Melydice removes the chair from the doorknob and opens the door. She tells them to put their hands on their heads and walk in. The outer layer of the woman’s skin looks like it’s made of stone, while the man’s skin is peeling off. Tatsu notices the skin looks like the one in the fridge.

When they see our guns, the man, who’s 2 feet taller than the woman, tries to hide behind her. He’s trembling. Melydice says there’s nothing to be scared of if they follow our instructions. The man grips the woman’s shoulders. She shrugs them off. Tries to. Says she’ll put her hands up because the man’s too much of a bitch to.

We keep the guns on them. Melydice keeps threatening them. The woman says not to do anything funny and threatens us with two stone eggs in her hands…

I notice the man eyes the bathroom. I follow his gaze and look back at him with a raised eyebrow. The woman says to not look at him, to look at her, and to ask her questions.

Amaia closes the door. Melydice asks where they get the drugs from. The woman asks why, saying we probably already have some. But we don’t care about that. We want to know where they’re from. The woman says ‘Mechanics’.

Melydice asks her to elaborate, but the woman instead comments about how calm we are, as if we’ve seen these things before. (No idea what they’re talking about, but all right.) She explains they’re not from this world, which is obvious at this point. Then she explains where they get the drug from. Pink is fuel they get from mechanics of their world that’s used to fix communication devices. They sell it here because it’s cheap back home. They come here, take human materials (the ones on the bed), and sell them back at their home.

I ask about the skin in the fridge. They’re disguises to look like humans. It’s what the man wears, but it doesn’t look good on him. He’s too stressed for it to work. I ask about the kid in the closet. Organ trafficking. Some things still stay the same across worlds, huh?

I also ask what the rock eggs do. She asks if we want to find out. Tatsu and I say no. As Melydice reaches to her pocket, the woman’s hands tighten around the eggs. But all Melydice wants to do is to call Arquette.

Some time later, we hear his voice: “Room service.” Amaia opens the door. Arquette and Fisher enter. Fisher’s two fists are held in front of him and when the door closes, a flaming sword appears in his hands. You would’ve loved seeing that. The sword, I mean. It sounds like the story about the sword in the stone you tell me about. The one with Merlin, right?

Arquete gets more information out of the drug dealers. They’re from a city called the Borderworld, made by extinct aliens. It’s filled with refugees from other universes. Traffickers, sorcerers, slavers, awful people. Also slaves. These two go between both worlds through gates like the bathroom, trying to keep low because both worlds hate them. So they do a bad job in both worlds. Money’s tight. They have a hard time keeping it. Besides Pink, they also sell machetes (made out of meteoric iron, intricately engraved, very useful for combat), protective equipment, necklaces (good for defence, guns will be useless with them).

And then, instead of killing them or arresting them, Arquette decides to negotiate with them for some goddamn reason. If they stop selling drugs and stop killing people, Helvetia will keep them alive as payment for their goods. He continues to threaten the woman, cornering her, and intimidates her into dropping the stone eggs, the snake. She complies. Nothing happens.

Arquette tells Melydice to bag the eggs as evidence and to take them away. We can handle the aliens as we please. As we do so, Melydice tells them they’re lucky we were told not to kill them. The woman also spits out an amulet and her skin turns to normal.

I hold Fisher back. Since he’s the computer guy I thought he could, I don’t know, track the kid’s face and find his parents. And I don’t need to use English to talk to him. He says he’ll take care of it. No parent wouldn’t want to know their kid has been torn up like that. It’ll be a closed casket funeral, and he’ll find the kid’s parents.

We’re the last to leave. Fisher tells me that even if it doesn’t look like it, this was a job well done. It sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. It doesn’t feel like anything.

Everyone gets in the van. The woman and man are handcuffed. Arquette fixes the disguise on the man, looks through the evidence bags, and keeps one of the cat lamps. I’m glad I kept one in my bag. Hygd’s going to love it. I hope she will. He also talks about keeping one of the lighters even though Fisher says Arquette doesn’t smoke anymore.

Arquette tells the prisoners that they’ll be kept in a special cell where Melydice can visit them. Melydice interrupts, saying he’s making another mistake by keeping them. Arqutte says it’s better to keep them out of others’ hands, even though there are other ways of doing that. The prisoners also have weapons and defences that are good for Helvetia. Melydice leans back into her seat: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Mr. Arquette.” Arquette trusts her to take care of him when he gets over his head.

I’m writing part of this as we drive back to headquarters. I also take another cat lamp: something for Molly’s birthday. She’s still young. She might like it. Yona takes two of them. Tatsu and Amaia take incense.

We arrive at headquarters. Fucking Arquette had the same idea as me and gave his cat lamp to Molly! Melydice tells her to throw it away because it’s “touched by devils”. I think it’s more important for her to know they were left next to blood and semen samples. I give my second cat lamp to Molly since I don’t know what to do with a spare. I tell her to not listen to Melydice, but that she may want to wash her hands because of the blood and semen samples. I clarify that the samples weren’t on the bed. They were in the tubes. So the lamps are at least that clean.

Arquette and Fisher talk to each other in French as we follow them into an office. Arquette says we did good. And the bastard reveals he made us wear the uniforms to make the mission harder for us! He wants us to make sure we have the right clothes with the right situation. Obviously we already know that. A fucking six year old would know that!

He also reveals the police were under his pay. Apparently, when the cops at the apartment called their office, it also went to Helvetia. This won’t always be the case for our operations, though. Then he talks about the other Helvetia branches (we’re in the South American one). The North American branch was killed off. A prisoner from there either escaped or was broken out. The African branch killed themselves. The Asian branch is dying out. There’s only Europe, Antarctica, South America, and Australia left. Melydice raises an eyebrow at Arquette. I can hear her say “I told you so”.

We’ll get a message in late April to get our clearances, whatever that means. We’re also supposed to get “mandated therapy sessions” as well. I also don’t understand what that means, but I don’t care either. Because of the list of 20 we gathered, we got paid well. Very well. And most importantly, I can finally go home.

My flight home isn’t until tomorrow, so I’m writing this from my hotel room while lying on my bed. To be honest, I don’t know why I wrote this. I thought this would’ve been like those books you like to read. But even if you were here and I was stuck in Helvetia, I would never show this to you. It’s sick. And I’ll get killed for that, too.

I guess I can’t help it. Maybe in another world where all this was just make-believe, you would’ve liked reading these. And it’s always nice to write to you. It’s like you’re still here, listening to me. And I would really like you to be here right now.