Well in that case it's happening. He doesn't make a huge production out of it; it barely prolongs the shower beyond what it would likely have been anyway (not that this is a short shower, since this time there is shampoo and stuff and that's exciting). And then they get dressed and hop on the bus to the mall.

Atsinni swings through the Nordstrom to nod at the fitting room attendant and duck into a back room to confirm with her that he's Atsinni, this is what his host looks like, yeah he can show up earlier tomorrow he'll set an alarm. "Do you need the Pool today?"

"I could wait till tomorrow morning but as long as I work here seems wise not to push it."

"Yeah, all right. Come right before lunch or he'll puke in the cells, if he's a puker, and the Taxxons don't get it all reliably."

"Gotcha."

And they are off to patrol the mall.

Shampoo is exciting. It's not as new to him but it's still nice.

The mall is also nice.

<What are Taxxons?>

<Another kinda host. There were some around when we nabbed you but it was too dark to see them, there'll be some around in the Pool. They're the centipedey guys.>

<Huh, okay.> That will probably be interesting but he's trying not to anticipate anything about the Pool too much.

In between noticing things about the mall he tries to figure out how to square a circle.

Atsinni drifts around the mall, window-shopping, trying on clothes, actually buying some clothes but asking them to be held for him till later, taking selfies wearing half the merch at a sunglasses kiosk and buying a pointy-cornered red pair with rhinestones which the proprietor pronounces "interestingly genderfuck", and when he finds the whiff of Cinnabon too tempting, back to Nordstrom to go through the secret passage in the employee bathroom. There's stairs, and after they've gone down the first flight, they can hear the screaming!

Oh, it's not going to be lonely. Hell is often lonely. They presumably have much less space here.

Atsinni introduces himself to people, some of whom he apparently knew at least distantly before, and gets in line. The process appears to be that each host - they're only doing humans right now, maybe the centipedey guys and the scary spiky ones take off-peak-hours - gets locked up and then tipped forward over the sludgy-looking pool of fluid in the center of the room, their Yeerk goes out, and they get tossed in a cell for some amount of time, after which they get hauled back to get their Yeerk back. In the cells, they appear to be doing things like:

- sobbing and screaming
- puking
- jerking off, while having a shouted argument with the host in the next cell about whether this is a reasonable thing to do in this situation
- pleading with their captors
- sitting quietly doing the crossword (this one isn't restrained at all - is in a cell, but not shackled there)
- looking for ways to commit suicide (this one has been a bit more thoroughly restrained than most of them)

On the way to the Pool he just repeats don't think don't think don't think don't think don't think don't think over and over until Atsinni isn't going to overhear anything. Math would also be fine except he can't focus on it at all. It's not that any individual person is suffering that much, they actually mostly seem to be suffering relatively little, and it's not that there actually are more total people suffering, but it's more visible suffering all in one place than he can remember ever seeing before and they're being loud.

<As you can see you are not going to escape, and if anyone listened to you talking about your healing factor, which they probably won't anyway unless you hurt yourself, all that would get you is studied. We good?>

He is not thinking about that yet. It's entirely possible that he's going to do absolutely nothing but he's not going to commit to that before he's thought about it and he's not going to think about it till he's alone.

<Dude. If you rat me out they probably kill me for not reporting you as an interesting find as soon as I hit gray matter. And then for all I know I go to Hell! Is that what you want?>

That is not the way to get him to commit to anything but it is a way to reduce him to incoherent internal screaming. Maybe soon it will be incoherent external screaming.

FINE. Atsinni gets out of the line and grabs a gag out of a basket and makes to tie it on. "It's his first time, he's usually a sweetie but this is throwing him and I don't want him to panic too bad and bite his tongue," he sighs at the curious-looking guy ahead of him in line as he slips back into place. "That's what these are for, right?" Then he stuffs it in his mouth and knots it.

"Ah, yeah, legit," says the guy in front of him, who looks like he's probably not more than sixteen. "Mine's a pussy about that kind of thing but he just fucking loves pissing himself to make a nuisance for me. Hosts, right?"

"Mm-hm," sighs Atsinni around the gag.

He doesn't react much, even internally. He's too busy freaking out about what kind of afterlife Yeerks go to.

Then they can make it to the head of the line and into the manacles and tip forward, held securely by a couple strong staffpersons.

Out goes Atsinni with a little plop.

Once Atsinni's not suppressing it he feels intensely sick.

Takes him a while to manage to think anything at all, and even then... well, there's no actual point in thinking about whether he can possibly make decisions, then, is there. Fair enough, really.

It's just... he obviously can't be trusted and it's obviously silly to care about his preferences, but it would be kind of unexpected for that to be true of all of these other people, and no one else seems to both disapprove and be in a position to do anything about it. That's true of Hell, too, but there aren't countless damned souls screaming at him right now, and he's not so exhausted that he wants an excuse to give up this time. So it hurts more.

He does not, in the end, make any progress on anything he meant to think about.

He's escorted back to the pool after about an hour and leaned down for Atsinni's convenience. Atsinni breaches the liquid into his ear.

The nausea settles down. The staff unlock the shackles; Atsinni unties the gag himself. Doesn't say anything right away. Heads for the stairwell.

He doesn't say anything either. He's not thinking much.

They go up the stairs. The screaming sounds die away. They pop out in the fluorescence of Nordstrom. Atsinni heads for the food court.

This is fine. He deserves to suffer anyway. It's so unfair that he can't just gut himself, too. He keeps having to suppress he urge to be angry at Atsinni when this is so reasonable, and the urge to try to talk Atsinni into doing something good when he has no idea what that would entail, and the urge to try to run away when that wouldn't even have any effect.

<Can you maybe skip sleeping in the future, I think it's easier not to care about anything when I'm tired.>

<I can try it tonight and see how it goes but I don't know how hard it'll be for me to do stuff with your body if it's tired.> They are having a Cinnabon and, ooh, what's that, a slice of pepperoni pizza, for lunch.

Cinnabons are horrible. Pizza doesn't taste like food, not really, it tastes -

- if his emotions connected to anything anymore he would maybe throw up.

<The chips were better.> Why is he bothering to say so, it's not like anyone should ever listen to him about anything.

<Yeah, I know. Kind of weird that I can like sweets when I have to eat them with your mouth and you don't seem to like 'em.>

<I used to like things. I think. If I don't remember wrong. I think maybe a very long time ago I would've liked the Cinnabon. Maybe you have the taste I would've had if not for everything?>

<Plausible.> Atsinni busses the tray like everyone else and explores more of the mall. There's a fountain. There's a little indoor playgroundy thing with toddlers. There are escalators. There's a shoe store, he pops in there to shop because they currently only have flip-flops.