the irremediable.

it's shame more than fear. is he getting lazy? no, he'd let himself be seen. otherwise they wouldn't be here in the restaurant at all. the students leave him alone. nobody ever gives him any mind. he likes the library. libraries are one of the few places people like him are left alone because they do not feel pressured to buy something and fuck off. he's even lied before in order to get a free hot meal from the cafeteria. so-and-so's brother (swiped her meal card when he offered to watch her stuff; gave it to the lost and found desk when he was through). or i'm with the visiting school but misplaced my money.

he changes his mind, and picks his chopsticks back up. he reaches far enough to pluck a braised potato chunk from its plate and ungracefully shove it into the pocket of his left cheek.

        DARK EYES, HEAVY with drooping lashes like leaves bowing under the weight of morning dew, barely flicker away from his phone. Whatever uncertainty roils behind his eyes, Mutt has the right to privacy. Just as he does not expect Mutt to be peeking behind the curtain any time soon, he is content to meet whatever version of himself he seems willing to present.

Nero snatched the signed form, prattling and piddling more to salve his own wounded ego than anything. Sure enough, Harold's form was an admissible document. Nero gave it a scan with his teledex to clear the arrival of the new specimen, before clipping the device back onto his belt and starting to speak into his wristwatch communicator. For the presence of redundancies like tangible paper forms and latex gloves by the box-full, knowing when to wield advancements also came in handy, as he doled out several orders:

“Ecghh echh!— Dakkar to ops…”

Button pressing.

A gyroscopically sound service android to retrieve Dr. Ong's specimen containers by hand to preserve their already fragile integrity.

A request for the industrial-grade fabrication enmats to construct standardized prefabs of the lab equipment, dematerializing damaged units and placing the new ones at their coordinates via site-to-site use of the telepads.

More button pressing.

Last but not least, other people from sci-division to come adjust the temperature of terrarium and the specimen fridge.

Those initial button presses early on were to generate a force-field wall that would keep Harold confined to his desk for a while. Left to face against randomly assigned researchers on their way now. A man alone, his only comrade a passable chair.

"So! Change of plans: I'm off to sick bay. You’ve scored some other smegheads to supervise. Unfortunately, due to your hands-on approach, it'll have to be strictly verbal instruction. But look who I’m talking to…! You. The go-getter. Professor… so-and-so.”

        NERO, UNFORTUNATELY, LOOKS like shit. Harold revels in it. It's like a phantom limb, some festering entitlement to vengeance even if he's only been aboard this ship for a few hours and doesn't really have anyone to seek vengeance against. The only other alternative is to either leave everyone alone or seek camaraderie instead, both of which are laughable. He hopes Nero dies in sickbay. Painfully. But before he dies: ❝ give me back my papers, ❞ Dr. Ong instructs curtly, stepping forward with an expectant, outstretched hand before toe of his shoe bumps up against something solid.

        HE LOOKS DOWN. He then looks confused. His foot continues to slide forward hesitantly before it, once again, bumps up against nothing, and he resembles a particularly disgruntled mime. Said sharp, seething gaze snaps up to Nero, and he skips straight from bewilderment and into blistering fury. If there is one thing Harold is a renowned expert at besides esoteric helminth biology, it is being angry.

⚖️You’ve Reached Durán Law: “ you know what this could mean to the university? ” @gordiacea

“No, Doc, I don’t.” She admits, “I think we’ve already established that we speak two very different dialects of dense academic jargon.” Try as Dolores might to glean what she can of his work from the disparate documents he gave her to analyze, a lot of the nuances and applications of helminthology are lost on someone with at best a high school understanding of science.  Her eyes dart from Dr. Ong to the door as a shadow passes by. Just once she’d like to feel like she isn’t being haunted. “Translation, please?”

        DR. ONG'S OFFICE IS just far enough away from his current lab to make the walk between the two locations mildly irritating - he suspects the facilities faculty was not intelligent enough to take this into account when assigning him the space. While the exact location of his designated lab has varied depending on grants, availabilities and logistical requirements, Harold has been trapped in the same office for the better part of almost fifteen years. Between the shelves haphazardly stuffed full of wedged books and the filing cabinets bloated with unorganized piles of bullshit, it makes Dolores's shoebox look like a mansion in comparison.

        ❝ THESE ARE THE kinds of discoveries that gets you awards. That gets you the 'privilege' of naming new species, ❞ he drawls irately, folding his stack of papers as he flings them straight into his desk drawer and shoves it shut, ❝ and I'm not doing shit with it until this case is closed. God. I'd rather shoot myself in the head than share credit just 'cause they rented me some fucking lab equipment, ❞ he snaps, and his eyes follow hers to the long, cutting stream of light filtering past the open door.

"Considering it'd be bad manners to punch a new exit out of here? Yeah, it's not working." Cherry huffs, blows her hair out of her face. She knows she counted the marbles correctly. At the edges of her mind, Nikita even helped. For the demon to step in and so selflessly aid her, they must be in dire straits. Clearly, Cherry is the only person among them who actually wants to be here.

She frowns at the jar of marbles, then turns her attention to Harold. "Oh...hold up. You mean my super genius attempts at rescuing us, or, like, the whole date?" Her eyes widen a fraction as the corners of her lips plummet. It's equal parts sincere and hopelessly cartoonish—and possibly even funnier because of its sincerity. "I was having fun."

Her gaze wavers slightly, no longer homed directly on him, but him-adjacent. It's enough, at least, to note the way his nails nearly pierce his flesh. It's uncomfortable to think that she's causing such an intense reaction. A small, noncommittal note rumbles at the back of her throat before she speaks again. "There are things we haven't tried! The map, like, take another look?" She gestures to the faux-weathered paper sprawled across across a compact tabletop. "Something with the lat and long, maybe..."

        SOAP, HE SUPPLIES unhelpfully, and he would have been able to detect the undercurrent of amaretto if he knew what that smelled like. How ardently he yearns to yearn, wants to feel something other than the alien, arms' distance remove from humanity like he is watching his own life from a distant skylight. He wants a revelation to hit him so hard it breaks his orbital bone and knocks his brain against the back of his skull. But all Dr. Ong can detect in his heart is mild discomfort, mounting shame, and a growing irritation at the novelty pirate music playing on a loop in their tiny prison.

        ❝ NO. NOT - ❞ AND he swallows down the word date, ❝ not that. ❞ How ambiguous. ❝ And I don't want ice cream, ❞ he mutters, mostly on account of lactose intolerance, but also from the near nuclear amount of embarrassment he generates imagining how stupid he'd look holding an ice cream cone.

Oh. Right. In just a few short, acidic words, Ong has successfully reminded Dolores why she doesn't get too chummy with her clients. Instinctively she follows the motion of the beat-up passport as it unceremoniously drops near the basin of the kiosk. Mr. Robinson exchanges a look with her, a wide eyed stare asking what the hell this guy's problem is, but she doesn't give him an answer. "I do." It's the most neutral thing she can think to say as she slides Dr. Ong's passport under the glass divider proper. "Thanks." Whether it's to save her or himself from dealing with this any longer, Mr. Robinson cuts the tension with an, 'alright,' and flips the passport closed. 'Dr. Ong, if I can get you to raise your right hand.' The clerk instructs and the attorney nods at her client to do so. 'Do you affirm that all of the contents of this document are true to the best of your knowledge?'

        NO MATTER THE mechanical normalcy of it, Harold manages to make the simple act of lifting his hand look utterly wretched, bony fingers stiffly curled like they're going to nail him to a cross. His stare frosts over with cold, icy contempt, contemplating how this is all just so unspeakably beneath him.

        ❝ YES, ❞ HE SAYS, but it's thrown out with the same carelessness as if he'd snapped who gives a fuck. Dropping his leaden hand back to his side, he sulks beside the counter, flexing his jaw as if chewing through the litany of complaints he could unleash upon him for wasting his morning. To Mr. Robinson, unhappy courtroom denizens are not out of the ordinary, but Harold is in a league of his own.

        BACK STILL TO the counter, something squirms in his innards as he chances a glance at Dolores. Harold doesn't know how he's so good at always saying the wrong thing. Similarly, he doesn't know how everyone else is so good at always saying the wrong thing to him. As the clerk busies himself stamping the forms and journaling a new notary entry, Harold begins to fidget, fingers twisting into themselves like a gordian knot. Things had felt so good before - not just yesterday, but even this morning, her dusky mauve silhouette a beacon amongst the beige and black. Something is distinctly off. This must be because he woke up too late to get her coffee before he came here.

"Hm? Oh-- he's just asking for one more signature right..." Dolores turns her watchful eyes away from Dr. Ong and onto the document, tracing lines with her nail until she finds the missed section. "Right here." Tap-tap. "But you haven't seen the ads?" TV, newspapers, magazines-- hell, she saw a WE'RE READY TO BELIEVE YOU and all four boys in beige stretched out across a bus on her way to court just today. "The stupid song? Bada- ba-da-ba-dum?" There's a snort from behind the glass as Robinson pipes up, 'Couldn't go nowhere without hearing that all summer.' Dolores herself almost threw out her radio because of it, but whatever. She shakes her head. "It's really not all that important, I guess. They keep my lights on." No one here needs to know the details, anyway, but she looks back up at Dr. Ong with a question burning in the back of her mind. "So... if you didn't hire me because of that suit, how did you find my firm?"

        SHOVED INTO THE recesses of his coat pocket, the nail of his index finger compulsively presses half-moon marks into the skin of his thumb, the mounting stress of the day beginning to chisel a dull ache at the back of his head. The taxonomy of emotion eludes him - simple annoyance doesn't seem to suffice for this situation. It's more reminiscent of the bitter resentment he feels walking into the employee lounge and being confronted with his coworkers' laughter, only to have it vanish the moment they're aware of his presence.

        ❝ WE'LL NEED YOUR ID, Dr. Ong, ❞ the clerk says, attempting to squeeze in the crevices of their conversation. Harold maintains a petulant refusal to look at him, digging his bent passport out of his bag. Republika ng Pilipinas - he flings it onto the table and crosses his arms, impatient.

        ❝ I DON'T KNOW, ❞ he mumbles, ❝ just - somewhere. A recommendation, I guess, ❞ he supplies haphazardly. An indirect one, at least - he'd yanked her business card off of the university's community bulletin. ❝ Then I called you, and, y'know, I'm sure you remember. You seemed - ❞ he strains, words failing him, voice clipping off into a pinched silence as he makes some vague, meaningless gesture to fill in the void.

        SHE'D SEEMED DIFFERENT. And that was just over the phone. Because when he'd met her, she'd seemed - good, he supposes, good in a way that didn't feel like cheap paint slathered over an empty facade, but he isn't about to discuss that here, in front of these brainless worker ants scurrying around their stupid courthouse, this nosy, bumbling clerk, not when he feels so oddly fragile ( less like glass and more like a third degree burn with his skin peeling off in sheets ).

*krrrllchht!*

The sound was small. Already, Nero was experiencing the deleterious effects of being in this place and now he was stacking on some more. Every surviving leech he collected seemed to want much of the same, one after another. The shivering, twitching human with his loathsome cold sweats coming on. And Harold had a front row seat.

--Not enough soap in the UNIVERSE--

Even just a cursory understanding of the parasitic annelid made separating the larger-than-average suction seal-- actually, going forward certain things would simply happen. Harold could ask for the details if he ever wanted them badly enough. Otherwise, the leech was safely removed. The workforce gets things done and that's all upper management needs to know.

The last of the surviving leeches were stored away, for as long as their remaining lifespan might have lasted. But Nero would not relax: it is exactly in moments like these that he expects some sort of knocking over of an object that was perfectly intact. He waited for something to that effect. Mostly listening for keywords in Dr. Ong's speech to draw the conclusion his services were no longer needed. Cosmic entities yoking and rewriting the fundamental laws of physics weren't nearly this infuriating. A sphincter on the verge of becoming unreliable at any second, if left untreated.

What in the Gortdamn...

        TO THE FULLEST extent one can enjoy a desk chair, anyways. He sits in it and it doesn't collapse into a worthless pile of shitty plastic; that's more than he can say about most of the equipment ( and crew ) on this ship.

        THE POSH INDIFFERENCE of his long, crossed legs and the blinding alabaster whiteness of his uniform coat give him such an erudite air of propriety that it's easy to forget he is just as much a seething, vengeful psychopath as he is a scientist. ❝ Are you done ? ❞ Harold drawls with patronizing scorn, and he doesn't even deign him a glance as he's to his feet and snatching his clipboard off his desk in one fell swoop. Two quick signatures sweep across the page and he turns the paper to the nice young man so Nero can observe the mile long list of other tasks he expects of him.

        ❝ GOOD. THEN YOU can get to setting up the wiring for the heating and lighting in all of the terrariums for proper live specimen habitation, prepping the refrigerated storage unit for long term containment, and getting the external backup for my computer up and running. ❞ Dark eyes glance over the rim of his square glasses, pursing his lips. ❝ Ah. And expect another delivery in the shipment bay, t-minus ten minutes. Then they'll need to get back here and into those properly heated terrariums ay-sap, ❞ which is an annoying and nigh offensive way of pronouncing ASAP as a single word.

Ugh. Hm. Yeesh. Okay. Dolores knew this topic would come up at some point, she just expected it sooner. Like first consultation sooner. Most prospective clients know her from her brief fifteen minutes of fame on NY1 a couple years ago and her continued work with New York's Bravest- Finest- Most Destructive. It's frankly a little surprising that Dr. Ong didn't seek her out for that reason considering everything about this lawsuit. She stares back at him with the faintest trace of trepidation creasing her brow. Dr. Ong is a serious scientist. She can tell just as much from the state of his lab and from what she's seen of his notes and publications. Her guys, for all their flaws, are serious scientists too. The problem is that their field is only now gaining any credibility as being the real deal and not crackpot science fiction. Many people have accepted that ghosts are real (herself, begrudgingly, included) and many many more still don't. That's why half the doors she opens get slammed in her face and why she currently has one hundred Casper dolls gathering dust in a box in her apartment. Shining, purple nails tap 1-2-3-4 on the kiosk counter while Robinson carefully inspects each copy of the document, totally not listening in on this conversation. Dolores takes a deep breath and sighs. "You know the Ghostbusters?" She relents. "Well, they also happen to be clients of mine and he was asking if you were with them."

        SHE RELENTS, BUT her explanation offers nothing. He regards her with utter bewilderment, lips parting despite the fact that he isn't sure he even knows what to ask to illicit further clarification. She might as well have spoken gibberish - the expression he currently dons is similar to what he'd opt for if Dolores had suddenly told him she was from Mars. ❝ Am I supposed to know who that is ? ❞ he asks incredulously, and it's becoming evident that he has little interest in the world beyond the confines of his lab. He isn't even sure what she said. For all he knows, that could be a band, to which he'd snidely proclaim he has little interest in the realm of popular music.

        ❝ WELL, MISTER - DOCTOR, ❞ Robinson amends, sensing Ong is not the type to take kindly to such mistakes, ❝ you're almost there. Missed one on the back side of here - small, I know, these things get away from you no matter how hard you look. If I could get your, ah, John Hancock right over here, ❞ he says, sliding over a pen attached to a silver chain, and Harold stares at the document, baffled, then back at the clerk with blatant annoyance chiseled into his furrowed brows and deep scowl.

He takes a deep breath. It does wonders for his almost eternally-stressed-out-brain. Bachelor thinks to himself, I came here seeking a fellow scientist--yes, beyond that, people accuse me of being heartless when I merely speak of the facts. I must try to be patient, and remember that there are more important things at play here. Thanatica is crumbling. I need all the information I can get.

--The finger jams into his chest. The breath he had taken: it's like it never happened. Daniil is, once again, annoyed.

Daniil brush-swats Harold's hand aside from its accusatory position at his sternum. "I agree with you, Dr. Ong." He surprises even himself at how calm his voice manages to come across. "But a parasite can be manipulated; as you know, my research is preoccupied with the idea of defeating death. Resurrection, reanimation, whatever it is people want to call it--although I must confess the scientific part of my mind finds these terms limiting in their scope--," not that Harold probably gives a damn but whatever, Daniil feels obligated to say it anyways--,

        AMBITIONS OF IMMORTALITY are as appealing to him as switching careers and studying soil for the rest of his life. More often than not, he entertains fantasies of mysteriously dropping dead from a brain aneurysm, here and then gone in the span between blinks - and no matter how much he stares at Daniil with impassive contempt, he cannot will him to drop dead, either.

        ❝ OH, SO, YOU don't know, huh ? ❞ he echoes back, equal parts smug and scornful. Deft fingers snap the lid off of the terrarium, a pair of forceps withdrawing one of the dead mantises. Perhaps the most merciful course of action is to kindly ask Daniil to leave his lab and never try to speak to him again, but Harold will always fall victim to the temptation of having the last word. ❝ Firstly, ❞ he interrupts, punctuated by a papery crunch of the mantis's thorax as the forceps clench a little too tight, ❝ not all parasites affect host behavior via neurological manipulation. That is, in fact, the most uncommon method of behavior alteration. Most induce change via manipulation of the immune system or sensory organs, and if something's already dead, then that wouldn't work, would it ? ❞

        DR. ONG DROPS THE mantis in a dish of shallow water. Tendrils of long, black threads pulse and flail as they extricate themselves from its insides, a spasmodic, writhing tangle like a living gordian knot. He has no intentions of scaring Daniil - far from it, as he assumes any self-propertied man of science can handle seeing a harmless worm - but he gestures to the tray as if to prove a point. ❝ Gordiacea spawns in water. It would have been within their best interest to manipulate the dead mantis to submerge itself in order to do so, right ? But if something's dead, then it's dead, ❞ he concludes curtly, ❝ and even if you did find enough residual impulses to fake movement, you didn't bring anything back to life. You made a sock puppet. So great work, doctor, you've got a plan that's equal parts half-baked and just plain fucking stupid. Honestly, I don't even see why you care. ❞

"You know how sharks have to keep moving or they'll die? Same concept." A joke, yes, but there's a very fine line between attorneys and sharks to some. Even as blurry as her world is beyond the gold wire framing her vision, Dolores can feel Dr. Ong's eyes watching her. Not that she minds, she knows he's an anxious person and based on the way he's fidgeting in his seat, she figures he's just trying to put his focus anywhere other than the new faces constantly filtering in and out. She shifts in her seat. "Um..." She briefly looks at Harold, currently trying to phase through the brick wall behind him, then back to Miss Chanel in her wrinkled confusion. "Fifty-four, ma'am. Can I see your ticket?" She shows her the scrap of paper and after a moment of scrutiny, Dolores informs her that she should be up soon. With her concerns addressed, she turns her attention back to her client. "Not long. Mr. Robinson's usually quick with--" 'Six se-- Ha-- sorry, folks, looks like I need new cheaters. Sixty-seven?' Dolores nods. "See?" Right on time. She gets to her feet and clicks across the beige flecked stone to the available window. Cutting right down to business, she explains that she's here to witness for Dr. Ong's affidavit and the jovial man behind the counter beams. 'Woah doctor, nice. You with the Ghostbusters too?' Dolores' eyes widen slightly and immediately she jumps in, "Ah-- No, unaffiliated." He shrugs and takes the papers from Harold. 'Suit yourself. Give me a moment to go over these.'

        HAROLD DOESN'T THINK he's ever been so relieved to be summoned to deal with bureaucracy. He shoots out of his seat, desperate to get out of the Chanel blast radius, clutching his wilting paper number like it's his personal ticket into the gates of heaven. Puzzling, though, that even as the noxious miasma of mothballs and stale powder is abandoned behind him, he catches the faintest wisp of earl grey tea as he and Dolores claim their rightful spot before the counter.

        IN MOMENTS LIKE these, he always finds relief that his dogshit life could always be worse: exhibit A, at least he isn't a courthouse clerk. He observes Mr. Robinson as one would a particularly uncanny specimen in a laboratory, too dazed from the overwhelming streams of people to be properly disdainful.