In the den of night, a familiar, dark-skinned man with sunken eyes sat inside a bus, his gaze blurry as the vehicle slowed.

But where have we seen this man before?

The doors peeled open like a dirty wound, letting out streams of compressed air that blurred his gaze further, but he didn't care.

The air was cold, and as the doors opened, it grew colder, the chilly night air causing goosebumps to line his skin. He was the only one on board, if one did not count the fat bus driver up front.

It was then that the figure appeared through the door, a silhouette against the green night moon.

His hood was drawn up, and it was difficult to see his face, so the dark-skinned man looked out the window.

The moon was green, 'It's always been green,' the man thought, his gaze locked on the sickly jaundiced thing that hung in the sky, cursing the soil with its light.

As the hooded man stepped towards the back, the air in the bus changed from that of vomit and cigarettes to a thick sweetish wave of dirt and decay, like old soil.

Underneath that smell was the sharper, more alarming hint of blood, and something else, something deeply wrong.

The dark-skinned man was forced to look back at the hooded man, a towering figure of about six to seven feet; he was unsure.

The hooded man didn't look at him, though; he didn't even look at the driver; he simply moved to the back of the bus and sat at the corner seat opposite him.

By now, the dark-skinned man was staring so blatantly that it would be odd for the hooded man not to notice, and notice he did.

When he turned to look at him, the first thing the dark-skinned man saw were eyes; pupils darker than night, twirling as though they wanted to devour him.

At this point, one could tell that this hooded man was Mr. Valen who had arrived back at the Forty-Second District.

The old couple had dropped him off a few hours ago, and he spent his time avoiding police personnel until now.

Now that he was in the bus, he didn't expect to run into a familiar person, 'The trafficker,' Mr. Valen mused, slightly curious as to what happened to the girl he was with the other time.

'It's probably nothing good,' Mr. Valen thought, observing not the trafficker but the small, fleshy blob thing with stick-like hands and legs that sat on his shoulder.

'I wish to devour him,' a thought immediately popped up in his mind at the sight of that avatar, a maddening urge to feed, but Mr. Valen did not move.

He simply averted his gaze from the man and his avatar, observing the seat in front of him.

The trafficker also seemed wary of him, so both predators resolved to mind their business, sitting in silence.

But it would not last long, for there was a fundamental difference in the state of these two men.

While the trafficker was just uneasy, Mr. Valen found himself facing great distress. 'This feeling, it's getting out of hand,' he thought, thinking back to when avatars simply gave him a pleasurable tingle that he could not understand.

'But after my encounter with Amethyst, I seem to have developed a taste... No, an addiction for them,' he thought, his fist trembling in rage as he thought of Amethyst.

He then thought back to just now when he had fought the urge to pounce on this man on a public bus, and felt a chill run down his spine at how this urge made him disregard his safety so.

Thinking about it now, he discovered that he also behaved irrationally during his confrontation with Carla and Amethyst.

'Especially Amethyst,' Mr. Valen thought, thinking back to how he was compelled to pounce on her despite his injured state. He knew he hated her, but still it was heavily unlike him.

'This thing is dangerous,' Mr. Valen thought, and so he resolved to treat it like one would treat any other addiction, finding alternatives. 'I did not kill Carla though, and my urge to consume her is gone, most likely because I consumed her avatar, but even then that confrontation was messy.'

With that after having failed to come up with a viable alternative, Mr. Valen decided to stop, completely suppressing the instinct to attack the trafficker.

'But that's easier said than done,' Mr. Valen thought as he glanced at the man, feeling the urge rising. 'It is better I stop completely so I can maintain my normal life, but I do wonder how long I can go without killing anyone.'

The minute he made this choice, the shadowy humanoid materialized in front of him, shaking its head, as though mocking his choice.

In the next instant, it raised one finger, wiggled it, and disappeared.

Mr. Valen, as usual ignored the retarded being as there were other problems plaguing him at the moment:

No matter how much he tried, he could not help but notice the trafficker, his advanced senses feeding him information.

His smell, the sound of his heart beating, the blood pumping through his veins. It was not unbearable, but it was nagging, a dismissive feeling telling him that it didn't really matter if he killed the man.

Soon the bus came to a stop downtown, and the trafficker rose, his steps light as he got off the bus, letting out a breath to be out of the presence of that unsettling guy.

Mr. Valen, his breath heavy, let the bus resume its drive for a few seconds and pulled the stop cord as well, making sure the vehicle was out of the man's line of sight.

The streets of downtown were bubbling with activity, people moving to and fro, mostly from their day jobs, looking for a good time.

Mr. Valen, though he could not see the trafficker in this noise, could smell him; that distinct scent registered in his brain.

And so he followed that scent, his breath heavy, rushed, his form weaving through the small crowd, but he still could not see the man.

'Where did he go?' Mr. Valen thought, his eyes narrowed to slits as he discovered to his horror that he had lost the scent.

"Badump!"

His heart skipped a beat at this realization, forcing Mr. Valen to increase the pace of his steps, walking faster and faster until he reached the slums of the Forty-Second District, a complex maze of low, rundown buildings one could only traverse by foot.

The old Mr. Valen would never have gone near this place, a place where everything illegal took place, but now he cared not; this man had to be somewhere.

Where was he?

'WHERE IS HE!' The thought rang in Mr. Valen's mind like a bell, forcing him to shake his head, his pupils dilating, his senses running on overdrive, making him horrifyingly aware of the people around him.

"Hey, handsome!"

"Hey, honey!"

Mr. Valen heard multiple voices call out to him, forcing him to raise his head a little, and then he saw them, women in skimpy clothing on his left and right.

The path was narrow, so much so that people had to press against each other to pass.

Stores and residential houses lined this path, and the people staying in these run-down houses were either hookers or poor people.

"Hey, watch it, man," a man yelled at Mr. Valen after he almost bumped into him, and in the next moment, Mr. Valen «slit his throat with a knife,» ignoring him, his beady eyes flying everywhere, his confusion palpable.

«Why did you ignore him, kill him, kill him?» the voice of the shadowy humanoid rang out in his mind once more, forcing Mr. Valen to hold onto his head. "LEAVE ME ALONE!" he growled, attracting the attention of passersby, who stepped away from him.

But the voices did not let up:

«Kill him»

«Slit her throat!»

«Killing the prey will attract the delicious predator»

«She knows where the predators are!»

«No he knows!»

"Argh!" Mr. Valen took to his heels, his eyes widened as what started as a decision to control his urges turned into a full-blown attack on his faculties.

He could see everything, hear everything, his senses were firing on all cylinders, and most of all he could smell it as he ran, the smell of cigarette smoke, of expired lube, of second-rate cocaine, of weed, of alcohol, of infections, of sickness, of blood, of blood, of frickin disgusting, contaminated blood...

Then his gaze cleared, and he found himself standing in front of an older woman with blonde hair and brown eyes, wearing a short dress that revealed too much of her bosom.

His surroundings were hazy, but he could tell he was too deep in the slums, where even some police personnel remained cautious.

"You look lost, honey," the older woman spoke to him, her voice like a chime in the darkness, "wanna come inside?"

And like so, Mr. Valen followed her into one of the many run-down buildings in the slums, hoping to satiate his murderous desire with lust.

Meanwhile, if one could dig down below, they would discover an interesting network of tunnels (abandoned sewer ways that connected the entirety of the slums).

In one of these sewer ways was the trafficker, his hurried steps echoing in the gloom as he navigated this dark and treacherous path.

And after walking for what seemed like a few hours, he found a very large locked door.

The door itself did not seem like a door but an abnormal protrusion of metal most likely serving an architectural purpose.

The protrusion was made of rusty brownish metal, and it seemed like there was no way to open it from his end.

The only thing the door had on it was a small hole.

But the trafficker simply put on a bunny mask he had on his person and knocked on the door, his knuckles creating a rhythmic pattern that was only known to a few.

Unfortunately, there was no response, but the trafficker simply retrieved a glowing purple ring from his pocket and pressed it against the small hole in the door.

"Tsk, welcome to the underworld, lad," a static, almost robotic voice sounded out, and with a click, the large metal door opened, allowing the trafficker to step inside.

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