The building continues to look empty for the first little while. It's dark inside, and really dusty.

When he sneezes, there's a flurry of movement in the shadows, and a flare of blinding light, and then he's out.

Yep. Not for as long as expected but much longer than they actually need.

When he wakes up, his eyes move, but he isn't doing it. He sits up, but he isn't doing that either.

There's a hissing screeching nightmare noise and then his own lips say, "Who said that? I can't see in the dark from in here." More screeching. "No sir, no one likely to look for him." Screeching. "Understood, sir. I believe I'm able to make it on foot if it's not convenient to give me a ride at this time." Screeching. "Of course, sir, thank you."

He stands up. He walks, eyes flicking around as though to get hints from the bits of light here and there, out to the exit and back into the open fields that surrounded the apparently not very abandoned building.

He wonders why he's reflexively doing that and then he gets suspicious of the fact that that's not something he would do reflexively and even if he would he would still have stopped immediately on wondering about it and - no he can't shut up, no he can't just scream instead, no he can't raise a hand - it takes a while after that for him to think anything other than oh fuck oh no over and over.

He's been speaking modern English for a while, but his most comfortable language is Latin, and it's not even his first. He's got Old English, Old French, Classical Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, Classic Maya - more than that, actually, so many languages he's lost count, most of them too rusty to jump back into without spending a while listening to someone else - and he hates it, hates that he can interface with the world in so many ways and all of them were taught to him by demons.

That's the most notable thing about him, is that either he's delusional or he died centuries ago during a plague epidemic, and since then he's been in Hell most of the time. They told him it was Purgatory, that he'd learn better and then go to Heaven, that while he was there maybe he could help them help others, too, for values of "help" that included "break their wills because they need to stop being so sinful" - he doesn't want to think about it and also he doesn't think he can ever forget, not the time he took the hand of someone he'd up till then called a friend and started breaking their fingers, not the times he ordered someone else to drag someone off out of his sight while he knew what was happening and relaxed -

- It's a lot but it's not definitely centuries. If it is centuries, then there are stretches of years eaten by sleep deprivation or blurred by sheer monotony. It's more than there really ought to be at his apparent age, anyway. And some of it's testable; he thinks he's not really alive, will never age, doesn't need food (he had that driven home to him particularly humiliatingly), heals from literally everything and often in under a day although there's some kind of extremely painful workaround for that (he didn't start out male, that was a reward or maybe a reminder of what he's done, one or the other).

It's a very good healing factor but it doesn't keep him healthy, he's weak and miserable and exhausted and fuzzy-headed and being stunned was the closest he's gotten to sleep in months. They dolled him up a bit when they sent him to Earth (to save people, they said, but he's pretty sure he's been damning them, actually) to make him look more vaguely angelic than obviously damned, but that's only the magic of personal grooming. He has long since forgotten that living people who feel this way have a tendency to fall asleep as soon as they're horizontal.

Someone will, actually, look for him, but not today, and not someone who'd call the police, and anyway maybe he's delusional and they won't. It's only been about a day since he decided to go to ground on Earth and hope Hell couldn't track him down. They weren't even going to check in for days yet.

Though when he manages to unstick his thoughts from sheer horror he supposes that actually they can just possess him, so that's fucking delightful, and it's also baffling but he's in no shape to think about why it's baffling. The most salient thing about it, at the moment, is that he can give up.

Yup. He can totally give up. He doesn't have to exercise any volition at all in order to continue walking till reaching the road and then keep going from there for a couple miles, his mouth trying out some of the languages while his feet take step after step.

It's - miserable, really, that there's nothing he can do, but at least maybe their incentives line up so they want his body really healthy and maybe that means not torturing him.

He thinks, for the first time and surprising himself even though after everything else it shouldn't be a surprise, You know what, I think I hate you. He doesn't even strongly expect to be heard.

<Yeah, I think that's pretty common with human hosts,> replies a nonvoice.

Why can they read minds on top of everything else! He thought they couldn't do that! But as established he is a complete idiot!

He keeps trying to move, even though he's pretty clear on that not working, because it's such a weird experience and he keeps expecting that whatever he's doing is something he's doing, and it seems like a good idea to get used to the way things are as fast as possible.

<I'm not a demon or anything, I'm a Yeerk. We're space aliens.>

He kind of effortfully tries to consider the likelihood of that. He's never seen one in Hell but they seem to be invisible and maybe they're best tortured with systematically different infrastructure and have their own area, or maybe he saw them and forgot, and at any rate maybe they don't even sin, who knows, he sure doesn't. It would be so confusing if demons could do this and not confusing at all if they couldn't, but he's very stupid so why should it matter if he's confused?

Most importantly they clearly aren't trying to trick him, because whoever this is doesn't need to, so - that's good. If they're not demons and they might never have committed any sins then actually that's great, he's sorry to have said he hates them, probably they're fine.

<I actually have no idea if this thing happens to us when we die. Or if it even happened to you. But the healing thing seems real so you're probably not totally delusional.>

He deliberately suppresses all the things he might otherwise think of to say to that since, in fact, they are not optimized for keeping people out of Hell after all. Maybe listening to his thoughts is a dangerous idea considering how much he as a person has been optimized for malevolent ends, but he doesn't quite manage to actually suggest ignoring him because that would be crushingly lonely.

<I know, right, being alone in your head is awful. I'd heard humans weren't like that but it's neat that you are!>

<External people are also good company, maybe that's the thing you heard? Probably better in some ways because I'm not sure Satan himself deserves to hear all my thoughts.>

<Oh, it's not so bad. It does look like you had a very rough time but I'm not planning to get you into anything too awful going forward if I can avoid it.>

Aww, that's nice. And there's not really any point in doubting it since there's not really anything he could do if he knew it wasn't true, though he seems to be kind of quietly doubting it anyway just because at this point he doubts the existence of gravity.

<Thank you. ...What are you going to do?>

<Well, we're kind of at war, but if I don't tell anybody you've got a magic healing factor I bet they'll let me keep you and won't be especially likely to put me in a combat position. Humans aren't best for that anyway.>

He's pretty sure wars are bad because they kill people and killing people is bad because then some of them go to Hell. Or maybe that's fine, as established he can't tell right from wrong. Probably it would be silly at best to try to second-guess their choices here when he knows absolutely nothing.

<...I hope you figure out whether you go to Hell when you die and how to avoid it.>

<I have no idea how I'd find that out, honestly.> How did his host even get here?

Seems like demons can just appear on Earth? Probably not casually all the time, nothing looks like it would look if they could do it all the time, but they can do it at all and they can take passengers if, for example, they want to make someone else run their errands for them.

He got here as in this city by walking and also taking a bus.

He thinks maybe it's important not to give up on figuring out something that important? Or maybe he's completely wrong. No one should take his advice, it'll only make everything worse.

Well, how is the demon he's running errands for supposed to find him?

He was supposed to be in a specific area but maybe that was actually completely unnecessary, he was figuring he'd be able to tell if it was actually necessary based on whether he successfully hid or not. He was thinking of changing clothes and doing something different to his hair and maybe some horrific facial scarring would make him harder to recognize...? But maybe none of that would matter. In hindsight they probably wanted him not to be able to derive anything useful about their capabilities.

Does he have any money on him in his own right literally at all?

He has a blade and twine and some wire and a couple of tools from a craft store tucked away in pockets and $1.73 that wasn't given to him by demons and he does not have or need a house or food or water. He has shoes so he feels pretty rich although they should trade them for different shoes that don't come from demons, unless maybe whoever has them next will have problems, he has no idea whether there is actually any problem with them.

$1.73 will get them a bus ticket next time a bus passes by.

Once they are in a more populated area and can find an ATM they can get a few hundred and go to the nearest thrift store for a replacement outfit and shoes.