Aria left before dawn in scrubs and a ponytail, whispering something about pudding diplomacy and charting. The door clicked; the apartment settled. Jiss lay on the couch staring at the ceiling crack. The city lively beyond the window. Inside his head, something stretched like a cat.
Hungry, Toxin said.
"We'll handle breakfast after… this," he whispered.
After what?
"After we find out what I'm."
Silence at that. Listening. Approving.
He dressed in the least conspicuous version of himself: hoodie, cap, cheap sneakers and pocketed the burner phone Aria had bullied into his future. He left a note on the table: Thanks. Groceries later. –J It looked like a teenager's apology.
We will not tell Soft Human, Toxin murmured, pleased.
"Nope," he agreed. Kindness and secrets did not share a kitchen well.
He walked south as the skyline shifted: glass gave way to brick, then to corrugated metal. The East River looked rough thou, like it hadn't slept. In an industrial block where most loading docks were either for lease or overgrown, he found what he was looking for: a low warehouse, fenced in, with a door that had forgotten it was supposed to lock.
Jiss slid inside.
The air smelled of dust. Sunlight cut through the high windows in sharp bands, leaving the rest in shadow. In the center was an open floor, marked with old tire tracks.
He listened for signs of life: voices, radios, the beep of a forklift. Nothing. Just pigeons in the rafters, cooing their opinions at the empty space.
"Okay," he said, breath fogging as if the warehouse remembered winter. "Rules are the same. Listen to me when I say stop."
Stop is boring, Toxin said, affectionate.
"Alive is boring. I like boring."
He peeled off the hoodie, rolled his sleeves, and flexed his fingers. His body felt like a room where the furniture had been rearranged in the night: everything familiar, everything wrong.
"Let's start with… saying hello on purpose."
He focused on his right hand, the same way he'd learned to find pulse in a wrist: attention, not force. A warmth answered him from under the skin, a coil uncoiling. Something slick and dark red pressed against his palm from the inside like a curious animal testing glass.
"Easy," he said, as much to himself as to the not-him. "Slow."
A tendril bloomed from the base of his thumb. Not horror-movie eruption: more like ink remembering it could be a rope. It gleamed a wet, impossible black shot with a red. It hovered, tasting air. He thought reach and it did gently, experimentally toward a discarded crate.
"Okay." He swallowed. "Grip."
The tendril wrapped around the crate's slat and tightened. The wood creaked. He slowed his breathing and pictured the slat like a wrist he didn't want to snap. Pressure was a dial, something he could turn gently with two fingers.
The tendril softened.
He pulled. The crate scraped across the concrete with a high-pitched squeal that shot through him like a nail. His grip let go on instinct, heart pounding. The sound echoed off the rafters. The pigeons swore overhead in protest.
Sharp sound hurts, Toxin complained, recoiling.
"Noted," Jiss breathed, waiting for the ache to ebb. "No dragging. Lift."
He tried again, gentler. The tendril coiled under the slat and lifted, the way a strong hand lifts a sleeping child: awkward, careful, then surprisingly sure. The crate rose, wobbled, held. Another tendril unspooled from his left wrist without being asked, eager to help. He froze at the second shape and then let it exist.
"Okay, octopus," he muttered. "Teamwork."
We are many hands, Toxin said, pleased. Echo.
He set the crate down without a squeal this time and felt stupidly proud. His forearms tingled with a not-unpleasant heat. He could feel the tendrils not just as extensions, but as skin, as if his reach now included a few more feet of living rope.
"Fine motor?" He spotted a rusted bolt near a pillar. "Pick up the small thing."
The right tendril extended, split into two delicate whisker-fingers, and pinched. The bolt slipped. Tried again. Slipped. On the third try, he imagined chopsticks, imagined patience, and the bolt hopped obediently into the red black grip.
He laughed, breathless. "Look at us. Party tricks."
We could pin a throat, Toxin suggested, matter-of-fact.
"Or stack chairs at a soup kitchen," he countered.
We prefer throats.
"File that under 'we'll talk.'"
He practiced until sweat cooled on his neck. Loop, lift, set. Reach, retract. Gentle, gentler. The tendrils responded like a dance partner learning, sometimes leading when he didn't expect it, sometimes lagging when fear tightened his chest. When he let them move within the lines he'd drawn, they moved beautifully.
"Next," he said, voice rasping. "Shield."
------------------------------
The word conjured an image he hadn't realized he'd already filed: something domed, something with a mouth. He spread his fingers, palms out. The space between his hands filled with liquid darkness that thickened, flexed, and become real.
A rounded plate took shape, glossy as oil, ridged with subtle muscle lines. Its edge had teeth, but more like petal-sharp ridges curving inward.
"Maw Shield," he said without thinking, and the shape preened.
We like teeth that keep us, Toxin purred.
Jiss set the shield between himself and a stack of thin metal rods. He grabbed one, stepped back, and tossed it flat at the shield. It hit with a deep thud that echoed in his bones. The shield rippled, pulling the impact inward, then flung the rod away like it was nothing.
"Okay," he whispered. "That's… that's useful."
He stepped back farther and threw harder. The shield absorbed the force like it enjoyed it.
When he tossed two rods at once, his knees bent from the feedback. It didn't hurt exactly, it just drained him, like holding an umbrella against a strong wind.
"Feedback loop," he said aloud, because words made the lesson stick. "You eat force, we pay the check."
I prefer meat, Toxin offered.
He let the shield drop. It folded back into him like a sigh, leaving his arms heavy. He flexed his fingers, shaking the blood back into them.
The exhaustion felt almost good like after a run, not like falling over. He could stop here. He should stop here.
He looked at the far wall, where a old conveyor belt hung.
"Blade," he said quietly.
The symbiote reacted fast. Focused. Hungry. He clenched his jaw, raised his right arm, and thought edge.
A blade grew along his forearm like a second bone. It was pure black that swallowed light, edged in a red seam that looked hot but wasn't. It stretched a foot past his wrist, ending in a point that made his whole arm feel like a threat.
He swallowed. "We keep it away from me," he told the air. "From us."
We do not cut us, Toxin agreed, solemn for once.
He stepped up to the hanging belt and tapped the blade against it. The rubber gave a solid thunk. He pressed a little harder. The blade slid through like it had been made for this. The belt dropped in two clean pieces.
Next, he tested a crate slat, the cracked one. The blade cut straight through. No resistance. No noise. Just clean slices.
He forced himself to stop after three cuts. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath until he let it go.
"Rope?" He found a fraying tie-down at the wall, pulled it taut, and drew the blade through. The rope parted, ends falling like hair.
The blade dulled. It sank back into his skin without a scar. His arm prickled in its wake. He stared at the clean cut lines like he could read the future in them and didn't like the story.
He needed to stop. He knew he needed to stop.
"Two more reps," he bargained. "Then we eat. Real food."
Real meat, Toxin corrected, hopeful.
"Store-bought," he said firmly.
They did two more: tendril-loop-lift-set; shield-catch-release. On the final guard raise, something in him misfired: a surge, a compulsion to push beyond his new normal.
Speed shook through his limbs, a blur trying to happen. Redline, in the way he'd named it without permission.
"Stop," he said immediately, scared by how good the almost felt.
The symbiote bucked, wanting to go, then folded, displeased but obedient. The surge broke like a wave.
The aftermath hit fast: lightheaded, knees weak, a metallic taste in his mouth—not blood, but close enough to remember it.He dropped to one knee, the concrete solid and grounding under his hand. His breath came rough. Sweat blurred his vision
The pigeons in the rafters took offended flight at his biology.
Too fast, Toxin said, chiding, worried. You burn. We burn.
"We're done," he rasped.
Silence, then a deliberate easing along his nerves.
Stop, Toxin echoed, a word it didn't love made into an agreement. Together.
He sat there until the concrete stopped moving. He could feel the hunger again, crowding the edges of him, not cruel but determined. He'd fed it eggs and soup kitchen carbohydrates and jokes. It wanted iron and salt and something that satisfied at a deeper layer.
"Fine," he said, head bowed. "We'll go find a butcher. We'll be normal weird."
Normal weird, Toxin repeated happily, as if they'd invented a holiday.
He gathered the mess he'd made the fallen rope ends, the cut rubber and tucked them out of obvious sight. He wiped his palms on his jeans and left through the same not-locked door, pulling it shut until it made the click of a job well-enough done.
Outside, the river wind hit him like a full reset. He walked carefully like after a workout, when your legs are still debating with gravity.
Every car horn felt too loud. Every bird call made his shoulders twitch, remembering the shield.
He passed a butcher shop with a chalk pig sign out front. Inside: cold tile, sharp smells, and a man in an apron who didn't care who he was as long as the money was good.
Jiss bought a paper-wrapped bundle that felt heavier than it looked, like admitting he needed it.
In the nearest pocket of shade, he tore off a discreet piece and let Toxin take it—not taking his hand, not ceding, just… sharing. The hunger eased. The entire world got a half-shade less sharp. He hated that relief.
Better, Toxin sighed, heathen contentment. Meat that remembers being alive.
"Don't say that," he muttered. "Say protein. Say steak."
Steak, Toxin said dutifully, then under its breath: meat.
He made it back to Aria's building by late afternoon, paper bag under his arm, hoodie zipped to hide the sweat-salt map his shirt had become. He washed his hands at the sink until they smelled like cheap soap and not like warehouse. He put the rest of the butcher paper in the freezer like he'd always had a freezer and it had always forgiven him.
The couch pulled at him like a tide. He resisted long enough to text Aria:Got a cheap phone. Grab groceries? I'll carry.
The reply came fast:YES. After 6.
He smiled at the screen like a fool, because sometimes being alive was just that embarrassing and good.
He lay back.
We learned, Toxin said, with the tone of a proud teacher. Hands. Shield. Tooth. Stop.
"Yeah," he echoed, eyes closing. "We learned a lot today."
Sleep took him.