Human was not in the van.

Once again, Death debated abandoning her humanlike form to find the Beast-God and once again, she rejected the idea. Not only was it not necessary, this was interesting in a way she hadn’t seen in a long time. Probably ever.

Death wasn’t certain she’d had the capability to be interested in things before she took an Incarnate. At least, not things that weren’t directly connected to her portfolio. She certainly hadn’t understood many things; she wouldn’t have understood why blinding herself to preserve the mystery was interesting.

“Get in and buckle yourself in.” The annoying man gestured with the pistol towards the open van door. He clearly expected the gun to be all he needed to ensure compliance, but 

Death shrugged internally and did as he said; this was all part of playing along until she found Human and figured out what was going on, after all. She’d definitely been wrong about what was the most likely thing to kill the annoying man early, however. A heart attack was still possible, but only if it managed to happen before Death got around to killing him. She didn’t give it high odds.

Other than a pair of seats, the back of the van was empty. The space behind the pair of seats had clearly been cleaned, but Death could easily see that something dying had lain there for a while. It hadn’t died in the van; in fact, Death thought it had recovered afterwards, probably by being healed. That didn’t mean it hadn’t come close to death. If it hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been able to see the residue.

There was a metal mesh sandwiched between a pair of clear panes between her and the two front seats. Death was certain that made the driver and the annoying man in the passenger seat feel like they were safe. It didn’t actually make them safe, but it wasn’t time to show them that yet. Instead, Death relaxed and leaned back in the seat; she wanted to see where they went.

Death didn’t have the context to know that the fact that she’d seen their faces and that she could see out the windows meant they didn’t plan to release her alive, but even if she had known, she wouldn’t have cared. She also didn’t have any idea that being taken to a warehouse building near the docks meant anything; she didn’t even know that was what the building was.

When they reached the warehouse, an entire section had been converted to holding cells. It was interesting to see what they’d collected; other than herself and Human, Death saw several actual humans, a Sterath, two Traa, and a deer. There was also a holding cell that seemed to be empty but had clearly once held something, as the concrete floor had a near-circular area that had clearly been dug out and refilled at some point.

There were limited signs of death in the building; most of it was for small creatures. Death doubted it would stay that way.

The annoying man indicated the cell next to Human’s for Death. He had his pistol out again, but seemed to have relaxed a lot. “Make yourself comfortable; sleep off your drinking. There will be someone to see you in the morning.”

Death made her way into the makeshift cell and sat on the mattress on the floor. She wasn’t an expert in humans, but she was fairly confident this wasn’t how they tried to be treated.

One of the two people flanking the annoying man locked the cell door, then the three of them headed out of the area. 

Human waited until they were gone to speak. “The entire area is monitored for both sound and vision.”

Death shrugged. She didn’t really care. She knew Serenity would probably care if there were mana sensors, but he had people he cared about that his behavior could affect. He also cared about not killing too many people. Death didn’t.

Well, she cared about his people because he did, at least to an extent. Serenity affected her because he was her Incarnate; that was how it worked. In this case, however, she wasn’t constrained. 

“Do you want to leave here now or is there something you want to accomplish first?” Death assumed there was a reason Human had allowed herself to be taken here. Human was Death’s reason, but Death expected that Human could have gotten out whenever she wanted to, or simply not come in the first place. A Beast God was not weak when surrounded by their Beast.

“I wanted to know what was going on,” Human admitted. “Curiosity is probably my biggest weakness. Which makes sense, really.”

Death shrugged. She didn’t know enough about humans in general to know whether they had other huge weaknesses. She knew about how they died, not how they lived. How they died didn’t really matter in reference to Human; she wouldn’t die until her Beasts were too weak to sustain her. “You said you wanted to know. Does that mean you don’t care now?”

Human paused and had to think. 

Death simply waited. Death was patient; it came when it came and she was the same way. Well, she had been the same way; she knew taking Serenity as her Incarnate had changed her. Even so, he was patient and not really well bound by Time, so it wasn’t like that part of herself had changed.

“Yes, I think I do. So … please don’t do anything to get us out of here until I say so, okay?” Human placed a lot of stress on the word anything, enough that even Death noticed. 

“Okay. Let me know if you need my help.” Death paused, then asked the question that she’d asked Human before and would probably ask again. “So, what do you think of Earth now?”

Human laughed. That wasn’t the response Death expected; she’d always given thoughtful answers before. “I should have known you’d ask that again. The planet’s full of humans; this only makes that more obvious.”

Human was happy, then? Death smiled and shrugged to herself; she hadn’t expected that being abducted would make Human happy. Maybe she shouldn’t kill everyone involved?

Naah. She was pretty sure that leaving them alive wasn’t what Serenity would do. She’d have to ask Human once Human had her answers. For now, she relaxed on the mattress and paid more attention to what Death was happening across the universe instead of what her avatar was doing. Limiting herself didn’t change much about Death, but it was still good to watch sometimes. 

It was pleasant, if nothing else.

---

The next morning, the annoying man was back. This time, he had two people with him that Death hadn’t seen before. One was a younger man, in good shape and overtly armed. He looked a lot like the man who locked the door to her cell the previous night, though he definitely wasn’t the same man. He’d live longer than the man from the previous night, at least as long as he continued to exercise the way he had been; death wasn’t close to him for now unless Death decided he needed to die. Death guessed he was probably there as muscle.

“Your two latest anomalies don’t look like much,” the older woman said. She was in generally good physical shape, but untreated breast cancer meant that her physical shape didn’t really matter. Death knew there were many ways to handle breast cancer, but if she did nothing, she’d die in less than two years. “Two girls who were partying last night?”

The annoying man that would die when Human decided she knew enough looked nervous. He cleared his throat before he spoke. “They aren’t what they seem. Neither of them registers on the MANIC at all.”

The lady with breast cancer raised an eyebrow. “Show me.”

The annoying man pulled out something that looked a lot like one of the larger phones Earth-humans carried. Death assumed it was the “MANIC,” whatever that meant. 

“It’s pegged,” the lady stated. “That doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“You always have to adjust for ambient levels before you start checking individuals,” the man stated. “Here, let me.”

He tapped on it a few times, then seemed to aim the top of the “phone” at the woman. He showed her the screen, then aimed it at Death before showing it to the woman again.

“I see what you mean. It’s like she isn’t there at all; even a child has a better response than that.”

Human didn’t seem to want to wait any longer. “What, you kidnapped me because I know how to control my aura? The hell you say.”

“Control your aura? Please explain.” The woman’s voice was cold but interested.

Death leaned forward a little but stayed seated on her mattress. This was sure to be interesting.

“The hell I will,” Human shouted.

“This is important; it’s knowledge that we need to have to deal with the invaders. You will help or I will consider you a traitor to Humanity.” The woman tilted her head. “We’ll start taking away privileges; I’m thinking that not feeding you today might make you more amenable.”

The two men with her both seemed uncomfortable but neither objected.

Death couldn’t suppress her laughter. Calling Human a “traitor to Humanity” was hilarious.

The woman with breast cancer’s gaze snapped to Death in a glare. “If you think it’s so funny, you can talk! You’ll get the same restrictions she does until one of you explains your secret!”

For some reason, Human didn’t laugh. She shook her head and sounded sad when she spoke. “They can all die. Keep the prisoners alive, please.”

That was clear enough. It also met Death’s criteria of being what Serenity would do; she knew he didn’t like people who tried to take instead of asking, after all, and this was a question that she would happily have answered if the annoying man had just asked. After all, Serenity would have, and doing what Serenity did was a good way to deal with people.

The woman with breast cancer and the man who was clearly going to die because he kept annoying Death both collapsed where they stood. Breast cancer wasn’t the woman’s cause of death, but “annoying Death” was definitely the major contributor to the man’s demise. The guard gaped at them.

Death gave Human a glance. Was she supposed to kill the guard as well? She wasn’t certain if Serenity would do that or not; he might give the guard a chance to run if Human didn’t specifically want him dead.

Human nodded. “They can all die. The ones in the cars, the ones who just guarded this place, all of them can die.” Human sounded furious. 

The guard in front of Death collapsed as he started to turn away from them. Elsewhere in the city, a man driving a black van died at the wheel and veered off the road. He didn’t hit any pedestrians; Death was careful. The others Death had seen weren’t doing anything dangerous to others, so they simply collapsed where they were. 

“The ones I know of are all dead,” Death reported. “I expect that there are others I don’t know about, however; I never saw the people who took you if it wasn’t the same people who took me.”

“We’ll deal with that once we figure out how to get out of here,” Human snarled. “I should have had you leave him alive long enough to get his key.”

Oh. That was easy; as Serenity so often said, anything could die. Death held her hand up to the bar in front of her and debated how to handle it for a moment; dealing with the rock would be easier than the metal. It was limestone and therefore made of the dead, after all. She could simply move it out of the way.

Death smacked the bars in front of her; the entire section simply fell over with the stone no longer holding it in place. 

Human watched, then pulled herself back and whalloped the bars in front of her, clearly expecting resistance. Death made certain that the rock gave way, so the section Human had grabbed flew away from her instead of merely falling over.

“Should we let the others out?” Death couldn’t really apply “what would Serenity do” to them; she didn’t know enough and she knew she didn’t have the background to make the judgments he would.

“No,” Human snapped. “Someone else can do that. Let’s just get out of here.”

That didn’t really seem to line up with Human’s earlier curiosity, but Death had noticed that Serenity changed his mind sometimes; this seemed like one of those time. Death followed Human out, but noticed that Human grabbed the MANIC device before she left.