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Grunt work was always a welcome change from anything involving thinking. Or giving a s**t about stuff. However, today the face that greeted him was different. It wasn't a creepy Doctor, who might ask him uncomfortable questions and make him feel dim.

It was....

Otto double took for a moment. Something had felt off, as he saw her there. Then again, he was so used to the doctor's mug when he delivered a body. That was all this was too.

"Ya gotta practice the basics. Simple things in life." He dropped the heavy bag down beside him once he was in front of her. A sick sounding thud filled the silent space of the office. "Where's the old man? He stick you with shippin' and receivin' or what?"

Otto's chest went tight. A vice grip pressed his heart flat until it was at the brink of bursting. There in that bag was someone he'd admired. Someone he'd loved dearly. He'd never seen her die. Never seen her dead. Not until now. He'd carried on because somewhere in the back of his mind, she'd never really died. She'd just gone away for a while. Now, seeing her like this? He couldn't deny. He couldn't even remember her alive and smiling beautifully. All he could see of Clerise was blood and death.

Why? Why had they made him drag her here in such a disrespectful way; just like every other cargo he'd taken to the Doctor?

Why did she have to die?

Clarice's casual tone about this dead woman was immediately seen as off and wrong. After all, Clarice was Clerise's... "How can you say th---"

- - -

Otto stopped dead in his tracks. Wasn't he just here? Or was this task so common, every new trip felt like De Ja Vu? His heart was still recovering from the last time he'd remembered doing this.

Something wasn't right. He felt it in his struggling heart beat. An uneasy feeling that nagged his mind. Something was wrong here.

He looked down at the body bag. His breathing quickened. Who was in here this time?

Otto dared to squat down, open the bag, and check for himself.

Otto stood, and backed away. Something was more than wrong. Maybe this was just a dream. A vivid, too real dream. He'd had more than enough of dying friends and dead faces. Stormy, as far as he'd known, was alive and well.

Or maybe not... Wait, wasn't Clarice.... wasn't she dead too?

His fingers gripping the hair on his head. He bit his lip, trying to keep calm and failing immediately. Heart rate increased. The shaking, quick and panicked breaths continued.

Otto abandoned the body, and rushed into H's office. "What the <********> is going on!?" He demanded before he'd even seen who was inside.

With every skip of the record of time, Otto found his panic rising to levels who could hardly control. Nothing he could do would make it stop. His friends, dead or living. Every one of them was being shoved in his face, displayed in a body bag.

Clarice's demand replayed over and over, and it made Otto feel a lot of things. Anger was strongest. Grief helped fan that flame. He hated seeing his friends die. He hated losing people he loved. He hated seeing ones that he'd thought he'd have forever, staring up at him with corpse eyes.

"Stop it!!" He screamed at Clarice, terrified that he'd just end up with another dead friend in his hands. Terrified this would go on until he had no one left. His voice cracked with every plea. "Please, just stop it! What do you want from me? I can't do this anymore!"

Not Cami. Not his smiling, joyful and bright happy woman. Her laughter and her smile, replaced with gore and a feeling of nauseating disbelief. He looked up if only so he didn't have to see Cami like this. If he'd looked any longer, he would stp breathing. He'd choke. He'd die. He did this, only to see Clarice, missing a few important details, herself. At the very least, she wasn't in an office. At the very least, she didn't request more bodies.

Approaching Clarice wasn't easy. But he couldn't look at Cami like that. He'd said goodbye to friends who'd looked bad, but not like this. He didn't want to cry.

"Clarice.." He choked back, fighting to keep from breaking apart. "What the <********>... is happening? Where's your godamn arms, and where the ******** are my friends?"

He dared a glance back at the body. He didn't linger.

"If this is surviving, then <********> living. I can't go on if I don't have my friends to come home to. I can't say good bye anymore."

Why was Deus always made up of riddles and puzzles? He felt like he was being given the answers without the means to translate any of it.

He woke up, with Clarice's hasty voice ringing in his ear. Her frantic and erratic pleas replayed over and over as he sat there. It was a dream. His friends, at least those still living, were indeed still alive. One was sleeping soundly right beside him.

Clarice had played up something important within Otto's desires. The want to save, and protect. Not to be a hero, but to do good in any way he could. But what about whether he was human or not? Had she spoken literally, or had she spoken of something else?

Save them how? What door? Would these clues reveal their purpose down the road, or was there a way to be proactive and search for answers?

Forever questioning, worrying and over thinking. Otto threaded his hands through his sweat dampened hair. The loud white noise of rain outside his window buzzed continuously until all his thoughts blurred with fatigue.

"Maybe it was just a dumb dream..."

But maybe it wasn't.

Otto put himself back to sleep, but the memories of that too vivid, too gruesome dream plagued him even as he woke the next morning. He needed to know. Whether he took her words literally in research. Whether he attempted to interpret them as a riddle that required solving.

First things first. His big clue. Clarice's work that went wrong. Maybe if he did some sleuthing, he could find the clues he needed to find out what she meant. What she wanted from him.

<> Tenya snickered in his mind as Otto got out of bed and into his clothing.

"Cause I'm a coward and an idiot." He murmured back aloud.

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