5:20 PM Parramatta Road - Earth-Prime Number whatever.


    The brakes lights of the car in front of him went off, and his attention shifted back to the road ahead.


    The lights stayed off, but the car jerked to a halt again. It wasn''t safe to count on the handbrake to hold you at the lights, but some folks still did it. The cutie in front of him didn''t look okay in her rearview mirror.


    His sedan sat higher than her little buzz box so that he could see down between the seats of her car.


    He could see as she started to slump, her hand still clutching the handbrake.


    Knuckles white, the trembling in her forearm, the skin was turning a strange Red, and then.


    He saw it.


    Why did he have to see it? Why?


    Couldn''t he have been even one car further back so he''d have not seen it?


    It was weird. After years, you don''t even need to think about the mirrors when driving, just use them automatically. Rearview mirrors are there so a driver can see behind them. But stopped at the lights when one looks ahead, they let you see the eyes of that one driver. Eyes are the window to the Soul. One of those cliched sayings in the English language isn''t it, so often said.


    In those times of waiting, that rearview mirror just felt to him to be a mail slip window into someone else life. Their eyes often showed their current mood, and he wondered if it was just that moment; or if he saw their whole day or even life. They might be happy, bored, singing, angry, frustrated, sad, mourning, any of a range of emotions. A little snippet of their lives while waiting for their travels to progress.


    Her hand was trembling, and he looked up at her rearview mirror.


    He had seen her eyes bright with energy just a short time earlier. She''d looked to have set the day behind her, or it had been a good day. Or it was just that she was enjoying something musical. Head was nodding to the beat, eyes bright with enjoyment.


    Now when he saw her eyes, that joy had been washed away, stamped out by confusion that was clear as day.


    Her eyelids drooped shut, and then there were the flames.


    Through that little window into someone''s life, he had never expected to see it all end. Never, ever, nor for it to end in flames, her eyes had shut, they had.


    Her eyelids had closed, they had, and then the flames burned so brightly, so hot he could see them melting through the seat. Her body had already dropped downwards, falling out of the perspective of that window.


    The rest was a blur, strange blur that would often fill his nights for so long. Phone grabbed, ignition off, handbrake, popping the boot, out of the car, holding his extinguisher. Each time he blinked, he seemed to have jumped forward in time—his brain rejecting the moment in between as unneeded.


    Then he was looking through the window of her car, at the emptiness it held.


    The flames were already out.


    The seat a hollowed core, a cradle, a pit, the bones already settled and shifted. White ashes, dusted bones, some cracked, others just seared of all flesh.


    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Her skull was tilted upwards in the ashes as if she''d thrown back her head as she died. The eyes full of life were gone, only emptiness remained, empty sockets of her skull filled now with a dusting of ash.


    He remembered words, stilted and far away.


    Emergency services, fire, and police. Death. Fire. Where.


    Snippets of information cataloguing this unreal situation.


    Standing on the median strip, still holding the extinguisher,


    Blink.


    In someone''s car speaking to one police officer.


    Blink, then another officer.


    Blink, the room, the window, dusted with ashes falling from the clouds of soot. Dusted with ashes just like that woman''s skull.


    5:40 PM Parramatta Road - Earth-Prime Number whatever.


    "Witness is in a rough state; paramedics are treating him. He gave the same details to both myself and then the Senior Constable. It will be a bit before someone from FETSC is on scene." The Constable recounted to his nearly arrived Sergeant, who looked at the remains in disbelief like they had earlier.


    "No one''s opened the car?"


    "There has been no need, and neither of us wanted to disturb anything. We just secured the scene for forensics. The flames were out by the time we got on scene. All damage to the vehicle seems isolated to the driver''s seat. Whatever incinerated the victim only damaged the driver''s seat, no other obvious damage to rest of the interior. Car is registered to one Julia Earnst, we''ve called through to the nearest station to get someone out to her home address."


    "Very well. Only the one witness?"


    "Only one that stayed on the scene. Traffic cam in the intersection likely caught the cars'' license plates that would have been facing this direction. The intersection was packed when the lights changed."


    The Sergeant leaned forward to look in the window before crouching to check the still white ceiling, unmarked by flame or even soot.


    "Right keep the car sealed till Forensics are here to process it. The remains look fragile, so no towing it anywhere till they''ve at least run through it once."


    8:30 PM Earnst Household - Western Sydney - Tregear


    Sam watched his wife holding the picture frame to her chest as she rocked back and forth.


    The police officers that had come by had been kind with asking their questions, and he''d used his phone to find his daughter''s phone. She''d gotten him to find it a few times in the past, so he didn''t have any issue with that.


    It had shown it in the vicinity of Parramatta road, near the intersection with Balmain Road.


    When they had asked him to ring it, the officer called someone else.


    They''d confirmed it could be heard ringing in the car, the ringtone matching the one his daughter had put against his number.


    A car that was stopped at the lights, his daughter''s car, their daughter''s car, a car with human remains within.


    Sitting on the couch next to his wife, he put his arms around her, and they both let their grief flow.


    <hr>


    She''d shucked the shells of the Lurkers, made a rough and smelly satchel from one section of the membrane and harvested all the acid glands. She was carrying it right now, and she wasn''t in a happy place.


    Why is my rotten profile still showing an inventory of none?


    Hmmm.


    Taking the satchel off her shoulder, she set it down on the ground, tempted as she was to kick the whole smelly lot away. The implication she could perhaps sell the glands, even if she didn''t know for what now, restrained her foot. Reaching into the roughly made container, she pulled out one of her gross and squishing prizes.


    Inventory: Gland


    Nada!


    Store: Gland


    Nada!


    Stock: Gland


    She hadn''t expected the result, but it had disappeared out of her hand, without any indication of what had happened. Calling up her profile again, she snorted, as she noted it was now indicating 1 gooey Lurker acid gland in the inventory section under her profile. Working through the collected items, she stored the rest of the glands, sections of shell, membrane, and tendons. Anything from the bodies that might be of use, her Demonic Lore, insisted that Demon body parts didn''t rot (or at least not any further if their form was always rotten).


    Analysis: Satchel


    [Satchel: Is that what you want to call it? Something vaguely resembling a carry bag, made from the inner flesh sack of a Scoured Plains Lurker. Why don''t you go for a step up next time and dig out its equivalent of a scrotum, and use the membrane from around that?


    Quality: Rough or should I put it bluntly crap.


    Crafter: J


    Value: You might have to pay someone to throw it in the rubbish.]


    [Haggling unlocked.


    Crafting: Leatherworking unlocked


    Inventory unlocked


    Inventory (0 -> 1)]


    Analysis: Inventory


    [Inventory: This is your inventory unless you wanted to peek into someone''s stock of unmentionables. A personal space that surprisingly lets you store things, this skill''s level impacts how much you can store. It also influences where the item has to be when storing it, and how near or far you can make items reappear from inventory.


    Current Limit: 10 kilograms


    Current Range: Self Hand job


    Your space''s current contents: Assorted Lurker bits and bobs]


    Trolling Bitch!


    Fine, I need to level more.


    If I kill more lurkers, I''ll get more glands to trade later and practice apparently bad leatherworking. Though needles made of shell bits, and stitching membrane with tendon likely isn''t going to get me the best result in any case.


    "If the Lurkers did come out of those side holes, then I need to be very careful about the size of playmates I might attract," Julia muttered to herself.


    The sounds of her words chilling her yet again as she found herself speaking Abyssal. She didn''t know why she had spoken English before; her profile said she could still speak it. However, even when she meant to say things in English since the fight started everything came out in the closest word in Abyssal. They actually had words for trucks, no idea if they meant the same things with the word. She just knew that when she went to say trucks, a hissing snarl resulted, which meant trucks to her.


    While she also knew Common Celestial, she felt that speaking that tongue in the Abyss might be Bad, with a huge B, and some accompanying fireworks.


    Let''s see if we can bait something up to the surface and practice with my Ki Strike.