And there's the brick wall. Hi, brick wall, meet forehead. Didn't expect you two to get acquainted so soon. 

His head spins and he feels himself be lifted off his feet, and he's resigning himself already to whatever's about to happen, wherever he's about to be taken. Nobody's coming after him here.

Wrong.

The silhouette of a woman appears at the end of the alley.

"You're going to put him down, now," she says in a voice that brooks no arguments, like an elementary school teacher who knows exactly what you did.

He feels himself swing around as the man turns. His head knocks into the wall again. Ow.

"None of your business what I do," says the man gruffly.

"You're committing assault. And attempted rape, unless I'm badly mistaken. Would you rather I make it the police's business?"

The man growls, pauses for a second, then drops his leather-clad cargo (who lands in a heap) and leaves the alley at a good clip.

It only takes a few seconds before he sits up and groans, wiping a little trickle of blood off his forehead.

She walks over and kneels down beside him.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I, uh..."

He squints up at her face.

"...have we met before, or something? I don't think I know you."

"...Not as far as I know?"

"Huh."

He scoots back against the wall to lean against it.

"Why'd you help me out?"

"Because...you were being...assaulted?"

"Yeah, well, when you put it like that..."

"Mhm. Need any medical attention?"

"Nah, I'm a weirdo."

He holds out his hand.

"I'm Z. You?"

"Edie!" She shakes his hand. "Does being a weirdo make you immune to concussions?"

"My special kind of being a weirdo makes concussions last, like, half an hour at most."

"Ooh. Regen factor?"

"Factor 4 and proud."

He stands up, a little wobbly.

"So, what brings you out here to talk to prostitutes, anyway?"

"Running errands, took a shortcut."

"Glad you did. I hate that guy."

He reaches out a hand to help her up.

She gets up. "Is he liable to bother you again?"

Shrug.

"Not sure. He only just started hanging around here. You might've scared him off."

"I hope so."

He nods.

"...You didn't get all jumpy when I gave you my number. You high-factor too?"

"My sister is!"

"Oh, nice. Tell her hi from the dude you saved in an alley."

Nod.

"--So I have a question but I'm not sure how rude it is."

"Go ahead, shoot. I love rude questions."

"Why are you doing this? I have nothing against sex work qua sex work but streetwalking is, uh, dangerous."

"...yeah, definitely dangerous. Less for me than most people, I patch up pretty fast, but...uh, I don't have enough subscribers to pay rent this month, so..."

"Subscribers?"

"I cut myself up and show the internet. People pay for it. Gotta use my special talents somehow."

Giggle. "Selling your organs on the black market not working out?"

"Nah, nobody wants to buy my organs. Who knows where they've been?"

"People buy kidneys harvested from drunk Mardi Gras college students in New Orleans."

"Maybe there's some hope for my weird spleen after all."

"Perhaps! Mind, I have no idea how to get in touch with the black market."

"...pretty sure if I ask somebody 'hey, how do I sell my infinite organs" I'll get kidnapped and chained up in a basement."

"You're probably right!"

"...anyway, yeah. That's my tragic hooker story."

"Wanna crash at my place? My sister and I have a guest room. And we ran out of creepy rapist cereal last Tuesday."

"...seriously?"

He looks a little wary immediately, looks her over in a different light.

"No, creepy rapist cereal is not seriously a thing."

"No, I mean...you'd do that?"

"I have a spare room, you have a high factor..."

He relaxes, just a little.

"That's pretty cool of you. I usually, uh, work from home, though..."

"Does cutting yourself open on the internet usually get loud?"

"Extremely. It's including but not limited to cutting myself."

"Guess we'll have to figure something out for soundproofing, then."

"...you're really serious about this, huh?"

He looks amazed.

"Hey, I take my irresponsible spur-of-the-moment commitments seriously."

“We are definitely gonna get along.”

"I'm glad to hear it!"

"Should I just go home and throw all my stuff in my car?"

"I don't see why not."

He starts towards the entrance of the alley right away before he remembers something sort of important.

"...uh, I should probably ask where you live first."

"I'll walk back to your apartment with you and help you move stuff into your car and give you directions."

He grins, nods and heads for the exit with her.

"Do you adopt a lot of weirdos?"

"Not as such."

"Aww. I feel special."

"I'd call factor four pretty special!"

"Hey, I'm not just eternally regenerating meat! I have feelings!"

He looks pleased.

"Of course you do," she says firmly.

...huh. He didn't expect her to take that seriously.

He chews on that for a minute, until they round the corner to his apartment building. It looks pretty decent, for something in this area.

"I guess it's a good thing I have, like, two actual pieces of furniture."

"Or at least it has a silver lining," she agrees.

Getting up to the apartment requires climbing a couple flights of stairs, but it's certainly not unmanageable.

It's tiny, but it's relatively clean, although there's some degree of organized chaos in the kitchen area. The only real pieces of furniture in the place are a futon-sofa-bed monstrosity, a beat-up little desk with a chair, and some drawers.

There's a fairly large box tucked under the monstrosity, and a tray on the desk covered in what are unmistakably surgical instruments.

"Oh, nice," she says when she sees them. "And here I thought all you'd have to cut yourself with was a box cutter and some razors."

He grins.

"That's what it was at first, but it turns out people on the internet really liked the idea of buying me scalpels when I asked."

"That would explain it."

He kneels down next to the futon monstrosity and, with some difficulty, tugs a suitcase out from underneath.

"You know, you're more chill about this than anyone has ever been."

"Most people wouldn't have been chill about the sex work, either, it's just that I have actual standards for my behavior."

"A lot of people would say that means you don't have standards for mine."

He proceeds with the suitcase to some neat piles of folded clothes in the corner and starts loading them in.

"Yes, but those people are wrong and stupid."

“Yeah, I try to tell people that, but it’s always ‘who are you? You’re disrupting class! Do you even go to school here?’”

He shuffles his clothes around in the suitcase.

"Interrupt universities often?"

“I mean, not often. Especially not anymore. Apparently auditing a class and then arguing with the professor is bad or something.”

"I vote or something."

He laughs and, with difficulty, shuts the suitcase so he can lug the box out from under the monstrosity.

“From experience?”

"From common sense! If someone is going to teach a thing they shouldn't try to strike down attempts to engage with the material."

“I don’t think she expected an objection from an actual prostitute.”

"A lack of foresight on her part does not constitute an objectionable action on your part."

“No, she just had a really hilarious expression by the time I stopped talking.”

The frame of the momstrosity disassembles fairly quickly with some help from a multitool he had in one of the drawers. (The drawers appear to mostly be full of non-clothing miscellany.)

"Fair enough. Anything I can do to help?"

“With packing or my education?”

“...hang on, if I can find that stretch wrap you can help me wrap these up, save a lot of emptying drawers...”

He goes to dig in a kitchen cabinet.

"Well I meant packing, but..."

He produces a roll of stretch wrap and waves it triumphantly.

“Well, I’m not taking that class again anyway.”

"There's other classes!"

“Yeah, but—here, help me with this.”

He ushers her over to the drawers and moves her hand to hold the end of the wrap in place.

She assists as instructed. 

He has the drawers wrapped in short order.

"You promise you're not a serial killer, right?"

"I'm not even a singular killer, I promise."

"Technically if you collected guys with healing factors and were really careful not to overdo it that'd still be true."

He yanks a bin out from under the sink and starts filling it with kitchen implements. There's not much to pack.

"Although I guess I wouldn't mind that so much."

She makes a face. "I'd actually become a serial killer before I preyed on people with factors."

"I mean, technically everybody's got something."

He starts tossing kitchen towels in with the plates in a vain hope that some of it won't break.

"Still a precog if all you can do is guess coin flips, and all that."

"I mean, yes, but if I was kidnapping people specifically for having a high enough healing factor to survive horrible things, that would be evil."

"Yep. Pretty sure you're not evil, but I've gotta cover my bases. So if it turns out you are I'll have been...right, beforehand, or something."

He tosses a bag of silverware in the bin and seals it.

"I'm not very good at this."

"I promise you if I turn out to be secretly evil it will be a classy kind of evil, not one that involves preying on a socially-disadvantaged minority."

"Do we honestly count?"

He finds a case and starts packing in the scalpels and related implements.

"I get that we have bad rep sometimes but we are the people who can blow up buildings with our minds."

"If it's the kind of thing where the incentives suggest you hide in a metaphorical closet then it counts."