Quills and I approached the reinforced door, ready to step into an unknown world of tunnels and cleaning. She handed me a large backpack, full of clunking plastic and wood tools. It was a lot lighter than I thought it’d be, but heavier than I’d hope. I swung it around onto my back.

“What’s the job?” I asked. 

“Luckily for us both, a clean up duty. And if we are even luckier, it will stay that way.” Quills responded.

“Got it.” I nodded back, as we opened the heavy door. 

We both stepped into the tunnel, a small employee platform of hexagon metal sat at the porch of the entryway. Quills sealed the door behind us. She pulled out her EDA, as I did mine. The screen flickered to life, humming lightly in my hand. It defaulted to a map screen, littered and twisting with passages and maintenance hallways that seemed to twist and turn like capillaries into the main arteries and veins of the mag rail network.

I gasped at its complexity. “Where are we to go?” I asked.

“It should have a yellow dot marked with a liquid drop symbol, that’s our destination.”

I looked back at the screen, and sure enough to our northwest there was indeed a dot for our job. I pondered this, “Hey Quills, this maze system seems rather complex, how are we so close to the destination?”

“A bit of luck, and that's also a bit of the mystery of the DPT. I don’t know how they made this place, but there has to be something to do with the weird construction of their offices, and how they connect to the tunnels.” Quills proposed.

“Is that why the hallways were so long? I asked.

Quills gave an exasperated look. “Lynn, I really couldn’t tell you. This place is dangerous as it is confusing and indescribable.”

I shook my head as we started walking down an employee passage alongside the mag rail tracks. “Will anyone I work with know?”

“Probably not.” Said Quills. “In fact, I suspect only the highest level of employees know. But I’ve seen shit down here that makes my spines stand on end. I doubt the architects know fully what’s in here.”

My mind began reeling again. “Wait wait wait, what kind of shit is down here? And what are we cleaning up?!” I asked.

“The usual fare of viscera, litter, debris, you name it. All sorts of gross and weird shit. And if you find anything good, you just might get a little bonus, if I don’t swipe it first.” Quills trailed off her voice. I could tell by the distant look in her face that she hated it here. I knew that I wouldn’t like it here either, that this was a means to an end, but it was mostly out of my hands now as I had a job to do.

The corridor was lit with a soft white and red series of lights along a smooth concrete floor. My heels clicked an echo down the piped and wired hallways. There was always a moderate hum of the mag rails currents washing over us, just on the other side of the wall between us and the tracks. If I could make it through today, I could talk to Shimmer to get a better picture of all of this.

“Say Quills..” I began. “What is the deal with your hair? Is it weird like mine too?”

Quills laughed, “Excuse me? I don’t think yours will ever be weird like mine.” I huffed out a breath.

“Mine’s plenty weird! I’m just getting used to it now is all…” Strands of brunette began to blend into black and purples, as they twisted their vines onto my shoulders and arms. Quills gave me a look. “I’m not sure if hair color changes are gonna be much help here, but maybe there’s something else you can do.” I reciprocated Quills’ look.

“Wait, how many people have the weird hair magic going on? Is it just us?” I didn’t want to give away anything about Shimmer. It wasn’t my place to say.

Quills began again, “Pretty much all of us do. Though usually new employees don’t get theirs until they last about a week to a month, depending on their luck. Though I don’t know if it's necessarily magic.”

“What’s with the variable wait?” I asked.

“Cause sometimes you don’t see any action until later, if you are lucky. And we can’t just give people the parasites needed to unleash your powers until you’ve ‘proved you can survive on the job long enough.’” Quills looked distant again, detached. I wanted to reach out, but I needed this information more than I could muster the patience to try to comfort her.

“Say that again? Parasites?” I asked.

“I’m not too bright on the details Lynn. It was likely a medicine looking thing of some sort you got. Some people get a pill to dissolve, some a shot. I’ve even heard a transfusion once happened.” Quills went on. “I hear so much from those I do get to talk to, but nothing comes up in any real pattern. It’s different in some way every time.”

“But you did use the word parasites.” I pushed.

“Yeah, it’s something like that. I can’t actually confirm it though. But it seems that whatever they put in us thrives down here. I’ve tried using my powers above ground and out of the system. Figured I could be a freak show for some internet show or something. Anything to get a stable income out of this job. But whenever I leave work, my abilities get weaker.” Quills explained.

“But not gone entirely, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, not entirely-” Quills stopped. I followed her lead. Our EDAs began to chirp.

Quills gestured to my bag. “Looks like we are here. It's time to get to work.”

An access door with a push bar pried itself open with Quills’ effort, and a gory scene of viscera had been laid before us. Mangled teeth and claws nearly embedded in the concrete, splashes of blood that would make Jackson Pollock blush, and other sinews polluted the tracks. It smelled like the hell it looked like, and its inhuman amount of parts only made the mind wander into fields of confusion of its origins.

My face scrunched up tightly. I pulled out my bag finally, revealing its contents. It was cleaning supplies of course. Mops, brooms, heavy duty cleaning solvents, gloves, boots, you name it. The only anomalies being a set of two telescopic rods with switches on the bottom of them. “What are these for?” I asked. 

“Visitors. Undesirables, anything you don’t like.” Quills responded, using an access faucet to fill a bucket with presumably hot water.

“That’s rather harsh to call homeless people that.” I accused her.

“They aren’t for homeless people, Lynn.” 

“What else? Pests?”

“You could call them that.” Quills gave me a grim look. 

“Okay could everyone cut the shit and tell me what the fuck is going on in these tunnels? Are the arm monsters things a real fucking thing? I wasn’t dreaming about that? I wasn’t just in a terrible nightmare of a mag rail accident?” 

I was at my limit. That incident felt real, and I never really processed it, but I just didn’t want to dwell on it. But now this was all too convenient, given the warnings and the lead up. I gave Quills a look again. “Are we sacrifices or something? What is this job?!” I shouted.

Quills sighed, “No, we aren’t. Not at least to my knowledge. We are cleaners, janitors of a sort. But this job isn’t just sanitization of tracks.” She threw a newly wet, chemically bathed mop to me. I caught it with my hands and hair.

“It’s also a job of extermination and pest control.” Quills finished.

–

Viscera pickup duty came and went. Bag the sinew and bones, pry the debris free and bag it too. Scrub and mop up the worst of the blood so it doesn’t build up, and sweep the dried surfaces. Quills’ ears then perked up.

“Hey Lynn, take a step back with me to the maintenance door.” She asked.

Moments later, both EDAs began to ring loudly. I checked back with the gadget. ‘INCOMING MAG RAIL. PROCEED TO A MAINTENANCE AREA FOR SHELTER.’ My hair began to frizz and spike, and I made a dash to the door. The ground began to hum, and then rumble. The walls themselves began to shift uncomfortably in their mortar and bricks. Violent yawns from deep in the tunnels began to stretch into the ears of myself and Quills. My balance became loosened, but I held onto a still shifting wall. Then, with a thunderous flash of violence, a mag rail blurred past my vision, threatening to tear my retinas off with its ferocity and speed.

And like that, silence.

Quills began, “This place looks good enough, and we cleaned it without much time to spare. It’s time to high tail it outta here Lynn.” She had a look of worry on her face.

“Is there something wrong, monsters maybe?” I asked with my heart still thumping with adrenaline.

“Ghouls usually follow mag rails, looking for road kill or worse, us.” Quills said solemnly. I nodded in agreement and we began to pack and proceed back to the tunnels. Tapping and stepping in unison, Quills and I made our way through yet more industrial passages. However, this time the route felt different. Left turns where I was sure there was a right. Straight aways where I had thought previous twists had existed. I looked at my EDA. It flickered to life, and indeed we were going in the right direction. 

“I could’ve sworn we took a different route before.” I pondered aloud.

“We did, and we didn’t. The tunnels don’t work the way you think they do.” Quills proposed. “They shift anytime a mag rail train passes through. Backtracking is a real bitch in here if one passes through. Most of the time its not a big deal, but if you run into ghouls, its a real fucked situation.

“How do you not have a panic attack daily, Quills?” I asked.

“I sometimes do, but it gets a little less worse most of the time.”

“Most of the time?”

“The bad days are when you lose people.” Quills noted. I nodded back at her. As if on cue, both our EDAs beeped in an uproar, vibrating this time too. We gave them a look. A red hazard symbol.

“Ghouls are in the area, I heard you’ve seen one of them before?” Quills asked.

“Yeah, it was awful.” I ran my fingers along the scar on my side. The medication helped immensely, I could hardly believe I was walking. But the memory was still imprinted on my skin nonetheless. My hair began to wrap itself around my arms and legs instinctually like armor and lances. “Don’t tell me I gotta deal with that.” I said, knowing the awful truth.

“Sorry girl, that’s a job for us. Plus, you earn commission on extermination and pest control.”

I sighed again. It was starting to get real old how much I was doing that now. Quills gave me the first genuine gentle smile she could, and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Cheer up Lynn, everyone deals with a ghoul from time to time. And if we are lucky, maybe it’ll be an easier one.” She said, trying to ease my nerves.

“An easier one?”

“Well, they are never easy per se, just easier.”

Quills and I slowed our pace, pushing closer to the blip on our EDAs, now set to silent. A maintenance door was now the only thing separating ourselves from the blip on the other side of the door. My breathing pace quickened sharply. My sides began to tighten, and I honestly felt like I could almost cry, but pushed the feeling down desperately. Quills slowly pushed the bar on the door, and it creeped open…

Shiny tracks were laid out on the pathway. The bricks felt absolute in the walls. The air was still and suffocating, and the tunnel darker than normal. The red lights of the tunnel flickered, dimmer and unsure of their ability to clasp onto life. 

*DING!*

A sharp strike on metal on metal rang through the tunnel.

*DING!*

It came from the left of the entryway into the tunnel before us.

*DING!*

A scuffling of steps approached closer. My hair tightened, and coiled around my left arm, spreading itself beyond just my arm. I exhaled, what I wanted more than anything else right now was to be safe, to make it home. Just a paycheck and a warm bed. Safe at home. My hair began to lace itself even further, stretching beyond far, far beyond its normal length. It dawned a black sheen to it, but morphed itself into a hardened, but flexible disc on my forearm. A shield. I looked towards Quills. Her body hair began to lengthen, a pinprick point with a serrated tip on each. I looked towards her hair only to see her normally short hair beginning to pulse outward, pouring down from the back of her head and draping down her back as it began to stiffen into javelin-like structures.

*DING!*

It was certainly closer this time. Quills motioned for me to take a look. I peered through the door, into the eye of the storm. A man in torn, ragged clothes was stumbling slowly, shuffling forward towards our location. An oversized mag rail rivet was pierced from the top of his head through and out from the bottom of his jaw and neck tissue. Each couple of steps, it would stumble harder, striking the tracks with a shoddy sledgehammer in its left handed grip.

*DING!*

There was only one, and there were two of us. This could be manageable. But what was I to expect? How strong are these ghouls anyway? At least it wasn’t the one from before. Quills shuffled next to me to peer in, and tapped me on the shoulder.

“It’s go-time, Lynn. We got this.” She reassured me, snapping a few javelins from the back of her head, a crimson dust spilling from the broken edges of the hair. She stepped forward and out the door to confront the ghoul. Quills boots clomped hard onto the concrete, as she strode outward to face the creature down. It had taken notice, and began to gurgle, and pick up its tempo towards her. Its sledgehammer began to drag on the ground, its shuffling mass beginning to break into a jog, and then a frenzied sprint as it shrieked at its perceived prey. 

Quills bit her lower lip, and steeled herself. This wasn’t the first time, and she was resolved to know it wouldn’t be the last. The beast finally flung itself forward in a pouncing motion. Quills deftly threw herself to the right, the creature missing her body. She quickly turned to lance the creature with a javelin, but the ghoul rebounded off the ground too quickly. A haymaker swing with its sledgehammer was barreling towards her. A low duck avoided the blow, but the creature was relentless in its assault, moving closer to clinch Quills. Its jaw distended revealing jagged, broken teeth and the rivet piercing through the roof and bottom of its mouth.

Quills called out, “Lynn, take a shot at it!”

My legs stayed my feet. I wanted to help her, but it was such desperate violence. How could I kill this thing? I only had a piddly stun baton, but this thing must be over six feet tall. Quills retreated another couple meters back. The ghoul was flailing its limbs and hammer in a frenzy. Quills then scored a shot in the creature’s gut with a hair javelin. It screeched gutturally, but never ceased its momentum. Eventually, the speed and ferocity was too much, and a glancing blow from the hammer struck Quills left wrist. She cried out in agony.

Fuck this. This wasn’t about me anymore. Quills was in danger and I wasn’t doing anything! The ice in my legs broke and I rushed forward, casting the stun baton out and my shield forward. The ghoul turned to face the barrage, but it was too late to shift its momentum towards me. I collided with the beast shield first, my hair beginning to drift from its abyssal black tone to a pink-gold. 

“Fuck you!” I cried out. I swung the stun baton but the monster caught it with its flailing arm, knocking it away. “Quills! Kill it!” I shouted, it was quickly pushing back against me now that it had reoriented itself against me. Quills pulled another two javelins, throwing the first, skewering the right thigh, and the other catching the beast on its side. Still the beast continued, pushing me onto my back. Seizing the opportunity the monster slammed its hammer upon my hair shield, my arm radiating pain from the blow, but still unharmed. 

Quills threw herself towards the beast, a longer hair spear in her hand to drive through the side of the beast, only to be parried. Quills’ guard was wide open, and the beast switched stances to lunge at her exposed abdomen. I reached underneath my guard and pulled out the creature’s ankles with my hair, and the monster slammed belly first onto the concrete floor.

“Get it now!” I shouted from the ground. Quills recovered quickly and seized the moment skewering the beast through its spine, now finally giving out. It writhed on the ground useless, its legs no longer working. I scrambled quickly to my feet, and away from the ghoul, pulling the sledgehammer away with me. Quills pulled a loose javelin from the tunnel that had missed earlier, sticking it into the head of the beast, and another into where Quills would estimate its heart resided. Its flailing bled into squirming, which bled into twitching, then stillness. Now the tunnel was only populated by the ragged breaths of two women. 

“That’s an easier one?” I gasped out.

“Yeah..” Quills answered, “Believe it or not.”

“Why don’t you travel in bigger groups then?” I asked, dumbfoundedly.

“Understaffed, mostly. Spread way too thin.” Quills began to hiccup from the adrenaline, her spines flaring in tempo. I couldn’t believe it, even here of all places the DPT couldn’t be fucking bothered to hire more people.

“In fairness, this isn’t a job most people could stomach, or likely survive. Many don’t last a week.” Quills said, as if she was answering my thoughts. “Well, it seems that now is a good enough time as any to ping this location for clean up. I’d really like to get my wrist looked at.” Quills said. It was true, her wrist was already swelling badly, and bleeding on top of that. I used the EDA to ping our coordinates, and we finally made our way back to home base.

–

I folded my clothes up, and walked into the showers. Company supplied shampoo and soap lined on the wall shelves just for situations like this. The water was hot, and helped release the tension in my shoulders and scalp. My head was ringing from the taut pull of my hair during the fight. It would be something I’d need to get used to if I wanted to survive. Could I even quit? Would the company let me, knowing that I already had the hair powers? The shower head spurted out more water at a higher, sudden pressure. It felt heavenly, my arm was still killing me from earlier.

How strong was my hair exactly? What were its limits? I formed a shield, and that must mean I could form other things. It shimmered in colors while wet. My emotions made me wear my heart on my sleeve, nearly literally at times. I felt unsure, but I did know that I needed to talk to Shimmer again. I had so much to ask her, so much to learn.

I turned the shower head off, and dried myself before getting into my clothes from before the interview. Tying my shoes, Quills entered the room, now with a bandaged hand and wrist. “How are you holding up, Lynn?” She asked.

I smiled, “I could ask you the same thing.”

“You could, but I’m asking you instead.” She replied.

“I’m… fine. Honestly not a fan of how that went, but I need to get a better control of my hair. I was a glorified distraction out there.” I said, dejectedly.

“You did get that fucker off of me, and pulled him down. That counts, and it's why we are still here.”

“True.” I said. So I guess it wasn’t all bad. Though I need to find Shimmer.” I replied.

“She’s probably finishing her shift around this time. Wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to find you too. She seems to like you a lot.”

I did a double take. “Wait, do you know her?” I asked.

“Of course, we all know each other. Some of us even hate each other. Shimmer’s a bit of a rebel, and often doesn’t play well with the other teams. But she’s got a couple favorites. She at least acknowledges me sometimes.” She went on.

“Is there any way to know when she will be back? She’s kinda my ride now that I remember it.” I asked.

“Not usually, no time sheets that I am aware of really.” She replied. 

“I guess I’ll have to wait for her then.”

“If that’s what you gotta do. I’m gonna go home and pass the fuck out. Later girl.”

With that, Quills exited the locker room. I packed the rest of my belongings. I would have to just wait outside for Shimmer.