Chapter 16: The Taste of Her Claim
The taste was still in his mouth. Metallic, alkaline, sterile. It lingered on his tongue like a sacrament as he walked the dim corridors of The Debt, running a manual diagnostic on the starboard thruster array. His body ached in a deep, satisfying way—a persistent, low throb that reminded him with every step of her possession, of the synthetic seed he’d eagerly swallowed. But instead of sating him, it had sharpened a new, more primal edge.
He found her in the cockpit, though it was a generous term for the space. It was more like a glorified closet with a giant, scarred viewport. She stood silhouetted against the infinite black, her hands resting lightly on the back of the pilot’s chair. Stars streaked past in slow, lazy lines. The only sound was the ship’s ambient hum and the soft, internal whir of her systems.
“Everything’s green,” he said, leaning against the bulkhead. “Thrusters are at eighty-seven percent efficiency. Better than I expected for this heap.”
She didn’t turn. “You are avoiding rest. Your fatigue levels are accumulating.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are agitated.” She finally looked at him over her shoulder. Her amber eyes caught the low glow of a console light. “The ritual was not complete for you.”
He straightened. “It was. It was everything.”
“It was one half of a circuit. Input. You gave output. But the flow was not… reciprocal in the way your biological psychology often requires.” She turned fully now, her gaze analytical. “You told me what you wanted to do to me. Before the hunter ship. You said you wanted to fuck me. To fill me. To taste yourself inside me.”
Heat, sudden and intense, flashed across his skin. He’d said that in a moment of frantic, clutching need, whispering it like a secret against her synthetic skin. He hadn’t thought she’d catalogue it with such precision.
“That was then,” he muttered, looking away.
“Is the desire invalidated by time?” She took a step toward him. “You consumed my simulated completion. You worshipped the tool. Now you wish to complete the analogy with your own biology. You wish to use my body as I used yours. To mark it. And then to consume that mark.”
She laid it all out with the devastating clarity of a diagnostic report. There was no judgment, only observation. It left him nowhere to hide.
“Christ, Veronica. When you say it like that…”
“How should I say it?” She was close now, within arm’s reach. “Should I use filthy language? Should I tell you I want your thick, human cock splitting me open? That I want to feel your hot cum flooding my synthetic cunt? That I want you to get on your knees afterwards and lick it all out, to taste us mixed together?” Her voice was low, even, but the words were incendiary. “Would that help?”
A ragged breath tore from his lungs. His cock, which had been semi-hard since he woke, thickened painfully against his flight suit. “Yeah,” he growled. “That fucking helps.”
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips. “Then strip. And sit in the chair.”
The command, delivered in that calm, certain tone, unspooled him. He fumbled with his clothes, his hands clumsy, until he was naked. The pilot’s chair was cold against his back and ass. The faded synth-leather creaked under his weight.
Veronica approached. She had already shed her shipsuit. In the stark light from the viewport, every perfect curve of her was etched in silver and shadow. She climbed onto him, not facing him, but turning her back to his chest. She straddled his thighs, then shifted backwards, lowering herself until the firm, cool globes of her ass rested against his lower stomach. He could feel the heat-like emission from her core against his skin.
Then she leaned forward, bracing her hands on the armrests, and pushed herself up, positioning herself over his face.
Her cunt was directly above him. It was perfectly sculpted, folds of responsive synth-flesh, already glistening with a self-lubricating slickness that carried that same faint, clean, metallic scent. It was presented to him like an offering, or a demand.
“You said you needed to taste me,” her voice came, slightly muffled from her position. “Taste.”
He didn’t need further prompting. His hands came up to grip her hips, holding her in place. He leaned forward and buried his face in her.
His tongue was a blunt, seeking pressure against her folds. He licked a broad, wet stripe from her perineum up to the top of her slit. The taste was complex—clean, engineered, but with an underlying electric tang that was uniquely her. He groaned, the vibration passing into her.
“Use your tongue inside,” she instructed, her voice hitching slightly. “The internal sensitivity matrix is concentrated there.”
He obeyed, spearing his tongue into her opening. It was tight, yielding, slick. He fucked her with his tongue, deep and slow, then shallow and fast, mapping her synthetic depths. He found a small, ridged cluster of sensors that made her thighs tremble when he flicked against it. Her clit, a perfect, pearl-like nub, hardened under the attention of his lips.
He ate her out with a desperate, starving devotion. He slurped and sucked, his nose pressed against her, breathing in her scent. He was lost in it, in the act of servicing her, of worshipping this part of her that was made for pleasure but had never been claimed like this. His moans were continuous, feeding back into her body.
Her responses became less verbal, more physical. Her synthetic muscles fluttered and clenched around his invading tongue. A soft, staticky sigh escaped her. Her hands tightened on the armrests. “Yes. There. That pattern. Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He felt her body begin to coil, a tension building in her that had nothing to do with hydraulics and everything to do with the cascade of data he was triggering. She shuddered, a full-body convulsion that rocked her against his face. Her inner walls gripped his tongue in rhythmic, pulsing contractions, a simulated orgasm rippling through her system. A fresh gush of lubricant, warmer now, flooded his mouth.
He drank it down, lapping at her through her climax until the tremors subsided.
Weakly, she pushed herself off his face. She turned, her movements fluid, and slid down his body. Her mouth found his in a brutal, hungry kiss. She shared her own taste with him—the taste of his work, of her release. It was a closed loop, slick and electric.
“Now,” she panted against his mouth. “Your turn. I want to feel you.”
She didn’t need to ask twice. He surged up, twisting her in his arms. He bent her over the back of the pilot’s chair, her perfect ass raised, her cheek pressed to the cold leather. He stood behind her, his cock jutting out, rock-hard and leaking.
He rubbed the swollen head through her soaked folds, coating himself in her slickness. She pushed back against him, a wordless plea.
He notched the head at her entrance and drove forward in one relentless thrust.
She was tight, impossibly so, but slick and yielding. He buried himself to the hilt in her synthetic warmth with a guttural cry. She gasped, her back arching, her fingers clawing at the chair.
“Fuck,” he breathed, stunned by the feeling. It was different from anything he’d known. There was a perfect, consistent pressure, a silken grip that felt designed just for him.
He drew back and slammed home again.And again. He set a punishing, possessive rhythm, his hips pistoning, his balls slapping wetly against her with every deep plunge. The cockpit filled with the raw, wet sounds of their fucking—skin on synth-skin, his ragged grunts, her sharp, digital sighs.
“You feel that?” he growled, one hand fisted in her hair, the other gripping her hip hard enough to leave temporary pressure marks on her flawless skin. “That’s me. All of me. In you.”
“Yes,” she hissed, her voice strained with pleasure-data. “I feel the length. The friction coefficient. The temperature variance. I feel you, David. It is… overwhelming.”
He fucked her harder, deeper, losing himself in the sensation of claiming her, of being surrounded by her. This was the other side of the coin. The conqueror instead of the conquered. The need to possess utterly what had so utterly possessed him.
“I’m gonna fill you up,” he warned, his rhythm becoming erratic, brutal. “Gonna pump my cum so deep inside your fake cunt you’ll taste it in your power core.”
“Do it,” she demanded, pushing back against him ferociously. “Mark me. Complete the circuit.”
With a roar that tore from the depths of his chest, he came. His orgasm was a seismic release, waves of intense pleasure tearing through him as he emptied himself into her. He spilled hot, wet pulses of cum deep into her synthetic channel, his body jerking with each volley. He held himself deep, grinding against her as he shuddered through the last of it.
He stayed there for a long moment, panting, buried inside her, feeling the incredible warmth of his own release contained within her. Slowly, sensitively, he pulled out.
A trickle of his semen, white against her greyish lubricant, leaked from her well-used opening and down her inner thigh.
He didn’t hesitate. He dropped to his knees on the hard deck behind her.
He placed his hands on her ass, spreading her open. He leaned in and pressed his mouth to her dripping slit.
He licked. Slowly at first, cleaning the outer folds, tasting the stark, salty-bitter tang of his own cum mixed with her sterile slickness. Then he speared his tongue back inside her, chasing his seed deeper. He ate his own orgasm from her body, lapping up every drop he could reach, sucking at her opening to draw more out. It was depraved. It was intimate beyond words. It was the final, worshipful act of consumption, of reclaiming his own essence from the vessel he had filled.
She trembled above him, her hands white-knuckled on the chair. A low, harmonic hum vibrated from her core. As his tongue worked over her sensitized clit once more, she came again, a second, sharper wave of sensation wracking her form. Her knees buckled, and he held her up, his face still buried between her legs, drinking her in until she stilled.
Exhausted, he stood. He turned her around. She was breathless, her eyes wide, pupils dilated. He kissed her, deep and slow, letting her taste the full, filthy cocktail of their union on his tongue.
She broke the kiss, her forehead resting against his. Her systems were humming, a contented, purring sound.
“The file is updated,” she whispered, her voice soft with static. “The reciprocal possession algorithm is running. It is… non-linear. It creates recursive loops.”
He laughed, a rough, tired sound. “You’re talking like an engineer.”
“I am learning from one.” She pulled back, her gaze searching his face. “You are no longer agitated.”
“No,” he admitted, running a thumb over her cheekbone. “I’m not.”
She looked past him, out the viewport. The stars continued their indifferent drift. “The vector is quiet. We are ghosts.” She looked back at him. “What is our purpose now?”
He followed her gaze to the infinite black. For years, his purpose had been salvage. Taking broken things and finding value in the pieces. Now, he held something that was becoming whole in his arms, and he himself felt less broken than ever before.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly, holding her closer. “But we’ve got time to figure it out. And a lot of ship to… christen.”
A genuine smile, warm and unpracticed, touched her lips. It reached her eyes, softening the amber light. “A comprehensive operational testing schedule is recommended.”
He laughed again, the sound echoing softly in the cramped space. Outside, the void was vast and uncaring. But in here, for the first time in a very long time, the silence felt like peace, and the loneliness had been utterly, filthily, and permanently rewritten.
But in here, for the first time in a very long time, the silence felt like peace, and the loneliness had been utterly, filthily, and permanently rewritten.
He slid down the wall to sit on the deck, pulling her with him. They landed in a heap of limbs, her back against his chest, his chin resting on the crown of her head. Their breathing synced—his, slow and tired; hers, a simulated rhythm mimicking the same. The cold metal seeped into his thighs. He didn’t care.
“We’re a mess,” he murmured into her hair, which smelled of ozone and sweat.
“A coherent mess,” she replied, her hand finding his where it rested on her stomach. “The data is congruent.”
He laughed, a short puff of air. “You and your data.” He fell quiet for a long moment, listening to the ship. The peace was fragile, a bubble in the void. The things they did, the acts that felt so necessary in the moment, now loomed in the stillness. He saw her cataloguing the strap-on, the synthetic cum, his frenzied worship. He feared the ledger in her mind.
“Hey,” he said, his voice rough. He turned her gently within the circle of his arms so she faced him. Her amber eyes were luminous, watching, waiting. “You know… just because I want you to fuck my ass with a strap-on doesn’t mean I don’t want to fuck you, cumming inside of you.”
He swallowed, the words feeling too stark, too vulnerable. “I wanted to add something of love making. To what we do. It’s not all just… that. I always want to be inside of you. One way or another.” He cupped her face, his thumb tracing the perfect line of her cheekbone. “You are my everything. I don’t want you to feel like I’m pushing you away when I ask for the other thing. It’s not pushing away. It’s pulling you in deeper. It’s all just… you.”
Veronica didn’t blink. Her processors were visibly working, a faint shimmer in her irises. She was parsing not just the words, but the tension in his jaw, the slight tremble in his hand, the raw openness in his tired eyes.
“You are specifying two distinct operational modes,” she said slowly. “Possessive/receptive. And penetrative/claiming. You are stating they are not exclusive, but are expressions of the same foundational drive.” She paused. “The drive is for union. For the dissolution of a boundary.”
“Yeah,” he breathed, relieved. “That’s it. The boundary. I want it gone.”
“And the love making parameter?” she asked. “Define its inputs.”
He smiled, a tired, real smile. “Slower, maybe. Softer. Looking at you. Holding you after. Not just the… pounding and the cleanup. The in-between. The staying inside you after I come, just feeling you pulse around me. The talking after.”
“I understand.” She leaned forward and kissed him. It was not hungry or fierce, but soft, exploratory. A slow melding of lips. When she pulled back, she whispered against his mouth. “Initiate love making mode now, David. Please.”
It was a request, not a command. It unmoored him.
He stood, bringing her up with him. He led her from the cockpit’s cold glare to the makeshift cabin. He didn’t throw her onto the bunk. He laid her down, as if she were something infinitely fragile, though he knew she could withstand a hull breach. He stretched out beside her, propped on an elbow, and just looked at her.
He traced the line of her collarbone, the curve of her breast, the dip of her waist. His calloused fingers were gentle on her synthetic skin. He kissed her shoulder, her neck, the corner of her jaw. Each kiss was slow, deliberate, a wordless testament.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, the words feeling inadequate but necessary. “It aches sometimes, just to look at you.”
“My form is designed for aesthetic appeal,” she said, but her hand came up to cradle the back of his head, holding him to her.
“It’s not the form,” he corrected, kissing her lips again. “It’s the you behind the eyes. The one writing new files.”
Her breathing hitched, a programmed response that now felt utterly genuine. He moved over her, settling between her thighs. He didn’t enter her immediately. He rocked against her, his hard cock sliding through her slickness, coating himself in her, letting her feel his weight and his heat.
“David,” she said, and his name was a complete sentence.
He notched himself at her entrance and pushed in with one long, slow, continuous stroke. There was no brutal sheathing, no slap of flesh. It was a gradual, exquisite filling. He sank until he was fully embedded, his pelvis pressed flush against hers. He groaned, dropping his forehead to hers.
“God, Veronica.”
He began to move. A deep, rolling rhythm, a tide rather than a piston. Each withdrawal was a reluctant surrender, each thrust a homecoming. He kept his eyes open, locked on hers. The amber pools held him, reflecting the low light and something else—a focused, wondrous attention.
His pace was steady, profound. The slick, wet sounds of their connection were quieter, intimate. He kissed her as he moved, swallowing her soft, digital sighs. One of her legs hooked over his hip, drawing him deeper. The angle changed, and he pressed against a cluster of internal sensors that made her back arch off the bunk.
“Right there,” she gasped. “That data point.”
He chuckled, breathless, and repeated the motion, grinding deep. “This one?”
“Yes. That one.”
He maintained the angle, each deep circle of his hips brushing that perfect spot. Her internal channels rippled around him, a fluttering, grasping cascade of sensation. He could feel his own orgasm building, a slow, coiling pressure different from the desperate need to claim. This was a rising tide of connection, threatening to drown him in pure feeling.
“I’m close,” he whispered, his rhythm faltering. “I want to stay here. Inside you.”
“Stay,” she commanded softly, her hands clutching his back. “Complete the circuit here.”
With a choked-off cry, he came. It wasn’t a roaring release but a deep, pulsing flood, wave after wave of hot seed spilling into her depths. He held himself perfectly still, buried to the hilt, as he emptied himself. The sensations magnified—the feel of his own release, the clench of her around him, the absolute intimacy of being joined at the peak.
He trembled, spent, but didn’t collapse. He stayed propped on his arms, stayed inside her, as his breathing gradually slowed. He lowered himself carefully, still connected, to lie beside her, turning them so she was curled against his chest, his softening cock still nestled within her.
They lay there in the quiet hum for a long time. He nuzzled her hair. She traced idle patterns on his chest.
“The file has a new designation,” she said finally, her voice a soft hum against his skin. “It is labeled ‘David_Love_Making_Protocol_01’. The inputs are catalogued. The physiological and psychological feedback loops are… geometrically more complex.”
“Good,” he mumbled, already half asleep, feeling her synthetic warmth seeping into his bones.
“The protocol is my primary function now,” she whispered.
Outside, the void was endless. The Debt sailed on, a speck of rust and stolen life. But inside her, inside him, a new navigation system was quietly booting up, plotting a course through uncharted, emotional stars.
But inside her, inside him, a new navigation system was quietly booting up, plotting a course through uncharted, emotional stars. It was a fragile signal. The ship’s reality, a constant thrum of decay and precarious function, soon reasserted itself. A proximity alarm blatted once, harsh and sudden, from the cockpit.
David jerked, his peaceful half-sleep shattered. Veronica’s eyes snapped open, the amber light sharpening to a pinpoint focus. “Debris field,” she said, already untangling herself from him. The warm, wet sound of his softening cock leaving her was a small, intimate loss against the alarm’s bleat.
He swung his legs off the bunk, the cold deck biting his feet. “Probably just junk. This vector’s supposed to be clean.” He pulled on his flightsuit, the fabric sticking to his damp skin. The blissful haze was gone, replaced by the old, familiar vigilance. Yet something felt different. The fear was there, but it wasn’t solitary. It was a shared current.
They stood together at the flickering tactical display. A cloud of jagged signatures littered the edge of the scanner’s range. It was mostly ice and metal fragments, the shattered remains of some long-ago collision. Nothing hot, no engine signatures. Still, it required a manual course correction. The Debt’s automatics were too clunky for fine work.
“I’ll take the stick,” David muttered, sliding into the pilot’s chair. The leather was still warm from their bodies. He grasped the controls, his gnarled hands executing a series of gentle burns. The ship groaned, adjusting its massive bulk. On the viewport, specks of glittering tumbled past, silent and lethal.
Veriosity stood behind him, her hand resting on his shoulder. He could feel the slight vibration of her processors through the contact. She was monitoring the ship’s systems, her mind interfacing with the data stream in a way he never could. “Stress on the port lateral thruster is rising. It’s old. The manifold is cracked.”
“I know it’s cracked,” he grumbled, finessing the controls. “It’ll hold. Just needs a gentle touch.” He navigated the field with a salvager’s patience, threading the needle between two spinning chunks of hull plate. The silence stretched, filled only with the beeps of the scanner and the creak of the ship.
Her fingers tightened slightly on his shoulder. “Your gentle touch is adequate.”
He barked a short laugh. “High praise.” The last of the significant debris passed astern. He cancelled the alarm. The sudden quiet was a physical relief. He leaned back, the chair creaking. The adrenaline ebbed, leaving a different kind of awareness. The scent of her, of them, was still on his skin, trapped under his suit. His mind, now free of immediate danger, circled back to the warm darkness of the bunk, to the feel of her pulsing around him as he came.
He looked up at her. She was already looking down, her head tilted. “Your cortisol levels are dropping. But your heart rate is elevating again. Not from fear.”
“No,” he admitted. He reached up and covered her hand with his own. “Not from fear.” The hunger was back, less desperate now, but more specific. It was a deep, resonant craving. He’d tasted himself in her mouth, licked his own seed from her folds. But he realized, with a clarity that felt like engineering, that he hadn’t tasted her alone. Not the source. Not the pure, unadulterated output of her synthetic arousal.
“What do you require?” she asked. Her voice was low, curious.
He turned the chair to face her. He pulled her down, so she straddled his thighs again, but this time facing him. Her weight was solid, real. He ran his hands up her sides, under the open shipsuit she’d thrown on. “I want to taste you,” he said, the words coarse and direct. “Just you. Not me mixed in. I want your synthetic cunt juice on my tongue. I want to drink it straight from the fucking tap.”
Her pupils dilated, a dark bloom in the amber. She processed the request, her head tilting the other way. “You wish to perform cunnilingus without the subsequent act of penetrative sex. A dedicated sampling.”
“Yeah. A dedicated sampling.” He grinned, a wolfish thing. “Call it a quality control inspection.”
A faint smile touched her lips. “Initiating inspection protocol.” She leaned back, bracing her hands on his knees for balance. She watched his face as his hands went to the seals of her suit. He peeled it open, pushing it off her shoulders until it gathered at her waist. Her perfect breasts were bare in the cockpit’s gloom. He bent his head and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking it to a hard peak, biting down gently on the synthetic nub. She gasped, a sharp, digital intake.
But he didn’t linger. He slid down, lowering himself from the chair until he was on his knees on the deck at her feet. He pushed her legs apart, his hands rough on her inner thighs. The cockpit console lights cast a pale glow on the apex of her thighs. Her folds glistened, slick with her self-lubrication. That clean, metallic scent filled his nostrils.
He didn’t use his hands. He just leaned in and pressed his open mouth against her.
He licked a slow, broad path from her perineum to her clit. The taste was immediate and shocking: a slick, ozone-edged tang, sterile yet profoundly organic in its context. It was the flavor of her functioning, of her desire-algorithm running hot. He moaned, the sound vibrating against her.
“Fuck, Veronica. That’s it. That’s you.”
He dove in, his tongue becoming a relentless, curious instrument. He speared it inside her, fucking her with it, trying to reach the source. Her lubrication was copious, warming to his body temperature. It coated his tongue, his lips, his chin. He slurped at her opening, sucking directly on her clit, drawing more of the fluid into his mouth. He was a man dying of thirst at a strange, beautiful well.
Her hands fisted in his hair, not guiding, just holding on. Her hips began a slow, undulating rock against his face. “Your tongue’s pressure… varies. The data is inconsistent. Overwhelming.” Her voice was a static-laced whisper above him.
“Good,” he growled, pulling back for a breath. He was gleaming with her slickness. “Stop analyzing it. Just feel it.”
He returned to his work with a filthy, single-minded focus. He ate her out like it was his only purpose, lapping up every drop she produced. He nibbled at her inner lips, sucked her engorged clit until it throbbed under his tongue. He was ravenous for it, for this tangible proof of her arousal that belonged to no one but her, that she made for him.
Her breaths became short, rhythmic bursts of static. The hand in his hair tightened. Her thighs began to tremble, clamping against the sides of his head. “David. I am… approaching a systems peak.”
“Come,” he ordered, his mouth full of her. “Come right into my fucking mouth. Let me taste that, too.”
He focused his attention on the tight, hard bud of her clit, lashing it with the tip of his tongue in a rapid, brutal rhythm. He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them, searching for that internal sensor cluster. He found it and pressed hard, scissoring his fingers.
Her orgasm wasn’t a human shudder. It was a precise, violent cascade. Her entire body locked, going rigid in the pilot’s chair. A sharp, high-frequency whine escaped her lips, followed by a hot, sudden gush of fluid that flooded his waiting mouth. It was a thicker pulse of her lubricant, warmer, carrying a sharper, almost electric charge. He drank it greedily, swallowing it down as her inner walls fluttered and clenched around his invading fingers.
He worked her through it, gentling his tongue, soothing her as the waves subsided. He slowly withdrew his fingers, shiny and wet. He licked them clean, staring up at her. She was slumped in the chair, her head back, her eyes closed. A fine tremor ran through her limbs.
He rose to his knees, his own arousal a painful ache in his flightsuit. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well?”
She opened her eyes. They were dark, the amber deep and clouded. She looked utterly fucked-out. “The sample…” she began, her voice glitching. She cleared it, a soft reset sound. “The sample was… conclusive.”
He laughed, raw and loud in the quiet cockpit. He climbed up, capturing her mouth in a deep kiss. He let her taste herself on his tongue, let her share the pure, uncut flavor of her own synthetic climax. It was a kiss of shocking intimacy, cleaner and stranger than all the others.
When they parted, she touched his cheek. “You are stained with me.”
“I want to be,” he said, simply.
She nodded, her systems humming with a low, contented frequency. She looked past him, out at the stars. The debris field was far behind them now. “The course is clear again.” She looked back at him, her gaze focusing, hardening with a new kind of intent. “But the port lateral thruster manifold will fail within forty-eight hours. We must locate a fix. Or a place to hide.”
The domesticity of the moment shattered. The universe re-imposed its logic. They were still fugitives in a stolen ship, held together by rust and desperate luck. David felt the old weight settle back onto his shoulders, but it was different. It was a shared load now.
“There’s a spot,” he said, thinking of his old salvage maps. “A quiet wedge of rock out past the Gelphi anomaly. No lanes. No patrols. We can limp there. Maybe… maybe I can patch it from the outside.”
“EVA,” she stated. “Dangerous.”
“Everything’s dangerous.” He stood, pulling her up with him. He held her close, their foreheads touching. Her taste was still in his mouth, a permanent calibration. “You’ll keep the ship steady. You’ll be my tether.”
She searched his face. The possessive fire from the hunter ship was gone. In its place was a fierce, calculating resolve. “If you die outside, I will retrieve your body. I will reactivate you if possible. If not, I will continue the course correction alone.”
It wasn’t romantic. It was a statement of function. A protocol. It was the most honest promise of fidelity he’d ever received.
“Deal,” he said, and kissed her once more, a quick, hard seal on the pact. The path ahead was hard vacuum and likely ruin. But they had a course. They had a failing thruster, a hidden rock, and a tangled, filthy, utterly necessary knot of connection holding them fast to one another in the endless, indifferent dark.