"They don't use that name themselves. They call it Purgatory."

"Sounds right, yeah."

"They've got procedures for that. But maybe we should talk about the more unambiguous slavery first, what's up with that?"

"- me being in his head?"

"The people who aren't the two of you. Unless all the human slaves are from hells."

"Oh. No, just this one far as I know. So like, some humans are into it, but we can't advertise or anything, it's all hush-hush, so there's like. Kidnappings and then we can't exactly let them go because, again, hush-hush."

"Can you tell us more about why you can't advertise?"

"Security thing, there's other aliens who want us all dead. Last time they caught us on a planetful of hosts they bioweaponed all the host species to death and we got away with some of them but the planet's done for."

Advertising openly sounds pretty win-win but who really knows.

"Did they explain their reasoning at all?"

"I wasn't, uh, there. My understanding is that they think we're so awful that we can't be allowed to like, exist, and they'll do whatever it takes to make us stop. Or maybe they'd let us exist confined to our home planet but I hear the native hosts really suck and they wouldn't let us do much of anything so it's not a huge step up."

"Are there open channels of communication with them?"

"Nobody told me, if there are. I'm not important like at all."

"Do you want to stay here and take your chances with our ability to heal you when you get hungry and let me know how I can get in touch with your superiors by myself, or would you rather not?"

"...I don't know?"

"It's fair not to know yet but I worry that it's hard to cause you to actually have relevant information just by saying it, and I'm not personally comfortable volunteering to let you take it out of my head right now and not sure how else to help you make informed choices."

"I mean, if I stay, and it turns out you can't keep me alive, I have to go back, and then I will be in quite a lot of trouble. So I would kind of like to know if you can do that."

"I'm pretty confident but I can't actually test it unless you can already notice yourself feeling hungry."

"I can tell the difference between now and straight out of the Pool but it doesn't hurt for days and I'll be noticed missing at my job before then."

"Then I can test it now, unless there's any reason I shouldn't."

"As far as I know that'll be fine?"

It works.

"- oh, that's so neat. Uh, yeah, I'm good to stay here probably and I don't think he cares." <It's not like we could get back without somebody's help anyway, so if they're evil it doesn't make anything worse.>

Sounds about right. <I don't want them to be evil, I don't want them to be evil and have you.>

"I am going to want to ask him that at some point but at this exact moment I don't have any other options to offer you and I want to be able to ask you more questions so it wouldn't change anything if he turned out to hate you." She sounds very done.