millisecond, Wolf took in the stranger's appearance—a bulldog, sporting a tactical vest over a sloppy off-white shirt, and a pair of black cargo shorts with boots. His under-bite was set in a permanent, jeering snarl. He had a hefty blaster in his hands.

Ears erect, Wolf pulled his gun out at the encroaching thug, firing off one shot. The bulldog's reflexes were too slow and he toppled over with a hole burned through his chest. Andrew yelped, covering his head with both hands. He began to stammer something out, but Wolf did not care to listen.

"Search the shop! There could still be more!" Wolf snarled to the other three. He ran for the far side of Lenny's shop, darting up a set of squeaky stairs. As he made it to the top, a bulky raccoon came barreling at him. A silver glint caught Wolf's eye as he clumsily dodged to the side, slamming himself shoulder-first into the wall.

A knife.

He grabbed the thug's outstretched wrist and turned it, pulling his opponent towards him. A firmer twist and the knife fell out of the ruffian's hand, clanging down the stairs. A fist met the side of Wolf's head and he stumbled back into the wall. Hand gripping the top of the stair's railing, he steadied himself and lashed out with a foot into the raccoon's stomach. As the raccoon recovered, Wolf aimed a potshot. It seared the thug's cheek.

Goddamn it, this eye makes it impossible to fucking aim!

The thug pulled his pistol out but ate a laser in the face before he could fire. With a thud, the raccoon lifelessly fell to the ground, blood seeping from the wound at his brow. Wolf stepped over him and kept moving. He could hear a few shots being exchanged downstairs, his heartbeat quickening.

Down the upstairs corridor, there were only three doors. The first one was a small closet, holding nothing but dust and old coats that looked more akin to quilts from all of their off-color patches. The next door was a bedroom—Lenny's bedroom, from the looks of it. Past the bed was a side table littered with random objects, a family photo, and a small gun that he no doubt kept for self-defense purposes. Wolf scanned the room, glancing at the photos on the walls and trying not to think too hard about them. He could not help but notice a girl recurring in every single one, her eyes soft with the twinkle of hope and her smile faintly resembling Lenny's mischievousness.

When he confirmed that the bedroom was clear, he moved onto the last room—a bathroom that was in need of cleaning. He glanced at the shower, noting the curtain hanging from its rod. He pushed the rest of it back with his blaster, finger halfway squeezing the trigger. No one was in there, and he breathed a small sigh of relief.

"Upstairs is clear," he announced upon returning to the shop's entrance. Leon was cleaning blood off of his knives and Pigma had two heavy bags flung over his shoulder. From the blood seeping through, Wolf could tell they were freshly-made corpses. Grimly, he watched Pigma walk out the back door with them.

"How'd they get the jump on us?" Andrew asked, sending Wolf an accusing glare.

"Aren't you the psychic?" Wolf asked.

"I told you," Andrew began with a huff. "I can't control it!"

"Well, I suggest you start hurrying on that. Or else we might end up like those assholes Pigma just took out back," Wolf remarked, then looked to the hog as he came back in. "There's another one upstairs."

"Heh, figures. I thought I'd give 'em a dirt bath," Pigma shrugged. "Beats leavin' 'em to stink up the place."

"Fair," Wolf nodded. "I'm sure Lenny will appreciate that when he gets back."

"You said you had a plan," Leon spoke up, clicking his knives back into their sheaths. "Shall we hear it?"

"Once we've cleaned up and gotten a moment to relax," Wolf replied, sweeping his gaze across the other three. "Between the four of us, we need to at least have one brain functioning. And I ain't convinced we do at the moment."

"Did we ever before this mess?" Pigma grinned and trundled towards the stairs.

"I guess that's up for debate," Wolf shrugged.

He departed out the back door, noting the shovel Pigma had staked in the ground. Silently, he wondered if Lenny would ever care to excavate his backyard. Accidentally stumbling across the thugs's bodies could prove mildly traumatizing to the old scrapper, but Wolf figured Pigma's idea was better than nothing—and that was the moment in which the canine knew he was exhausted.

Stepping into the dormitory, he cast a glance at the endless sea of bunkbeds, feeling his legs wobble with the need for rest. He forced himself to keep moving down the narrow aisle and towards the showers. When he eventually reached one of the shower stalls, Wolf began to peel his clothes off. Each layer felt merged onto his fur but he wrested himself free from its grasp. With an unpleasant splat noise, each article fell to the stall's floor in a heap. He turned the water on, putting the heat onto max.

Closing both his maimed and functional eye, he let himself get lost in the artificial rain, feeling the grime banish itself from his fur. The warmth from the water breathed life into his limbs and he sighed with pleasure as he stood underneath the spray from the showerhead. He thought to pick up his clothes from the floor but the muscles in his back complained, so he left them there. Running his claws through his fur, he let the shower cleanse him of the tunnel's putrid touch, his worries floating momentarily away.

I wonder how Tala and Ralph are managing these days?

It was not terribly often that he thought of his siblings—not anymore, at least. He was certain they had been able to manage after he had left Eladard the last time. They had deserved better than the hell he would have brought upon them. He tried to imagine what they would look like but his tired mind had trouble even concocting their faces. Exhausted, he scrubbed himself down, ears perking at the sound of another entering the room.

"It's just me," Andrew heralded his arrival. "I helped Pigma dig the hole for the bodies. Leon's gone back to the ship to get us some more supplies."

"He went back?! Alone!?" Wolf asked, alarmed.

"Yeah, he said we'd just slow him down," Andrew replied nonchalantly.

"Ugh…" Wolf grumbled. "I wish he hadn't. If Archie's bastards see him…" It could spell trouble for us. A lot of trouble. They'll know we somehow got out of the factory and made it back.

"Leon's the sneakiest guy I know," Andrew remarked.

"How many 'guys' do you know?" Wolf asked.

"Not that many," confessed the simian. "But enough to know Leon will be okay."

He's such a rookie that it hurts sometimes.

"He'd better be," Wolf remarked, his tone diminishing into an ill-pleased grumble.

By the time he had stepped out of the shower, feeling cleansed enough from Eladard's filth, the sly chameleon had returned with a dufflebag slung over his chest. Wolf, clad in little but a towel around his waist, felt his fur prickle as Leon wordlessly began to dig through the clothes. He hesitated slightly before handing Wolf his muted crimson and black flight suit.

"We're gonna stick out like a sore thumb in these," remarked Wolf. He took the clothes into one arm, holding them by clamping his forearm to his torso. His other hand remained as security to make sure his towel did not drop.

"It's all we had," Leon replied. "I grabbed some weapons too. They are under my bed."

"How did you carry all of that?" Wolf asked.

"With my arms," Leon retorted and Wolf flicked an ear back.

"That's the worst joke I've ever heard."

"I… was not joking?"

"Then color me impressed. I didn't think a scrawny guy like you could lift all that much."

"Heh," a smirk wound its way across the lizard's snout. "Weakness is culled at an early age on Venom." Leon's vivid irises dulled with thought—memories, no doubt, of his homeland.

"Don't go gettin' sentimental on me. We got a mission to outline, guns to check… We've got a lot of work ahead of us tonight," Wolf replied, voice lined with amusement. "Thanks for the clothes."

"There's one more thing," Leon began tentatively, extending his hand. Wrapped around his palm was a piece of ebony cloth, torn in a roguish fashion. When Wolf held it up, he admitted there was something rather stylish about it. His fingers ran over the fabric—it felt soft enough to bury his face into it and snooze.

"And this is?" the canine cocked his head.

"It's not a real eyepatch… but it was the best I could find…" Leon stumbled over his words, his pupils focused on something—anything—other than Wolf.

"Oh."

Tenderly, Wolf wrapped it around his head, letting the smooth fabric rest over his maimed eye. Leon helped him tie a knot, which rested gently against the back of his head. A glance in the mirror and Wolf could not have said the makeshift eyepatch did any favors to his spiked fringe of hair, but it helped steady his vision.

"Thanks, Leon," he glanced at the chameleon, whose scales had begun to shift in tone around his slanted cheeks.

"Mhm," Leon said stiffly, a few scales prickling to life in a vibrant ruby shade.

He stepped back into the stall to change into his flight suit. When he donned the jacket, he marveled for a bit on the material—it was custom-made to fit him, tailored to perfection by a poor, innocent Macbethian that Andross had nabbed just for the job. She had used a certain type of hardy material that made it flexible but firm enough to take some hits without the threads breaking. Wolf vaguely wondered what had happened to that tailor after everything had gone down on Venom. If memory served, she would have been on the base. His stomach churned at the thought.

"Geez! Thanks for the help, Andrew!" Pigma huffed as he staggered into the bathroom. Dirt clung to his voluptuous form, a comical clump situated between his tucked-over ears. To Wolf, the hog whined, "He left me to finish burying all those bodies!'

"You kept yelling at me," Andrew protested from where he was leaning against the white-tile wall, picking at his nails. "So I decided you could finish it."

"Sometimes, I feel like this team's mother instead of its leader," Wolf remarked. "Job's done, right? Nobody gonna find them?"

"Right," Pigma nodded with a bloodthirsty grin.

"That's all I care about. Good work, Pigma. Go hit the showers. Please," Wolf shrugged and walked out of the bathroom.

When Wolf found his bunkbed, he felt his joy strike him with dizzying ecstasy. He fell into it, hugging the stiff and uncomfortable pillow to his face. He buried his nose into it, smelling the distasteful, yet nostalgic aroma of the dormitory. Steel, dust, and wood—they mixed in the air to form a perfume and settled onto everything in sight. He savored that sentimental smell, feeling his stress seep from his body. Each limb gradually loosened, relaxing into the springy, ratty mattress he lay on. His feet hurt too much to complain about how his bed sat uneven. His mind was too exhausted to form words about how hungry he was.

It was another thirty minutes before the others joined him. Their footsteps tore the canine from the light doze he had fallen into and he turned his tired head to face them. When he saw their expectant expressions, he sighed and grumbled.

"I don't want to get up."

"Now who's the whiny one?" Andrew scoffed.

With a scowl, Wolf sat upright. The world flashed around him, spinning chaotically but he steadied himself with a hand on the railing of the bunk. A growl still frosting his breath, he corrected the young heir.

"I said I didn't want to, I didn't say I wasn't going to."

They settled into a few dingy, steel foldout chairs, positioning them in a circle. Leon had taken the time to draw out a map of the mansion on the hill, resting his makeshift canvas of cardboard in the middle. Though he did not say it, the reptile seemed to radiate with a sense of smugness over his elaborate depiction of Archie's manor—which, Wolf had to admit, was fairly impressive.

"So first things first," Wolf began. "Archie's whole mansion runs on a few generators. Leon's been so kind as to draw us a visual map. Y'know, for them uh… visual folk." To emphasis Wolf's point, the reptile helpfully gestured to the generators on the mansion's map—which were marked in dark blue with triangles.

"Thanks for the map," Pigma said, delighted.

"Is that a map or an abstract art piece?" Andrew asked, squinting his eyes at the cardboard canvas.

"I'd like to see you do better," Leon shot back and the simian looked beyond offended.

"No. Stop. Focus back in. The faster we do this, the faster we get to have dinner," Wolf snapped. "The thing about these generators, though, is that they're not strong enough to sustain the energy going around Archie's mansion if even so much as one of them goes out. It's… not great planning on his part. But it's good fer us."

"So we take one out. Easy-peasy," Pigma nodded.

"Except the generator is powering the electric fence around the manor," Wolf replied. Leon, on cue, gestured to the perimeter of the map, which was adequately labeled with a flurry of lightning streaks all around.

"Oh… bummer," Pigma remarked.

"So that seems like a bust," Andrew sighed.

"The fence covers Archie's yard, but it doesn't do shit to anything that comes at it from the sky," Wolf replied. "So Pigma, that's where you come in." And nearly the only reason you're still alive. "You're the best here when it comes to programmin' and mechanical stuff. Think you can program an old scrapper to crash into the generator?"

"Heh, I can give it a looksee," Pigma shrugged.

"After that, Leon will climb the wall and let us in to the east—that's the opposite direction of where the crash will take place. While the guards are runnin' to see what's goin' on up front, we'll go through the east door. Power will be down, the cameras won't be workin'," Wolf continued.

"That really is bad security planning," Andrew said, rubbing his chin.

"I told ya," Wolf shrugged. "Once we get inside, we'll divide into two teams. Pigma and Leon—you'll go after the necklace. It'll be in his treasure room… and… yes, he does have one o' those. Andrew, you'll be with me and we'll go after Lenny."

"And who takes out Archie?" Andrew asked.

Ahhh yes, the million-dollar question.

"Nobody," Wolf answered firmly.

"Huh?" Andrew blinked at him. "And why not? The guy seems like nothing but trouble, we're just gonna let him live? After all the hell he's put us through?"

"He's not worth tangoin' with, trust me on that one. We'll let him keep his life an' we'll rob his dignity. This is easy shit. Don't fuck it up," Wolf declared, his violet iris scouring the other three for any signs of mutiny.

Andrew had a protest lingering on the tip of his tongue, but it died there as he gave a sigh, sinking into his chair further with arms crossed over his chest. Pigma rocked back and forth in his chair, its front legs leaving the ground just to crash back onto the floor in an unsettlingly loud thud. He smirked as Andrew flinched. Stoic, Leon merely nodded to Wolf, hands tucked politely into his lap.

"Good. I'll check weapons. Pigma, you'll start on programmin' the scrapper. Leon and Andrew, you're on dinner duty," Wolf instructed them. "Daybreak and we should be beyond ready to go. Any questions?"

"Here's some extra cash for food," Pigma slipped Leon a few bills with a wink. "Got it from a friend in town."

"One of your mysterious contacts?" Leon asked, eyeing the money skeptically. He held it daintily between two fingers, as though it were infected. After a quick observation, the lizard glanced to the hog inquisitively. "Mm this is a fair amount of money."

"Heh, he owed me. And somethin' tells me he ain't gonna need it anymore anyways," Pigma shrugged and stood up. "Welp, I'm gonna start at my task. Lemme know when you're back with the grub."

"Will do," Wolf said and the others departed.

The silence their absence let in was starkly different from the disquiet of the tunnels. Wolf sat in it for a few long minutes, letting himself bask in the familiarity of his surroundings. His gaze wandered to the window. Outside, the moon had been swallowed completely by thunderclouds. Electricity brimmed in devilish forks that struck out into the feral lands beyond the decrepit Corona cityscape. He could feel each boom of thunder in his bones. When the rain came, it sounded like hisses upon the glass of the window. The wind howled.

Pitch black dwelled outside in an unfathomable layer of darkness that devoured all sight. However, it was not the storm that Wolf thought of. His mind traveled to the lonely mansion on a hill. Behind its armed fence and legion of sentinels dwelled their fates, intertwined with a lunatic, an old mourning crocodile, and a necklace.

He checked the core crystal of his blaster with a grim scowl.

Hang in there, Lenny.