https://bandana.co/jobs/2d9bb0f0-ceef-4c96-9a75-e482fe79e658?utm_source=reddit
Job Duties & Responsibilities: - Responsible for securing the building, including monitoring, inspecting, and securing all entrances and exits, as well as surveillance of hotel property and individuals. - Control entry onto hotel premises through the parking garage during the hotel renovation. - Patrol the physical property or maintain a fixed post position, reporting any suspicious activity and investigating accidents and criminal acts. - Maintain a working knowledge of emergency policies, procedures, and regulations to respond to alarms, incidents, and emergencies. - Ensure the continuous and safe operation of elevators and access doors.
Qualifications and Requirements: - Minimum two years of experience in a similar capacity for a luxury or ultra-luxury property. - High school diploma is required. - Prior experience in Security/Loss Prevention, Law Enforcement, Military, or Fire Life Safety is required. - Fire Life Safety Director certification is required. - New York State Guard License is required. - Certified in Adult, Child, and Infant CPR, AED, and First Aid.
Pay and Benefits: - Hourly Rate: $29.55 - $39.90 per hour - Competitive benefits including medical, dental, vision, and retirement benefits - Paid holidays
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First
The Bounty Hunters
“So, ya’ll got the Imperial Army on the governess and they’re on their way?” Susie-Lu asks after she got over her initial rush. It had taken about a minute for her to calm down, but she had then wiped off her face, regained her dignity and started asking all sorts of questions.
“We’re basically just here to stop things from getting worse. And now the woman has shown herself to be trying to make herself queen of the slug people for some reason.”
“Oh that? I know what she wants outta them. She was proud of it.”
“Are you going to leave us in suspense?” Scaly asks.
“There are a few ways to really lock your name in as someone that is integral to The Empire. Those that found new colonies, those that win incredible martial victories and finally, those that bring an entirely new people into The Empire.”
“And bringing in a previously unknown species?” Pukey asks.
“If she had the time ta train them and get them loyal ta the empire on first contact? She’d get ta start her own royal house. Then she could push bigger and bigger.” Susie-Lu says.
“I see. So it was a long term power grab. And speaking of grabbing...”
“I wanted ta make my own business my way, in the way of my home and people and not because some robe wearin’ twerp thought her credits were better than everyone else’s. Even if she’s got more, it’s just credits.”
“Ah, an artist.” Pukey notes.
“Got a problem with that?” Susie-Lu asks.
“Not at all. Nothing wrong with taking pride in your work.” Pukey answers. Before a pale green light starts slowly growing stronger around a corner. “Slugs are here.”
“... I’m real glad I’ve been puttin’ safeties on mah guns, for sher.” Susie-Lu notes as a revolver is pointed at them, but there’s a block stopping the hammer from hitting the firing pin and showing a small bit of metal sticking out the right side of the gun with an X on it.
“Very well done. So do we have to watch out for yoru symbol when staring down the barrel?” Tang asks.
“Eyup.” Susie-Lu notes in amusement as Tang then plucks the gun out of the grip of the incredulous slug woman and then walks back to hand it to her. “Thank ya kindly. I ain’t no scratch on ma sister, but I’ve earned more than a few meals huntin’.”
She then checks the weapon and sighs. “Ah dust it! There ain’t even one bullet left! Gun’s empty!”
“Here, does this round fit?” Tang offers handing her a bullet that she takes from him incredulously and slots it in. It’s a little looser than what she’s make, but otherwise a perfect fit. The muzzle flash is going to be something else though...
“Why in the hell are ya’ll space men walkin around with proper bullets for my revolver?”
“You got very close to a very common bullet size that we use. All of us have ammo to spare for you.”
“Ain’t just your voices that are plenty sweet, the words ya’ll use are downright poetry.”
“Aljin kran! Krani Gulga Halmara!”
“There’s that word again...” Pukey notes.
“Gulga Halmara? That’s what they call me! Goddess knows what it means, they don’t like sticking around much when I’m forgin’ and the deal was I get food so long as I work the forge. They gave me this whole space age setup but it was just the same heat totems and more, just with a lotta wasted chrome ya’ll could put on a tool. So I did. Right pissed off Governess Bumbleshell.” Susie-Lu says and
“... Gulga Halmara!”
“And there’s the question on what to do with her.” Pukey notes. The slug woman hasn’t made any hostile moves, but she’s clearly in a panic. She wants the gun back, but doesn’t want to approach them. “She keeps trying to say something to you Susie-Lu.”
“I got no clue what she’s goin’ on about I’m afraid. I ain’t been given nothin’ in the way for a primer. All I know is that they seem kinda scared of me and they call me Gulga Halmara.”
“They called me Oulga Halmara, but only when I pulled out my Plasma Sword.”
“The big shiny thing... maybe Halmara means bright or something? When a forge gets goin’ there’s plenty o’ light.” Susie-Lu muses. “Still, are we all gonna just jaw about? Or are we goin’ after Sallie?”
“We are, the only question is are you joining us or are we getting you towards safety so you can get the hell out of here while we well trained warriors take things on.”
“Well trained are ya? Is that why ya’ll got an eye that weren’t there when ya’ll were born? Or an arm for that rate?” She asks before turning to Scaly. “Not to mention I think this one’s just a runt, but I been told that ya’ll space types can grow younger if ya’ll want to.”
“He’s also got all sorts of fun toys and weapons on him, and I traded up for a very powerful eye.”
“Sure ya did. Look handsome, I’m not sayin’ I ain’t grateful. But if ya’ll think yer goin’ ta go help ma sister without me than ya’ll musta lost some brains with that eye.” Susie-Lu says and he shrugs.
“Alright, look into this and state that I swear until the mission has ended that I am agreeing to be under the command of Captain Gregory Schmidt.” Pukey tells her pulling out his communicator and has it record her repeat the quick oath. “Fantastic. Welcome to the team. Let’s go.”
“Wut? Just like that?”
“You’re at least a little known to the locals, which means you’re the closest we got for a translator and...” Pukey begins to say before his communicator starts going off. “Excuse me. This is Pukey.”
“DO NOT BRING THESE PEOPLE INTO SUNLIGHT!” Cindy all but screams at him. “They are extremely photosensitive! A burn time lasting in seconds, the infant had only a moment’s contact and is already injured! Do NOT expose these things to light!”
“What kind of light?! I held up my plasma sword and while they flinched back none of them started cooking from across the room!”
“I don’t know, and I don’t think they do either. But it’s something put out by yellow stars! This isn’t something we’re going to figure out today either as the only test subject I have is a sun-burnt baby!”
“Relax. This is good to know. Is the baby alright?”
“The baby is going to fine, Onyx ducked back into the shadows the nanosecond the child started to burn. The damage looks bad, but from what I can tell is minimal. Still, seeing her turn deep brown in the light is disturbing.”
“Pale white to deep brown? Hunh. Anyways, we’ve saved Sallie’s sister but now we need Sallie, The Hat and The Goveness back. So we’re poking through tunnels and leaving a trail of signal boosters as we go. Tell Lytha to let us know if The Hat crosses into range of the boosters.”
“Uh... about the child...”
“Yes...?” Pukey asks.
“What are we doing with it?”
“Well right now I’d like you to make sure the little one is healthy and happy. After we sort the immediate mess we’ll make a choice. But try not to get attached, this is a new species and we have no idea what they eat, or drink or what their developmental stages are like. This is completely unknown territory here.” Pukey says.
“Right... right sorry it’s just...”
“I know, a mother to be around a baby is borderline asking for a kidnapping to happen under ideal circumstances. Just relax. It’s going to be fine.” He assures her. His eyes flicker up as the ambient light starts growing again, this time in pink rather than pale green. “I gotta go, it seems like we’re about to have a lot more company than just one babbling, confused and frightened local.”
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
“Pink light?” Bongani asks as they notice the strange colour coming from a hole in the ceiling above. There’s some murmuring from Adili and he pulls the bandana partway off. “And this is?”
“Something that will hopefully kill you.” She snarls at him and he puts the gag back.
“Hostile then. Or potentially. On your guard.” Bongani orders.
“Potentially?” Sallie asks.
“She’s a liar, if she tells you the sun is warm don’t trust it.” Bongani says and Sallie snorts.
“Right. Fair point. Plenty o’ ways ta lie. Even with the truth.”
“Exactly. Pink light means something. Our liar says hostile. But she didn’t say it meant nothing. So it’s probably something.” Bongani says and there’s an offended mumble from Adili.
“So do we keep goin’ or wait and see?”
“I’d rather not have something potentially following us. We wait for a few moments.” Bongani says as the pink light slowly grows brighter and brighter until...
“Halmara!” A slug woman glowing pink exclaims before falling out of the shaft and scooting away as hard as she can. The whole time chanting ‘Halmara!’ as she abandons her heavy looking axe and disappears down another tunnel.
“Well ain’t you popular!” Sallie says with a big smile directed right at The Hat.
“Oh yeah, guest of honour here.” Bongani notes before stepping up a bit and sheathing his pistol then reaching down and picking up the axe. “Hunh... stone? What do you think? Flint?”
“Basalt I think. But why the heck is one of these girls using stone tools when they’ve got metal already? I get that high grade metal needs ma sister, but surely bronze or copper would be better. Though the handle looks like a root o’ somthin’.” Sallie muses.
“Another mystery. Maybe this one was a one off, or maybe part of a larger picture. But whatever it is, Halmara scares them downright senseless, and I think Halmara is me.”
“It’s a right weird word, I’ll give ya that. I’ve heard names, curses and warnings all shouted like that. But what’s it mean?”
“I think that when that question is fully answered a lot more answers will fall into place. But I think we should keep moving. Operate the spiral, we’ll run into something friendly sooner or later.” Bongani says taking the lead again and Adili openly snorts at that.
“Well, since she’s been lyin’ the whole time I’ll take that as a yes.” Sallie chirps if only to annoy Adili. Which actually works.
As they start to move they find more and more tunnels with Sallie marking them all. Through numerous ones are different slug women staring out at them. Whispers of ‘Halmara!’ following them as they pass.
Then in the distance there’s a burst of noise, a fast conversation with numerous invectives that uses Halmara in multiple places. Followed by the sound of something wooden being smashed and then a thump.
“Aur aljin galliack!” Rings out and at the unfamiliar word The Hat and Sallie spare a glance. There is a snuffling sound and the sound of something scraping the earth... and then The Hat and Sallie both jump back to avoid a massive pair of claws bursting out of the floor followed by a huge nose with feelers branching off from it in all directions.
Several pistol shots go right down the nostrils before Bongani pulls out his plasma pistol and chases them in with a burst of white hot fire. The giant star nosed mole freezes as it’s brain fries and slumps back down the tunnel it dug at them.
“Attack moles. Alright then.” Bongani notes.
“Aljin Halmara Oulga Halmaratas!” One of the natives screams in absolute terror and the locals clear away so thoroughly that Bongani and Sallie are plunged into absolute darkness.
“Wut?” Sallie asks before Bongani turns on a flashlight and clips it into his jacket.
“I have no idea beyond they just sicked a giant mole on us, and panicked badly when we killed it.” He says.
“By why do they keep saying Halmara?!” Sallie demands.
“That’s what I wanna know.”
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
“So... hostile tribe?” Pukey asks the group as Itchy effortlessly wrestles the flint spear away from the pink slug woman. The pale green one had taken to hiding behind Susie-Lu at the sight of the new one which was just making things more confusing. “She did mention the locals needing the weapons.”
“I don’t make things so whole messes of weapons so dang fools can slaughter each other. I make works of art that can save people’s lives.”
“Hmm... well we don’t have the full picture yet. But we might get one...” Pukey considers before shrugging and turning to the slug hiding behind Susie-Lu.
He waves his hand to make sure he has the woman’s complete attention and then points to her. Then to him then mimes talking with his hand. “Is there someone who can talk to us?”
The slug woman tilts her head.
“Do you.” He points at her.
“Know.” He indicates his head and hers.
“Anyone.” He indicates everyone.
“Who can talk to us?” He asks miming the mouth movements again and he can already see he lost her.
“Maybe something else? One side bossman. Let me have a whack at it.” Air Farce says nudging Pukey in the side and crouching down in front of the woman. He then holds his hands out in front of him and channels Axiom. Soon a small series of glowing balls of light show up and before he can mould them into his little puppet show the woman dives behind Susie-Lu with a cry of ‘Halmara!’.
“Does Halmara mean light?”
“They burn in the sun. Halmara means dangerous light.” Pukey suddenly realizes. Incorrectly, but not completely.
​
First Last Next

Part 1
Part 2
As the Hueys begin to ascend, leaving behind a scene of merciless carnage, Tuyết's gaze fixes on one helicopter veering off in a different direction. A look of sheer terror washes over her face.
"It's heading towards my village," she whispers, her voice laced with panic.
My blood runs cold at the implications. After witnessing the ruthless execution of my platoon, the prospect of that helicopter reaching her village is horrifying. The rules of war seem to have been abandoned.
Tuyết’s hands clench into fists, her knuckles whitening under the strain. For a fleeting moment, her hardened façade cracks, revealing a vulnerability that I hadn't seen before. “My family,” she breathes, her voice barely audible. “I have to get to them.”
With a sense of urgency that words can't describe, she leads the way through the tunnel. I follow close behind, my mind racing with the implications of what's unfolding above us.
As we move, Tuyết explains in hushed, anxious tones about a hidden tunnel entrance in her village, used as an emergency escape route during bombings. "It's well concealed," she says. "We've used it to evacuate civilians during air raids."
"Be careful," she warns. "The section is unstable, and there could be traps that haven't been disarmed."
I nod, my senses heightened to the potential dangers lurking in the shadows.
As we progress, the tunnel begins to narrow, the walls closing in until we're forced to move in a single file.
Suddenly, Tuyet freezes, her body tensing. I stop abruptly, sensing the shift in her demeanor. She signals for silence, her hand raised in a warning gesture.
In the silence, a soft, sinister hissing becomes audible. It's rhythmic, almost hypnotic, and seems to resonate from the very walls of the tunnel.
The hissing grows louder, a serenade that prickles the skin.
Tuyết recoils, backing into me. I peer over her shoulder, and my blood runs cold.
Emerging from the murky shadows, a monstrous sight unfolds before us. A two-headed viper, hideously mutated, its scales glistening with a sickly sheen under the flashlight's beam. Each head, larger than a man's, sways menacingly, forked tongues flickering in the stale air. Its eyes, beady and unblinking.
We press our backs against the damp tunnel walls, our breaths shallow, trying to make ourselves as small and inconspicuous as possible. The conjoined creature hasn't seen us yet.
I can feel Tuyết's hand gripping mine, her fingernails digging into my palm with fear. Every instinct screams at me to flee, but I know movement would be fatal.
In this tense standoff, a drop of sweat trickles down my forehead, stinging my eye. I blink hard, trying to maintain focus. The sudden, involuntary twitch of my eyelid causes the drop to fall to the ground with an almost imperceptible sound.
But to the viper, it's a clarion call. Both heads snap towards the sound, their eyes narrowing, their bodies coiling in anticipation.
The viper pounces on us, its dual heads striking with terrifying precision, jaws unhinging to reveal rows of dripping fangs. Tuyết and I dive in opposite directions, narrowly avoiding the venomous fangs. The creature's body, thick and sinewy, coils and twists with an unnatural agility.
The viper's assault is relentless, a deadly blur of scales and venom. I scramble to my feet, my rifle in hand. Firing in these tight quarters is a dangerous gamble, but it's our only chance.
I aim at the creature, but the confines of the tunnel make it nearly impossible to get a clear shot. The serpent moves with a chilling speed, its bodies twisting and undulating in the dim light. Every time I think I have a clear shot, it contorts, evading the barrel of my gun.
As the creature lurches at us again, I notice something crucial: the two heads, although attached to the same body, are not in sync. They seem to struggle against each other, each head vying for control, unaware of the other's actions. It’s a flaw that we can exploit.
"Tuyet," I whisper urgently, "the heads, they're not moving in sync. We can use that."
"What do you want to do?" she asks, her voice trembling.
"When I give the signal, make noise on your side. Draw it towards you."
She looks at me, her eyes wide with fear and disbelief. "You're insane!"
"Trust me," I say, formulating a risky plan in my mind. "We can turn one against the other."
Tuyết hesitates, uncertain. But one of the heads lunges again, narrowly missing her, the urgency of the situation leaves no room for doubt. She nods.
Tuyết grasps her machete, striking it against the tunnel wall. The sharp, metallic clangs echo through the confined space, drawing the attention of the mutant viper. Its heads, momentarily distracted, swivel towards the source of the noise. Seizing the opportunity, I leap towards the right head, wrapping my arms around its thick, muscular neck. The creature writhes violently, its scales abrasive against my skin.
The right head, in its frantic attempts to dislodge me, thrashes wildly, slamming me against the left.
The left head, its attention drawn towards me, strikes with lethal intent, its jaws agape and fangs dripping with venom.
In the split-second before the left head's fangs can sink into me, I release my grip on the right head and throw myself to the side.
The left head's jaws snap shut with a sickening crunch, but not on me. Instead, its fangs sink deep into its twin, one of them piercing right through the eye. The sound is grotesque, a mix of a wet pop and a muffled scream. The right head writhes in agony, its eye oozing a viscous fluid that glistens in the dim light.
The two heads, now entwined in a horrific embrace, seem to realize their mistake. But it's too late. The left head tries to disengage, pulling back with a desperate force, but the fang is lodged deeply, effectively pinning them together. The snake’s body convulses, its movements becoming a chaotic dance of self-destruction.
We stand there frozen in terror. Then, survival instinct kicks in. "Move!" I shout, grabbing Tuyết's hand. We scramble away from the undulating mass, our footsteps pounding against the tunnel floor.
—
As Tuyết leads me down the twisting passage, the tunnel gradually slopes upward, signaling our approach to the surface. The air grows fresher, less stifling, a small mercy in this claustrophobic underworld.
Finally, we reach an end. Tuyết pushes aside a wooden panel disguised as part of the floor, revealing the dim interior of a small structure. We emerge into a rice storage hut, the musty smell of grains mingling with the earthy scent of the tunnel. The hut is cramped, filled with sacks of rice and agricultural tools.
We barely have a moment to catch our breath before the ground beneath us starts to tremble. A low, thunderous rumbling fills the air, growing louder and more intense with each passing second.
The sound is unmistakable – the heavy, rhythmic thumping of a Huey helicopter rotor, hovering directly overhead. Its presence is oppressive, like a dark cloud casting a shadow over us. The hut’s wooden structure vibrates with the force of the rotor wash, dust and small debris falling from the rafters. The sacks of rice shift slightly, the tools clinking against each other in a discordant symphony.
Tuyết moves to the small window, peering out with wary eyes. Her face drains of color at what she sees.
Peeking cautiously beside Tuyết, the harrowing scene unfolding outside the hut sears into my memory, a tableau of terror and brutality.
The helicopter, a menacing behemoth, looms over the village like a predatory bird. Below, figures move with ruthless efficiency – soldiers, but unlike any I've seen before. They're dressed like American commandos, but their uniforms are stripped of any unit insignia or flags, rendering them ghosts, devoid of identity or allegiance. One of the soldiers wears a string of human ears, each a grim trophy of battles past.
The soldiers herd the villagers into the center of the hamlet with a cold, methodical precision. The villagers, faces etched with fear and confusion, stumble and fall as they're pushed and prodded like cattle.
The cries of children, the wails of mothers, the pleas of elders, all merge as they huddle together in fear. The soldiers tower over them, shouting orders in broken Vietnamese, their words laced with curses and impatience.
One woman, clutching a wailing infant to her chest, stumbles in her haste. A soldier, without missing a beat, grabs her roughly by the arm, dragging her along. The baby's cries pierce the air.
An elderly man, his back bent with age, falls to his knees, his breath ragged with exhaustion. A boot to his back sends him sprawling to the ground, his frail body crumpling under the assault. No mercy is shown, no compassion given.
One particular figure strides confidently through the chaos. He stands taller than the other soldiers, an air of authority emanating from him. This man, clad in the same unmarked fatigues, wears mirror sunglasses that reflect the terror around him. A yellow bandana conceals his face.
His men step aside, parting a path for him as he approaches the center of the commotion. They address him with a tone of respect tinged with fear. "Major Wolff," one of the soldiers reports.
Wolff stops and surveys the scene with a calculated gaze, his hands clasped behind his back. He turns to the soldier who had spoken. "Report," he commands, his voice firm and devoid of emotion.
"Sir, the villagers claim they don’t know anything about Project Wandering Soul. We've searched the houses, interrogated several of them. Nothing."
Wolff responds with an icy, humorless chuckle. "Bullshit they don’t," he says, his voice tinged with scorn. He pulls down his bandana, revealing a face that's as battle-scarred as it is cold.
Wolff's movements are swift and predatory as he navigates through the crowd of villagers. His eyes scan the gathered people, searching for a target to make an example of.
Without warning, Wolff's hand shoots out, seizing a woman from the crowd. She's young, perhaps in her late twenties, with a face marked by a life of hardship. Her eyes widen in terror as Wolff drags her forward, her feet stumbling over the uneven ground.
Tuyết's breath catches in her throat, a strangled cry escaping her lips. "No... Chị Linh!" she whispers, her voice breaking. The woman being manhandled is her older sister.
The woman's cries are desperate, pleading for mercy in a voice choked with fear. "Please don’t! Please don’t!” she begs.
But Wolff's grip only tightens, his fingers digging into her arm. With a violent jerk, he throws her to the ground. The impact is brutal, her body landing with a sickening thud. Dust billows around her as she struggles to rise, her face contorted in pain.
From the terrified crowd, a small child breaks free, a little girl no more than five years old. Her hair is in disarray, her tiny feet bare against the dirt. With tears streaming down her face, she runs towards the woman.
"Mẹ ơi!" (Mommy!) she cries, her voice piercing the tense silence.
As the child reaches her mother, wrapping her small arms around her, Wolff grabs the girl by the back of her shirt collar. He lifts her up, her legs kicking in a futile attempt to break free. Linh’s screams, a raw, primal sound that cuts through the air.
“That’s Mai!” Tuyet cries.
Wolff's hand moves to his side, drawing an M1911 pistol. The gun gleams coldly in the sunlight as he presses it against the Mai's temple. The girl's eyes are wide with uncomprehending fear, her sobs choked and quiet.
"Where are you hiding them?" Wolff barks in heavily accented Vietnamese. “Speak, or the girl dies!"
Linh, her body trembling, stammers in response, "Please, I don't know what you're talking about. Please, don't hurt her!"
The major cocks his pistol. "I won’t ask again. Where are they?"
Tuyết, watching helplessly, whispers through gritted teeth, "We have to do something, Thành. That's my niece. We can't let him..."
I agree with her sentiment, but what can we do? We are two against many. The thought of intervening is a dangerous one, a likely suicide mission. Yet, doing nothing feels like an even greater crime.
As the tension in the village square reaches a feverish peak, an elderly villager steps forward. His gait is unsteady, his back bent with age, but his eyes burn with a defiant fire. “Take me instead,” he says, his voice raspy but firm. “Let the child go.”
The Major turns to face the old man, his smirk a cruel twist of lips. For a moment, there's a flicker of emotion in his eyes, as if he finds the offer amusing, a brief interlude in his reign of terror. Then, without a word, he raises his pistol towards the man and fires. The old man collapses, a crimson stain spreading across his shirt.
Panic erupts among the villagers. Cries of horror and grief mingle with the wails of the child, still held captive in Wolff's merciless grip.
Wolff tosses Mai roughly to the ground beside her mother, who immediately envelops her in a protective embrace. The girl's sobs are muffled against her mother's chest, her small body shaking with fear.
Wolff stands up, surveying the village with a cold detachment. "Burn it all," he orders, his voice devoid of emotion. "Leave no witnesses."
The soldiers hesitate, exchanging uneasy glances. The order seems to weigh heavily on some of them, a flicker of humanity in their eyes.
But the Major's authority is absolute. His men, trained to follow orders without question, begin the grim task. They move through the village, setting fire to the huts with flamethrowers. The thatch roofs catch quickly, flames licking upwards, consuming the structures in a voracious blaze.
The men of the village are forced to one side of the square, their hands bound behind their backs. The unspoken fate that awaits them is written in the soldiers' cold, calculating eyes. A fate of bullets and unmarked graves.
The women, clutching their children, are herded into a group. The leering glances of their captors as they encircle the women speak volumes of the unspeakable horrors that will soon befall them.
Hearing her niece's cries, Tuyết's instinct to protect her family surges to the forefront. She lurches towards the door, her every muscle tensed to spring into action. I grab her arm, pulling her back with all my strength.
"Tuyết, no! You'll be killed!"
She struggles against my hold, her eyes wild with desperation. "My family, I can't just—"
"Listen to me!" I beg, my voice strained with the effort of restraining her. "Rushing out there will only get us both killed. We need to think this through."
Our heated whispers are suddenly cut short by a chilling, guttural moan from under a pile of rice sacks in the corner of the hut. Our heads snap towards the sound, our bodies instinctively tensing for a new threat.
We approach the corner cautiously, my flashlight’s beam cutting through the dimness of the hut. A hand protrudes from under the sacks. It’s a ghastly sight – skin charred and blistered, fingers twisted unnaturally. Another moan fills the air, laden with pain and suffering.
We gingerly pull away the sacks to reveal a woman, or at least what's left of her. Her body is a horrific patchwork of burns and blistering skin, her features barely recognizable.
Thick hemp ropes bind her tightly, digging into her already damaged skin, suggesting she was tied down as a precaution by someone who feared what she had become.
Her mouth, a gash of torn flesh and broken teeth, snaps open and closed with savage ferocity. Saliva and blood mix, dribbling down her chin in a grotesque parody of humanity.
Tuyết gasps, her face pale with shock. "That's... that's Mrs. Thảo, the village seamstress," she stutters, her voice trembling.
"Mrs. Thảo..." she whispers, reaching out her hand.
I grab Tuyết's arm, stopping her. "Don't," I warn, my voice tense. "She's not the person you knew anymore."
Tuyết's eyes fill with tears, but she nods, understanding the harsh reality of our situation.
As we stand there, grappling with the grim transformation of Mrs. Thảo, a sudden, violent commotion erupts outside. The wooden door to the hut shudders under a series of heavy blows. The wood creaks and groans under the assault, splinters flying as the door begins to buckle.
“Clear the area! Breach on my go!” a voice commands.
X
Y

Part 1
Part 2
As the Hueys begin to ascend, leaving behind a scene of merciless carnage, Tuyết's gaze fixes on one helicopter veering off in a different direction. A look of sheer terror washes over her face.
"It's heading towards my village," she whispers, her voice laced with panic.
My blood runs cold at the implications. After witnessing the ruthless execution of my platoon, the prospect of that helicopter reaching her village is horrifying. The rules of war seem to have been abandoned.
Tuyết’s hands clench into fists, her knuckles whitening under the strain. For a fleeting moment, her hardened façade cracks, revealing a vulnerability that I hadn't seen before. “My family,” she breathes, her voice barely audible. “I have to get to them.”
With a sense of urgency that words can't describe, she leads the way through the tunnel. I follow close behind, my mind racing with the implications of what's unfolding above us.
As we move, Tuyết explains in hushed, anxious tones about a hidden tunnel entrance in her village, used as an emergency escape route during bombings. "It's well concealed," she says. "We've used it to evacuate civilians during air raids."
"Be careful," she warns. "The section is unstable, and there could be traps that haven't been disarmed."
I nod, my senses heightened to the potential dangers lurking in the shadows.
As we progress, the tunnel begins to narrow, the walls closing in until we're forced to move in a single file.
Suddenly, Tuyet freezes, her body tensing. I stop abruptly, sensing the shift in her demeanor. She signals for silence, her hand raised in a warning gesture.
In the silence, a soft, sinister hissing becomes audible. It's rhythmic, almost hypnotic, and seems to resonate from the very walls of the tunnel.
The hissing grows louder, a serenade that prickles the skin.
Tuyết recoils, backing into me. I peer over her shoulder, and my blood runs cold.
Emerging from the murky shadows, a monstrous sight unfolds before us. A two-headed viper, hideously mutated, its scales glistening with a sickly sheen under the flashlight's beam. Each head, larger than a man's, sways menacingly, forked tongues flickering in the stale air. Its eyes, beady and unblinking.
We press our backs against the damp tunnel walls, our breaths shallow, trying to make ourselves as small and inconspicuous as possible. The conjoined creature hasn't seen us yet.
I can feel Tuyết's hand gripping mine, her fingernails digging into my palm with fear. Every instinct screams at me to flee, but I know movement would be fatal.
In this tense standoff, a drop of sweat trickles down my forehead, stinging my eye. I blink hard, trying to maintain focus. The sudden, involuntary twitch of my eyelid causes the drop to fall to the ground with an almost imperceptible sound.
But to the viper, it's a clarion call. Both heads snap towards the sound, their eyes narrowing, their bodies coiling in anticipation.
The viper pounces on us, its dual heads striking with terrifying precision, jaws unhinging to reveal rows of dripping fangs. Tuyết and I dive in opposite directions, narrowly avoiding the venomous fangs. The creature's body, thick and sinewy, coils and twists with an unnatural agility.
The viper's assault is relentless, a deadly blur of scales and venom. I scramble to my feet, my rifle in hand. Firing in these tight quarters is a dangerous gamble, but it's our only chance.
I aim at the creature, but the confines of the tunnel make it nearly impossible to get a clear shot. The serpent moves with a chilling speed, its bodies twisting and undulating in the dim light. Every time I think I have a clear shot, it contorts, evading the barrel of my gun.
As the creature lurches at us again, I notice something crucial: the two heads, although attached to the same body, are not in sync. They seem to struggle against each other, each head vying for control, unaware of the other's actions. It’s a flaw that we can exploit.
"Tuyet," I whisper urgently, "the heads, they're not moving in sync. We can use that."
"What do you want to do?" she asks, her voice trembling.
"When I give the signal, make noise on your side. Draw it towards you."
She looks at me, her eyes wide with fear and disbelief. "You're insane!"
"Trust me," I say, formulating a risky plan in my mind. "We can turn one against the other."
Tuyết hesitates, uncertain. But one of the heads lunges again, narrowly missing her, the urgency of the situation leaves no room for doubt. She nods.
Tuyết grasps her machete, striking it against the tunnel wall. The sharp, metallic clangs echo through the confined space, drawing the attention of the mutant viper. Its heads, momentarily distracted, swivel towards the source of the noise. Seizing the opportunity, I leap towards the right head, wrapping my arms around its thick, muscular neck. The creature writhes violently, its scales abrasive against my skin.
The right head, in its frantic attempts to dislodge me, thrashes wildly, slamming me against the left.
The left head, its attention drawn towards me, strikes with lethal intent, its jaws agape and fangs dripping with venom.
In the split-second before the left head's fangs can sink into me, I release my grip on the right head and throw myself to the side.
The left head's jaws snap shut with a sickening crunch, but not on me. Instead, its fangs sink deep into its twin, one of them piercing right through the eye. The sound is grotesque, a mix of a wet pop and a muffled scream. The right head writhes in agony, its eye oozing a viscous fluid that glistens in the dim light.
The two heads, now entwined in a horrific embrace, seem to realize their mistake. But it's too late. The left head tries to disengage, pulling back with a desperate force, but the fang is lodged deeply, effectively pinning them together. The snake’s body convulses, its movements becoming a chaotic dance of self-destruction.
We stand there frozen in terror. Then, survival instinct kicks in. "Move!" I shout, grabbing Tuyết's hand. We scramble away from the undulating mass, our footsteps pounding against the tunnel floor.
—
As Tuyết leads me down the twisting passage, the tunnel gradually slopes upward, signaling our approach to the surface. The air grows fresher, less stifling, a small mercy in this claustrophobic underworld.
Finally, we reach an end. Tuyết pushes aside a wooden panel disguised as part of the floor, revealing the dim interior of a small structure. We emerge into a rice storage hut, the musty smell of grains mingling with the earthy scent of the tunnel. The hut is cramped, filled with sacks of rice and agricultural tools.
We barely have a moment to catch our breath before the ground beneath us starts to tremble. A low, thunderous rumbling fills the air, growing louder and more intense with each passing second.
The sound is unmistakable – the heavy, rhythmic thumping of a Huey helicopter rotor, hovering directly overhead. Its presence is oppressive, like a dark cloud casting a shadow over us. The hut’s wooden structure vibrates with the force of the rotor wash, dust and small debris falling from the rafters. The sacks of rice shift slightly, the tools clinking against each other in a discordant symphony.
Tuyết moves to the small window, peering out with wary eyes. Her face drains of color at what she sees.
Peeking cautiously beside Tuyết, the harrowing scene unfolding outside the hut sears into my memory, a tableau of terror and brutality.
The helicopter, a menacing behemoth, looms over the village like a predatory bird. Below, figures move with ruthless efficiency – soldiers, but unlike any I've seen before. They're dressed like American commandos, but their uniforms are stripped of any unit insignia or flags, rendering them ghosts, devoid of identity or allegiance. One of the soldiers wears a string of human ears, each a grim trophy of battles past.
The soldiers herd the villagers into the center of the hamlet with a cold, methodical precision. The villagers, faces etched with fear and confusion, stumble and fall as they're pushed and prodded like cattle.
The cries of children, the wails of mothers, the pleas of elders, all merge as they huddle together in fear. The soldiers tower over them, shouting orders in broken Vietnamese, their words laced with curses and impatience.
One woman, clutching a wailing infant to her chest, stumbles in her haste. A soldier, without missing a beat, grabs her roughly by the arm, dragging her along. The baby's cries pierce the air.
An elderly man, his back bent with age, falls to his knees, his breath ragged with exhaustion. A boot to his back sends him sprawling to the ground, his frail body crumpling under the assault. No mercy is shown, no compassion given.
One particular figure strides confidently through the chaos. He stands taller than the other soldiers, an air of authority emanating from him. This man, clad in the same unmarked fatigues, wears mirror sunglasses that reflect the terror around him. A yellow bandana conceals him face.
His men step aside, parting a path for him as he approaches the center of the commotion. They address him with a tone of respect tinged with fear. "Major Wolff," one of the soldiers reports.
Wolff stops and surveys the scene with a calculated gaze, his hands clasped behind his back. He turns to the soldier who had spoken. "Report," he commands, his voice firm and devoid of emotion.
"Sir, the villagers claim they don’t know anything about Project Wandering Soul. We've searched the houses, interrogated several of them. Nothing."
Wolff responds with an icy, humorless chuckle. "Bullshit they don’t," he says, his voice tinged with scorn. He pulls down his bandana, revealing a face that's as battle-scarred as it is cold.
Wolff's movements are swift and predatory as he navigates through the crowd of villagers. His eyes scan the gathered people, searching for a target to make an example of.
Without warning, Wolff's hand shoots out, seizing a woman from the crowd. She's young, perhaps in her late twenties, with a face marked by a life of hardship. Her eyes widen in terror as Wolff drags her forward, her feet stumbling over the uneven ground.
Tuyết's breath catches in her throat, a strangled cry escaping her lips. "No... Chị Linh!" she whispers, her voice breaking. The woman being manhandled is her older sister.
The woman's cries are desperate, pleading for mercy in a voice choked with fear. "Please don’t! Please don’t!” she begs.
But Wolff's grip only tightens, his fingers digging into her arm. With a violent jerk, he throws her to the ground. The impact is brutal, her body landing with a sickening thud. Dust billows around her as she struggles to rise, her face contorted in pain.
From the terrified crowd, a small child breaks free, a little girl no more than five years old. Her hair is in disarray, her tiny feet bare against the dirt. With tears streaming down her face, she runs towards the woman.
"Mẹ ơi!" (Mommy!) she cries, her voice piercing the tense silence.
As the child reaches her mother, wrapping her small arms around her, Wolff grabs the girl by the back of her shirt collar. He lifts her up, her legs kicking in a futile attempt to break free. Linh’s screams, a raw, primal sound that cuts through the air.
“That’s Mai!” Tuyet cries.
Wolff's hand moves to his side, drawing an M1911 pistol. The gun gleams coldly in the sunlight as he presses it against the Mai's temple. The girl's eyes are wide with uncomprehending fear, her sobs choked and quiet.
"Where are you hiding them?" Wolff barks in heavily accented Vietnamese. “Speak, or the girl dies!"
Linh, her body trembling, stammers in response, "Please, I don't know what you're talking about. Please, don't hurt her!"
The major cocks his pistol. "I won’t ask again. Where are they?"
Tuyết, watching helplessly, whispers through gritted teeth, "We have to do something, Thành. That's my niece. We can't let him..."
I agree with her sentiment, but what can we do? We are two against many. The thought of intervening is a dangerous one, a likely suicide mission. Yet, doing nothing feels like an even greater crime.
As the tension in the village square reaches a feverish peak, an elderly villager steps forward. His gait is unsteady, his back bent with age, but his eyes burn with a defiant fire. “Take me instead,” he says, his voice raspy but firm. “Let the child go.”
The Major turns to face the old man, his smirk a cruel twist of lips. For a moment, there's a flicker of emotion in his eyes, as if he finds the offer amusing, a brief interlude in his reign of terror. Then, without a word, he raises his pistol towards the man and fires. The old man collapses, a crimson stain spreading across his shirt.
Panic erupts among the villagers. Cries of horror and grief mingle with the wails of the child, still held captive in Wolff's merciless grip.
Wolff tosses Mai roughly to the ground beside her mother, who immediately envelops her in a protective embrace. The girl's sobs are muffled against her mother's chest, her small body shaking with fear.
Wolff stands up, surveying the village with a cold detachment. "Burn it all," he orders, his voice devoid of emotion. "Leave no witnesses."
The soldiers hesitate, exchanging uneasy glances. The order seems to weigh heavily on some of them, a flicker of humanity in their eyes.
But the Major's authority is absolute. His men, trained to follow orders without question, begin the grim task. They move through the village, setting fire to the huts with flamethrowers. The thatch roofs catch quickly, flames licking upwards, consuming the structures in a voracious blaze.
The men of the village are forced to one side of the square, their hands bound behind their backs. The unspoken fate that awaits them is written in the soldiers' cold, calculating eyes. A fate of bullets and unmarked graves.
The women, clutching their children, are herded into a group. The leering glances of their captors as they encircle the women speak volumes of the unspeakable horrors that will soon befall them.
Hearing her niece's cries, Tuyết's instinct to protect her family surges to the forefront. She lurches towards the door, her every muscle tensed to spring into action. I grab her arm, pulling her back with all my strength.
"Tuyết, no! You'll be killed!"
She struggles against my hold, her eyes wild with desperation. "My family, I can't just—"
"Listen to me!" I beg, my voice strained with the effort of restraining her. "Rushing out there will only get us both killed. We need to think this through."
Our heated whispers are suddenly cut short by a chilling, guttural moan from under a pile of rice sacks in the corner of the hut. Our heads snap towards the sound, our bodies instinctively tensing for a new threat.
We approach the corner cautiously, my flashlight’s beam cutting through the dimness of the hut. A hand protrudes from under the sacks. It’s a ghastly sight – skin charred and blistered, fingers twisted unnaturally. Another moan fills the air, laden with pain and suffering.
We gingerly pull away the sacks to reveal a woman, or at least what's left of her. Her body is a horrific patchwork of burns and blistering skin, her features barely recognizable.
Thick hemp ropes bind her tightly, digging into her already damaged skin, suggesting she was tied down as a precaution by someone who feared what she had become.
Her mouth, a gash of torn flesh and broken teeth, snaps open and closed with savage ferocity. Saliva and blood mix, dribbling down her chin in a grotesque parody of humanity.
Tuyết gasps, her face pale with shock. "That's... that's Mrs. Thảo, the village seamstress," she stutters, her voice trembling.
"Mrs. Thảo..." she whispers, reaching out her hand.
I grab Tuyết's arm, stopping her. "Don't," I warn, my voice tense. "She's not the person you knew anymore."
Tuyết's eyes fill with tears, but she nods, understanding the harsh reality of our situation.
As we stand there, grappling with the grim transformation of Mrs. Thảo, a sudden, violent commotion erupts outside. The wooden door to the hut shudders under a series of heavy blows. The wood creaks and groans under the assault, splinters flying as the door begins to buckle.
“Clear the area! Breach on my go!” a voice commands.
X
Y

Part 1
Part 2
As the Hueys begin to ascend, leaving behind a scene of merciless carnage, Tuyết's gaze fixes on one helicopter veering off in a different direction. A look of sheer terror washes over her face.
"It's heading towards my village," she whispers, her voice laced with panic.
My blood runs cold at the implications. After witnessing the ruthless execution of my platoon, the prospect of that helicopter reaching her village is horrifying. The rules of war seem to have been abandoned.
Tuyết’s hands clench into fists, her knuckles whitening under the strain. For a fleeting moment, her hardened façade cracks, revealing a vulnerability that I hadn't seen before. “My family,” she breathes, her voice barely audible. “I have to get to them.”
With a sense of urgency that words can't describe, she leads the way through the tunnel. I follow close behind, my mind racing with the implications of what's unfolding above us.
As we move, Tuyết explains in hushed, anxious tones about a hidden tunnel entrance in her village, used as an emergency escape route during bombings. "It's well concealed," she says. "We've used it to evacuate civilians during air raids."
"Be careful," she warns. "The section is unstable, and there could be traps that haven't been disarmed."
I nod, my senses heightened to the potential dangers lurking in the shadows.
As we progress, the tunnel begins to narrow, the walls closing in until we're forced to move in a single file.
Suddenly, Tuyet freezes, her body tensing. I stop abruptly, sensing the shift in her demeanor. She signals for silence, her hand raised in a warning gesture.
In the silence, a soft, sinister hissing becomes audible. It's rhythmic, almost hypnotic, and seems to resonate from the very walls of the tunnel.
The hissing grows louder, a serenade that prickles the skin.
Tuyết recoils, backing into me. I peer over her shoulder, and my blood runs cold.
Emerging from the murky shadows, a monstrous sight unfolds before us. A two-headed viper, hideously mutated, its scales glistening with a sickly sheen under the flashlight's beam. Each head, larger than a man's, sways menacingly, forked tongues flickering in the stale air. Its eyes, beady and unblinking.
We press our backs against the damp tunnel walls, our breaths shallow, trying to make ourselves as small and inconspicuous as possible. The conjoined creature hasn't seen us yet.
I can feel Tuyết's hand gripping mine, her fingernails digging into my palm with fear. Every instinct screams at me to flee, but I know movement would be fatal.
In this tense standoff, a drop of sweat trickles down my forehead, stinging my eye. I blink hard, trying to maintain focus. The sudden, involuntary twitch of my eyelid causes the drop to fall to the ground with an almost imperceptible sound.
But to the viper, it's a clarion call. Both heads snap towards the sound, their eyes narrowing, their bodies coiling in anticipation.
The viper pounces on us, its dual heads striking with terrifying precision, jaws unhinging to reveal rows of dripping fangs. Tuyết and I dive in opposite directions, narrowly avoiding the venomous fangs. The creature's body, thick and sinewy, coils and twists with an unnatural agility.
The viper's assault is relentless, a deadly blur of scales and venom. I scramble to my feet, my rifle in hand. Firing in these tight quarters is a dangerous gamble, but it's our only chance.
I aim at the creature, but the confines of the tunnel make it nearly impossible to get a clear shot. The serpent moves with a chilling speed, its bodies twisting and undulating in the dim light. Every time I think I have a clear shot, it contorts, evading the barrel of my gun.
As the creature lurches at us again, I notice something crucial: the two heads, although attached to the same body, are not in sync. They seem to struggle against each other, each head vying for control, unaware of the other's actions. It’s a flaw that we can exploit.
"Tuyet," I whisper urgently, "the heads, they're not moving in sync. We can use that."
"What do you want to do?" she asks, her voice trembling.
"When I give the signal, make noise on your side. Draw it towards you."
She looks at me, her eyes wide with fear and disbelief. "You're insane!"
"Trust me," I say, formulating a risky plan in my mind. "We can turn one against the other."
Tuyết hesitates, uncertain. But one of the heads lunges again, narrowly missing her, the urgency of the situation leaves no room for doubt. She nods.
Tuyết grasps her machete, striking it against the tunnel wall. The sharp, metallic clangs echo through the confined space, drawing the attention of the mutant viper. Its heads, momentarily distracted, swivel towards the source of the noise. Seizing the opportunity, I leap towards the right head, wrapping my arms around its thick, muscular neck. The creature writhes violently, its scales abrasive against my skin.
The right head, in its frantic attempts to dislodge me, thrashes wildly, slamming me against the left.
The left head, its attention drawn towards me, strikes with lethal intent, its jaws agape and fangs dripping with venom.
In the split-second before the left head's fangs can sink into me, I release my grip on the right head and throw myself to the side.
The left head's jaws snap shut with a sickening crunch, but not on me. Instead, its fangs sink deep into its twin, one of them piercing right through the eye. The sound is grotesque, a mix of a wet pop and a muffled scream. The right head writhes in agony, its eye oozing a viscous fluid that glistens in the dim light.
The two heads, now entwined in a horrific embrace, seem to realize their mistake. But it's too late. The left head tries to disengage, pulling back with a desperate force, but the fang is lodged deeply, effectively pinning them together. The snake’s body convulses, its movements becoming a chaotic dance of self-destruction.
We stand there frozen in terror. Then, survival instinct kicks in. "Move!" I shout, grabbing Tuyết's hand. We scramble away from the undulating mass, our footsteps pounding against the tunnel floor.
—
As Tuyết leads me down the twisting passage, the tunnel gradually slopes upward, signaling our approach to the surface. The air grows fresher, less stifling, a small mercy in this claustrophobic underworld.
Finally, we reach an end. Tuyết pushes aside a wooden panel disguised as part of the floor, revealing the dim interior of a small structure. We emerge into a rice storage hut, the musty smell of grains mingling with the earthy scent of the tunnel. The hut is cramped, filled with sacks of rice and agricultural tools.
We barely have a moment to catch our breath before the ground beneath us starts to tremble. A low, thunderous rumbling fills the air, growing louder and more intense with each passing second.
The sound is unmistakable – the heavy, rhythmic thumping of a Huey helicopter rotor, hovering directly overhead. Its presence is oppressive, like a dark cloud casting a shadow over us. The hut’s wooden structure vibrates with the force of the rotor wash, dust and small debris falling from the rafters. The sacks of rice shift slightly, the tools clinking against each other in a discordant symphony.
Tuyết moves to the small window, peering out with wary eyes. Her face drains of color at what she sees.
Peeking cautiously beside Tuyết, the harrowing scene unfolding outside the hut sears into my memory, a tableau of terror and brutality.
The helicopter, a menacing behemoth, looms over the village like a predatory bird. Below, figures move with ruthless efficiency – soldiers, but unlike any I've seen before. They're dressed like American commandos, but their uniforms are stripped of any unit insignia or flags, rendering them ghosts, devoid of identity or allegiance.
The soldiers herd the villagers into the center of the hamlet with a cold, methodical precision. The villagers, faces etched with fear and confusion, stumble and fall as they're pushed and prodded like cattle.
The cries of children, the wails of mothers, the pleas of elders, all merge as they huddle together in fear. The soldiers tower over them, shouting orders in broken Vietnamese, their words laced with curses and impatience.
One woman, clutching a wailing infant to her chest, stumbles in her haste. A soldier hoists her over his shoulder. She kicks and screams, her cries muffled against the camouflaged fabric of his uniform, her infant clutched tightly in her arms
An elderly man, his back bent with age, falls to his knees, his breath ragged with exhaustion. A boot to his back sends him sprawling to the ground, his frail body crumpling under the assault. No mercy is shown, no compassion given.
One particular figure strides confidently through the chaos. He stands taller than the other soldiers, an air of authority emanating from him. This man, clad in the same unmarked fatigues, wears mirror sunglasses that reflect the terror around him. A yellow bandana conceals his face.
His men step aside, parting a path for him as he approaches the center of the commotion. They address him with a tone of respect tinged with fear. "Major Wolff," one of the soldiers reports.
Wolff stops and surveys the scene with a calculated gaze, his hands clasped behind his back. He turns to the soldier who had spoken. "Report, sergeant," he commands, his voice firm and devoid of emotion.
"Sir, the villagers claim they don’t know anything about Project Grim Harvest. We've searched the houses, interrogated several of them. Nothing."
Wolff responds with an icy, humorless chuckle. "Bullshit they don’t," he says, his voice tinged with scorn. He pulls down his bandana, revealing a face that's as battle-hardened as it is cold.
Wolff's movements are swift and predatory as he navigates through the crowd of villagers. His eyes scan the gathered people, searching for a target to make an example of.
Without warning, Wolff's hand shoots out, seizing a woman from the crowd. She's young, perhaps in her late twenties, with a face marked by a life of hardship. Her eyes widen in terror as Wolff drags her forward, her feet stumbling over the uneven ground.
Tuyết's breath catches in her throat, a strangled cry escaping her lips. "No... Chị Linh!" she whispers, her voice breaking. The woman being manhandled is her older sister.
The woman's cries are desperate, pleading for mercy in a voice choked with fear. "Please don’t! Please don’t!” she begs.
But Wolff's grip only tightens, his fingers digging into her arm. With a violent jerk, he throws her to the ground. The impact is brutal, her body landing with a sickening thud. Dust billows around her as she struggles to rise, her face contorted in pain.
From the terrified crowd, a small child breaks free, a little girl no more than five years old. Her hair is in disarray, her tiny feet bare against the dirt. With tears streaming down her face, she runs towards the woman.
"Mẹ ơi!" (Mommy!) she cries, her voice piercing the tense silence.
“That’s Mai!” Tuyet cries.
As the child reaches her mother, wrapping her small arms around her, Wolff grabs the girl by the back of her shirt collar and tosses the her to the side like discarded trash. Linh’s screams, a raw, primal sound that cuts through the air.
Wolff lifts Linh up, her legs kicking in a futile attempt to break free. His hand moves to his side, drawing an M1911 pistol. The gun gleams coldly in the sunlight as he presses it against the Linh's temple. The woman's eyes are wide with uncomprehending fear, her sobs choked and quiet.
"Where are you hiding them?" Wolff barks in heavily accented Vietnamese. “Speak, or she dies!"
Linh, her body trembling, stammers in response, "Please, I don't know what you're talking about. Please, don't hurt me!"
The major cocks his pistol. "I won’t ask again. Where are they?"
Tuyết, watching helplessly, whispers through gritted teeth, "We have to do something, Thành. That's my sister. We can't let him..."
I agree with her sentiment, but what can we do? We are two against many. The thought of intervening is a dangerous one, a likely suicide mission. Yet, doing nothing feels like an even greater crime.
As the tension in the village square reaches a feverish peak, an elderly villager steps forward. His gait is unsteady, his back bent with age, but his eyes burn with a defiant fire. “Take me instead,” he says, his voice raspy but firm. “Let the woman go.”
The Major turns to face the old man, his smirk a cruel twist of lips. For a moment, there's a flicker of emotion in his eyes, as if he finds the offer amusing, a brief interlude in his reign of terror. Then, without a word, he raises his pistol towards the man and fires. The old man collapses, a crimson stain spreading across his shirt.
Panic erupts among the villagers. Cries of horror and grief mingle with the wails of the child, still held captive in Wolff's merciless grip.
Wolff throws Linh roughly to the ground beside her daughter, who immediately envelops her in a protective embrace. The girl's sobs are muffled against her mother's chest, her small body shaking with fear.
Wolff stands up, surveying the village with a cold detachment. "Burn it all," he orders, his voice devoid of emotion. "Leave no witnesses."
The soldiers hesitate, exchanging uneasy glances. The order seems to weigh heavily on some of them, a flicker of humanity in their eyes.
But the Major's authority is absolute. His men, trained to follow orders without question, begin the grim task. They move through the village, setting fire to the huts with flamethrowers. The thatch roofs catch quickly, flames licking upwards, consuming the structures in a voracious blaze.
The men of the village are forced to one side of the square, their hands bound behind their backs. Their fate is one of bullets to the back of the head and unmarked graves.
The women, clutching their children, are herded into a group. We can see some of the soldiers forcing themselves on the terrified women. They hold them down, their rough hands tearing at their clothes, while others watch and laugh.
Hearing her niece's cries, Tuyết's instinct to protect her family surges to the forefront. She lurches towards the door, her every muscle tensed to spring into action. I grab her arm, pulling her back with all my strength.
"Tuyết, no! You'll be killed!"
She struggles against my hold, her eyes wild with desperation. "My family, I can't just—"
"Listen to me!" I beg, my voice strained with the effort of restraining her. "Rushing out there will only get us both killed. We need to think this through."
Our heated whispers are suddenly cut short by a chilling, guttural moan from under a pile of rice sacks in the corner of the hut. Our heads snap towards the sound, our bodies instinctively tensing for a new threat.
We approach the corner cautiously, my flashlight’s beam cutting through the dimness of the hut. A hand protrudes from under the sacks. It’s a ghastly sight – skin charred and blistered, fingers twisted unnaturally. Another moan fills the air, laden with pain and suffering.
We gingerly pull away the sacks to reveal a woman, or at least what's left of her. Her body is a horrific patchwork of burns and blistering skin, her features barely recognizable.
Thick hemp ropes bind her tightly, digging into her already damaged skin, suggesting she was tied down as a precaution by someone who feared what she had become.
Her mouth, a gash of torn flesh and broken teeth, snaps open and closed with savage ferocity. Saliva and blood mix, dribbling down her chin in a grotesque parody of humanity.
Tuyết gasps, her face pale with shock. "That's... that's Mrs. Thảo, the village seamstress," she stutters, her voice trembling.
"Mrs. Thảo..." she whispers, reaching out her hand.
I grab Tuyết's arm, stopping her. "Don't," I warn, my voice tense. "She's not the person you knew anymore."
Tuyết's eyes fill with tears, but she nods, understanding the harsh reality of our situation.
As we stand there, grappling with the grim transformation of Mrs. Thảo, a sudden, violent commotion erupts outside. The wooden door to the hut shudders under a series of heavy blows. The wood creaks and groans under the assault, splinters flying as the door begins to buckle.
“Clear the area! Breach on my go!” a voice commands.
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
X
Y

I almost overlooked it, that last present beneath the tree. It was a lumpy badly-wrapped thing that looked like it had never seen the inside of a box, and had been stuffed into a corner, almost like it had been hidden there. I had my doubts about the strange package, but my seven-year-old daughter Eliza was never one to pass up an unopened gift.
“It’s for me!” she shouted, and sure enough, “ELIZA” was printed in big black letters on the side. I had a sinking feeling as she tore into the plain brown paper: the gift wasn’t mine, and my wife’s wrapping was picture perfect, nothing like the ugly paper that my daughter was pulling apart. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that the gift was only a baby doll–one of those incredibly lifelike ones that can be fed and changed like a real infant. Eliza had been begging for one all year, and when I saw the eerily realistic doll in my daughter’s arms, I figured that my wife had finally found one that we could afford.
The doll had light brown skin and curly golden hair. Its eyes were closed as though it were sleeping, and was dressed in one of those flower-pattern outfits that were popular in the 1970’s. Peering over my daughter’s shoulder, I noticed some strange burn marks on its upper chest. When I unbuttoned the cloth, I saw that they were letters: ashen-black letters that looked like they’d been branded into the doll’s skin. “LUCY,” they read. If that was the doll’s name, it was a sick way of showing it. Some instinct made me want to rip the doll out of my daughter’s hands, but she pulled away.
“Lucy doesn’t want to go with you!” she insisted. “Lucy is mine.” I frowned. My daughter wasn’t usually so possessive of her toys, but I could see why she was so entranced by “Lucy.” If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn it was a real infant. Eliza let out a shriek of joy and ran up to her room, cradling her new doll to her chest. The living room was a disaster area of wrapping and tissue paper, but looking at it, my wife and I couldn’t help but laugh. Eliza had gotten us up before dawn to watch for Santa, and now the two of us finally had a chance to drink some coffee and rest.
Eliza spent all day with Lucy: cradling her in her arms, twirling her around, talking to her. She even took Lucy with her when she went for her evening bath, but reacted with a scream when I tried to put the doll into the tub at her side.
“Lucy doesn’t like running water,” she warned me. When I asked Eliza how she knew, my daughter shrugged: “Duh! She told me.”
As I put my pajamas on that night, I told my wife that she’d really outdone herself this year:
“Eliza loves that doll you got her! Where on earth did you find one that we could actually afford?!”
My wife gave me an odd look:
“I didn’t. I thought that you did!”
Silence. I think that my heart actually stopped beating for a second before I sprang out of bed and sprinted to my daughter’s room. To my horror, she wasn’t in her bed: instead, the doll was beneath her sheets with its head on my daughter’s pillow, looking so real that it seemed it might sit up and open its eyes at any moment. Ignoring it, my wife and I raced through the house shouting our daughter’s name.
We found her walking down the stairs in the dark. My wife grabbed Eliza’s shoulders and shook her:
“Honey, what is it? Have you been sleepwalking?!”
My daughter shook her head.
“No. Lucy wanted me to get something from the kitchen.”
I groaned. I felt a headache coming on. Eliza had always been an imaginative child with a tendency to get obsessed with things: the year before, it had been horses; before that, mermaids. If Lucy was her next big thing, my wife and I were in for a long winter.
“What did Lucy want you to get, honey?” My daughter frowned at the question.
“I’m not supposed to say…” she whispered.
“It’s okay, honey.” My wife hugged her. “You can tell mommy and daddy anything, come on…”
While my wife soothed Eliza, I snuck upstairs to inspect the doll more closely. Touching it, I shuddered: its skin felt so real…
“Get away from Lucy, daddy.” I spun around like a thief caught in the act. Eliza was standing in the doorway, pointing an accusatory finger at me. “No one can touch her but me!”
“That’s enough!” I groaned. “If you keep this up, mommy and I are going to take Lucy away.”
“NO!” Eliza ran to the doll and flung herself on top of it, sobbing. In no time at all, she was fast asleep. My wife and I exchanged a glance before covering her with a blanket and dragging ourselves back to bed. It was past two AM, and I had to work in the morning.
I woke up a few hours later to a hushed conversation outside the bedroom door:
“Are you sure?” Eliza was whispering. “But…they’re my parents…”
There was a long silence…like someone or something was responding to her. I crept to the door and pressed my ear to the wood:
“Just a little cut? That’s it? Then they’ll be fine?” Eliza asked for reassurance. The door creaked open. Something shimmered in the glow of the nightlight:
A kitchen knife in my daughter’s hand. In the other, cradled to her chest, was Lucy. Eliza tiptoed into our bedroom, the blade held high above her head–
My daughter shrieked as I tackled her. Lucy and the knife skidded across the floor.
“What are you doing?!” my wife sat up in bed, still half-asleep.
“Lucy has to eat!” Eliza yelled. A burst of pain shot up my arm as she bit down on my wrist and squirmed out of my grasp. “And if you won’t feed her, then I will!”
Before I could stop her, my daughter scrambled to Lucy, cut her own hand on the knife blade, and squeezed droplets of warm blood into the doll’s mouth. Its eyes snapped open, as bright and white as two full moons in our dim bedroom.
No. This couldn’t be happening, I told myself. Dolls don’t move on their own. Dolls don’t drink blood! As I tore Eliza away from Lucy, I would have sworn that its fleshy plastic lips had just curled into a smile.
Then it was over. The doll’s eyes closed…and my daughter fell unconscious in my arms. I pressed my hand to her forehead: it was so hot it almost burned. No matter what I tried, she was unresponsive, her breathing shallow, her hands and legs as limp…as a doll’s. While I dialed emergency services, my wife stormed out of the house and flung the awful doll into the trash. Just having it out of the house felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my chest, and by the time the paramedics arrived, my daughter was sitting up in bed and even talking a bit. Her fever was still dangerously high, but it seemed to have broken. They warned us to keep an eye on her, but told us not to worry too much: she was showing signs of improvement, they said.
By morning, my daughter seemed to be perfectly healthy. My wife and I attributed her behavior the night before to delusions brought on by fever, but I think the truth was that we just wanted to put the whole unsettling experience behind us. As for my daughter, she didn’t seem to mind that her favorite doll was gone; in fact, she didn’t even ask about it. For me, that was the most disturbing aspect of the whole thing: it was like the hellish night before had never happened at all.
We didn’t have much time for wonder. My daughter was more cheerful and energetic than ever during those next few weeks: playing in the snow, dancing in her room to her grandfather’s old records, and drinking cup after cup of hot cocoa. My wife and I were so thrilled about her rapid recovery that we didn’t ask many questions, although looking back, perhaps we should have.
My daughter’s tastes changed drastically after that night. Instead of the frilly pink skirts and light-up tennis shoes that we were used to, she suddenly preferred tie-dye, bandanas, and sandals. Her vocabulary seemed to have doubled overnight, but some of the slang sounded odd coming out of my daughter’s mouth. Since when had she said “far out” instead of “cool” and “freaky” instead of “weird”?!
More troubling, however, were some of the other changes I noticed. My daughter’s teachers had always praised her for being kind and helpful, but almost as soon as school was back in session I received a troubling phone call. Apparently, my sweet seven-year-old girl had pushed an older boy down the stairs. When I confronted her about it, she only shrugged:
“I didn’t like his face.”
It was those words, so coldly and cruelly delivered, that finally forced me to finally open my eyes. I couldn’t lie to myself any longer: everything was different. My daughter’s personality, her taste in fashion and music, even the way she walked and talked…it was like, ever since that night, she had become a different person. I suddenly felt a desperate need to find that doll.
I got to the dump at closing time, but two fifty-dollar bills were enough for the watchman to leave the gate unlocked for me.
“If you’re caught, I never met ya,” he spat, before driving away and leaving me alone among the eerie, foul smelling piles of junk. “Crazy bastard.”
Of course, I had no idea where to start. I wandered through the post-apocalyptic mountains of trash with a single flickery flashlight, waiting for a tiny plastic hand to shoot up from the filth and grab me. It never came. Instead, I spent the night exhausting myself for nothing. I left at dawn, smelling terrible and worried about tetanus. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining where I’d been to my wife, but when I got home, the house was quiet.
I found my daughter in her room, plucking petals off of a flower. I wondered where she’d found it…and when she’d left the house.
“Honey, have you seen your mother?” I asked.
“She’s gone,” my daughter shrugged, still tossing petals onto the rug.
“Gone?!” I shouted. “What do you mean, gone?!”
My daughter just shrugged. It was all that I or the police got out of her, and my wife was still nowhere to be found. Waiting sleeplessly for news, I spent the next twenty-four hours scouring the dark corners of the internet for any sign of the doll or others like it. While I did, I kept the door locked. Twice during the night I noticed the handle try to turn…and heard my daughter’s bare footsteps retreating back to her bedroom. I closed the blinds, irrationally afraid that I would look up from my research to find her pale face grinning at me from the other side of the second-storey window. Finally, I found it:
An ad online for a familiar-looking doll. This time, however, its short brown hair was cut in the same style as Eliza’s; it was wearing a miniature version of the frilly pink skirt and light-up sneakers that my daughter used to love so much. I contacted the seller right away and set up a meeting for the next morning, after I dropped my daughter off at school. I tried to make conversation with her, hoping that she might drop some clue about what had happened to her mother, but my daughter spent the entire ride staring straight ahead with a knowing smirk on her face: the kind that said “I know something you don’t know…and I’m not telling.” Instead of waving goodbye, she just stared at me as I drove off, silently mouthing some words at my tail lights. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I would have sworn that they were “one down, one to go.”
I was still troubled by what those words might mean when I arrived in the supermarket parking lot where I’d agreed to meet the doll’s new owner. So early in the morning, the place was nearly empty, but the woman I was meeting was already there waiting for me. One of her van’s windows was sealed with a black trash bag; through the grime of the other, I could see heaps of discarded toys: teddy bears missing eyes, superhero figurines without heads, and others that were so junked that I could no longer tell what they might have been originally. I suspected the overweight, unhealthily-pale woman in front of me might be a hoarder or a dumpster-diving addict, but I wasn’t there to judge: all I cared about was the cloth bundle in her hands and the haunted look in her eyes. I handed over a ten-dollar bill and unwrapped the doll.
“It’s a beautiful doll,” she was saying, in a husky smoker’s voice. “My kid was just startin’ to get a lil’ too…attached to it.”
The doll was exactly as I remembered. The oddly-lifelike skin and hair. The perfect details of the mouth and face. The eyes closed as if in sleep…and the strange black letters branded into its chest. I unbuttoned its shirt to confirm the horrible truth that, deep down, I already knew.
The name “LUCY” was gone. It had been replaced by a new one: “ELIZA.”
X
​

I'm a BIG Halloween lover and a FTM, and my due date is Oct. 10. Currently struggling to find costumes that'll fit my LO because the smallest size I can find at Target, HalloweenCostumes.com, Walmart, Party City, etc. is 0-6mo, which is such a wide range when you really think about it. Like, what 3-week-old is going to fit a costume that'd also fit a 6-MONTH-old?!
I'm currently toying around with a couple ideas based on pairing regular infant clothes with accessories to tie in with costumes my husband and I already have, so the whole family can match: A) Pirate: pair a red and white striped onesie with black pants, and maybe a bandana (if baby girl will allow it) for photos lol B) Kuzko's Poison Bottle (from The Emperor's New Groove, as hubby and I have Kronk and Yzma costumes): dress LO in a pink sleepsack (to represent the pink poison) and a tan beanie (to represent the cork stopper on the bottle); safety pin a sheet of paper with the skull/llama label to the sleepsack
Does anyone have any advice or other ideas as to what we could dress her up as? Thanks in advance!

I know I am more susceptible to being emotional and upset right now because my 5 month old barely sleeps at night, I’m tired of dealing with work and kids at the same time, and I’m on my period. But I’m upset and I am even more upset that everything that is bothering me has a logical reason why it has to be the way it is.
I don’t go out, I don’t have a ton of friends, and I don’t do much for myself because we don’t have the money for frivolous extras. My baby is not a fan of the bottle, so anytime I leave her with anyone else it’s just a matter of time before she gets hungry and whoever has her loses patience with the crying and bottle refusal and I have to come back. That’s my own fault and I have to deal with the consequences.
But right now I’m upset because I just wanted to go out to an event down the street for back to school. My 7 year old has been stuck at home this summer while I work, and she’s been a real trooper with helping me with the baby. She’s got her own issues and has been frustrating, but she’s been pretty secluded this summer and misses her friends. I wanted to take her and the baby down to the park where she’d see her friends and get to play on the bouncy houses and whatever other stuff they have set up. This would also mean I can socialize with the other parents and maybe make some friends too. The problem is it’s 85 degrees out with super high humidity and the baby currently has a helmet which makes her hotter than usual. My husband didn’t want me to take her outside because it isn’t safe since she can’t regulate her temperature well. I get that, so I said I’d freeze a wet bandana so I could use it to cool her off while we’re there. He thinks that would be uncomfortable for her. So I said I’d move her 1 hour of helmet free time to the afternoon and we’d only stay for an hour. But it is still too hot for an infant. So he suggested I take them to the mall or something indoors. It isn’t the same. He doesn’t understand why this is so important for me to go, and our older daughter will see her friends in 2 days when school starts, and it’s inconsiderate of me to go to this event when it isn’t good for the baby. He can’t watch her while I take the older kid because he’s got to get ready to go to a baseball game with his friend.
I don’t have friends who invite me to things, so I find my own fun…I say no to so many things because it costs money or would require childcare, or is suboptimal for whatever reason. It just feels crappy to have him tell me he isn’t saying no, but doesn’t understand why I can’t just do something else. And so I won’t go because he doesn’t want me to, because he has a logical reason of not wanting to put the baby in a bad situation.
He gets invited to go out pretty frequently (by my standards) and I’m not going to tell him no because I don’t want him to feel bad and trapped at home too. It just sucks.
I’m so tired and sad. I just wish I had friends who invited me out and the ability to just go have fun with people. And I wish I wasn’t jealous of my husband for having that ability. Leaving the kids with him and going out by myself isn’t even the answer because I’ll just be upset that I don’t have someone to hang out with.

I know I am more susceptible to being emotional and upset right now because my 5 month old barely sleeps at night, I’m tired of dealing with work and kids at the same time, and I’m on my period. But I’m upset and I am even more upset that everything that is bothering me has a logical reason why it has to be the way it is.
I don’t go out, I don’t have a ton of friends, and I don’t do much for myself because we don’t have the money for frivolous extras. My baby is not a fan of the bottle, so anytime I leave her with anyone else it’s just a matter of time before she gets hungry and whoever has her loses patience with the crying and bottle refusal and I have to come back. That’s my own fault and I have to deal with the consequences.
But right now I’m upset because I just wanted to go out to an event down the street for back to school. My 7 year old has been stuck at home this summer while I work, and she’s been a real trooper with helping me with the baby. She’s got her own issues and has been frustrating, but she’s been pretty secluded this summer and misses her friends. I wanted to take her and the baby down to the park where she’d see her friends and get to play on the bouncy houses and whatever other stuff they have set up. This would also mean I can socialize with the other parents and maybe make some friends too. The problem is it’s 85 degrees out with super high humidity and the baby currently has a helmet which makes her hotter than usual. My husband didn’t want me to take her outside because it isn’t safe since she can’t regulate her temperature well. I get that, so I said I’d freeze a wet bandana so I could use it to cool her off while we’re there. He thinks that would be uncomfortable for her. So I said I’d move her 1 hour of helmet free time to the afternoon and we’d only stay for an hour. But it is still too hot for an infant. So he suggested I take them to the mall or something indoors. It isn’t the same. He doesn’t understand why this is so important for me to go, and our older daughter will see her friends in 2 days when school starts, and it’s inconsiderate of me to go to this event when it isn’t good for the baby. He can’t watch her while I take the older kid because he’s got to get ready to go to a baseball game with his friend.
I don’t have friends who invite me to things, so I find my own fun…I say no to so many things because it costs money or would require childcare, or is suboptimal for whatever reason. It just feels crappy to have him tell me he isn’t saying no, but doesn’t understand why I can’t just do something else. And so I won’t go because he doesn’t want me to, because he has a logical reason of not wanting to put the baby in a bad situation.
He gets invited to go out pretty frequently (by my standards) and I’m not going to tell him no because I don’t want him to feel bad and trapped at home too. It just sucks.
I’m so tired and sad. I just wish I had friends who invited me out and the ability to just go have fun with people. And I wish I wasn’t jealous of my husband for having that ability. Leaving the kids with him and going out by myself isn’t even the answer because I’ll just be upset that I don’t have someone to hang out with.

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Hey everyone! I'm 27 weeks pregnant with a rainbow baby (maybe that helps explain the absolute insanity you'll witness below). I have a teenager, but so much has changed since then I'd really love some feedback on what how we've chosen to prepare for baby's arrival this August.
Because I'm a generally anxious person, my husband and I already accumulated a lot of what would have gone on our registry (and honestly I'm really glad we did because we purchased almost everything second-hand and it allowed us to be 'bougie on a budget'). I was also blessed to have a close friend who kept a ton of stuff from her littles for over 6 years while we waited to try and then went through infertility hell to get here.
I guess it makes sense to try to organize things by category and add in little explanations. Items actually visible on my registry are bolded (I tried to have only a handful of things >$100. Almost everything is under $50):
STROLLERS & CAR SEATS

• Cybex Sirona S & Baby Jogger City Turn - $175 on FB Marketplace. Neither were ever used and don't expire until 2031 (the City Turn even still has its paperwork attached and in plastic). Ultimately I decided that I didn't want to risk leaving baby in a car seat for too long (hence the bassinets), so we're going right for convertible. I really like that they rotate.
• Baby Jogger City Select stroller w/ Bassinet attachment - Free from Buy Nothing. This did not come with the normal stroller seat sadly, so before 6 months I'll need to decide if I want to get the seat portion or replace the stroller.
• Thule Urban Glide 2 - $200 on Facebook Marketplace. Husband loves running so this was a real win for us. It even came with the bumper bar, 'sport organizer' (cup holder and zipper compartment for parent), and a rain cover.
• Thule Bassinet attachment - $100 on FB Marketplace
• We just found out while I was making this post that my husband's father purchased a (second) Thule jogging stroller outright from my registry (despite me specifying that we were trying to get it used and that it was only listed for contributions). I'm not sure what we'll wind up doing, but it seems I overcomplicated everything by being so extra. It's ironic that we suddenly have two jogging strollers and no normal stroller since the City Select doesn't have the seat. I'm hesitant to keep both jogging strollers since I definitely will not be jogging, but it turns out the Thule is actually lighter than the City Select. idk, advice?

SLEEPING

• Halo Bassinest Swivel + Newborn insert + 3 sheets - $30 on FB Marketplace. A friend actually gifted us her older model but it's missing the feet. The one we found to replace it is super basic and doesn't have any of the sounds/lights etc. I really like that it swivels and that the side pushes down to help with nighttime feedings in the early days.
• Babyletto Origami Mini-Crib + Nook Pebble Mattress + 2 sheets - $95 on FB Marketplace. Our plan/hope is that baby will use the bassinet until rolling ovepushing up and then we'll convert to the mini crib and try to keep baby in our room until 9-12months. Eventually we'll transition baby to what is currently my office, baby-proof the room and just use a twin mattress on the floor.
• babyletto Mini Crib Sheet Terracotta Rainbow
• Halo Sleepsack swaddle (newborn)
• Love to Dream Swaddle Up (small)
• Zipadee-Zip Swaddle Transition
• SwaddleMe - Free in registry welcome box (I have no idea what will work for us so wanted to get a few different types of things)
• VAVA Baby Night Light - Would we be better off asking for a Hatch? They're so expensive, but I keep seeing them recommended.

FEEDING

• Spectra S1 Plus pump - Free from Buy Nothing. Debating whether to replace the accessories or just sanitize them. I suppose that either way I may need to get different flanges depending on my size...
• Ameda manual pump - free from friend
• Avo Babies Silicone Manual Breast Pump - free from friend
• Medela breastmilk storage solution
• My Brest Friend Twins Nursing Pillow $20 on FB Marketplace - I'm not having twins, but I read that this was a great nursing pillow for plus-sized women
• 10-pack Large Muslin Burp Cloths (20"x10")
• Tripp Trapp - considering this a 'wishlist' item - it's not visible on my registry as I hope to find it used. I'd love to get the chair, baby seat, and newborn attachment so that baby can be present at the table from birth. My family typically has dinner together every night and with a teen I feel that it's important to keep up as much as possible even with a newborn, but I don't really want to put baby on the table or the floor. Definitely open to suggestions since it's so expensive, even used!
• Boon Cacti Bottle Cleaning Brush Set - probably unnecessary but I wanted to make sure there were a few cheaper cutesie things people could get
• Bandana Bib 8-pack (thinking early days for dribbles)
• Ready Rocker $75 on FB Marketplace - this one I'm feeling uncertain about - I got it because we simply don't have the space for a glider, so I think it'll come in handy whether I'm in bed, my office, or the living room, but $75 felt steep (though it's in like-new condition). Has anyone used this before?
• Oxo Roll-up Bib 2-pack (for when we get to solids)
• Easy Seat portable "high chair" - free from friend
• Silverette Nursing Cups - Not visible on my registry. Debating getting these used or not getting them at all until I feel like I need them.
• Nursing Cover - free from friend
• Various bottles from registry welcome boxes etc. I think I already have a two Mams, and a Philips Avent as well as a bunch of Dr Browns, a Tommee Tippee, a Playtex VentAire, another Mam, and another Philips Avent from a friend. Similar story with Pacifiers.
• Dishwasher basket for bottles - free from friend

DIAPERING

• 30 AlvaBaby cloth diapers with microfiber and charcoal bamboo inserts - $45 on Facebook Marketplace
• 24 AlvaBaby cotton/bamboo wipes (split into 3 items)
• Prince Lionheart Warmies Wipe Warmer (for cloth wipes)
• Baby Bits Wipes Solution 2 pack (for cloth wipes)
• Boudreaux's Butt Paste
• Decor Plus Hands-Free Diaper Pail - $20 on FB Marketplace
• Teamoy Reusable Pail Liner 2 pack
• Xuanguo Diaper Caddy/Organizer
• Keekaroo Peanut Changer, Raspberry - $45 on FB Marketplace - I was so happy to find it in good condition in this color. Tired of all the greys!
• WaterWipes
• I'm thinking we'll use disposable diapers for the first few weeks while we're all recovering, but I'm promising myself not to buy them before knowing whether baby will need newborns or not.

BATHING

• Moby 3-stage tub - $10 on FB Marketplace
• Burt's Bees Baby Hooded Towels, 2-pack
• 24 Baby Bath washcloths
• b&h Baby Baby duck Thermometer
• Blooming Lotus - Free from Buy Nothing - I'm not sure we'll use this much, it came bundled with some other Buy Nothing stuff we got after getting the tub lol. Which bath setup did you wind up using?

HEALTH & SAFETY

• Levoit Dual 150 Humidifier - honestly I hate humidifiers. They get so gross and moldy and we've never had one last for more than a winter or two. That said we're in the northeast US, have forced air oil heat, and really dry skin. Definitely open to suggestions but wanted to keep this affordable (this one is $27 and has great ratings).
• FridaBbay Electric Nasal Aspirator (I found the bulb things to be totally ineffective with my firstborn, but again that was almost 16 years ago)
• Frida Electric Nail Buffer
• VTech WiFi Baby Monitor w/ 5-inch display
• Baby Banz Infant Hearing Protection Earmuffs (for music concerts etc)
• Frida Mom Alcohol Detection Strips - Added this to the registry to make my friends laugh, but figured it might actually come in handy if I manage to exclusively BF/Pump.
• A butt-load of classic baby gates - free from friend
• Dreambaby Retractable Baby Gate - $25 from buybuy Baby (we actually got this early for our blind dog lol)

ACTIVITIES/CONTAINERS

• MamaRoo - free from friend (it's an older model and apparently recalled due to the straps hanging low, but I can't imagine using it after baby's crawling anyway - thoughts?) - hoping this comes in handy when I start transitioning back to WFH (we'll be getting daycare but can't afford it full time until around 6 months)
• Ingenuity Bouncer $5 on FB Marketplace
• Graco Soothing Vibrations Bouncer - free from friend, I think it came from a pack n play, but works as a standalone bouncer.
• Infantino Twist and Fold Gym $10 on FB Marketplace
• Art Baby black and white books - free from friend
• Two boxes of various board books - free from friend
• ECR4Kids bi-directional Mirror
• Fisher Price Jumparoo - free from friend
• Doorway Baby Jumper - Free from Buy Nothing - came bundled, are these even safe to use lol?
• Cuddle tags lion blankie - free from friend
• Skip Hop Play Mat Interlocking Foam Tiles - Free from Buy Nothing
• Lovevery Play Gym - listen, I really want this. Am I willing to spend $140 on it (or watch a loved one spend that much)? Hell no. If I can find it in good shape for $40-50 I might jump on it. Keep this one set up semi-permanently and use the twist and fold for downstairs and traveling.

TRAVELING

• Baby Trend GoLite ELX Nursery Center Playard $20 on FB Marketplace (Missing basinet attachment, but has the changing pad)
• Dikaslon Diaper Bag $15 on FB Marketplace
• AlvaBaby Wet/Dry bag
• Boba Wrap $18 on FB Marketplace
• LilleBaby Complete Airflow Carrier - free from friend
• Just Hatched Hater Pack - $50 from buybuy Baby - This was actually the first thing we purchased for babe. We found it in the discount bin down from $250, before BBB even announced they were closing. Dad will use this as his diaper bag and carrier, especially on short hikes.
• Backseat baby Mirror x2
• Car window shade x2 - Free from friend

CLOTHING

• Hubby and I decided not to purchase any new clothes and so far we've only "accidentally" bought a onesie (for our announcement) and two outfits lol.
• We have a nice-sized bag of newborn -9month clothes from a friend whose baby just outgrew them
• We plan on waiting to see how big baby is and what we're missing and then either get stuff off FB Marketplace or Goodwill.
• I somewhat expect relatives to get a few clothes even though we didn't ask for any - I feel like picking out new outfits is everyone's favorite part. We avoided revealing the gender in the hopes that we'll stay away from super-gendered clothing, but we'll see what happens.

So what do you guys think? What am I missing? I spent a ton of time and energy reading through previous registry roasts and post-partum advice posts and I feel like the main thing I didn't follow was getting way way too much stuff haha. I still have time to adjust my registry since it feels like almost no one is using it anyway ;)
​
Thank you so much for ready through this. I'm sure I sound totally nuts.
PS: I'd love to get some early advice on breastfeeding, pumping, bras, and baby-wearing with large breasts. I've tried searching this and other related subreddits but find that the advice usually caps out at about DDDs, but I'm a 38JJ/N :(

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A computer was, it turned out, a marvelous thing.
Yarine held one of them now, one of those flat slabs of dark glass that fit perfectly into the palm of her hand. A ‘phone’, Bauman had called it, even though he’d said it was also a computer. She ran her thumb over its glossy, elegant surface, the colorful images on its screen growing and shrinking as they reacted to its presence.
There were dozens of such pictographs, for all kind of things. Recording voice or images, or far-listening, or displaying maps... Yarine was still familiarizing herself with the most basic functions, a long process which wasn’t helped by the fact that she didn’t understand these humans’ alphabet, and that so many of the pictographs tended to depict older devices that she wasn’t familiar with, either. It frustrated her. How was she expected to figure out that a bumpy rectangle with a circle inside it was short for image recording calculations? And what in the Equation was an ‘internet’?
But not all of them were unknown. She paused over the one depicting a stylized pocket watch, then pressed on it. She smiled as the familiar white circle appeared on the screen, the needles turning in their usual snappy increments. A pocket computer to replace her pocket watch. Not that it really could, though. For some reason, she still felt attached to the ancient brass device. As if it had somehow soaked in her pain and tears during those endless nights in Oleania, her very soul now intertwined with its gears and springs.
She took her gaze off her phone when she felt the vehicle tilting to the side, and clasped at her seat’s armrest with her free hand, sitting ramrod straight as if that would help, were they to fall out of the sky. She only relaxed when she noticed none of the two Agents seated across from her were panicking.
Unlike computers, helicopters were a horrid form of travel. A madman’s invention. The vehicle shook and trembled, buffeted by the crosswinds of the storm clouds brewing overhead, some angry droplets crashing against its frontal window now and then. The rotor’s piercing roar filled the cabin, slowly worming its way into her brain and threatening to take her sanity away.
It was fast, though, she had to admit that as they flew over the neverending potted fields and farms, following the twisting roads and rivers that bisected the flat landscape.
That was another of the reasons behind her uneasiness. The tracking theorem —which it took them two weeks of coordinated effort to make work on the computer, one much bigger than Yarine’s new phone— had placed the Oracle almost half a continent away from the Agents’ home base, in the city that had contained the Void-Bridge. But she hadn’t understood what that truly meant until she was strapped to the helicopter’s seat and the vehicle had flown straight past the end of the city, the reassuring buildings and streets giving way to open landscape.
They had gone off-city, and in the Manifold that would have meant danger of the highest degree, never sure of what exactly you could find —or could find you— when you crossed past the threshold of civilization. Plus the certainty of being too far away, well out of the reach of any helping hands should you encounter a threat you couldn’t deal with on your own.
So she was surprised when she noticed that the city had ended, but a trickle of civilization persisted beyond its limits. A few solitary roads traversing the wild, circling around hills and leaping over valleys and rivers atop enormous bridges, merging now and then, crossing paths with their siblings just to divert once more as each went their own separate ways.
It was oddly mesmerizing. Without Void-Bridges, the humans of Earth had managed to bridge the distances anyways, to join their cities the old fashioned way. She had to wonder at the expense of it all. How many resources went into those endless arteries of asphalt? How much did it cost them to fight off the unyielding assault, the perennial chaos of natural forces? The erosion of the wind blowing dust across them, day after day, or the plants continuously trying to burrow into whatever cracks they could find? It had to be mind-boggling.
She wasn’t surprised that the Agents had agreed to pursue the trail leading them to the Oracle, once they had fully understood what an Oracle of the Manifold was supposed to be able to do. The impossible idea of instantaneous travel, of building portals between the major cities on Earth, and from there to other worlds altogether. It planted a seed of doubt in Yarine, though, because she could imagine these Agents of Earth wanting to use the Oracle for their own purposes, and all but forgetting about the Manifold and the promises they had made in return for Yarine’s help.
The voice of the pilot reached Yarine via the odd earmuffs she was wearing, which apparently weren’t only meant to cushion the rotor’s noise. It sounded crackly and distorted. “Commencing our descent in five minuteth,” he said.
Yarine returned her attention to her phone and pressed on her favorite pictograph: the one depicting a branching arrow. The screen changed and showed a few more symbols, each of them representing a theorematic calculation. Each one taken from Solver’s notebook. The Phalanx’s essential repertoire: A momentum manipulation here, and embedding field there... Yarine touched the one that depicted a human covered in schematic shell-shields.
The moment she did, her whole body was instantly wrapped by the interlocking protective shields, shining strong against the cabin’s dimness. She ran one hand over the projected second skin, which offered an unnatural resistance, stopping her fingers from ever reaching her own clothes. She had never caressed a shell-shield before, and she discovered that they felt oddly prickly and spongy.
Ironic, that she’d had to leave the Manifold of Worlds in order to become a battle mathematician herself. A somewhat limited one, to be fair, since Solver’s notes hadn’t been as extensive as any of the Phalanx’s actual course books. But at least the phone could calculate more than one theorem at the same time, making her into a discount Olean of sorts.
And it had been humans —dull, simple humans— that had granted her these abilities, this impossible gift. She wished only that her tutor, Suzvir could’ve seen her now. That she could repeat that fight once more; the one that had been the dawn of her rebellion, her freedom. That she could fight and best Suzvir again, this time with a phone computer rather than a dagger. That she could defeat him at his own game.
“Thou shalt run out o’ battery ere we land,” said Frey, shaking her head at Yarine’s antics.
“If this contraption falls out of the sky, you’ll wish you had yours active,” she replied, but still she stopped the calculation and let the shields vanish, the cabin going back to darkness. She noticed the phone was already warm to the touch. She was starting to learn that this was a common limitation to most of Earth’s ‘technologies’. From her pocket watch to her phone, or even the flying vehicle they were currently inside of, they all needed to be recharged from time to time, consuming fuel or electricity or something else. That the phone was dependent on this world’s infrastructure rankled Yarine immensely, and she would need to figure out how to deal with that once she could return long-term to the Manifold, where one couldn’t simply plug a wire into one of those odd little holes in the walls that seemed omnipresent here, found in almost every room.
It was a complication for another day, though, because soon enough the helicopter started to descend towards a coastal town, a sea of houses growing along the soft crescent shape of an enclosed bay. The vehicle skimmed over the roofs of buildings, and it finally landed on an enormous expanse of asphalt near the town’s outskirts. Yarine had to wait impatiently for one of the Agents to open the side door before she could finally, finally leave the death trap behind, crouching slightly to put as much distance between her head and the still spinning rotor as possible.
They boarded a shiny black ground car, part of a convoy along with the ones carrying more officers belonging to the same agency, and they advanced slowly across the town’s streets. They had opted for being inconspicuous, Bauman explained, which is why they weren’t clearing the traffic away with their flashing blue lights. And perhaps they should have mentioned that to her sometime before, she thought, and she’d have made sure to use her cosmetics; rather than going barefaced as she was now, her tattoos visible to everyone.
As it was, Yarine had a few minutes to look at the world outside, the rows of trees decorating the streets, the facades painted a clean white —which she guessed would shine when hit by the sun, but that now looked only drab under the overcast, cloudy sky— and the many balconies decorated with splashes of colorful flowers.
It was, she realized, a resort district. Or resort town, in this case. Not unlike Panvillon, back in the Manifold, with calm aquamarine waters and perennial warm weather. And when the cars spat them out on a promenade overlooking a now half empty beach, the sea beyond all choppy and violent, she could almost imagine the crowds of wealthy Salakorians strolling by, pausing to peruse at stores selling trinkets at prices inflated twelve-fold or more.
And there were crowds. Of human vacationers, at that, the sight still bizarre no matter how many days she had spent in this world already. Hundreds of people strolling along the promenade despite the weather threatening rain, and she guessed the crowds would only be thicker in those days when the sun actually made an appearance. Most of them looked relaxed, satisfied. Well off, even.
Which only made the contrast more apparent when she finally saw a few who weren’t. A couple of vagabonds sat on a nearby corner. Human beggars, dressed in messy clothes and with unkempt hair. The kind of humans she’d grown used to seeing in the Manifold, in a district like this. She gazed back at the Agents, her brow furrowing.
“Didst thou trow Earth would’st be a paradise?” Frey replied to her unspoken question. “We have problems too.”
“This is wherefore we need thy Oracle,” said Bauman. “The Manifold’s own techno— calculations. An they can open new worlds for us, gift us more resourceth... We are ensnared hither, condemned to a single planet. Resourceth are scarce.”
“Somehow, they always are,” muttered Yarine, thinking of Oosmon’s flying coach, of mansions built out of sheer pretentiousness.
Because that was always the excuse, wasn’t it? Always the justification, for the poverty, for the slums. And did Earth have slums too? Did it have scores of people being marginalized, their lives harsher than they could’ve been? Did it have its own equivalent to the Archons, to the Oleans always hovering above ground?
Odd, that she felt so disappointed. She figured that by now and after all that she’d seen while working with the Divergence, she’d been cured of any misplaced idealism. That she’d have realized that the better way was just... words in a poem. That reality would always, always fail to live up to a dream.
“This is’t,” Bauman said a few minutes later, raising his eyes from his phone’s screen to look at the area around them. “The marked latitude, three hundred meters endlong.”
“How long was a meter again?” asked Yarine.
“As from thy feet up to thy hip,” said Frey.
“Must we scan now e’ry soul present hither, withal the tracking app?” asked Bauman, turning to Yarine. “’Twill take us hours. How did the Manifold’s Divineers handle this toil?”
She shrugged. “It’s been hundreds of years since the last time, so some of the details are lost. But from what I was taught, it was easier for them. Because they started the search just months after the previous one died, they knew the rough age of the new one. They only had to check the infants.”
“Aye, it could be anyone,” said Frey, her brow knitting as she took in the sizable crowd around them. She pressed the communicator in her ear. The radio, Yarine now knew. “Let’s commence, then. Scan everyone thee run into hence, and be discreet.”
The two Agents and their subordinates spread around, and for the next minutes they started scanning everyone in the crowd with their phones; doing their best not to call attention, keeping their phones low and close to their bodies as they surreptitiously pointed the devices at people old and young, women and men.
Yarine had the same algorithm in her phone, but found it unnecessary to scan people herself, seeing as Frey never was more than a step away and she was already busy at work. It seemed like the woman wasn’t willing to let her guest drift away in the crowd. Which sure, Yarine could understand, but it still annoyed her. So feeling somewhat petty she quickened her pace along the promenade, forcing Frey to rush after her if she didn’t want to be left behind.
Instead of looking at a tiny screen, Yarine’s gaze went to the people they crossed paths with. Vacationers, and residents, and some service workers, many of them giving her odd looks in return. The thought that one of these people was the Oracle —the missing guide of the Manifold— was unreal, and she found herself asking that question of every face. Was it that matronly woman with two kids orbiting around her? What about the old man sitting at the stone bench, his beard whitening? Could it be the girl wiping the tavern’s table, her hair tied tight into a ponytail?
But again and again Frey pressed her finger on the phone’s screen, aiming its camera this and that way, and again and again she frowned and moved on. And after a quarter hour of this —which Yarine didn’t need her watch to measure, she was starting to develop an intuitive feel of Earth’s time units— even her tense enthusiasm began to wane. And she wondered if they could have made some mistake, when adapting the tracking theorem to work on one of Earth’s computers.
It hadn’t been a simple project. Definitely more complex than the other theorematic calculations, in no small part because there were symbols and references to mathematical concepts in Solver’s notebook that Yarine herself didn’t fully grasp, and so they’d needed to involve a couple of Earth’s top mathematicians in the process; get them to teach her some of their deductions, see if they fit.
Compared to that, getting the shell-shields to work had been easy. And fun; Yarine had sat next to the computer engineer as they worked together, she explaining the steps written in the notebook, he entering the computer code necessary to emulate them into his laptop —another type of calculating machine, this one with a larger screen and a board full of little key buttons that his hands had danced across with uncanny dexterity. And then he had pressed one of those buttons and the shell-shield had come alive, wrapping the laptop entirely as it activated. They both had jumped and celebrated, before quickly realizing the flaw in their plan, as they’d had to wait for the machine’s battery to fully drain before they could continue working, with no way to reach its many buttons that were now firmly protected under an impenetrable shield.
Frey also seemed to grow skeptical of the whole thing with every minute they didn’t find their target, because she was now communicating with the people back at the headquarters, asking them to run the whole tracking theorem once more in case the Oracle had moved away from the area, and to verify that there were no bugs in the calculation of all things, which puzzled Yarine —could insects get into computers?— but all right.
She drifted a few paces away then, her eyes attracted by an outcrop of market stalls next to the intersection between the main promenade and a side street. Each one a simple table covered by a piece of cloth as a sunshade of sorts, and with all kind of wares on display for sale: dresses of almost every variety and in a rainbow of colors, necklaces and bracelets of curious designs, an entire table covered entirely in wide-brimmed hats —Yarine guessed today’s gloomy weather was probably putting a dent on that particular stall’s owner, seeing as the woman behind the table eyed her with a grumpy expression as Yarine walked past.
She paused by a stall with a wild assortment of paintings in display, so many that not all of them fit on the table, instead sprawling across the nearby area, with some resting against the closest building’s wall. The canvases ranged from the size of a small booklet, all the way to a painting almost as tall as herself. Most depicted natural scenes, majestic landscapes, lush valleys bathed by twin suns, and snow-covered mountains, and tropical rainforests under planetary rings. They reminded Yarine of the Palace of the Five Skies, of all things, of the murals that decorated the executive rooms at the Compound of Peace.
Except that these paintings were less detailed. Instead the brush-strokes were clearly visible, lines of color that followed spirals and geometric patterns that weren’t really part of the objects in the scene, but that gave the resulting image an almost surreal quality. It was that, she realized, that had made her pause. Almost as if the combined shapes of all those intricate lines made the artworks feel... heavier, somehow. Denser.
The artist was hard at work on a new painting, right behind the stall. He was a young man with an unkempt beard and brown hair, a few curly bangs managing to worm their way to freedom out of the bandana he was wearing. There were splotches of paint on his clothes, some brown and messy trousers and a loose shirt. His looks were almost a polar opposite of that of the Agents, always so immaculate. But it wasn’t surprising, seeing how he worked as if in a trance, as if the paintbrush in his hand were a grass serpent and the canvas a helpless pouncefoot, droplets of paint flying away with every sudden attack.
And then Yarine saw what was in the canvas, what the new painting was depicting, and her eyes went wide. And she had to do a double take, and her heart skipped a beat.
Because that half-painted landscape in the canvas, it was the monumental world of Elara. Seen from somewhere off-city, yes, but the district’s majestic buildings were still visible in the distance, as was the massive inverted pyramid, its physics-defying shape impossible to miss.
She quickly rushed to examine the other artworks. And yes, now that she was paying attention she started to recognize many of them. The fields of Loraker here, the ancient streets of Innarvis there. A small painting of the fractal lattice itself at the corner of the table, almost unassuming. Even Ceeter, as seen from the bay outside the city proper, the commercial towers faint vertical smudges in the distance.
All in all, almost half of the paintings on display were of places in the Manifold, the other half being just imaginary worlds.
Or maybe not, she thought with a shiver. Maybe not imaginary, but unknown.
Yarine’s sudden interest in art didn’t go unnoticed, and she saw out of the corner of her eye as the Agents and other officers converged to make a perimeter. Bauman, his eyes wide at what his phone’s screen no doubt was confirming to him, approached the man —no, the Oracle!— and started talking to him in hushed tones.
He is too young, Yarine thought. Because in her mind, an Oracle had to be old. The title synonymous with a bigger than life figure, all wise and ancient, bringing mystical knowledge to the masses. She figured all the Oracles in Solver’s list had to have been young at some point, but it felt almost heretical, thinking of them in that way. And the idea of an unkempt Oracle, working with their hands, their clothes dirty... it was madness.
She shook her head and was about to join the conversation when she noticed yet another painting, and instead she walked up to it, almost as if drawn against her will. It was one of the larger canvases resting against the closest building’s wall. She had paid it no mind at first, but now she couldn’t look anywhere else.
It depicted a slum. A muddy street with wooden sidewalks, enclosed by stilt houses resting against each other. The skies a purple twilight, the shadows long. It was only missing the people, the humans.
She could almost recognize the street, she realized, standing right in front of the canvas. She knew the Rookery would be somewhere to the left side, off the limited view the painting depicted. Assuming it was still standing, of course. And she wished the strange shapes of brush-strokes, their circles and straight lines weren’t so prominent, though. It was almost as if the whole painting was covered in...
Yarine froze. Then slowly, so very slowly she placed her hand right in front of the painting, and compared the spirals and lines of her own tattoos with those of the colorful brush-strokes.
It was as if the whole painting was covered in link-patterns.
Each stroke, each line of paint, all of them coalescing into a complex, intricate design. A web of circles and branches and lines not unlike the ones covering her entire body, but much more compact: the lines on the canvas wrapped against each other with almost no space left in between. A much, much denser link-pattern.
And she could feel the density, as if the painting itself was a black hole of complexity, pulling at reality itself to fall into it.
Almost by instinct, Yarine reached with her hand to the vectorial field, and found that every single vectorial strand, every single one of those taut strings, pointed straight at the canvas in front of her.
Could it be...?
It was impossible, of course. That’s not how shadeswimming worked.
But could it be...?
She grasped one of the strings between her finger and thumb, took a deep breath, and pulled hard.
It resisted her, at first. The string felt heavier than any she had plucked before. Somehow impossibly unyielding and trying to wiggle out of her fingers at the same time. She realized then that she was doing this wrong, that she couldn’t shadeswim into the painting, but when she tried to push at the string instead, reversing the direction of the abstract movement, she felt the lines in the canvas shake slightly in front of her very eyes.
She pushed with more force then, the link-patterns in her own body almost vibrating with the effort. It was as if the canvas contained one of these strange human machines, one of their mechanical contraptions, already primed and ready to go. In an equilibrium of sorts, and she had only to give it that final push. To put it into motion, release its stored tension.
She missed the moment it changed. One instant she was looking at a normal canvas, and the next there was a shining point right in its center. It grew larger and larger, and the brush-strokes, the painting itself seemed to flow into it, like water going down a drain. The canvas vanishing, the brush-strokes shifting and widening, becoming a circle of scintillating distortions. It was easier then, so she kept pushing at the string, and the circle opened and a breath of damp, humid air hit her face. Yarine grinned, and pushed with more force.
She was laughing by the time the newly born Void-Bridge was big enough that she could fit comfortably inside, and she could see the residents of the swampy world rush to gather on the other side of the tunnel in reality, their faces surprised and brightly enthused. And still she kept pushing, widening the portal, past the size of a ground car, and then past the width of two cars, and then as wide as the very street she was standing on, the top of the tunnel raising far over her head.
Her growing fatigue made her stop there, but she almost didn’t notice the way her whole body trembled in exhaustion, her heavy breathing. Instead, she took a step ahead, and crossed the bridge. And then she was back in Sutsack once more.
She stood there for a beat, looking at the residents of the slum, the humans —and a couple Levorians also in the growing crowd— looking back at her. All muttering to each other, pointing at her.
It was the Oracle who brought her out of her trance, as he too crossed the Void-Bridge, stepped by her side followed by the two bewildered Agents. The young man’s jaw dropping low, his eyes jumping from point to point, as if trying to encompass the whole sight, the whole district at once.
Like anyone who had spent their entire youth within the perimeter walls of the Palace of the Five Skies, Yarine too had been educated in the Sacramental Theorems. At one point or another, she had witnessed most of the Divineers’ ancestral rituals. But never in a million years would she have thought she’d have to perform this one herself.
But there were no Divineers around, were there? And besides, it was... fitting. That she did it herself. A human speaking the words, for a human Oracle.
“What is your name,” she asked the young painter.
It took him a couple of seconds to register she was talking to him. When he spoke, his voice was raspy. “Mine...own name? Liam... Liam Zenellis?” He made it sound like a question.
She took a knee right in front of him —who looked down at her with sudden alarm in his eyes— and started speaking aloud, her voice firm and raised so that everyone in the crowd would hear it:
“Thrice rooted in the Equation!” she all but shouted the ancient words. “The pattern in time has converged once more. Long live the Bridger of Voids, scion of the eternal Lattice. Long live His Primeness Liam Zenellis, Supreme Archon of the Fractal Empire, and 211th Oracle of the Manifold of Worlds!”
To which the Oracle replied: “What.”
 
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Teddy is bigger than I thought. Check out these trademarks for TEDDY HOLDINGS LLC (owner of teddy.com).
NFT marketplace. Buyeseller marketplace. Blankets, pillows, puzzles, books. COMPUTER GAMES.
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Serial Number	Goods & Services Description
97546330	C 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Educational and entertainment services, namely, providing on-line interactive children's stories; Entertainment services, namely, providing on-line computer games; Entertainment services, namely, providing online video games; Providing on-line publications in the nature of news articles for children; Providing online non-downloadable visual and audio recordings featuring children's entertainment
97546274	IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: Provision of an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of downloadable digital art images, music, and videos authenticated by non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
97546248	IC 028. US 022 023 038 050. G & S: Puzzles; Children's educational toys for developing fine motor, cognitive, counting, coordination spelling, and math skills skills; Home video game machines
97546219	IC 025. US 022 039. G & S: Bandanas; Coats; Dresses; Footwear; Hats; Headbands; Leggings; Loungewear; Pants; Shirts; Shorts; Skirts; Sleepwear; Socks; Sweaters; Sweatshirts; Swimwear; T-shirts; Underwear; Caps being headwear; Wrist bands as clothing; Clothing jackets
97546181	IC 024. US 042 050. G & S: Comforters; Throws; Towels; Bed blankets; Bed sheets; Duvet covers; Shower curtains; Textile tablecloths; Table napkins of textile
97546165	IC 021. US 002 013 023 029 030 033 040 050. G & S: Cups; Dinnerware; Mugs; Vases; Beverage glassware; Figurines of china, crystal, earthenware, glass, porcelain, terra cotta; Travel mugs; Serving platters
97546136	IC 020. US 002 013 022 025 032 050. G & S: Furniture; Pillows; Figurines of plaster, plastic, wax, wood; Mirrors; Picture frames
9754613	IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Sunglasses; Audio books in the field of children's fiction and non-fiction; Audio books in the nature of novels; Cases for eyeglasses and sunglasses; Cases for mobile phones; Computer cases; Downloadable computer programs for video and computer games; Downloadable multimedia file containing artwork, text, audio, and video relating to children's entertainment authenticated by non-fungible tokens (NFTs); Non-fiction audio books on a variety of topics
97185420	IC 028. US 022 023 038 050. G & S: Dolls; Balls for sports; Board games; Card games; Children's multiple activity toys; Infant toys; Party games; Pet toys; Plastic character toys; Playground balls; Playing cards; Plush toys
97185368	IC 016. US 002 005 022 023 029 037 038 050. G & S: Crayons; Markers; Pencils; Pens; Stationery; Stickers; Blank writing journals; Paper notebooks; Printed greeting cards; Printed posters; Series of printed children's books
97201446	IC 016. US 002 005 022 023 029 037 038 050. G & S: Printed children's books; Series of printed fiction and non-fiction books on a variety of topics
97201438	IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Downloadable fiction books on a variety of topics; Downloadable non-fiction books on a variety of topics; Downloadable series of children's books
90881318	IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: Provision of an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of goods and services. FIRST USE: 20210727. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20210727
90189726	IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: Provision of an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of goods and services. FIRST USE: 20020422. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20020422