Chapter 94: Getting Crabs at The Brothel

William Oh once got his head latched onto by a brain-devouring monster. After a week of mind-bending hallucinations…the hive-mind was under his control.

• Jazon Salazar

Strangely enough, The Last Chance Inn was much harder to sneak into than the smuggler’s dock, for a variety of reasons.

The entire boat was well lit, there were tons of carousing witnesses, and nearly as many high-level bouncers with strong PVP skills patrolling every floor of the ship, looking for people not following the program.

After surveying it thoroughly, they did manage to find one corner of the vessel, near the waterline, that was shaded and protected from view. It wasn’t an entrance, but that didn’t matter much to Loth.

“I bet you never thought those riding chaps would come in handy,” Loth said from his shoulders.

“Why is it that every time we go out, you end up riding me?” Will asked as he crept along the waves. The water was bowing under his feet, nearly dropping them both into the ocean.

“Because you can walk on water, and I’m cold-blooded. If I fall into that water, I will pass out.” Loth said.

“Really?”

“In a few hours, anyway,” Loth said, her tail waggling against his back.

Will stopped and looked up at her. “You don’t feel cold-blooded to me.”

“Are you accusing me of pretending to succumb to hypothermia on the Second Floor as some kind of test!?” Loth whispered.

“No, but I’m definitely thinking it now.”

“Too late, you’ve already passed the test.” Loth said.

Will rolled his eyes and returned to his business, the two of them falling silent as they approached the unguarded corner of the Last Chance Inn.

Loth extended a black talon, lazily drawing a circle on the ship’s wooden beams as a stream of insects crawled from her sleeve and deposited themselves along the circle she traced.

The insects began chewing their way through the wood with startling speed. In a matter of seconds, the thick wooden side of the ship had a perfect hole drilled into the side.

Loth clambered off him and through the hole, followed shortly by Will.

One of the taboos of The Flotilla was entering a vessel without asking permission. Entering someone else’s ship without hailing them was considered a hostile act and would result in being attacked on sight.

It was also a great way to lose the goodwill he’d acquired in his brawl the previous night, so neither of them was particularly interested in getting caught.

In and out, Will thought to himself, touching his mask to confirm its presence, his gaze scanning the pitch-black room they’d found themselves in, the glimmers of light from between the floorboards of the rooms above the only source of light.

All he could make out with his superhuman vision was ripples and orbs on the floor, and he smelled…less rotting seaweed than he would’ve expected.

“Let me.” Loth whispered, reaching into a pocket and scattering some glowbugs.

Her experiments with controlling insects with Miasma in them had led to several improvements in her basic lineup of insects.

Glowbugs were the best example, as she had bred a variety that kept their luminescence into maturity, allowing them to fly, and their brightness had been improved from a dying candle to a brilliant lamplight.

The glowbugs woke up from their slumber midair and flew up to the ceiling, where they became stationary lighting.

Will’s brows furrowed as he took in the sight before them. The entire room was filled with meldweed placed on drying racks that increased the surface area as much as physically possible, but that didn’t feel right.

The drying racks and floor were covered in meldweed and more was dumped haphazardly up against the drying racks where they couldn’t find any space to put any more. As if someone had had a methodical plan, and begun it before it was taken over by thoughtless, disinterested laborers.

Or animals.

Will got a strange feeling nagging at him as he scanned the room.

The air isn’t dry enough to actually dry anything, so why do they have drying racks?

Will glanced up and saw where several vents had been nailed shut, implying that the owners didn’t want the seaweed to dry out. The room had been for drying meldweed, but now it was for something else.

But it’s not rotting, Will thought, inhaling. If anything, Will faintly smelled the musky smell of animal dung.

“It’s a nursery,” Loth whispered, drawing Will’s attention to her.

She had knelt down and carefully peeled aside a bit of meldweed, revealing thousands of pinkie-sized eggs, as well as pale little crabs about half the size of Will’s palm, who scuttled deeper into the mat of meldweed, seeking to avoid the light.

“Are they…eating the crabs?” Will mused.

Loth’s claws pierced the mat of green seaweed and came back up with a larger specimen, about the size of Will’s hand.

“Shh…” Loth whispered to the crab struggling in her grasp, and Will could feel Charge moving through Loth’s body. As his Acuity and Focus became higher, it became easier to feel if someone was using an Ability.

“You can control crabs?” Will asked as the crab relaxed in her hand before she began studying it.

“They’re crustaceans, which is close enough to insects for The Tower,” Loth murmured, turning the tamed crab over in her hand and studying its belly.

The crab’s belly opened, revealing a serrated beak-like mouth and dozens of pink tendrils attached to a mucus-covered pink wrinkly nodule.

“…Is that normal?” Will asked.

Loth gave him a ‘look’.

“Hey. I’ve never seen a crab before this Floor.” Will said, raising his hands defensively.

“This is its mouth,” She said, pointing at a little set of mandibles near the creature’s eyes at the front. I don’t know what this is,” She said, pointing at the belly-mouth. “But I don’t think they’re raising them for food.”

“I’d like to-“ Loth cut off as the door creaked open.

The two of them silently ducked behind a drying rack, making themselves as small as possible

“This…isn’t Madeline’s…room is it?” a voice asked, his words slurred from drugs.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“Sure it is, she’s right in there, can’t you see her?”

Will peeked around the corner and spotted a patron of the brothel kneeling in front of a particularly big clump of Meldweed. The man’s eyes were unfocused, as he chewed meldweed.

“I…think so?” he said before frowning as the heap of meldweed began to shift, revealing the legs of a crab about twice the size of the one in Loth’s hand.

“Look closer,” The bouncer said, grabbing the man by the back of the neck and shoving his head towards the heap of seaweed.

The pale crab swiftly clambered up onto the man’s head and settled down onto it like a man might settle into a comfy chair, wiggling its butt to find the perfect spot.

A wet pop carried through the still air to Will’s ear, making his stomach turn.

“Oh. Oh!” the patron said, pulling his head back up, still bearing the crab on the crown of his head, a trickle of blood flowing down the side of his head. He looked around the room with the wonder of a newborn.

“Welcome to the world, brother,” the bouncer said, clasping the man’s hand and bringing him back up to his feet.

Will couldn’t help but notice the bouncer’s ostentatious hat.

“Let’s get you covered up.” The bouncer said, producing a hat from a rack near the door, placing it over the crab attached to the man’s skull.

“…Why?” the man asked with the tone of a child.

“Think about it a moment.”

“Oh…oh,” Will witnessed the wide-eyed curiosity fade from the man’s face as he took the hat and clamped it down over the passenger atop his head, wiping the blood away from his temple.

“Let’s get you to see Mother.”

“..okay.”

The two of them left the room, leaving Will and Loth alone with thousands of parasitic crabs that could latch onto a man’s skull and control his body.

Will’s scalp itched with phantom pain.

Muse in the window.

Nail through foot.

Sick soup.

Choking on stolen peanut butter.

Instinctively, Will ran through his memory key, causing his thoughts and feelings to rapidly shift as he ran a hand over his scalp.

Nothing.

A shiver went down his spine.

They’d found the conspiracy they’d been looking for. Not fishmen, exactly, but close.

“I think we should-“ Will glanced down at Loth, who was inspecting the crab in her hand with a contemplative frown.

In an instant, he saw the plan bubbling away under the surface.