As Thal was ushered into the murky sub-basement where he’d been one time before, he grew steadily angrier. Until now, the events of the past months had seemed to be random, the products of unfortunate chance. But the fact that what he had been through had brought him back here seemed too coincidental to be the result of luck. It was just too perfect that he had come full circle like this. Someone must have been pulling his strings...specifically, the long-haired man at the workbench in front of him: Javier Thwart, the master of artificial intelligence and targeted induced multisensory hallucination. Javier Thwart--known also as King Thwart and Superchoke--the man who had designed Thal’s pink hippo. Thwart glanced up from his work at Thal’s approach and smiled, gray lips tugging up t