A cigarette takes an average of four minutes to finish.
A bottle of whiskey, if you're nursing it, can last two hours.
But if you have nothing — no cigarette, no drink, no chemical buffer between you and the inside of your own body — how long can a person hold on?
In the basement of Constantine's safe house, a figure sat on the floor in the dark and did not move. If not for the occasional full-body spasm — the involuntary tightening of every muscle at once, the kind of pain response that bypasses conscious control entirely — he could have been mistaken for something that had stopped.
A small light shifted in the corner. Smoke drifted.
"Whiskey?" Constantine's voice came from the shadows, low and unhurried.
"Drinking makes it harder to hold on." Jude's voice had gone rough at the edges — not from crying, but from the sustained effort of keeping everything that wanted to come out inside. Most of his available processing was occupied with one task: not losing his mind. "Loses the edges."
He didn't say what edges. Constantine understood.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
Your heart rate and blood pressure are increasing. Pain suppression is currently active at 70% of standard levels.
Would you like to increase suppression to 50%?
Note: Adjusting the suppression level will not affect the session fee. Cost remains: 10,000 Asset Points.
Jude declined.
Not because of the money — ten thousand wasn't nothing, but it wasn't the point. He'd spent time in the system's combat simulations, had been injured and killed in training scenarios often enough that he'd started to think of it as preparation. Get used to this level of pain now, he'd told himself, so it doesn't catch you off guard when it's real.
He had been wrong about what real felt like.
"I was wrong," he thought, clenching his fists against the floor. "That was nothing. This is—"
He breathed.
This is the kind of universe where this is unavoidable. He'd known that going in. Pain was as built into this world as fighting, as consequence. Better to adapt now, in a controlled environment, with Constantine sitting in the corner. Better to learn what the edge of it felt like before he was somewhere without a floor to hold onto.
He still wanted to scream.
"It genuinely hurts," he said, to no one in particular.
"Yes," Constantine said. He took a pull of whiskey. "It does."
They hadn't actually gone to Sudan. That had been the cover story for Midnight's benefit — I'm taking him to the shaman, the old priest, the only one who can finish this properly. The truth was simpler and less travelogue: Constantine had a safe house, a discreet address in a building that asked no questions, and a basement cell that had been used for exactly this kind of situation before. It was the most defensible available option for someone who needed to be somewhere very quiet and very contained while an indigenous evil spirit ate them from the inside.
The cell had seemed like the right choice when they arrived. The soundproofing was relevant. Jude was grateful for the soundproofing.
Light spilled down the basement stairs. Lester's silhouette appeared at the top, tentative, one hand on the railing.
"John." He kept his voice low. "Whiskey, morphine, cigarettes. And food."
He looked at Jude through the light — one quick glance, the involuntary kind — and then looked away with the specific shame of a man who has just understood, fully, what the phrase owes me a life actually weighs.
"Good." Constantine took a drag and stood. "Leave the morphine with me. Go back upstairs." A pause. "And don't touch your own supply."
Lester nodded. He went back upstairs without saying anything else.
The physical withdrawal had passed; Jude and Constantine both knew that. Whether Lester would stay clean now that the physiological pressure had lifted was a different question, one that neither of them held strong opinions on. They knew him well enough not to be surprised either way.
"Wishful thinking is worthless," Constantine said, as the footsteps faded overhead. "Wanting someone to be better doesn't make them better. You need means and discipline as well as will." He exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. "Sacrifice doesn't fix people."
"Well said." Jude's breathing had begun to even out slightly — the pain hadn't reduced, but he was learning its rhythms. Finding the spaces between the waves. "You must be very difficult to manipulate."
"Impossibly." Constantine looked down at him. "You're talking more. That's probably a good sign."
"Your cigarettes are extremely strong. Any chance you could—"
Constantine cursed, dropped the cigarette, and stepped on it.
"I'll smoke upstairs."
"Smoke less generally," Jude said. "At the rate you're going through them, you might not make it to whatever age you're planning to die at."
"I'll live to a hundred." Constantine gave him a specific hand gesture. "And you sound like a civil servant. You planning to run for Parliament? Tattooed Asian enters British politics, represents working people." He affected a news anchor voice. "A story of equality and modern Britain."
"A smoking ban is a collective concern," Jude said. "You're never going to fit in, personally. I'm just pointing out the math."
Constantine put the cigarette case back in his pocket, picked up the whiskey, took a drink. Set it down.
"Drink less," Jude said.
"Damn it." Constantine picked up the morphine. "I'm giving you a shot and going upstairs."
"I don't need it yet. I'm still coherent."
Constantine looked at him. At the man sitting on a basement floor, voluntarily hosting an entity that was eating him alive, declining whiskey and morphine and refusing to scream, discussing tobacco policy.
He didn't say anything.
"You've gone quiet," Jude observed. "I must have done something unusual."
The pain had settled to 80% of standard. Jude sat with that for a moment, measuring it. The system held the floor steady beneath him.
It can be raised, he thought.
Let's go to 81.
He regretted it immediately.
He pressed both palms flat against the floor and breathed through his nose.
"If you need the injection," Constantine's voice came from the corner, "say so."
He was still there. Hadn't gone upstairs.
Jude heard him reach for the cigarettes, heard a brief pause, then the sound of something different being removed from the pack.
"What the—" A pause. "These are Pocky sticks."
"Smoked Pocky," Jude said, with effort. "A custom item. You can't get them anywhere else."
Constantine put one in his mouth. Chewed. The faint, improbable smell of chocolate and smoke drifted through the basement.
"This is deranged," he said.
"You're welcome."
A silence settled. The kind that had become familiar over the last few hours — not uncomfortable, just present.
"By normal parameters," Constantine said, "Mnemoth finishes a person by midday. It's been longer than that." He didn't phrase it as a compliment. Just a fact being reported. "Didn't expect it."
"My constitution," Jude said. "Apparently I'm difficult to chew."
"Doesn't matter. It'll get there."
"I know."
Constantine went quiet again. Jude heard him shift — settling in, not leaving.
He would see, when the light was better, what was standing around Jude in the dark. Anne Maria. Frank. Benjamin. Emma.
Not speaking. Just there — four pale figures arranged like a vigil, as if proximity could do something that nothing else could. As if the dead could absorb some fraction of what the living was carrying.
It won't help, Constantine thought.
He stayed in the basement anyway.