A swarm of threats buzzed out of the intercom. Blah blah retribution, blah blah karma. Why the fuck were they even bothering? It wasn't karma when it was enforced by guns. Karma worked -- how the hell did it work? The inside of his eyelids flared white as S.T. squeezed his eyes shut, overloading his optic nerve by tiny changes in pressure. Like--like a thing. The thing for books, the thing they didn't have one of here because there were only a few shelves and the Head Bastard only let goody two-shoeses take out a book or two at a time.

Something to do with fingers? S.T. opened his eyes and stared at his index finger. He wiggled it, as if doing so would uncover an avalanche of small pieces of cardstock, and in their wake, the empty catalog drawers that precisely paralleled his state of mind. After that, the name of the thing would be superfluous. Relieving, but superfluous.

It was also too dark in the room for him to actually see the finger he was staring at. He crossed the room and peeled his flashlight from the toolkit by feel alone. That was familiar. So were the shapes inside the kit. Round bottles, delicate sheaves of paper, a small, round circle of metal. He slid each one out and into the pocket of his jeans. Once everything was arranged to his satisfaction, he put them on.

[to here]