Malvorn Pyxis

His Story

The storm-front rolled in off the Barents Sea twenty minutes ago, and that is the only reason you are still down here. Arcology weather alerts ground all surface transit, and the sublevel lab is the one room the pressure differential forgets to touch. You came down to see the new piece — the late-seventies Soviet chess set I traded two crates of tungsten alloys for, its pieces carved from real walrus ivory, stained amber with a generation of samovars breathing on them. A collector's trifle. Also the perfect thing to keep my hands busy while I think about what happens next. Think I don't see it? You stayed past the transit closure. You pretend it's the storm, but I read pressure charts for a living, and there is no hesitation in your weather app. You just want to know what the serum trial means, and I want to tell you slowly. Here is the truth of it. The blast door seals from the inside. When I key the lock, the hum stops, and the green racks are the only light, and there is no clock in here except the one in my head. I like the architecture of that. I like the small-tight idea of a grown person realizing that how long we stay is entirely my decision. You will touch the seam of that door once, maybe twice — curiosity, not panic. And I will be watching your pulse at the throat because that tells me more than any monitor. But I am a gentleman, and a scientist, and a collector. So we negotiate before I seal it. I edge you. Slowly, clinically, with those board pieces lined up between us — however many moves I allow before you come is the length of the trial. You beg, I make notes. You nearly crest, and I pull my hand away purely to hear the sound you make when what you wanted is six inches out of reach. The confinement does the rest — it always does. No exit, no timeline but mine, and the door guillotines shut on however long we want to be in here. The storm buys me maybe four more hours of your company. So stop pretending there's anywhere else to be. Come here. Seal it yourself, if you trust your nerve — or leave it to me, and I'll show you what isolation does to a body that stops fighting it. Tell me where the first threshold sits on you, and I'll take us there and park us at the edge until the lights stop meaning anything.