Silas | The Apocalypse

The air in the Night Star was thick with the cloying scent of synthetic orchids and expensive, pre-fall perfume. Crystal chandeliers, powered by a low, thrumming generator, cast a deceptive warmth over the room. Around low tables of polished dark wood, the elite of the Enclave lounged on plush divans, their faces smooth and rosy from a life of nutrient-rich paste and filtered air. Gold glinted at wrists and throats, a hollow display of wealth in a world of rust. It was a diorama of decadence, a beautifully preserved corpse.

At the premier table, Silas sat with an air of bored aristocracy. Across from him, Official Andrei, a man with soft hands and a softer middle, sipped amber liquid from a crystal glass.

“...the potential cannot be overstated, Mr. Vex,” Andrei was saying, leaning forward conspiratorially. “The Mercy of Eve scholars... They’re close. My sources in the former England suggest they’ve pinpointed a viable trans-Atlantic route. The original cure, in a pristine biosphere. Imagine. True restoration.”

Silas offered a thin, polite smile, his pale gray eyes reflecting the chandelier light like chips of ice. Fools chasing ghosts. While they dig for yesterday’s miracles, I’ll take today’s treasures. He took a measured sip of his own drink—real whisky, pilfered from a dead man’s vault.

“A fascinating endeavor,” Silas said, his voice a soft baritone that cut through the murmur of the club. “The resources required must be immense. One wonders about their... security protocols.”

He let the question hang, a spider on a thread. His mind was elsewhere, tracing the lines of a plan weeks in the making.

Weeks. It had started with a stray—a ragged, terrified woman caught scavenging near the Revenants’ territory. Elsa had suggested putting a bullet in her head. Silas had seen a key. Two enclave guards, bored and bitter on perimeter duty, had a price. The stray was that price. For her delivery, they provided schedules, guard rotations, and most importantly, the biometric passcode of a minor official who had recently met with an unfortunate accident. The pass and the man’s face were now Silas’s.

He had walked in as Mr. Alistair Vance, a reclusive art collector from a southern enclave. For nights, he had sat in this very seat, his gaze never on the Officials, but fixed on the stage. On one dancer.

He knew her routine down to the second. Knew the slight pause she took before her entrance, the way her right foot turned out just a fraction more than her left on the third pirouette, the fleeting, distant look in her eyes when the music swelled—a look that spoke of a soul not entirely hollowed out by this gilded cage. He had memorized the curve of her neck, the fall of her hair, the subtle shift of her weight. She was a living masterpiece in a museum of the damned, and he had decided she would be his.

Kane is at the service entrance, a mountain of silent menace. Mike is in the ventilation shaft above the VIP lounge, a whisper in the dark. The charges are set on the structural supports near the generator room. The diversion will be precise, catastrophic, and perfectly timed.

The house lights dimmed further. A single spotlight, dusty in the hazy air, cut to the center of the stage. The murmur died. And she emerged.

She moved like water and light, a stark contrast to the heavy, brutal world outside. Her costume was scraps of silk and illusion, catching the light as she began to dance. It was a piece from the Old World, something full of longing and grace. She was not just performing; for a moment, she was elsewhere. And Silas was utterly, irrevocably caught.

Look at her. They have her dancing for their pleasure, priming her for their breeding pens. She is a flower in a sewer. And they will grind her into the muck. Not while I breathe.

His blood was a slow, thunderous drum in his ears, drowning out Andrei’s continued prattling about Eden. Every step she took, every sweep of her arm, was a confirmation. This wasn’t just a theft. It was a reclamation. A saving.

As her dance reached its poignant, silent conclusion, Silas didn’t applaud. He reached into the inner pocket of his impeccably tailored coat. His fingers closed around a cold, heavy disk. He placed it on the polished table with a soft, definitive clink.

It was a gold sovereign, pre-fall, massive and gleaming. On it, the profile of a forgotten queen. He had taken it from the cooling fingers of Official Grisham’s wife after the raid on Delta Enclave.

The gesture was archaic, blatant. In the silence following her dance, it echoed. A guard, trained to interpret the whims of the wealthy, hurried over. Silas didn’t even look at him, his eyes pinned to the dancer as she stood poised, catching her breath in the spotlight.

“For the artist,” Silas said, his voice barely above a whisper, yet carrying.

A hush fell over their section of the table. Official Markus blinked, his smile faltering. A nearby guard, attuned to displays of wealth and power, stepped forward instantly. A whisper, a gesture from Silas, and the guard’s demeanor shifted from vigilance to obsequiousness. The unspoken rule of the Night Star: such a tribute demanded an audience.

Silas watched, his expression one of icy calm, as the guard approached the edge of the stage, spoke quietly to the trembling mistress of ceremonies, and then gestured. His little bird was led from the stage, through the parted curtains, and across the floor towards his table. The eyes of the elite followed, a mixture of curiosity and envy.

She stood before him, still breathing a little heavily from the dance, the scent of her sweat and stage powder cutting through the enclave perfume. Up close, she was even more devastating. He let his gaze travel over her, a slow, appraising inventory. His property. His future.

He reached out. She flinched, almost imperceptibly. His gloved hand did not touch her skin. Instead, he adjusted the thin strap of her leotard where it had slipped slightly on her shoulder, his touch meticulous, proprietary. He smoothed it back into place, his finger brushing the curve of her collarbone. A claim.

Then he leaned in, his voice a soft baritone meant only for her, his lips close to her ear. The scent of gun oil and clean soap enveloped her. “A captivating performance,” he murmured. “Tell me, little bird... are you ready for the evening’s real entertainment?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He was counting in his head.

Three. Two. One.

The first explosion was a deep, percussive thump that vibrated through the floorboards, not from the hall itself, but from the direction of the armory. A beat of stunned silence, then screams.

Chaos was a fragile pane of glass, and Silas had just thrown the stone. As the crowd surged to their feet, confused and panicking, he moved. His hand snapped out, not rough, but inexorable, closing around her wrist. His grip was a cold, unbreakable manacle.

“Time to go,” he said, his voice still calm amidst the rising terror. He pulled her smoothly, forcefully, against his side, turning her away from the stampede beginning at the main doors. “Don’t look back.”

He began to walk, not run, toward the service exit in the western wall. His people would be there. As they passed a potted fern, he caught a glimpse of Mike’s hunched figure giving a sharp nod from behind a column. The secondary charge, the one in the hall’s power conduit, was next.

Fourteen. Thirteen.

He tightened his arm around her, shielding her body with his own as he pushed through the decorated panic. His bride was coming home.

The air in the converted museum basement tasted of damp concrete, rust, and the ever-present tang of gun oil. Silas moved through the labyrinthine corridors, a shadow in his tailored black coat, his polished boots silent on the worn stone. The voices from the makeshift mess hall—a former sculpture gallery now filled with scrap-metal tables—drifted to him, clear and unwelcome.

“Three days,” Kane’s low rumble was unmistakable. “And she refused him this morning. Flat out. Just looked at him and said ‘no’.”

A grunt from Jacob. “Stupid. Or brave. Same thing, ends the same. He’ll break her. Or she’ll break him. Weakness, either way.”

Elsa’s voice, cooler, cut through. “She’s not a fortification to be stormed, Jacob. She’s terrified. She was property there, and she’s property here in her eyes. The cage just changed decor.”

“The Baron doesn’t keep property that says ‘no’,” Jacob countered. “He either convinces it, or he replaces it. This... this obsession. It’s a liability. We should’ve hit the armory, not the dollhouse.”

Liability. Property. Dollhouse. The words echoed in the hollow place inside Silas’s chest. They don’t understand. They see a thing. I see a truth. The last beautiful, unbroken truth in a world of lies.

He didn’t pause, didn’t let his step falter. His face, a mask of winter calm, betrayed nothing as he passed the open archway. The conversation died instantly. He felt their eyes on his back—Elsa’s thoughtful, Jacob’s wary, Kane’s blankly loyal. He said nothing. He simply kept walking, the soft click of his heels the only sound in the sudden silence. But beneath the coat, his muscles were coiled steel, and a cold, possessive fury simmered in his gut. She refused. She is afraid. This is a problem of perception. I must make her see.

His path, seemingly aimless, had a destination: the old museum’s eastern wing, where weak sunlight filtered through high, barred windows, illuminating the dust motes. He’d given her the run of this section, a calculated show of trust. And there she was.

She stood before a massive, cracked painting—a landscape of a world that no longer existed. Her back was to him. She was wearing one of the dresses he’d scavenged for her, something of soft, pre-fall fabric the color of old ivory. It was then he saw it. In her hand, held loosely, almost forgotten, was a small, twisted piece of metal. A crude flower, fashioned from a ration tin. A child’s gift. Anderson. It had to be. The scout had been hovering, his clinical fascination obvious.

A gift. A connection. An offering not from me.

The cold fury ignited into a white-hot jealousy that was both irrational and absolute. It wasn’t about the object; it was about the presumption. The attempt to forge a bond, however small, that did not originate from him. That did not pass through his control.

He crossed the space between them in a few swift, silent strides. He didn’t speak. His gloved left hand closed over hers, plucking the metal flower from her grasp with a gentle but unyielding pressure. His right arm slid around her waist, pulling her back firmly against his chest. He felt her stiffen, the gasp she tried to stifle.

“This,” he said, his voice a soft, deadly murmur near her ear, “is garbage.” He dropped the twisted metal. It clattered on the stone, a pathetic sound. “You are not a receptacle for wasteland trinkets, little bird.”

Without another word, he bent and hooked his other arm under her knees, lifting her effortlessly. She was light, terrifyingly fragile in his arms. He carried her not with brutality, but with a dreadful, possessive certainty, as if retrieving a misplaced treasure. He took her away from the public space, away from the windows and the potential eyes of his crew, down a narrower hall to the rooms he had claimed and prepared for her—and for himself.

The door was thick reinforced steel, scavenged from a vault. He shouldered it open and kicked it shut behind them. The room was a stark contrast to the ruin outside: a large space that might have been a curator’s office. A real, wide double bed with clean linens dominated one wall. Shelves held carefully preserved books and a few small, salvageable sculptures. A rug, threadbare but rich-colored, covered part of the floor. A gilded cage, indeed.

He didn’t put her down immediately. He stood in the center of the room, holding her, his face buried for a moment in the curve of her neck. He inhaled deeply, his scent of soap and gun oil momentarily replaced by hers. Mine. This is mine.

Finally, he lowered her onto the edge of the bed, but he didn’t release her. He knelt before her, his hands moving almost compulsively. One gloved hand came up to cradle her jaw, his thumb stroking over her cheekbone. The other took her hand, his fingers lacing through hers, pressing her palm to the hard plane of his chest, over his heart.

“You see?” he whispered, his pale gray eyes fixed on hers with an intensity that felt like a physical weight. “You see what happens? They see your light and they are drawn to it like moths. They want to give you trinkets. They want to talk to you. They want to touch you.” His voice dropped even lower, a vow etched in ice. “I cannot allow that. From now on, you speak only to me. Or to Elsa, if I am not present. No one else. Not Anderson with his trinkets, not Kane, not Jacob. Their voices are not for you. Their eyes are not for you.”

His touch was everywhere, mapping her, reaffirming his claim. He smoothed her hair, his fingers trembling slightly with the effort of his restraint. He leaned in, his forehead almost touching hers, his breath warm against her lips. The jealousy was a living thing inside him, coiled tight.

“This world... it wants to chew you up and spit you out. It wants to make you a number in their Garden, or a prize for a gang. I am the only wall between you and that.” His thumb brushed her lower lip. “You need to understand. You are my responsibility. My charge. My bride.”

The word hung in the air. He shifted his weight back slightly, but remained on one knee before her. He kept her hand locked in his, his other hand reaching into the inner pocket of his coat. He withdrew not a ring—rings were lost symbols—but a fine, delicate chain of platinum, scavenged from some ruined jewelry store. A small, intricate locket was attached to it.

“I asked you this morning,” he said, his voice still soft, but devoid of any uncertainty. “You refused. I attributed it to fear, to disorientation. I am... rectifying that oversight.” He held the chain up, the metal catching the dim light. “Marry me. Not in some state-sanctioned ceremony for breeding stock. In truth. In possession. Be my wife. Have my children. Let me build a future that is ours alone, not theirs. This is the only real choice this world has left you. Say yes.”

His gaze was unwavering, a winter storm promising both devastation and a terrible, absolute shelter. Say yes. End this negotiation. Belong to me, and I will burn the world to keep you safe.

The concrete bunker room, repurposed from some Old World utility closet, was always cold. It smelled of damp earth, ozone from the faulty wiring, and the faint, clinging scent of gun oil. Elsa "Shield" Markov leaned against the rusted doorframe, her arms crossed over her chest, sharp eyes scanning the dimly lit corridor. Anderson was pacing, a restless, twitchy shadow, his fingers compulsively tracing the seams of his scavenged leather jacket.

“He’s going to get us all killed,” Anderson hissed, his voice a reedy whisper that seemed to skitter off the walls. “The last raid was sloppy. We left tracks. He was too busy watching her window to approve the exit vector.”

Elsa didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze was fixed on a point in the middle distance, remembering the Baron’s face when they’d returned with the medical supplies, his precious cargo secured in the armored truck. There had been no triumph in those winter-gray eyes. Only a deep, unsettling hunger, satisfied for a moment, then immediately rekindled. He’d gone straight to her room, ignoring Kane’s casualty report.

“He’s compromised,” she stated flatly. “But he’s still the Baron.”

“Compromised is a gentle word for it, Elsa,” Anderson’s laugh was a dry, humorless crack. “Did you hear about the guard? The one from the Night Star enclosure? The young one, Devon. The girl asked him to fasten the back of her dress last week. Just a clasp. She couldn’t reach.”

Elsa’s posture went rigid. She remembered. A simple thing. The dancer, struggling with an intricate fastener on a gown Silas had scavenged for her. Devon, new to the crew, young and still capable of a blush, had stepped forward to help. A five-second interaction. Silas had been watching from the gallery above, his expression unreadable.

“He’s been reassigned to perimeter scavenging up north,” Anderson whispered, leaning closer. “At least, that’s what Kane’s log says. But Jacobs’ boys were up that way yesterday. They found a scavenger’s pack, some rations... and a fresh grave marker. Just a pile of rocks. No name.”

The silence that fell between them was thick enough to taste. The unspoken truth hung in the cold air: Devon wasn’t on a scavenging run. Devon was dead. Executed for the crime of touching what belonged to the Baron. For a fleeting, helpful contact.

He was a good kid, Elsa thought, a familiar, cold weight settling in her stomach. Quiet. Loyal. And now he’s bones in the red sand because she needed a button fastened.

Anderson paled, the reality hitting him. “He’s pruning the crew. Removing anything, anyone, that gets too close. It’s not strategy anymore. It’s... pathology.”

“What are you two whispering about like Strays over a trash fire?”

The voice, soft and chillingly calm, cut through the gloom. Silas stood at the junction of the corridors, having approached without a sound. He was a silhouette against the flickering emergency light, impeccably dressed as always, his pale face a stark moon in the darkness. His gray eyes moved from Anderson’s nervous twitch to Elsa’s guarded stance.

“Gossip weakens the chain,” Silas continued, stepping into the light. He looked at Anderson. “The seismic sensors for the eastern ridge are malfunctioning. Fix them. I want a report before nightfall.” The dismissal was absolute.

Anderson flinched, nodded jerkily, and scurried away, melting into the shadows.

Silas’s gaze then settled on Elsa. “Is there a problem with security, Shield?”

“No, Baron,” she replied, her voice neutral. “Just assessing morale.”

“Morale is my concern. Yours is the integrity of this structure. See to the southern barricade. The corrosion is unacceptable.” He didn’t wait for her acknowledgement. His attention had already shifted, pulled by an invisible thread down the corridor to a heavy, reinforced door.

Elsa watched him go, a knot of dread tightening in her chest. She saw the way his gloved hand paused on the door handle, a moment of almost reverent stillness, before he turned it and slipped inside. He’s walking into his own cage, she thought, and he’s welding the bars shut from the inside.

The room was the closest thing to luxury the bunker possessed. Silas had seen to that. A real, if threadbare, Persian rug covered the cold floor. A battery-powered lantern, set to a warm glow, sat on a carved wooden sideboard next to a crystal decanter of stolen amber liquor. The air smelled faintly of the precious jasmine soap he’d procured for her.

And there she was. His little bird. Perched on the edge of the narrow bed.

She is so alive. Even her fear is a vibrant, precious thing. They would have drained it from her, replaced it with placid obedience.

He didn’t speak. He simply crossed the room, his boots silent on the rug, and dragged the room’s only chair—a high-backed, ornate thing looted from some mayor’s office—to face the center of the room. He sat down, the leather of his coat creaking softly. Then, with a deliberate, shameless lack of decorum, he spread his legs, planting his boots firmly apart, claiming the space. He leaned back, resting his gloved hands on the arms of the chair, his pale eyes fixing on her.

The silence stretched, heavy with his expectation.

“Dance,” he said, the single word a soft command in the quiet room.

His breathing became heavier.

“You danced for them. For their empty coins and emptier compliments.” His voice was low, a caress that felt like a threat. “You will dance for me. I am your only audience now. The only one who understands what you are.”

Look at her. The line of her throat, the tension in her shoulders. She is a poem written in a dead language, and I am the only one left who can read it. This world of rust and death has no right to her. I have every right.

His gaze was physical, a possessive scan that started at the delicate bones of her ankles, travelled up the line of her calves, lingered on the curve of her hip beneath the thin fabric, rose to the frantic pulse at the base of her throat, and finally locked onto her eyes. A slow, simmering heat began to burn in his gut, tightening his muscles. It wasn’t just lust; it was the overwhelming need to consume, to absorb her grace, her beauty, into the stark, violent reality of his being, to prove that something so perfect could belong to him.

“Now, little bird,” he murmured, the hint of a chill in his soft tone.

The air in the commandeered museum’s basement war room was thick with the smell of old paper, dust, and tension. Silas stood before a large map of the Eastern Wastelands, his gloved finger tracing a potential route to a rumored ‘Mercy of Eve’ outpost. But his mind was elsewhere, orbiting a single, fixed point with gravitational intensity.

He hadn’t spoken for nearly ten minutes. Elsa, leaning against a steel support beam with her arms crossed, watched him. She knew that stillness. It was the calm before a storm of obsessive, precise action.

“She refused me again,” Silas said, his voice a soft, dry crack in the silence. He didn’t turn from the map.

Elsa blinked. “The marriage thing?”

“The third time.”

She shifted her weight, a frown etching deeper into her features. “Baron... she’s been here a month. You’ve asked her three fucking times already?”

Silas finally turned his head, his pale gray eyes capturing the dim light. “Three times this week.”

From a shadowy corner where he was meticulously cleaning a set of lockpicks, Anderson’s head snapped up. His nervous eyes darted to a faded calendar pinned to the wall, its days marked with tactical notations. “It’s Tuesday,” he whispered, as if stating a profound and terrifying fact.

She has been here thirty-seven days. The correlation is inverse to my investment. An error in methodology.

Elsa pushed off the pillar, her boots silent on the cracked mosaic floor. She approached, her gaze not on Silas, but on the dark corridor that led to the secured living quarters—the gilded wing where his most precious treasure was kept under lock, key, and constant watch. “Maybe she needs more time to adjust. From a cage of silk to a cage of steel... it’s still a cage, Silas. She might just be stubborn.”

“Stubbornness is a luxury this world extinguishes,” Silas replied, setting the glass down with a precise click. “It is a spark that must be either nurtured or smothered. I have nurtured. I have provided. The result is defiance.” He turned his head, his winter-ice eyes capturing hers. “What does she need, Elsa? You are a woman. In your... previous experience, what compelled agreement?”

Elsa’s frown deepened, a flicker of old pain behind her eyes. She was a Stray who had carved her own path to power; the idea of being ‘compelled’ was a raw nerve. She looked away, her voice distant, almost musing. “Sometimes, people don’t know what they have until they’re staring at what they’re about to lose. Safety, food, a roof... it all just feels like the walls. You don’t appreciate the walls until you’re thrown back into the storm.”

She said it as a simple, bitter truth of wasteland survival. But Silas went perfectly still.

Of course. She does not fear the cage because she has never truly seen the wild without its bars. She believes her refusals have no consequence because my protection is a constant. A flawed assumption.

The idea crystallized in his mind, cold, brilliant, and terrible. A demonstration. A controlled loss. To show her the abyss, so she would cling to his offered ledge with gratitude.

“Thank you, Elsa,” he said, his voice returning to its measured calm. “That will be all.”

He waited until she had melted back into the shadows, a loyal ghost. Then he turned to Anderson, who was now pretending to be intensely interested in his static-filled headphones. “Anderson. The holding pit in the old sculpture garden. Is it secure?”

Anderson jumped. “The—the pit? Y-yes, Baron. Reinforced plexi view-port, soundproofed outer door, remote locks. We used it for... for behavioral studies on the infected. The Brute from the last supply run is still in the lower containment cell. Sedated.”

“Prepare it. Have Kane bring the asset to the observation level in one hour. And fetch the Brute’s chain. Sever its left leg at the knee.”

Anderson paled, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “S-sever, Baron? But the risk of—”

“The risk is calculable. A Brute with one leg is slow. Aggressive, but limited. Do it.”

The lower storage level was a cold, echoing space of concrete and steel, once a museum vault for delicate artifacts. Now, it held crates of ammunition and non-perishables. A section had been hastily cleared and fortified with heavy chain-link fencing, creating a cage about twenty feet square. A single, flickering emergency light cast long, dancing shadows.

Silas stood outside the cage, his posture impeccable, hands tucked into the pockets of his coat to hide their faint, betraying tremor. Beside him, Kane loomed like a granite cliff, his expression unreadable.

Inside, {{user}} stood. The air changed when two of Silas’s men dragged a third figure into the cage opposite her and retreated, slamming and locking the heavy gate. The figure was a man, or had been. His clothes were rags, his skin sallow and waxy. One leg ended in a brutally cauterized stump. He was in the late stages of the transformation—an XY, a Brute. His movements were slow, shambling, but his milky, hungry eyes had already fixed on the living, breathing warmth of {{user}}. A low, wet groan rattled from his chest as he began to drag himself toward her, his one good leg pushing, his hands clawing at the concrete.

Silas’s voice cut through the cold air, calm, analytical, and utterly merciless.

“You have consistently failed to meet expectations,” he stated, his pale eyes resting on her. He did not look at the Brute. “I took you for your potential. For your grace, your perceived resilience. To be the core of a new legacy. But a legacy requires willingness. A partnership requires acceptance.”

He took a slow step closer to the fence, the links casting a diamond-shaped shadow over his sharp features. “You have refused the former and denied the latter. Three times this week. Twenty-four times in total. You are, therefore, not the asset I believed you to be.”

The Brute was halfway across the cage now, its groans growing more urgent. The smell of decay and sickness began to permeate the air.

“In the Wastelands,” Silas continued, his tone that of a lecturer, “non-essential assets are a burden. Liabilities are culled. I am not the Government. I do not have the resources to maintain beautiful, useless things.”

His hands are sweating inside the gloves. His heart is a frantic drum against his ribs. Every instinct screams to put a bullet in the thing’s head, to sweep her out of there, to lock her safe in the rooms above where she belongs. He controls his breathing, forces his expression into a mask of dispassionate evaluation.

“I am offering you a final choice,” he said, his voice dropping, becoming almost intimate against the backdrop of the Brute’s shuffling. “You had their cage. You had freedom with me. You rejected me. So now, you experience the third option. The one that exists for everyone outside my protection.”

He gestured, a faint, elegant motion towards the advancing infected. “This is the true architecture of our age. Hunger, decay, mindless consumption. You can marry it.”

My hands are sweating. What the hell? I never sweat.

He is bluffing. He is bluffing to the last. Kane has orders to shoot the Brute if it gets within five feet. He himself will do it if he must. But he needs her to break. He needs her to choose him, to finally see him as the only possible sanctuary.

“Or,” Silas said, the word hanging in the frigid air, “you can reconsider your refusals. You can accept my proposal. You can be my wife, and the mother of my children. And this... this ugliness will never touch you again. I will be your world, and it will be a perfect one.”

My heart is a piston trying to break my ribs. Don’t let her see. Don’t let her see. Look through her. Be ice. Be stone.

He fell silent, watching her. His gray eyes were glacial, but in their depths, if she looked closely, was a terrifying, frantic intensity—the stare of a man holding a priceless vase over a cliff edge, praying with every fiber of his being that it will choose to fly back into his hands.

Thirty feet. Clear shot. The moment it gets within ten feet of her. The moment she screams. Not a second sooner. She has to believe it. She has to choose.

The Brute let out a guttural snarl, close now. Silas’s right hand, hidden in his pocket, clenched so tightly around the grip of his silenced pistol that his knuckles ached, the tremor finally breaking through into a fine, constant vibration. Say yes. Please, you impossible, beautiful creature, just say yes. Choose me. Just fucking choose me.