PEDAGOGUE [Difficult: Success] - There were also the labor laws, if you’ll remember. Too little too late and rightfully dismissed for exactly those reasons. The last of the laws was pushed through the Moralintern in ‘03, just as they were coming into power and Sola was falling out of it. They were little more than a pathetic attempt at an apology from a woman that couldn’t choose sides between the aristocracy and the proletariat. And yet when you were sitting on your isola all alone, bouncing messages through the pale, those labor laws were the only thing keeping you alive. 

COMPOSURE - Barely.

SOLA, THE ANTI-INNOCENCE - “Thank you for this opportunity,” she tells the crowd, “to love you. To lead you, even to ruin.” 

PEDAGOGUE [Godly: Failure] - Sola won Miss Oranje Disco Dancer in ‘37, 31 years after she resigned. She told you this, drunk on the balcony of the Whirling-in-Rags.

MAGIC BULLET [Easy: Success] - *Goddamn,* girl, you can see why. You didn’t know they let women with legs like *those* become innocences. 

YOU - You feel a bit unsteady on your feet, so you sit down in a pew with the rest of the crowd. 

SOLA, THE ANTI-INNOCENCE - “I know you resent me, for keeping what I know from you. To be the anti-innocence isn’t *flattery* from the masses.” Her smile is slight and wry, thin lipped. “Oh, I’m sure you wish I were your Dolores Dei, sweetheart. Your past and your future, to open the pale to Elysium. Sing the magpie song. But I wasn’t, and we both knew I would never be. The future wasn’t mine to give.”

LEVERAGE - This is it. She’s done: speech over, rule over, game over. The people are held captive by the crinkle at the corners of her eyes and the sharp cut of blond hair against her thin back, the humanity behind her distance. They couldn’t protest to her resignation if they *tried.*

PARAPHRENIA [Godly: Success] - You know, I don't think Sola was blond.

SOLA, THE ANTI-INNOCENCE - She steps down from the lectern and starts to walk into the distance. Her flaxen hair swaws with her hips in her disco-shiny pantsuit. 

YOU - You let her. She isn’t yours. You only know her from history books and half-satirical, half-unhinged prayers while you worked at the pale repeater stations. You apparently don’t even know her real hair color. Still, some part of you protests against her leaving. You feel swept up in the betrayal of the citizens surrounding you and a wave of rage turns in your stomach.

SOLA, THE ANTI-INNOCENCE - As she walks away, she sings.

THE INSTIGATOR - The magpie song.

SOLA, THE ANTI-INNOCENCE - “Life gets haaard. But we go ooooooon!”

YOU - You wake up on the floor of the old church with one of your blinding fucking headaches, the kind that lasts only minutes but which makes you dread going to sleep only because it means you have to wake up again.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS.

PEDAGOGUE [Trivial: Success] - Pale exposure is a multifaceted and often debilitating hazard, with possible symptoms ranging from amnesia to-

PARAPHRENIA [Godly: Failure] - Where the *fuck* are you. Who took you here. Where’s your goddamn *GUN.*

YOU - You tense. Doesn’t help your headache at all.

SPINE - Look, relax or we’re gonna have more to deal with than just a headache. Deep breath. Don’t listen to the bastard. In, out. 

PEDAGOGUE [Challenging: Success] - Starting from your Achilles tendon, the muscles you are engaging are your peroneus brevis, peroneus longus, solus, gastrocnemius. 

THEW - They’re not in the shape they could be, if you did more with them than work the gas and hold decades of tension, but look, boss, you’ve had a rough time of it. Wouldn’t be fair if your brain was the only thing that took a hit.

YOU - You slowly and carefully relax. You are once again lying limp on the smooth wood floor of the church.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - Above you stretches dozens of yards of empty space before it bumps up against the dark wood of the vault ceiling. There’s the shadow of a man up there, which does absolutely nothing helpful for your paranoia, but the way that his existence is so disturbingly undeniable is a little soothing.

YOU - You prop yourself up on your elbows.

THEW - Oh, god, that’s worse than going ridgid. What did you *do* to your arms? It feels like they’ve been dragged along a few miles of sandy beach.

THE INSTIGATOR - Last you remember you were running away from that dirty cop, the one from La Puta Madre that was going to do things worse than a bullet in your skull. Since then, well… 

PARAPHRENIA [Godly: Failure] - You don’t remember. You fucker, this is how you die. You don’t *remember.* Du Bois is probably still out there with that creep of a partner. You’re going to get waterboarded.

PARAPHRENIA - You should have killed yourself there. Oh, Dei, you should have killed *him.*

LEVERAGE [Medium: Success] - Killing him would have done no one any favors. At least this way there’s the hope your radio scrambled his brains enough that he forgets who you even are. There wasn’t any way that confrontation went better for you. You were *not* in control.

COMPOSURE - No, you weren’t. It’s hardly a surprise you don’t remember what happened next. It’s not as if passing out when things get too loud is a *new* thing for you to struggle with. It’s lucky you were dragged to a church, not a drug den.

BLACK SHEEP - *I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.*

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Heh. Wouldn’t have expected that sort of bougie shit from *you,* but to each their own.

SHIVERS - Billie likes the play. She’s reading it right now, at her dining room table. There are tear splatters on the pages and she’s not really digesting the words between her grief and the chaos of a child’s afternoon surrounding her, but it’s still familiar to her.

COMPOSURE - It helps you a little bit, too.

SOONA - “She’s woken up.” 

YOU - Your headache *had* been receding. A voice- any voice, even one as thin and steady as this lady’s- does not help it.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - MOTHERFUCKER. IF YOU KILL HER, SISTER, THE WORLD SHUTS UP.

SPINE [Easy: Success] - No.

YOU - You get off your elbows in one final push and find your hands just as scraped up. You groan.

SOONA - There’s a woman next to a radiocomputer. Her eyes are pale and everything about her is thin, not just her voice. Her lips, her hair, her eyes. Still, despite the chronically hungry look about her- artist in Revachol, as Klaasje would have said- there’s a newfound resonance in her bones. 

TOVARISCH - She belongs somewhere again. 

LEVERAGE [Formidable: Success] - It’s putting her a little off-balance.

SOONA - “I did not expect her to wake up,” she says. “You. Sorry. Didn’t expect *you* to wake up.”

COMPOSURE [Legendary: Failure] - Her voice sends a spike of pain through you, courtesy of your headache.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS. SO BAD. KILL HER.

TOVARISCH [Easy: Success] - No.

PARAPHRENIA [Legendary: Failure] - Dei knows who the hell she is, though. She’s probably an agent for La Puta Madre, here to watch you until the big guns come over. Until Du Bois gets back. *God,* you should have pulled the trigger back there. 

PARAPHRENIA - You should do it now. Before she walks over here.

THE INSTIGATOR [Trivial: Success] - You don’t have your gun.

SOONA - She glances quickly between you and her radiocomputer, obviously resistant to the idea of leaving whatever she was working on behind to investigate the now-awake woman in her church. 

SOONA - Finally she relents and goes back to type a few lines of code.

THE INSTIGATOR [Medium: Success] - This is your opportunity to leave, if you’re going to take it. You could at least get to your lorry before the voices take you again. You could probably drive a few hours, actually. The panic attacks are almost always a few days apart.

PARAPHRENIA [Impossible: Failure] - Hear that? Now’s your chance, if you don’t want to get drawn and quartered in front of the Dolores Dei. 

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Easy: Failure] - You hadn’t even noticed it was a Dolorian Church. How many times walking past the windows, the giant image of the benevolent mother, and it had still always escaped your sight. 

PEDAGOGUE [Challenging: Success] - Sola, the anti-innocence, did not foster a church the way her predecessors did. There is no Solaien creed. Even if you searched all corners of Elysium, you would find no rotting cathedrals devoted to her. The most famous artwork of her, often assumed to be a religious work, is a single stained glass panel that hangs in a Graadian art museum. 

THE INSTIGATOR - The lady has finished with her work. Your chance to flee has passed, unless you plan to overcome her. It likely wouldn’t be difficult.

THEW [Godly: Failure] - Lifting your body off the floor was difficult, boss. No matter how much this woman resembles a stick bug, you’re in no place to win any sort of fight.

SOONA - The woman walks over to where you’re lying and offers you a hand. “Sorry for the rough wakeup. When Egghead found you, he wasn’t in the headspace for fragility. Hell, we all thought you were dead.”

PERCEPTION (HEARING) [Medium: Failure] - She mutters something about stray cats dragging in dead things, but you don’t catch enough of the details to be offended.

THE INSTIGATOR [Formidable: Success] - This isn’t the voice of someone in organized crime. Maybe she’s putting up a front, but you sincerely doubt it. If you would have really fallen into their hands, they wouldn’t bother pretending otherwise.

YOU - You relax a little.

LEVERAGE - You should have a talk with this “Egghead.” Make him think twice about putting you through the wringer like that again.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - KILL HIM. OTHERWISE WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT TIME.

LEVERAGE [Easy: Success] - Shut up.

YOU - “Ugh,” you manage, rubbing your temple, “Well, thank god I’m neither of those things.”

THEW [Challenging: Failure] - You try to pull yourself to your feet, ignoring the lady’s hand. You don’t quite manage it and your failed attempt is painfully obvious to both of you.

SOONA - She drops the eschewed hand. “Neither of what things?”

YOU - “Fragile or dead.” You manage a dry chuckle. You always feel like you have to laugh after someone makes you explain your jokes.

SOONA - The lady doesn’t have a face for laughing, so you’re not all that surprised when her expression doesn’t change. “I won’t disagree with you,” she says, “but you’re looking banged up for someone that isn’t fragile.”

YOU - “I’ve been through hell, man. Cut me some slack.” You roll your shoulders. “Looks like I won’t be standing up on my own, either,” you say. “Gimme me a hand again?”

PARAPHRENIA - Don’t go *into her debt!* Who knows what she’ll do with it!

LEVERAGE - For once, I agree with the fucker. You’re already out of your element. You need to assert yourself, or you’ll fall to the bottom of the totem pole. Or whatever they call it in the church.

PEDAGOGUE [Easy: Success] - Hierarchy.

SOONA - A sardonic smile flickers across her face for just a moment as she pulls you up. Her arms are stronger than they look, sinewy and pockmarked at the shoulders. Her hands are smooth and dry. She’s no manual laborer, but she’s not unused to carrying things around. 

COMPOSURE [Godly: Failure] - As soon as you’re standing, a *stupid* pain shoots up your legs. It feels like the church is trying to eat you from the bottom up. You probably crush the woman’s fingers in instinctive reaction. Her face remains impassive, until she shoulders you off onto one of the pews with badly concealed irritation.

COMPOSURE - Relieving pressure from your feet helps a lot. Your headache recedes with the leg pain. You feel like something of a human being again. You groan.

YOU - “Motherfucker.”

SOONA - The woman eyes you.

LEVERAGE [Formidable: Success] - Eye her back.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Easy: Success] - A middlingly attractive face and a slim, stick-straight frame that, like every woman's body, would be sexy as hell in the right outfit- not necessarily the one she's wearing. She wears frumpy clothes, the kind reminiscent of the New. Not in the disco way, but in the anti-disco way: all the nerds and geeks who couldn’t rock out. The colors don’t really match, but she obviously doesn't care. Her collar is askew and her hair frizzes. She has clunky headphones on and the pig-tail cord curls back to her radiocomputer. 

JARGON [Medium: Success] - They’re a different brand than yours. A few years older, too, and thicker. Probably model E34-Q, or maybe even earlier than that.

METHOD OF LOCI [Easy: Success] - Titus helping you pick out your pair. He moves to place them on your head like a king knighting someone but backs off before you bark at him for patronizing. It had been important at the time, not allowing them to treat you like a kid because of your pussy. The electronics store had smelt like dust and burnt carpet.

YOU - “Nice headset.”

SOONA - “Thanks. I’m Soona.”

TOVARISCH [Godly: Failure] - Mm, yeah, ringing no bells. You don’t know Martinaise like Titus does, but you know the big names and the union men. Soona’s not one of them.

YOU - “Ruby.”

SOONA - “Alright.” She nods and obviously seems to decide that her work here is done. “I’ve got work to do. Yell if you need something. Maybe wave your arms if I don’t seem to hear you.”

YOU - You nod back.

SOONA - Right before she checks out again, she lifts her head and fixes you with an almost sheepish look. “The kids’ll be back soon,” she says. “I’ll… well, I’ll help you negotiate with them if I’m not in the middle of something. Otherwise you’ll be on your own.”

SHIVERS [Medium: Success] - Four adolescents tromp through the thick snow and thin ice up the coast. One of them is carrying some sort of recorder, another a Fritte bag full of groceries. A third is planning a rave with the seagulls on the power lines. The last one, with gleaming blond hair and a distant grin, is pretty sure they’re lost.

BLACK SHEEP [Easy: Success] - They’re not lost, just conceptualizing. Conceptualizing takes a long time when you’re in your twenties. 

YOU - “Thanks for the warning,” you mutter, letting the full bodied shudder run its course.

SOONA - She shoots you another pale, wry smile and this one lingers on her face as she turns back to her radiocomputer. It softens all the harsh planes of her face. Her chapped lips just barely reflect the green light of the screen. Thin fingers play the keys.

SPINE [Formidable: Failure] - You’re staring.

MAGIC BULLET [Easy: Success] - *Yeah* you are. Oh, baby, we might have to reevaluate this woman. Look at those eyes. She could drink you under the table and then recite all the isolas in geographical order.

TASK GAINED : GO DOWN ON THE RADIOCOMPUTER LADY

TOVARISCH - Man, you’re 5’3” and usually don’t go stronger than cheap beer. Tommy could outdrink you. It’s not special.

MAGIC BULLET - Tommy doesn’t have nice tits.

TASK UPDATED : GO DOWN ON THE RADIOCOMPUTER LADY?

THE INSTIGATOR [Medium: Success] - You’ll also probably never see Tommy again. The reassurance that he didn’t sell you out was a small mercy, but that doesn’t change the fact that the first thing you've gotta do once you can stand is get the hell out of here.

YOU - You exhale and lean back in the pew. Nothing to but wait, then. Hope these kids aren’t the ones that are going to kill you once and for all.

ANDRE - “Soona, have you been out up the coast recently? It’s hard*core* up there. The sea air is insane.”YOU - You jolt awake from a sleep you hadn’t realized you’d fallen into. Your neck hurts from sitting at an odd angle, but your headache has not decided to return. Good. These kids look hard enough to deal with in your best shape. You blink at them.

SOONA - “Yes, I have. It was not for me, but I’m glad you four are finding use for it.” Her headphones slip easily off her head and back around her neck.

EMPATHY [Legendary: Success] - She’s pleased to see them back, but she would rather die than admit it.

NOID - The one holding the Fritte bag lifts it to Soona. “Grabbed some groceries, too,” he says. “Egghead wanted to get lost on the way back, so we went up the coast. I think Andre *thought* he was lost by the end of it.” He shoots a look at the spiky-haired boy.

EMPATHY [Legendary: Failure] - It’s unreadable.

NOID - “The oceans got some good waves going, though. Sound, water, *and* sine.” He looks around for a reasonable place to put the bag and, seeming to remember they’re in a derelict church, hangs it on a rusting nail. He’s wearing a dirt-stained tulle skirt and suspenders.

ACELE - “Your pocky’s in the bag, by the way. Thanks for the grocery money.”

SOONA - She waves a hand. “It’s nothing.”

EGGHEAD - The blond kid grins. His expression is nearly blinding.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS.

EGGHEAD - “The Fritte is a tumor of late stage capitalism!” he says. "*Not* hardcore!”

NOID - “Goddamn it. We shouldn’t have let that fucking pig get to you.”

PARAPHRENIA - *Pig.* These kids have met Du Bois, and they’re probably narcs. Or undercover cops. Or, worse than that- responding directly to La Puta Madre. It’s not safe here.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - YOU’VE GOT TO RUN, SISTER.

YOU - You wince.

SPINE [Easy: Success] - No, take a deep breath. In, out. They’re just loud. And even if Du Bois ran through the church, it doesn’t mean they’re in his pockets. 

TOVARISCH - It doesn't do anyone any good to assume the worst of strangers.

ANDRE - “Yo, Soona, what happened to the corpse?” He’s staring at the place you’d been lying. There’s a beam of sunlight there now, casting an inverse shadow on the warm wood. You realize that you’re probably not visible from where they stand. The pews are all shrouded in darkness.

ACELE - “She wasn’t dead, Andre. She’s just…” She notices, too, that your body has moved. “What *did* happen, actually?”

SOONA - “She woke up.”

EGGHEAD - “HAAARDCORE!”

NOID - “Where’d she go?”

ACELE - “You kept her gun, right?”

THE INSTIGATOR - So that’s what happened to it. It doesn’t really come as a surprise: any sane people in Martinaise would confiscate a gun they found, and even though these five are a little weird, they’ve got enough common sense between the group of ‘em to remember to check your holster. You’d forgotten to worry. Maybe you should listen to those bastards in your head more often- sometimes you’re paranoid *and* you’re right.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - RUN. THEY HAVE YOUR GUN. YOU’RE GOING TO DIE HERE, SISTER.

COMPOSURE [Easy: Success] - You were always going to die somewhere.

SOONA - Her voice is crisp. “I’m not an idiot. I may not be as *hardcore* as you four, but I’ve survived a hell of a lot longer. She’s in the pews *without* a gun."

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - Four heads swivel to look at you. The blond one blinks, then the spiked one, then the girl. The fourth, the one that had been carrying the Fritte bag, just stares.

LEVERAGE [Heroic: Failure] - You’re not sure if you should speak first or hold the ground on silence.

SOONA - Soona absolves your indecision by taking the choice. “This is Egghead, Andre, Acele, Noid,” she says, nodding at each of the teenagers in turn.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - The names fit each of them in ways that names usually don’t.

ANDRE - Finally, the spiked one- Andre- steps forward. He takes another dozen steps forward until he’s standing in front of your pew, then sticks out a hand. “Hullo, corpse we found on the boardwalk. Nice t’ meet you. I’m Andre, this is my posse, we run a nightclub.”

EGGHEAD - “Hello!”

NOID - “Afternoon.”

ACELE - “Nice to meet you.”

TOVARISCH [Formidable: Success] - You like these kids. They’re more polite than you expected, for ravers living in an old Dolorian church. They’ll be okay roommates for the few hours until you can get up onto your feet again.

THE INSTIGATOR [Medium: Success] - That idiot says that about every ragtag bunch you meet. Were Du Bois and the seolite more polite than you expected, too? There’s no time to get attached.

YOU - You shake his hand, anyway. It’s sweaty from the cold. “It’s a pleasure, Andre. Egghead, Acele, Noid.” You nod at each of them in turn.

PEDAGOGUE - Your memory isn’t what it was when you were young, bits and pieces of your neurons stolen by the membrane that holds the isolas together, but names have always been essential working with the Hardie boys. You’ve got a knack for it.

ACELE - “So, we’re all wondering,” she says, glancing around the group as if to verify that yes, you *are* an unending source of curiosity for them, “what happened to you?”

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - TELL THEM ABOUT US AND THEY LOCK YOU INTO A BOX AND CHUCK YOU INTO THE BAY.

LEVERAGE [Medium: Success] - Tell them about the voices and they think you’re a nutcase and then they kick you into the snow and you get scooped up by Du Bois after half an hour. You’ve seen what people do to good, sane people that they *like.*

BLACK SHEEP [Formidable: Success] - Tell them about the voices and they have a reasonable explanation for finding you passed out. An explanation that *doesn’t* involved covering up a murder.

PEDAGOGUE [Medium: Success] - Almost 4% of Insulinde’s population suffers from some form of pale exposure. The average person meets 10,000 other people in their lifetime- 4,000 of which are by the time they’re 20. This “posse” has likely met more than the average small-town hick, traveling around looking for somewhere to set up their nightclub. Statistically, they’ve undoubtedly met *someone* suffering from the symptoms.

TOVARISCH - You can come clean with them.

BULLSHITTER - Not about the hanging. Not about what that pale-induced fucked-up-ness led you to get mixed up in, not about what you’ve been hauling as you’ve reexposed yourself to it the last few years. This isn’t a time for unflinching honesty, shitkid.

YOU - You sigh, deeply, like finding you half dead was a normal occurrence that’s just a bit rude to comment on. It’s a specific tone of voice you learned from Titus, who was never as condescending as he was when people asked prodding questions about your neurosis. “I worked on pale repeater stations in my twenties,” you say, “and as lorry driver the last few years. Sometimes trans-isola.”

SOONA - Soona’s eyes widen.

ACELE - Acele winces sympathetically.

YOU - “The panic attacks are an unfortunate side effect."

NOID - “That’s rough,” he says, “rancid sines.”

YOU - “Someone’s got to do the work.” You stretch experimentally under the guise of resting your arms on the back of the pew.

THEW [Heroic: Failure] - Better than this morning. Still horrible. You don’t want to know what will happen if you put weight on any one of these fuckers again.

THE INSTIGATOR [Trivial: Success] - So you’re not going anywhere yet. Still, you’re making exponential recovery: there’s probably nothing serious wrong with you. You’ll be out of here tomorrow at the latest.

YOU - “It’s long over now. I gotta get out of here, actually.”

THE INSTIGATOR [Challenging: Success] - Grabbing your lorry would be suicide. You should go down, past the fishing village. You don’t know how long you were out, but it’s safest to assume Du Bois is still haunting Martinaise.

YOU - “How long was I out?”

ANDRE - Andre glances over at Soona and holds up three lanky fingers for verification. Soona nods. “Three,” he says, “uh, days. We found you right after the tribunal.”

PEDAGOGUE [Impossible: Failure] - The tribunal?

NOID - “We weren’t there for it. Just heard the gunshots.”

SHIVERS [Formidable: Success] - There’s blood on the square, then gasoline in thick, stinking letters. Then flames. Two cops- one sturdy, one slim- watch it ignite.

TOVARISCH [Legendary: Failure] - You failed the Hardie Boys. You don’t know what you could have done, with your string and cork board understanding of the events, but there are people gone now that weren’t gone before you left. Glen. Oh, fuck, Glen. Titus.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - DEAD. YOU’RE ALL THAT’S LEFT.

THE INSTIGATOR [Easy: Success] - There’s too much to keep track of in a disaster like this. Pain whites out everything. Paranoia distracts. You can’t blame yourself for forgetting there was something to mourn.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS. 

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - YOU KILLED THEM. IT HURTS, SISTER, IT HURTS.

PARAPHRENIA - You should have killed yourself when you had the chance. Your gun is gone now, you fucker. Now there’s nothing left but to live without them. These kids are going to cut off your fingers one by one and sell you out to everyone looking for you, and you’ll have to do it without the Hardies.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS. 

COMPOSURE [Impossible: Failure] - You curl up sideways, sort of like when someone punches you except much, much worse. It doesn’t do anything good for the aches and bruises covering you, either.

COMPOSURE - Your headphones. The headphones, fast. Get them. Hurry. Fuck.

YOU - You feel yourself laugh, somewhere between dryly and hysterically.

ANDRE - The kid is looking at you with horror.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - A MURDERER. YOU KILLED THEM. IT HURTS.

PARAPHRENIA [Heroic: Failure] - No. Worse than that. You’re a coward, a little pussy who couldn’t pull the trigger. Who knows what would be different if you had had the balls to *make* yourself a murderer? Who knows who would still be here?

COMPOSURE - Headphones. Fuck.

THEW [Legendary: Failure] - Your fingers scrabble against the thick earpads, but they’re too numb to get a hold on. Especially in your current mental condition.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Heroic: Success] - You manage to crack your eyes open and see Soona out of the corners of your eyes. She looks concerned.

EMPATHY [Formidable: Success] - It’s a thin veneer. Underneath, she’s fascinated. She’s never seen someone with pale-related trauma disorder. If you weren’t in so much goddamn pain, you’d chuckle at her reaction.

TOVARISCH [Easy: Success] - The last thing your mind offers you before you pass out is an image of Glenn, grin wide and sharp, and an almost-hallucination of his arm around your shoulders.

ANDRE - “Fuck, Noid, you killed her.”

NOID - “*I* killed her? Everyone knows about the tribunal. We’re all still dealing with the after-vibes. It’s not my fault if they hit her a bit harder than the rest of us.” 

ACELE - “She’s obviously part of the union. Adjacent to it, at least. She probably-” her voice goes hushed.

PERCEPTION (HEARING) [Medium: Success] - “knew some of the victims,” she finishes.

THEW [Formidable: Failure] - You’re not moving from this fetal position anytime soon, boss. It’s probably only been a few seconds since you grayed out, judging by the fact that they’re still talking about you. Might as well keep your eyes shut, see what else they say.

EGGHEAD - “The tribunal was a scar that’s going to stay on this city for a long time,” he says. His voice is shockingly plain without the enthusiasm. 

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - THEY CRISS-CROSS YOUR LUNGS. IT HURTS.

SOONA - “Pale exposure can make trauma triggers that much more intense,” she offers from the radiocomputer. “We should maybe tread lightly around the union and the Tribunal in the future.”

TOVARISCH - No, you *need* to know what else happened, and not in some pansy tiptoeing way. You need the cold, hard facts. You need to mourn.

COMPOSURE [Easy: Success] - You can’t handle the facts right now.

ANDRE - “You’re right. It’s the least we can do for her.” Even with your eyes closed, you can tell he’s looking down at you, brow furrowed.

NOID - “Sometimes people need to confront their demons.”

SOONA - “Perhaps your nightclub is not the place for that.” Her voice is dry.

ANDRE - “Oh, shit, yeah. Yo, we gotta cancel tonight. Probably tomorrow too. Close up, or whatever. It was okay just dragging her into the back when she wasn’t awake, but our music is *way* too hardcore if loud noises might have any, uh, adverse reactions. Noid, do you wanna go spread the news?”

NOID - “Urgh.”

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - That means no, he doesn’t wanna.

ANDRE - “Aw, c’mon man. Martin and Cindy like you best.”

NOID - “The idiot skulls-in-training like you better,” he retorts.

ANDRE - A moment of quiet as their leader considers. Finally, he says, “everyone likes Acele.”

ACELE - “What? Oh, no no no. I will *not* be the bearer of bad news. Noid already has the pall for it, you know. I don’t.”

SOONA - “You should all go. Spread the burden between the four of you and you won’t risk your individual popularity suffering because one of you becomes associated with the nightclub being closed.” Her voice is bone dry and the ticking of her keyboard doesn’t stop as she talks. Still, the rest of them pause to consider her words.

EGGHEAD - “Cooperative work is HARDCORE.”

NOID - Noid grumbles. “Fine,” he finally says. “So long as this doesn’t become some kind of routine. I’m not leaving the church every time Egghead wants an energy drink.”

ANDRE - There’s some garbled platitudes from their leader as the posse suits back up and gets ready to go out and spread the word. The church floors creak under the weight and then the huge, heavy oak doors slam behind their backs. They leave a veritable absence in their place, a hole in the church.

SOONA - “You can stop playing dead now, Ruby,” she says. Her typing stops.

THEW [Challenging: Success] - You can support yourself enough to at least sit up and uncurl your legs. C’mon, up and at ‘em.

LEVERAGE - Don’t *listen* to her! This bitch is being patronizing as hell. Don’t let her know she sniffled you out.

THEW - You don’t have a twenty year old spinal cord anymore. Fucking up your back- especially before you have to go on the run from the law- isn’t worth being stubborn.

YOU - You lurch into a seated position with a groan and shoot a glare at the programmer. 

LEVERAGE [Medium: Failure] - Fine. At least insist that you weren’t ‘playing dead.’

COMPOSURE [Medium: Failure] - It won’t make you sound like a child.

BLACK SHEEP [Medium: Failure] - We promise.

YOU - “I wasn’t ‘playing dead,’ I was suffering with acute psychological distress. With my eyes closed. Like a big girl.” You cross your arms and lean back in the pew.

SOONA - She doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. “Aren’t you always?”

SOONA - She walks over to the Fritte bag and you watch her.

MAGIC BULLET [Easy: Success] - Her clothes are frumpy, but *damn* her pants fit well.

YOU - “Always a big girl or always suffering acute psychological distress?”

SOONA - You thought for *sure* that would get a laugh- a wry one, at least- but Soona just shrugs and starts to sift through the groceries. “Both, I guess. I was referring to your neurosis, though. I’ve never met someone with the sort of late-state pale exposure you struggle with.

PEDAGOGUE [Medium: Success] - Statistically-

YOU - “Statistically, you have. About 4% of the population of Insulinde has been exposed to what’s considered an unhealthy amount of the pale. ’S higher around Revachol.”

SOONA - “I’m a shut-in.” She pulls a six-pack and a slim box out of the bag. The box is light brown and contains some kind of pastry. The beers are Pilsners, which you’d normally steer far away from. Still, they’re cheap. You figure a (probably) unemployed programmer and a quad of ravers in their 20s probably can’t afford anything better. Soona lifts the six-pack at you. “Want some?”

LEVERAGE [Trivial: Success] - Don’t take her damn food!

BLACK SHEEP [Challenging: Success] - People like people they break bread with. If you want to stay safe the next few days, get on Soona’s good side.

YOU - Your stomach pangs. “Nah, I-”

SOONA - “No,” she says sternly.

YOU - “Uh. Huh?”

SOONA - “You haven’t eaten in days. I wasn’t actually asking.” She doesn’t sit on the pew itself, instead perches on its back. A second later her hand descends from above you with an offered beer bottle. You take it.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Failure: Medium] - You can’t see anything of her but her legs unless you turn your head. They're just as thin as the rest of her body, with pants that come down to her shins and peach fuzz leg hair. Her shoes are as heavy duty as you get before you go into construction work or the military.

BLACK SHEEP - If you were with the guys, one of them would make a comment on her chicken legs and you would laugh. It was easier to go along with their criticisms and pretend they were your own, albeit distanced from the attraction inherent in the way the Hardie boys looked at women. Pretending to be a lady comparing herself and everyone else to an unattainable ideal, not a homo-sexual who loved knobby knees and crooked smiles.

MAGIC BULLET [Challenging: Success] - You kinda want to run your thumb up the back of her leg, see if it makes her shiver.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Your commitment to finding arousal in everything is impressive.

MAGIC BULLET - Thanks.

YOU - You take a sip of your beer. It tastes like piss, but that was expected.

SOONA - “So,” Soona says.

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - She has a lot of questions she wants to ask you, ranging from academic to personal to circumstantial. Her two main personality traits- eccentric and practical- are constantly warring with each other, and this is no exception. Finally, practical wins.

SOONA - “You said you needed to get out of Martinaise.”

YOU - “Yeah.”

THE INSTIGATOR [Trivial: Success] - I don’t have to tell you not to explain why.

SOONA - “The whole place is closed off.”

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - YOU’RE GOING TO DIE HERE. TRAPPED IN THE CITY WITH THE HUMAN CAN OPENER AND YOUR FRIENDS’ GHOSTS.

PARAPHRENIA [Medium: Failure] - This shouldn’t be coming as a surprise to you. What, you thought you could get out easy? Hop a bus and start a new life in Jamrock? You strung up a man and nearly killed two pigs. Your life is over. You should have ended it yourself: saved some of your dwindling dignity.

THE INSTIGATOR [Easy: Success] - No, this is temporary. The blood slaughter of your friends will swiftly end the strike in the union’s favor, and whatever Du Bois is, he’s a damn good cop and the tangle of worms the merc’s death opened will be cleaned up soon too. It’ll all be over in a week or two. You can hold out that long.

PARAPHRENIA [Challenging: Failure] - In this damn town, crawling with snitches? Fat fucking chance.

TOVARISCH [Easy: Success] - Shut up.

YOU - “Damn,” you manage, finally. Your voice is barely more than a croak. “Well, that’ll set me back a few weeks. I’m- not in any rush.”

SOONA - “You clearly are.” Her hand appears in your vision again, this time bearing a thin, chocolate dipped breadstick.

BULLSHITTER - There’s no point disputing that again, shitkid. She might not know what’s going on with you, but there’s a hell of a lot of sketchy shit going on around here and you are an obvious piece of the puzzle.

PEDAGOGUE [Heroic: Failure] - It *is* worth asking what the hell this thing is, though. It looks like a shit-dipped stick.

MAGIC BULLET - Or a messed up candy cigarette.

YOU - “What’s this?” You take whatever it is, despite your misgivings.

SOONA - “Pocky. The Fritte sells it for less than they do their normal biscuits.” There’s a pause. Soona is not used to keeping up conversation.

BLACK SHEEP - You’re lucky she’s inexplicably making an effort for you.

SOONA - “I used to eat them while I was working with Fortress Accident. Each one takes more time to eat than a normal pastry. More time with my fingers on the keys.”

YOU - You ponder the pocky. “Huh. Really?”

SOONA - “Yes. They’re longer than a normal biscuit, see,” she says dryly. 

LEVERAGE - Great. Now she thinks you’re an idiot.

YOU - You take a bite. It tastes like absolutely nothing. The breadstick part is flavorless and the chocolate is too thin to leave anything but the ghost of sweetness on your tongue. You stick the rest of it in your mouth, the same way you would a cigarette, and see if you can eat it without your hands.

THEW [Trivial: Success] - It’s disappointingly easy.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Godly: Failure] - There must be some secret appeal to these things. Are you supposed to lick the chocolate off like a popsicle?

PEDAGOGUE - Maybe they’re just for programmers. Maybe the appeal really *is* having to reach into the biscuit tin less.

SOONA - “What’s your rush?”

BLACK SHEEP - She’s asking about Martinaise- why you need to leave like there’s fire ants circling your boots.

YOU - “That’s my business, not yours.” You stare down at your drink.

METHOD OF LOCI [Challenging: Success] - Glen buying you a Potent Pilsner- *insisting* on it, even though if you were paying you could get the both of you something better. He liked to play at something flirtatious with you, and you humored it only because you sometimes thought he could see the irony in it. And you only humored it so much.

LEVERAGE - It was good, too, because none of the other boys wanted to mess with Glen. By the end of it they wouldn’t fuck with you anyway, but the weird underground connection you made with the dumb blond saved you a pain the ass the first few months.

PARAPHRENIA [Godly: Failure] - And now you don’t know if he’s alive or dead. If his blood watered Evrart’s damn contract.

SOONA - “Fine.” There’s the quiet noise of a biscuit snapping as she bites into it. “I won’t pry. I’m not too invested in the personal lives of others, anyway.”

YOU - You take another sip. “Why’d you ask, then?”

SOONA - “You are living under my roof. I felt like I had to do some sort of vetting.” 

LEVERAGE [Medium: Success] - The sardonic tone to her voice is to cover the self-deprecating acceptance that she knows she’s done a poor job attempting that.

YOU - “Well. I can’t make any promises about what might show up at your door looking for me, but I’m not going to slit your throat in your sleep.”

TOVARISCH [Easy: Success] - You’re a Hardie boy at your core. No matter what the pale might tell you, there’s no way in hell you’d hurt a Martinaise citizen. 

SOONA - “Good.” A lull, then she says, “ Are you planning on just heading straight out once the town opens up again?”

THE INSTIGATOR - You’ve been conscious only a few hours. You haven’t thought too much about it. You *had* had a plan before Du Bois and his partner wrecked your latitude compressor- not a good one, per say, but it had been there- but there were a few wrenches thrown into it. Now? Yeah, you plan on just leaving. Catching a bus somewhere. Doing what you always do.

YOU - “Yeah.”

SOONA - “Do you have any…” she waves a hand. “Stuff?”

THE INSTIGATOR - Goddamn it.

PARAPHRENIA - *Shit,* girlie, you’re a fucking idiot.  Thought you’d just swan out of Martinaise with nothing but the clothes on your back, huh? When you lost your consciousness, you lost *everything.*

BULLSHITTER - *Don’t* tell her this, shitkid.

THE INSTIGATOR - You just have to get some of the stuff back. It won’t be all that hard. Maybe you’ll even be able to back into your makeshift tent for your journal. The Feld building will be crawling with cops- or M’s men- once Du Bois rounds up his band of merry men, but if you go soon-

THEW - (Say, as soon as you can stand without whimpering like a little girl)

THE INSTIGATOR - you might be able to squeeze in before the yellow tape wraps that thing up tight. You can stop in at the fishing village, too. If you’re going to venture into Martinaise proper, you’ll need a disguise- and maybe your gun, depending on how far those fuckers’ backstabbing went- but the world isn’t over.

PARAPHRENIA - Not for you, at least.

THE INSTIGATOR - You can still get back on some kinda track. Hop a bus to Jamrock with some supplies.

SPINE - Do your big-girl deep breaths.

TASK GAINED : GET PREPARED

YOU - “Oh, yeah. Not on me, obviously, but… I’ll be alright.”

SOONA - Soona looks almost reassured by that. She sips her beer and cranes her head back, up at the nothingness in the rafters. “Good.” 

THE BLACK SHEEP - The two of you drink and eat bland biscuit-breadsticks for another hour until Andre’s posse finally returns. There’s food for dinner, prepared by Noid with ingredients that you don’t manage to parse. You don’t talk much and neither does Soona- it’s obvious the kids are used to monopolizing the conversation and they’re unbothered by your presence. No one asks how long you’ll be staying, but Acele gives you a thin, lumpy quilt before going to curl up with her boyfriend, which you pair with your balled-up jacket as a pillow. The pilsners you had lead you into sleep a bit easier. So does having a real meal in your stomach.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - YOU’LL BE DEAD BEFORE MORNING. IT HURTS, SISTER.

THEW [Heroic: Failure] - *Shit,* boss, you’re fucked this morning! Sleeping on the floor has damned every single bone in your body, and you’re one bad move from writhing like a flipped beetle.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS.

THEW - Feels worse than yesterday, if that’s possible.

THE INSTIGATOR [Formidable: Success] - Possible. Untrue, though. You’re making progress, really- it was worse when you woke up yesterday. Mornings are always hard. For… everything.

COMPOSURE [Legendary: Success] - You resist the urge to groan in pain and open your eyes.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - Emptiness above you. You’re still in the Dolorian church. The sky, the rafters, the shadows of supporting beams. The faint outline of a man perched on them.

PARAPHRENIA [Easy: Failure] - Nothing to see there.

ACELE - “Alright. I’ve got all four kings, three aces, the six seven eight nine ten of hearts and the three other tens, three jacks, and four sixes. Minus ten points for the queen of spades and that’s one-seventy points.” The low splash of a hand of cards being thrown onto the floor.

EGGHEAD - “That win was TOTALLY hardcore!”

ANDRE - “Goddamn it. I knew I shouldn’t have called the game then.”

ACELE - “You still wouldn’t have won.” Her voice is perfectly even: not consoling, not gloating, not even making a statement. Just soft.

YOU - You push yourself into a seated position. It really is easier than it had been the morning before, although your headache moves with the rest of your body and seems to protest getting jostled around in your head.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - MOTHERFUCKER.

PERCEPTION (TOUCH) [Medium: Success] - You notice the quilt from Acele just as it falls off your chest and onto your lap.

METHOD OF LOCI [Trivial: Success] - The girl, giving it to you with a practiced nonchalance before she went to bed. Her slightly furrowed brow as she studies your face when you accept it, ginger hair gleaming in the light that bled through the stained glass. It hadn’t helped much to cushion your aging bones from sleeping on the floor, but it had been better than nothing.

NOID - “Oh, hello.”

YOU - You blink at him. “Morning,” you say, voice gravelly. He’s sitting on the floor a few feet from you, spinning a hammer.

PARAPHRENIA [Formidable: Failure] - You just drifted away into dreamland last night, huh? You fucker, that’s how you die in Martinaise. This guy could’ve put that hammer through your skull, *easy.*

SPINE [Easy: Success] - He didn’t.

NOID - “I’m not feeling too good about the concept of morning,” he says blandly. The hammer spins again. “Time is a protoindustial farce to keep us chained to society. I think embracing human-based greetings is the only way to take a stand against this arm of the left-right complex.”

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Legendary: Failure] - It’s too early for this.

YOU - “Urgh, alright. Hey, kid.”

NOID - His face spasms at the word *kid* but you suspect out of some moral disagreement with the label, not that he thinks you’re patronizing. “Hey yourself,” he says.

YOU - You take a moment to adjust to being both awake and sitting. Your headache begins to recede and thoughts come a bit more smoothly. 

PERCEPTION (SMELL) - The church smells like someone burnt premade croissant rolls.

NOID - He leans forward. “You dye your hair yourself,” he says.

YOU - “Yeah. What about it?”

METHOD OF LOCI [Formidable: Success] - One of your old coworkers- *old* old, back in Jamrock- blowing cigarette smoke into your face while she painted sticky maroon goo through your freshly bleached bangs. It had never really occurred to you to stop dying it.

NOID - “Nothing,” his smile is barely there. “DIY is hardcore, man. You’ll fit right in.”

TOVARISCH [Challenging: Success] - Warmth blooms in your chest. You’ve always been stupidly weak for being liked.

THE INSTIGATOR [Legendary: Success] - You’ll *fit right in* for a week or two, sure, but then you’re *out* of here. Gone. 

MAGIC BULLET [Heroic: Success] - Poof! Ghosting everyone you’ve ever loved’s a hell of a drug.

YOU - You offer Noid a smile only a little bit wider than his.

NOID - He settles back into his hammer-spinning and you settle into trying to decide what to do next.

THE INSTIGATOR - Bide your time. 

TOVARISCH - Check out your new comrades.

MAGIC BULLET - Hey, wasn’t this a drug lab? You think you heard this was a drug lab.

ANDRE - “DAMN!” His exclamation shatters the silence of the church, but no one else looks up. “Good game, Egghead,” he says. His voice is only a little bit grudging. 

PARAPHRENIA - You could go hunt down your gun and then shoot something. Anything you want, actually. I wouldn’t be picky today. 

BLACK SHEEP - Or you could go check in with Soona.

SOONA - The clicking of a radiocomputer keyboard is omnipresent in the church. You *are* curious what she’s doing, and you’ve never really liked gin rummy, synthetic drugs, or shooting things.

YOU - You lift yourself to your feet with a groan. Noid sends you a blank look that you decide to call sympathetic.

THEW [Legendary: Success] - Hey, this isn’t nearly as bad as yesterday! More like stepping on a nail head than the sharp end. You really are recovering. Soon you’ll be brand spankin’ new.

THEW [Heroic: Failure] - You do still visibly limp when you walk over to Soona. There’s nothing you can do about that.

YOU - You rest your arms on the top of the radiocomputer. This means sticking your head into the cubist cage of an antennae and definitely messing up Soona’s computing. She gives you a horribly dirty look. It would probably bowl you over with guilt if you hadn’t spent decades of your life fucking with these things and know full well that whatever she was doing will spring perfectly back into place the second you duck out of its personal space.

PARAPHRENIA [Challenging: Success] - The radio waves bend around you like a topographical map, red around your mind and cool blue around your shoulders.

YOU - “What’re you working on?”

SOONA - “The hole in the world.” She jabs her fingers at a few final keys, like she’s trying in vain to make the machine account for the fully grown woman in the middle of its mind, before giving up and just staring despondently at the screen.

BLACK SHEEP [Formidable: Failure] - You can’t tell if she’s *trying* to keep you out of the loop or if she’s just always like this when she talks about her work.

YOU - “Oh, really?” You raise an eyebrow.

SOONA - When she finally looks up at you, her expression is a bit sheepish. “The one in the church. The isolary entroponetical phenomena that’s been growing in Martinaise for- who knows how long. Years- decades!” She’s starry eyed at the thought.

COMPOSURE [Godly: Failure] - You’re already pale, freckled face gone bone white at the news. Maybe even a little green around your gills. 

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - OH, SISTER, IT TEARS AT THE SEAMS. IT HURTS.

SOONA - She hasn’t noticed your reaction. “It’s an embarrassment that the Moralintern- I think- got a handle on this before the Union did,” she says, a little to herself. “But I suppose it’s a good thing. I’m sure your Hardie boys would be a little more territorial about their church that redefines the *entire field* of entroponetics than the Coalition.”

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - She’s really excited about this. Terrified, but excited. And the terror is definately in the backseat.

SOONA - “I’ve been studying it. Months now of research and a breakdown, *finally,* a handful of days ago.” A funny expression crosses her face.

EMPATHY - She hates the idea of her work going to nothing, but she hates the idea of it going to the Moralintern more. 

YOU - “You said it’s growing?” you manage to croak.

SOONA - She blinks her confliction away. “Oh. Yes,” she says. She doesn’t offer any followup.

YOU - “Alright.”

LEVERAGE - You’re not a fan of *prying* answers out of her. You’re no can opener. You’re just a woman and you were hoping for some kind of friendly conversation. The world-ending revelation was a surprise. 

PARAPHRENIA - It scares you, but you can’t resist glancing up at the rafters. It doesn’t *look* like the pale- there isn’t any porch collapse around it than you can see.

COMPOSURE [Formidable: Success] - You swallow.

SOONA - “No porch collapse. No *anything,* except a hole. I don’t think it’s big enough yet.”

YOU - You tear your eyes away from the inky blackness of the rafters to meet Soona’s gaze again.

MAGIC BULLET - *Wow* her eyes are intense when she’s talking about this stuff.

JARGON - A kindred spirit, perhaps.

SOONA - “My understanding, with the calculations I’ve done, is that porch collapse won’t form for decades- maybe centuries.” The programmer makes small, controlled gestures as she talks. Her hands are twitchy when they’re not typing, fingers slim and long, pulling at the air for concepts that aren’t there- except in the radio waves she needs her computer to interpret. “But I’ve only been watching it for a month or two and *no one* knows the rate the pale is expanding at. Maybe we’ll be seeing porch collapse next week and the whole world will be consumed in a month.” She shrugs. “I don’t think about it.”

EMPATHY [Godly: Success] - She thinks about it constantly, but that’s not mutually exclusive with not thinking about it.

YOU - “Dang.” You whistle. “Heavy shit for first thing in the morning.”

SOONA - Her lips purse.

BLACK SHEEP - Holding in a smile.

SOONA - “It’s two in the afternoon.”

EGGHEAD - “HAAAARDCORE!” He shouts, from across the room. “CONNATURAL CORTISOL MANAGEMENT!”

SOONA - This time, the smile breaks through. It’s not even a wry one this time- you can see the slightest glimpse of her teeth behind thin lips. “Yes. We figured sleep couldn’t do anything but help your injuries.” 

ANDRE - “And you didn’t wake up after a round of cards, a feat Noid thought should be rewarded!” 

YOU - “I appreciate it, man.” you tell the young neo-Aulay-impersonator.

PEDAGOGUE [Medium: Success] - Peter Aulay- real name Peter Steven Jorgeson- was a prog rock singer-songwriter and actor from Sur-La-Clef who was born in ‘01 and died in ‘49, with his height of popularity being in the late teens of the century. He had a prolific career and most of his movies are considered cult classics. He was a face of the New- and, paradoxically, of its refinement into Post-New for everywhere that wasn’t Revachol.

METHOD OF LOCI [Trivial: Success] - Glen putting on one of Aulay’s records one night, when the two of you were the only Hardies who hadn’t gone back to wherever they spent the night. His eyes flashed defensively when the first few notes strain from the speakers. You never really got into Aulay, but you never criticized his stuff in front of Glen.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Godly: Failure] - You have *no* idea if Noid is paying intentional homage.

NOID - He gives you a stoic nod.

ACELE - Acele finishes dealing out the next round of cards and Andre and Egghead pick up their cards. Noid takes his hammer and scooches close enough to them that he can see Acele’s hand over her shoulder.

TOVARISCH [Medium: Success] - They’ll all be embroiled in their adolescent fraternity for at least another twenty minutes. It’s just you and Soona in this conversation now, for better or for worse.

MAGIC BULLET [Challenging: Success] - Oh *yeah,* baby! Here’s a twenty step plan for how this is *absolutely* for better. Number one: that hand you’ve got there? The one that’s dangling uselessly off the end of the radiocomputer you’re leaning on? Yeah. Put it on her-

PEDAGOGUE - THIS IS A DISGRACE TO THE ART OF TWENTY STEP PLANS.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Still, the *sentiment* wasn’t all in the wrong place. If you don’t have to look all around at the ravers, you have more time to stare into her eyes! See if you can divine the world’s secrets in their deep gray.

SPINE - Woah. Where is this coming from?

BLACK SHEEP [Easy: Success] - You don’t know where it’s coming from, but you do know it’s going nowhere good for your safety in this ragtag group. A new infatuation spells out B-A-D N-E-W-S. Remember Sola?

METHOD OF LOCI - Klaasje.

BLACK SHEEP - That’s what I said. You weren’t even all that into her, just being a decent person, and you still ended up here. Soona’s a radio nerd *and* she has nice boobs- this is going to be a goddamn disaster.

MAGIC BULLET - Could be fun.

BLACK SHEEP - Could be a sack of homo-phobia and end with you- oh, I don’t know! Probably in a holding sell again, playing *sitting duck* for Madre.

TOVARISCH [Heroic: Success] - Last time, people died. Glen.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - FUCK. IT HURTS.

TASK UPDATED : DON’T GO DOWN ON THE RADIOCOMPUTER LADY

SOONA - “If you’re not going to say anything, can I have my radiostatic field back? I was doing important work.” Any humor the ravers had provoked in her is long gone. You feel similarly sobered.

BULLSHITTER - Don’t *act* like it, though!

COMPOSURE - You can process later. You *will* process later.

TASK GAINED : PROCESS LATER

YOU - You tap the plastic shell of the radiocomputer screen. “You can’t really be spending all your time investigating the pale phenomenon,” you say.

JARGON [Easy: Success] - You should know, with ten years under your belt spent nearly entirely on messing around with the pale. Eventually you wind up chatting with old men in Graad, or playing radiochess with a bored teenager who got a hold of their uncle’s favorite toy.

SOONA - Her brow creases. “I am. The pale phenomenon is a infinitely complex-”

MAGIC BULLET [Easy: Success] - Holy *shit.* She’s blushing.

COMPOSURE [Easy: Failure] - You feel a grin spread across your face. You don’t even try to stop it.

SOONA - “Ugh, fine. I have… another project I’m working on. In addition.” She mutters something about everyone having hobbies.

JARGON - She means a hobby that she uses as a break from examining the pale- which is also a hobby of hers. A hobby from her hobby.

SPINE - It’s rational. It’s a perfectly practical life choice that would be made only by a *deeply* eccentric person.

YOU - “Really? What’s the project?”

EMPATHY - She’s reluctant to share this information, but also painfully eager to.

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS - She’s a woman made of contradictions. You can relate, even if yours are not quite so front and center.

MAGIC BULLET - Here’s a contradiction within you right now: the fact that you *need* to bone this weird radiocomputer lady versus your stupid fucking spine.

SPINE - Time and a place.

SOONA - “Have you heard of Fortress Accident?” she asks.

PEDAGOGUE [Impossible: Failure] - Uhhh. Nope. 

YOU - “Nope. Sounds ill-fated, though. With the name.” You gesture vaguely, trying to evoke the tower tarot.

METHOD OF LOCI [Medium: Success] - Plaisance divining your future with her voodoo, drawing lines on your palm. The guys always snickered about it when you caught their eyes over her shoulder, but they were glad *someone* had an in with the storeowner.

SOONA - “Goddamn- *yes.* You’d think those fucking idiots would listen when someone tries to explain nominative determinism to them, but no one ever wanted to listen to what I had to say.”

SOONA - “Long story short, Fortress Accident was a game design company attempting to create a roleplaying game that could be conducted across the pale, using radiocomputers. It fell apart for a… variety of reasons a handful of years ago.”

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Challenging: Failure] - You’re having a difficult time connecting the dots between this defunct game designer and Soona’s hobbies.

SOONA - “And I wasted *years* of my life on it. Hours, days, months programming those goddamn thousand heads in the valley, vanished.” She glares at her blank radiocomputer. “It’s all gone.”

YOU - “So, you’re…” You raise an eyebrow and tilt your head.

SOONA - She snorts. “Rebuilding it? God, no. But when I solved the mystery-” she casts a look up to the rafters, which doesn’t solve anything for *you.*

PEDAGOGUE [Medium: Failure] - Good thing you don’t care, I guess.

SOONA - “-it gave me the kind of closure that you read about.” Her face is perfectly solemn, but satisfaction shines in her eyes. “I’ve gone back to game design. I’m no mastermind, just the programmer, but it’s sort of fun without someone breathing down my neck. I guess those detectives were good for *something* that wasn’t just manual labor.”

PARAPHRENIA [Easy: Success] - The detectives. If she was using *dirty cop Du Bois* to do her *manual labor*... Who knows who this woman really is. It was a fucking stupid move to write her off as a radiocomputer nerd. She could have anything hidden in those cargo pant pockets of hers. You need to find your gun and get the hell out of her, closed harbor be damned.

SPINE - Hey, wait. Maybe she’s just a normal citizen who roped Du Bois and his partner into helping with something- you know, like cops do.

PARAPHRENIA - *Like cops do.* Do you hear yourself right now? When the hell have you heard of a cop helping someone whose payroll they weren’t on? Your only goddamn hope for getting out of here is smashing something through her skull and running. 

MAGIC BULLET - Oh, *sweet* sweet betrayal. Another beautiful woman with a knife in your back- probably.

BLACK SHEEP [Medium: Failure] - You should ask her!

THE INSTIGATOR [Easy: Failure] - If she hasn’t killed you yet…

YOU - You interrupt her mid-sentence. “Hey, Soona, I’ve got a personal question for you.”

SOONA - She levels you with a completely impenetrable, unreadable stare.

YOU - “Are you one of La Puta Madre’s men?”

LEVERAGE - You sound scared. You didn’t manage to channel the same armored devil-may-care confidence you did with Du Bois- and even *that* armor was about as holey as Dolores Dei up there. You always used to reprimand the Hardie Boys for letting their guard down around women and here you are.

SOONA - Her gaze gets a lot more complicated after you say that, but no more understandable. Finally her brow creases. “Am I *what?*”

THE INSTIGATOR - You stare at her- at the civilian-grade boots, the checkered vest, the thin frown lines on her forehead- and suddenly all the things that had made your theory feel plausible a few seconds ago seem to immediately discredit it.

BLACK SHEEP - Fuck.

YOU - “Uh, well-”

BLACK SHEEP - I’ve got nothing else for you.

SOONA - “No,” she says crisply. “I’m not- I’m sober, actually. I won’t ask why you thought I was, either.” She glances over at the ravers. “They’re not tangled up in any drug rings larger than them and the twelve of their friends, if you were concerned about that too.” Her mouth curves into a mirthless smile and she presses a bony hand to her chest. “Welkin’s honor, Ruby.”

BULLSHITTER [Formidable: Success] - The truth, shitkid- if sworn a bit unorthodox.

YOU - “I appreciate it,” you say weakly. “Apologies for the implication.”

SOONA - “I don’t mind.”

BULLSHITTER [Challenging: Failure] - You can’t tell if she actually does or not. Just accept it, either way.

YOU - “Awesome. That’s great. Now, you were saying about your project?” You both glance down at the radiocomputer and its pure, blank, pale gray screen. 

SOONA - Soona sighs. “If you get out of there, I can show you.” She sounds put upon. Her eyes gleam with excitement.

THEW - Your embarrassment still lingers, but you can’t deny a current of excitement running through your poor, battered muscles.

JARGON - Oh, this is gonna be lit. You’ve never been very acquainted with radiocomputers, just the analogue side of the waves, because the behemoth machines usually cost a pretty penny and you’re just a lorry driver with a hobby. You’ve also never been very acquainted with roleplaying games, because you’re not a fucking nerd, but hey.

MAGIC BULLET - You’ll have whatever the lady’s having! And if she’s having nerd shit, *guess what.*

YOU - You duck out of the radio cage, ignoring the groaning protest from your muscles, and sidle over to Soona so that you can see over her shoulder.

PERCEPTION (SMELL) [Heroic: Success] - She doesn’t smell like she works for Madre. She smells like laundry detergent, which is a feat with the whole ‘living in an old Dolorian Church’ thing she’s got going on.

TOVARISCH - She must have some sort of friends in town. 

BLACK SHEEP - *You* probably *stink.* When was the last time you showered? Before that stupid Kineema came rolling into town at the very least.

COMPOSURE - Don’t think about it. Soona lives with ravers. She won’t mind. Or at least, she won’t say anything. Also, you’re completely spaced out. Snap snap, girl!

YOU - You blink back to attention. Soona’s too absorbed with reorganizing whatever she’d been working on pre-you to notice your crisis.

COMPOSURE - If you’re quick, she won’t notice you do a smell check quick, either.

SPINE- You don’t need a smell check. It’s no shit you stink after what, a week and a half and a half dozen panic attacks? Save yourself the potential embarrassment and- oh, alright, there we go. Don’t listen to me.

PERCEPTION (SMELL) [Easy: Success] - Yeah. Uh, *ew.*

TASK GAINED : SHOWER OR SOMETHING

THE INSTIGATOR - All your stuff- deodorant included- is back under the Feld Building! What are you supposed to do? Remove your sweat glands?

PEDAGOGUE [Heroic: Success] - Actually, the smell generally associated with body odor isn’t sweat at all, which is odorless. It is actually *Staphylococcus hominis,* a bacteria commonly found around your apocrine glands- where your body expels sweat. These are concentrated around your armpits, genitals, and nipples. The byproducts the bacteria produce when consuming sweat make the smell.

BULLSHITTER - Why the hell do you know that?

PEDAGOGUE [Formidable: Failure] - Who knows. Probably Liz.

THE INSTIGATOR - Also, like, just saying, even with that being true removing your sweat glands *would* have worked. No food no shit. You didn’t have to bust that whole spiel out just to ruin the joke.

SOONA - “Alright, I think I’ve got the beginning halfway playable. You should be able to stumble through it.” She eyes you. “I get the feeling you’re not too familiar with this type of thing, though.”

YOU - “How’d you guess?” you say dryly.

SOONA - “Lucky hunch.” She sidesteps a little, to allow you to fully stand in front of the radiocomputer next to her. The letters on the keycaps are rubbed away by her fingertips. “It’s a bit like a novel, though. You seem well read-” she says it sardonically, because nothing about you *seems* it- “so I figure you’re familiar with that premise.”

YOU - You crack your knuckles. “Yeah, I’ve got a few of those ‘novel’ things under my belt. Didn’t think all that pulp horror would come in handy, but I’m not complaining.”

EMPATHY - The jaunt of her eyebrows is a little amused. That's the closest thing to a laugh you're going to get out of her.

THE RADIOCOMPUTER - A green-gray screen with barely flickering lines of text. The words are blocky, nothing like your good friend Times New Franconegro. Still, the opening lines are familiar: some garbage about creeping noises echoing through the pale. 

PEDAGOGUE - No one ever knows that noise doesn’t *work* in there. You'd think they'd delve into some surface level entroponetics before writing a novel, but it's painfully obvious they don't.

YOU - You keep reading. The protagonist- a woman, although you’ve given next to no other description- tumbles out of the pale and into a normal Insulinde town that is being consumed by the expanding pale. Each time the text reaches the end, you press the long, thin bar at the bottom of the keyboard and the story continues.

JARGON - You like it so far, still. You’re a sucker for a good palethriller.

SOONA - Soona watches you carefully.

YOU - After a few paragraphs of- admittedly mediocre- writing, it seems to reach an end. 

THE RADIOCOMPUTER - You stand at the corner, the Swallow above you and the concrete below. The video rental store is inside the door in front of you. The precinct is to the north, the harbor to the east, and the rest of downtown is to the south. You’re not sure about the west, but you think it’s slowly being consumed. Porch collapse drifts on the wind.

YOU - And then… when you try to click for more, nothing happens. You smash the spacebar a few times before Soona notices.

SOONA - “Oh, this is the game part. Type what you want to do next.”

YOU - You raise an eyebrow at her. “Whatever?”

SOONA - “Yes, that’s the point of the radiocomputer.” The crows’ feet at the corner of her eyes crinkle. She must have smiled more, in a different time, to have smile lines. “Go on, try it.”

YOU - You type- haltingly, finger by finger- get a drink.

THE RADIOCOMPUTER - I don’t know what that means.

YOU - “Huh.”

SOONA - Soona frowns and her wrinkles shift. She has just as many scowl lines as laugh ones. “I don’t have *everything* programmed in. Do something that makes sense for the situation.”

YOU - “I don’t know. I think if the pale was eating everything, I’d get a drink. I usually get a drink after driving inter-isola. It helps come down from the exposure.”

METHOD OF LOCI - Sitting in the corner of the Whirling-in-Rags, more tucked away than the Hardie Boys already are. You’re nursing something smoother than usual- the boys liked to treat you after hard trips, and between the half dozen of them they could afford something good- and trying to parse through the goddamn screaming in your head.

SOONA - Some of the crossness bleeds out of her expression. She’d obviously thought you were actively trying to poke holes in her work, and the fact that you were being genuine soothes her. “Alright.” She smoothes her hair back with one hand and gestures at the screen with the other. “You can actually do that- you won’t get all the way through the drink, because I’ve spent less time on the bar than the rest of the game, but it’s there.”

YOU - “Cool.” You flex your pointer fingers above the keys. “How?”

LEVERAGE [Medium: Success] - She’s nervous. Why?

SOONA - “Well, go downtown.”

YOU - go downtown.

THE RADIOCOMPUTER - I don’t know what that means.

YOU - You sigh. Your horror novels were easier than this. 

SOONA - She grimaces. “You have to say everything in a specific way to fit into what I’ve programmed. I’m trying to make it work more smoothly, but at this rudimentary stage- well. You just have to use cardinal directions.”

YOU - You glance back up at the last paragraph, nearly off the screen from your failed attempts at actions. go south, you type.

THE RADIOCOMPUTER - A new set of narrative unfolds in front of you. The decrepit mainstreet, dotted with meticulously described and equally decrepit businesses. And, just before you think you’re finally about to be able to get a drink in this town, pale-apocalypse be damned, a beautiful woman appears on the screen. 

THE RADIOCOMPUTER (DISCO DANCER) - Before you can make any moves, the dirty window of a fourth-story apartment shatters onto the street and, flying through the air, is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever met. Silver-gold disco hair, thin eyes, sharp teeth that bite at the air as she falls. You instinctively close your eyes. You’ve seen stories like this before- the tallest building in the town and something awful: a bar fight, domestic squabbles, drugs- and you never like how they end.

THE RADIOCOMPUTER (DISCO DANCER) - But when you open them again, the woman is on her feet. She doesn’t even look hurt- spotless except for the porch collapse clinging to her ephemeral dress. She eyes you. “You’re a formidable looking woman,” she says. You shrug with one shoulder and she smiles blindingly. “Come with me.”

THE RADIOCOMPUTER (DISCO DANCER) - She runs down the street to the north, leaving you in the dust.

THE RADIOCOMPUTER - The cursor, which you’ve come to suspect means that it’s your turn, blinks at you.

YOU - Go into the bar, you type.

SOONA - Soona chuckles. It’s more of an exhalation of disbelief than anything with real humor. You glance over at her. “You wouldn't be much of a horror-adventure protagonist, would you.”

YOU - “Nah. I’m not in this for the adventure. I’m in this for a drink.” A thought occurs to you. “Do I have cash?”

SOONA - The lines at the corners of her eyes crinkle again. A ghost of a smile that only comes out when she talks about her work.

SHIVERS - Which is a ghost of the happiness she once had. Bickering over lunches, working late, late into the night, jokes and debates with *her people.* The city once embraced her as its own. It still does, but she misses *feeling* it.

SOONA - She leans into you to reach across the radiocomputer. The screen distorts when she taps it. ✤20.00 in tiny letters at the top, in a bar you hadn’t even noticed. The pixel capacity of the screen means that the miniscule numbers are barely more than an impressionistic implication, but the typeface is cleverly made and it’s readable. “Twenty reál,” she says. “Spend it wisely.”

MAGIC BULLET - Blow it on drugs and booze. They won’t be real, but neither is the money.

THE RADIOCOMPUTER - The bar is described as small, hovering between dim and well-lit in a strange trick of ambiguity, and *painfully obviously* a part of homo-sexual underground.

COMPOSURE - You manage to read with a straight face, but the last paragraph gets to you. You’re not sure if it’s the glancing description of pocket handkerchiefs- a strange moment of detail from writing which has, so far, been more of a “forest not the trees” kind of deal- or the *slightly* more involved description of the arms on the blue collar woman at the bar, but either way it becomes impossible to hold back a small chuckle.

SOONA - She’s blushing again, arms crossed over her chest and chin up. “What?”

YOU - “Planning on distributing this to the masses?”

SOONA - “It’s purely a… passion project,” she says.

MAGIC BULLET [Easy: Success] - Uh-*huh.*

YOU - “Yuh-huh. Alright.” You feel yourself smile. “So, can I pick up chicks in this game of yours? Or is the pale-thing too much of a downer.” 

LEVERAGE - She’s really looking down her nose at you but it’s so *painfully* obvious that you have the upper hand in this conversation that all of her posturing manages to get you on just barely equal ground.

SOONA - “Maybe some women find impending pale-apocalypse a turn-on,” she says. It’s a joke, underneath the way she’s incapable of taking a joking tone with anything. 

YOU - You raise your eyebrows back and cross your arms under your chest. “Oh, really?”

SOONA - “The element of mystery.” She shrugs, an action that she somehow manages to imbue with no casualness at all. “Some people like it.” Her blush has receded and, as she talks, her chin lowers to a normal angle to meet your eyes head-on. She arches a single eyebrow.

THEW - Not quite head-on. She’s got a half-foot on you at the best of times, boss.

YOU - “I’ll keep that in mind.” You mime taking out your journal- and a pang goes through your chest at having lost it- and say, writing in your big, loopy handwriting, “Note to self: during the apocalypse, look for the eccentric radio nerds.”

BLACK SHEEP - You’re not usually this loose when you’re flirting. Women don’t want *goofy* from their one night stands, and you’re not exactly this kind of person on a day to day basis. Soona’s fun, though. You haven’t had *fun* in years.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS.

BLACK SHEEP - It does. And women think the brooding silences you need to get your thoughts in order are *sexy* from their stone butch Dick Mullen, not from whatever conglomerate of messiness the real you is.

BLACK SHEEP - But Soona’s already seen you pass out twice and you smell like B.O. That’s not sexy even when you *are* doing the dark and handsome shtick. You might as well throw it all to the wind.

SOONA - “I object to that description.”

YOU - You drop the imaginary journal. “Hey, I’ve got the same hobbies. Don’t get too banged up about it.”

MAGIC BULLET - You know what she *didn’t* object to?

SPINE [Formidable: Success] - Time. And. A. Place.

MAGIC BULLET - Yeah, and that time and place is *here* and *now.*

BLACK SHEEP [Medium: Success] - She’s certainly not homo-phobic. That’s one concern out of the way. The ravers probably couldn’t care less.

THE INSTIGATOR [Challenging: Success] - You’ll be out of here in a week, too. 

MAGIC BULLET - Nothing wrong with a distraction in the meantime!

SPINE - … Fine.

TASK UPDATED : GO DOWN ON THE RADIOCOMPUTER LADY FOR REAL THIS TIME

SOONA - Her eyes drop to the headphones still around your neck, then move carefully back up to your face. “There might be a ‘eccentric radio nerd’ in that bar,” she says, nodding faintly to the computer and doing little finger quotes around the offending phrase. Then she pauses for just a moment, steeling herself. It’s immediately apparent that she’s done with any back-and-forth she’d indulged in. “But I really haven’t written anything past what you’ve seen. I was focused on the main plot, mostly,” she deadpans. “And coding poison into the combat system.”

YOU - You pat the copper cage of the radiocomputer fondly. It shakes a bit. “Guess this is the end of my radiocomputer game adventures for today,” you say. “It’s been a pleasure, old girl.”

RADIOCOMPUTER - The radiocomputer preens a little under your appreciation.

SOONA - “Don’t personify my radiocomputer,” she says.

MAGIC BULLET - She hip bumps- *hip bumps*- you away and immediately falls back into her work. You don’t do anything teenager-y like put your hand on the place she touched you or blush, but you do watch her work for a few moments.

JARGON - It’s incredible how focused she is. *Immediately* consumed with her work: furrowed brow; bright, half-lidded eyes; a slight divot in her lower lip that suggests she’s biting it. Her hands fly across the keys. She seems, for all intents and purposes, dead to the world at large. She is the master of her own destiny within the radiocomputer, and every action she takes changes the air slightly and irreversibly. Infra-materialism compressed and reshaped into one woman and her passion project.

PEDAGOGUE [Easy: Success] - Infra-materialism instrinically cannot be embodied by an individual. It is a group phenomenon. If it even exists.

PARAPHRENIA - Well, then, how come you can feel it? The rays of thought- focus- care- radiating from this woman like a halo. Like the pale.

MAGIC BULLET - Infra-materialism is the eight hour boner theory, right? Communards were nothing. You can do that with your strap *easy.*

COMPOSURE - Look ma, no hands! Or whatever.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Challenging: Success] - Oh, wow, Soona is looking *right* at you. Meeting your gaze. Which has been squarely on her for too long now.

LEVERAGE - It’s okay. We can make this work.

MAGIC BULLET [Medium: Success] - You smirk. Stretch your arms above your head. You’re just in your tank top, jacket still in its pathetic pillow-formation on the floor, and you’re not going to be *modest* about your arms. Even fucking Du Bois noticed.

LEVERAGE - Soona’s eyes follow your movements, tracking down smooth muscle under pale skin. She looks analytical, eyes narrowed slightly. 

MAGIC BULLET - You finish stretching with a satisfied sigh and wink at Soona. “Good luck with the poison system,” you say.

SPINE [Legendary: Success] - A valiant effort is made to not sound a) insane b) constipated c) sultry or d) sarcastic when you say that. You’re pretty sure it comes off well.

SOONA - Soona just nods and goes back to her work.

ANDRE - “Wishin’ you luck, Ruby!” the spikey-headed kid shouts to you. “Take care! Don’t get-” he rolls his hands together vaguely into a gesture that encompasses everything from “picked up and killed by mobsters” to “beaten down by bad vibes.”

ACELE - “Do you want a hat? It’s a bit chilly out.” She holds up an orange kit cap that looks like it’s seen better days. When she waves it around one long, unraveled tail of yarn swims through the air behind it.

YOU - “I’ll be fine, don’t worry ‘bout me.” You grin and put your hand on the door of the church. 

TOVARISCH - I was right about these guys. They’re not half bad.

THE INSTIGATOR [Medium: Success] - You’ve prepped for your foray out to the Feld building as well as you can: jacket once again hugging your arms, a lunch of more pocky, beer, and cheese sandwiches consumed, Fritte bag stuffed in your pockets. You hadn’t managed to negotiate your gun back from Acele, who’s got more steel than you’d think, but Noid had narrowed his eyes and slipped you a thin, sturdy knife when she wasn’t looking.

PARAPHRENIA - You didn’t love knowing that he keeps knives on himself. 

THEW - And you don’t really know what you’re supposed to do with a knife, boss. La Puta Madre’s goons will come with guns, and all you know about knife throwing was learned in a quarter dozen drunken bets with Titus. You won’t have muscle memory to rely on, and in a moment like that it’s not smart to rely on cognition.

THE INSTIGATOR - If the moment comes, it’s do or die. A knife is better than nothing and if it doesn’t come through, it won’t matter.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT’LL HURT.

YOU - Your hand stills on the doorknob.

SPINE - So does life. Get on with it.

METHOD OF LOCI [Formidable: Success] - Sitting in the fishing village with Eugene, asking the weird ex-bourgeoise addict about his stories. You’d always verify them with Liz afterwards, since the woman knew every goddamn thing that happened on the isola- big or small. Staying at the shack in the days before Du Bois *really* showed up, smoking at the end of the boardwalk pier with Glen, you and Titus bringing snacks and sodas to Lilienne’s kids. Titus would flirt unabashedly with her, face strong and open, and then he would leave and you would do the same and she would smile and laugh and treat you the same way she did all of the guys. It never went anywhere- you don’t want to be treated the same way as all the guys by women you bedded- but it was fun. Fall light filtering through the post-revolution filth that characterizes this side of Martinaise, making it feel like a little bit more than something left behind by the world. 

CONCEPTUALIZATION - It’s winter, now. You just feel alone.

YOU - You shove your hands a bit deeper into your pockets and keep walking. It’s not far to the Feld building. You can barely see the fishing village from over here, but it looks empty.

THEW - Your muscles *scream* at you when you duck through the beaten-down door at the base of the building.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Godly: Success] - You only barely notice fingerprints in the dust through the pain, but you do.

THE INSTIGATOR - Probably left by one- both?- of the cops from when they confronted you. Or… one of them must have gotten through another way. You remember locking this door from the inside before, and there’s no sign of a struggle.

SHIVERS - “...right here!” A voice, clear, says, “A maintenance door.” The dust of the underground swirls around them like smoke. There’s a tremendous thud, one heard by the woman hiding at the other end of the tunnels just as well as the father and son duo up on the boardwalk, and the voice smiles. “Good work. Shall we?”

SHIVERS - The darkness is to them what the pale is to you.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Challenging: Failure] - Communism?

SHIVERS - Hungry.

YOU - You shudder and start to pick your way through the decrepit basement. 

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - There are footsteps that didn’t used to be here, too. Fingerprints on *everything* like Du Bois and his buddy were kids dragging their hands along the wall at juvie. The communard hat you made the conscious decision not to wear is gone. 

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - You know that you can’t be making much noise on the soft dirt of the ground below you, but it feels like your footsteps echo. 

PARAPHRENIA [Easy: Success] - The world feels so incredibly large in this tiny, claustrophobic space. There are M’s men behind every nook and cranny and if it’s not M it’s communard goons, ready to shoot you through the mouth for not embracing the revolution in a world with nothing to revolt for. If it’s not Madre or communards it’s fascists, or Coalition diplomats with semi-automatics, or Wild Pines mercenaries. 

THE INSTIGATOR - The cold air gets to you and makes the possibility of mercenaries frighteningly plausible. The silence begins to sound manufactured. 

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - THE WORLD IS GOING TO COLLAPSE ON YOU, SISTER. 

SPINE [Formidable: Success] - You make yourself keep picking through the underground. Every nook comes away with nothing hidden behind it, but that doesn’t make the next one any less dangerous. Your knuckles are white around the knife at your side.

SHIVERS - “...Part of the Feld Playback Experiment?” Du Bois’s voice, curious. The flash of a torch against the cabinets.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - FUCK.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Formidable: Failure] - It’s too dark to tell where he is down here. He could be- anywhere. Ahead, behind. The voice doesn’t seem to come from anywhere. 

SHIVERS - “These? No, these are old filament memories. I hope you’re not expecting to find that device here- you will be disappointed.” The other, clearer voice. Must be Du Bois’s partner- the seolite man who hadn’t managed to speak through the pale. He’s solemn, because he knows the history of the building.

TOVARISCH - He likes the intricate little radiocomputers better than the men who destroyed them just to be bombed to shreds. He feels for them both but appreciates that his sorrow doesn’t have to be complicated when it comes to the device. 

YOU - If you weren’t pressed so painfully close against the wall, if you thought you could move a single muscle without alerting the hunters in the dark, you would sneer.

SHIVERS - The torch flashes again. Then, silence and a dark wind.

SPINE - You stand still for a long, long time. There isn’t even the sound of breathing- not from anyone but you. 

MAGIC BULLET - Your fingers itch for a cigarette.

PEDAGOGUE [Formidable: Success] - Of that 4% of the Insulinde population that is estimated to have experienced dangerous levels of pale exposure, over half who submit to medical or psychological evaluation report hallucination. Being spoken to, hearing voices of those who haven’t been in a space for centuries. Or days, in this case.

PARAPHRENIA - You’re going stark raving mad, Ruby. At least don’t *act* like it.

COMPOSURE [Legendary: Success] - Be a big girl and get your shit, then get out of this place. It gives you the creeps.

JARGON - Although, you know, you won’t have enough stuff remaining in that tent of yours to fill the Fritte bag. You might as well grab a filament or two. See if Soona would find them interesting.

YOU - You grab three at random: two from during the Revolution, one pre-communard. You think it’s a little funny how they’re all mixed together, distinguished mostly by the matronyms and dates. Otherwise one radio nerd is the same as the other. 

PEDAGOGUE - Take that, infra-materialism.

TASK GAINED : GIVE SOONA THE FILAMENTS

YOU - Even with the filaments, the Fritte bag can still fit in your pocket. You continue your trek.

SHIVERS - “Kim. I can’t see the Whirling-in-Rags,” Du Bois says. His voice is just a bit wondrous. You can almost see his newly acquired hat.

SPINE [Medium: Legendary] - You roll your eyes and keep walking. Finally, your- destroyed- pale latitude compressor is within sight. The shards of your creation glitter like a broken mirror on the ground. Footsteps surround it: mostly yours. Du Bois’s, too, and his partner. 

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS, SISTER. WHY DID YOU COME HERE.

SHIVERS - “Lieutenant, do you feel something?” Du Bois lurks just before the corner. The feeling that *something* resides beyond it roils in his chest. 

SHIVERS - A woman sits on the other side, waiting with a loaded gun and her finger on a dial. She’s not a killer yet, but Du Bois doesn’t know that. He just knows what the facts have lined up in front of him, a dozen knives in her back, and Du Bois hopes- prays to La Revacholière- that they’re leading him wrong.

SHIVERS - “No,” the slim cop says, “What do you mean?” He doesn’t have any of the same empathy for waiting lorry driver. He wants the case over with.

SHIVERS - “A pain, a strange tingling.”

THE INSTIGATOR - You remember this part. You hadn’t been able to hear Du Bois- your headphones drowned out too much- but you remember feeling their presence. 

SPINE - [Heroic: Success] - You keep walking to the scene of the crime.

PARAPHRENIA - You can see a slightly different world where your brains are painted on the ground here, where Du Bois said something idiotic and you didn’t take the gun out of your mouth in time. Where one dirty cop, eyes wide and horrified, handed in his notice and threw his badge in the sea. Where Lely’s murder stays unsolved and all six Hardies die at the tribunal with the seventh deep underground. 

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Legendary: Success] - It’s just light brown dirt. Unstained. 

SPINE [Godly: Success] - You bend to pick a few of the more valuable bits of your compressor off the ground. Most of the parts are broken beyond repair. The machine isn’t as fragile as the Feld contraption but it wasn’t meant for anyone but you to touch it, so you didn’t exactly give it an exoskeleton. The usable or repairable pieces go into the Fritte bag.

THE INSTIGATOR - You’re deluding yourself if you think you’ll ever be able to make something like that again. At *best* it would draw the wrong type of attention wherever you wind up, and Du Bois and friends aren’t likely to forget about that experience you gave them.

JARGON - You take them anyway. Most of this stuff is pretty multiuse, and the shit that survived the crash is mostly the standard stuff. You might be able to concoct something mundane with it in the time before the harbor opens.

TASK GAINED : CONCOCT SOMETHING MUNDANE

SPINE [Easy: Success] - The wind is silent as you finally reach your tent and begin to comb through its contents.

JARGON - You only take the magazines with charts and tables that had seemed helpful.

MAGIC BULLET - Your Astras have begun to mildew over the last few days and you don’t need mold poisoning on top of the pale and drugs, so you leave them. One of the novels goes in the bag, the rest are left on the ground. 

THE INSTIGATOR - You take your cooking stuff and it clinks tinily against itself in the Fritte bag. The only can of soup you didn’t eat also goes in the bag. The cash you buried, too, is carefully extracted from its plastic bag and tucked into your boot. Your personal documents in the bag with your cash are tucked into the inside pocket of your jacket.

METHOD OF LOCI - Your journal is gone. Probably in Du Bois’s pocket. You almost grin- you’d like to see Madre’s face when he reads it.

THEW - Finally, you fold up the tent, coaxing the telescoping rods into themselves and bundling the thin fabric into a near square. The resulting package doesn’t fit in the Fritte bag, so you sling it over your shoulder. 

TASK UPDATED - GET PREPARED

THE INSTIGATOR - This was good. You’ve gone from about 3% prepared to ditch Martinaise to about 45%. You still don’t have a lot of the operative agents for your escape- gun, small enough change for bus fare, food other than a single can of tomato soup- but you’re closer. 

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - “This way,” Du Bois says, “I know, Kim, but you believe me, don’t you?” His presence echoes through the low ceilings, bouncing off unfinished walls.

SPINE [Impossible: Success] - You grit your teeth and work through it, shoving the last few items you need into a plastic bag and straightening, ready to go.

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - “I do,” his partner says, tongue-in-cheek. “Which is the only reason I have allowed you to derail our investigation and come down here again.” The swiff of paper moving. “Are you sure you’re not just interested in this communard propaganda?”

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - “No, I saw those last time. This time it’s *her,* Kim, again. I swear-”

THE INSTIGATOR - Wait. Shit. This isn’t a ghost, or your damn auditory hallucinations. This Du Bois has been here before- he hears you *again.* Something is very wrong, Ruby. They’re here, now. Further into the building: they haven’t seen you yet. You need to hide.

THEW - Into the bushes, boss. Press yourself into the mud and the mildew and all the gross things that proliferate where the sea meets the bombed out radiocomputer building, and maybe they won’t find you. You can pray, at least. The cold will keep your muscles from atrophying out of fear. 

THE INSTIGATOR - Take the paper out of your boots and jacket first. Tuck them into the book in the Fritte bag.

YOU - You hide.

COMPOSURE - Your heart leaps into your throat, then drops to your stomach. Repeat ad nauseum.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - MOTHERFUCKER. FUCK. GODDAMN IT.

HARRY DU BOIS - “Her tent is gone,” he says. “She came back for it.” He sounds triumphant. He’s proving something to his partner. And to you, though he doesn’t know it: that your life is clay in his hands, something to prod at and show off. “And I can *feel* her here, I swear. If I can just-”

PARAPHRENIA - You believe him. You believe him more than you’ve believed anything else. You believe him like hundreds of thousands believed in Dolores Dei, and Franconegro, and Sola, and all the other innocences you can’t recite offhand. Harry Du Bois knows things, and he’s going to kill you with that.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Success] - FUCK.

MONOMANIA - IT HURTS, BROTHER. BROTHER, IT HURTS SO MUCH.

MONOMANIA - SAVE ME. FUCK.

MONOMANIA - WHAT IF I HAD BECOME A MURDERER FOR THEM. WHAT THEN. WOULD YOU HAVE HUNTED ME THEN, TOO?

HARRY DU BOIS - You can barely hear Du Bois over the voices in your head, but he’s not exactly saying anything either. He grunts. Sounds how he did when your pale latitude compressor was aimed at his mind. 

THE PARTNER - “Lieutenant, are you feeling alright?”

HARRY DU BOIS - “Yeah, I’m- I’m fine. It's just- unfamiliar voices. Feels weird.”

MONOMANIA - ALL YOUR VOICES ARE UNFAMILIAR. WHEN DID YOU BECOME A ‘YOU’?

THE PARTNER - “Yes… I’m sure it does. Can you still find Ruby? This isn’t necessary, Harry, we can leave at any time.” He sounds a little nervous. You can almost see him, glancing around the cavern. He’s not twitchy, but he’s like you: thorough.

EMPATHY [Formidable: Success] - The memories are getting to him.

MONOMANIA - IT HURTS.

HARRY DU BOIS - “Urgh… fuck. I don’t know. I’m not getting anything but this one- she’s in pain, Kim. Not physical. Pain like me.”

MONOMANIA - BROTHER, IT HURTS. LEAVE US TO LICK OUR WOUNDS. 

THE PARTNER - “Nearly 1 in 5 working class Revacholians struggle with shellshock disorder, detective. Ruby has been through more than the average lorry driver, too. It’s good that you feel a kinship with her.” His voice is still on edge. He doesn’t like this. “It’s a good thing for an RCM officer to feel.”

PARAPHRENIA [Formidable: Success] - This is more than railway spine or soldier’s heart. This transcends.

INLAND EMPIRE - *Du Bois’s mind is rough at the edges. It doesn’t scream like yours does, but it begs for atrophy and entropy. It’s *far* more disco.*

PARAPHRENIA - It feels wrong to have this unfamiliar voice in your head- more wrong, even, than the unwelcome ones of your own. You neurons rebel. It’s uncomfortable. You should have killed yourself days ago, pulled the trigger and let your life spill onto the dirt, just like those communards who died for your sins.

MONOMANIA - OUR LIFE HAS NEVER GOTTEN TO BE *DISCO.* OUR PALE CONSUMES. IT CORRODES THE METAL ON LORRY HUBCAPS. IT HURTS.

INLAND EMPIRE - *Du Bois’s pale is vast and oceanic. It sounds like karaoke.*

MONOMANIA - I FEEL LIKE YOU ARE NOT TAKING US SERIOUSLY, BROTHER.

INLAND EMPIRE - *This is dead serious.*

THE PARTNER - “Harry?”

MONOMANIA - GO. YOU WILL NOT FIND US. IT HURTS. 

MONOMANIA - GO.

MONOMANIA - GO.

THE PARTNER - “Harry, you are beginning to worry me,” his tone is light, but he isn’t joking.

THEW - Water seeps in the bottoms of your boots. You’ll stink even more when you get back to the church. You swallow and tilt your head back.

INLAND EMPIRE - *Fine. But this isn’t done.*

PARAPHRENIA - Fear slams into you like a truck. You knew this, you fuck, of course you knew. You didn’t think Du Bois would actually let up. But you had half-hoped this would be the end of it- that this would allow him to at least feel that he’s won. You couldn’t be more of a prey animal here, hidden in the reeds with your heart jackhammering in your chest.

INLAND EMPIRE - *We’ll sync our sines later, ma’am.*

MONOMANIA - GO.

HARRY - “I’m fine, Lieutenant.” His voice is unsteady. It dips and warbles. “It called me brother,” he says. “But it’s time to leave.”

THE PARTNER - “Alright.” He doesn’t ask any questions.

YOU - You wait in the reeds for a long time. The sky's reflection in the water darkens. By the time you pick your way out of the Feld building, there’s rancid water saturating every millimeter of your socks. 

THEW - The night air hits you like plunging your hand into ice water.

COMPOSURE [Godly: Success] - It takes every atom in you not to holler in- joy? fear? some exuberance that is neither and both?

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Success] - IT SOOTHES.

NOID - “You reek,” he says amiably. “More than this morning.”

TOVARISCH - Your recovery of pots and pans was received with glee from your new comrades. Apparently Egghead had accidentally dumped theirs into an untraversable gorge on their way to Martinaise and they’d been eating out of cut-open cans and styrofoam since then. Acele had offered to make soup in thanks.

TOVARISCH - The way she managed to stretch your single can of soup and the eclectic supplies from the Fritte into enough food for six people is certainly support for Infra-materialism.

PEDAGOGUE - They are ravers, not communards. 

YOU - “Keep sweet talking me, kid.” You lift your mug of soup to your lips and take a mouth-burning sip. “I ran into some shit while I was out.”

ANDRE - “What kind of shit?”

YOU - “None of your beeswax.”

ACELE - Acele eyes you appreciatively. “Another silver bird,” she says. Her Zemlyaki accent bleeds intentionally into the words. You chuckle.

THE INSTIGATOR - She doesn’t know how right- or how wrong- she is.

NOID - “I was just gonna offer a bath. Or, not a bath. A…" He gestures for Andre to continue and goes back to his soup.

ANDRE - “The four of us get up at the crack ‘o dawn every few days to go polar plunge up the coast. Really gets the blood running, you know? We bring soap and shit, too.”

EGGHEAD - “It’s haaardcore.”

SOONA - “It is likely the closest thing you will find to a bath here,” she says. Unlike the rest of you, sitting in a circle on the floor, she’s on the closest pew. It firmly sets her away from the rest of you, and the journal her nose is buried in solidifies that. Her soup sits on the bench next to her.

ANDRE - “We’ve been trying to get Soona to join us, but she finally snapped and called Egghead a raggamuffin, so we stopped.”

SOONA - “I have never used that word in my life.”

BLACK SHEEP [Easy: Success] - You chuckle. Andre grins blindingly at you.

YOU - “Where *do* you bathe, Soona?”

ANDRE - “That’s the thing! For the life of me, she won’t let it slip. A goddamn mystery. Noid thinks she’s gotten her sweat glands removed and just doesn’t have to anymore.”

NOID - “‘T’would be hardcore,” he affirms.

BULLSHITTER [Easy: Success] - You eye Soona. She eyes you back. You’re absolutely not getting any trade secrets out of her with the ravers around.

BLACK SHEEP - Take the path of least resistance. Either way you stop smelling like BO and decades old dead fish.

YOU - “Well, it’s sounding like you’ve given me my best option, Andre. Thanks for the offer.”

ANDRE - “Our pleasure, boss!” He delves back into his soup, scraping out the last of it with one of your foldable utensils. 

THE INSTIGATOR - It was silly of you to pack more than a single fork.

TOVARISCH - Look how well it’s turned out.

NOID - He downs the last of his soup in one go, then turns to Acele. “Yo, Acele, is there any soup left?” He lifts his bowl to show it’s empty and she levies a suspicious eyebrow at him. 

EMPATHY [Formidable: Success] - It’s a little weird for Noid to seconds. He’s a slim guy, and only some of his slimness comes from a young metabolism.

NOID - “Feeding our new “comrade” here got me thinking.” He says comrade with a pointedly flat tone, the way he does everything with political connotations. “Maybe we oughta invite crab-man down with us. Like, does he even eat?”

PARAPHRENIA - Dei help you. What the fuck. *Crab-man.*

ANDRE - “Who knows, man! He’s a little creepy.”

ACELE - “So’s everyone. Noid isn’t wrong. I don’t even know if he would want to, though.”

ANDRE - “And he’s *supremely* doped up.”

NOID - “All the more reason to get him to eat with us, right?” He sets his now-empty bowl of soup aside and leans forward. “The left-right complex *wants* us to accept disordered eating as an inevitable side effect of narcotics and leave the guy for dead. But him and his “mother” are an invaluable part of the sines in this church. It would not be hard core to leave him to waste away.” He glances at you and makes a dismal expression. “Or, uh… socially democratic either. I guess.”

TOVARISCH - You nod in wry appreciation, an expression you execute with a practiced ease that doesn’t reflect your internal turmoil regarding the existence of a druggie referred to as the “crab man” at all.

EGGHEAD - Egghead turns to look up at the rafters. The other three do in turn too, and finally you follow suit.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Medium: Success] - You see the silhouette again. A bulky man- broad shoulders, ropey thighs, the whole shebang- perched on the rafters like a bat.

PARAPHRENIA - What the fuuuuuuck. Damn, you wish you had your gun.

THEW - Ha. Like you could make that shot, boss. He’s a few dozen yards straight up and shrouded in shadow. You’re no sharpshooter.

SPINE - No murderer, either.

TOVARISCH - The kids are talking about him like he’s harmless, anyway. 

EGGHEAD - “MISTER CRAB MAN!” he yells. “YOU HUNGRY?”

CRAB-MAN - “Thanks, wey,” comes the muffled response, “but an adherent to the Mother needs no sustenance.” His voice is strong and deep, even through the thick, dusty air of the old church. 

ACELE - “Even monks need to eat!” she calls.

CRAB-MAN - “I grabbed something already,” he says, “and don’t really do soup, homes. But thanks for the offer. Blessings to y’all.”

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - The noise he makes when he climbs back up into the rafters is, indeed, reminiscent of a crab.

COMPOSURE - You shiver and, for once, it has nothing to do with the pale.

ANDRE - Andre turns back to the group. “Where the hell would he be gettin’ food? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him leave the church.”

ACELE - “We see very little of what he actually does. There may be a door up there. Or the raid back in ‘48 shattered some of the higher-up windows too and he leaves through those.” She doesn’t look sated, though. “We should- if we can, I mean- try to figure out if he’s eating.”

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - Now that Noid has brought the concept to light, she’s bothered by the idea of an emaciated crab-man falling to his death in front of her. She’s seen people die in far, far worse ways, but she doesn’t like it.

TASK GAINED : WHAT DOES THE CRAB-MAN EAT?

THE INSTIGATOR - Do you care, though? I don’t think that has to be a task.

PEDAGOGUE - No, it does. You do care. A lot. This question is going to haunt you, and it’ll haunt you even more if the answer really is “the heroin means he isn’t and in a week he’s going to die of malnutrition and a cracked skull.”

METHOD OF LOCI - You can rattle off every single person you’ve seen die and the supposed causes like a party trick. You don’t want the list any longer.

YOU - “I think it’s worth finding out. He’s been here longer than the four of you, so he’s probably eating *something* to survive this long.” You take another gulp of soup.

ANDRE - “Woah. How’d you know he’s lived here longer than us?”

LEVERAGE - Aha. Here’s the time to assert yourself. Deductions *always* equal social capital, unless you’re weird about them.

YOU - “You guys are terrified of this dude. If you weren’t respecting some kind of first come first serve doctrine, you’d have chased him out with a broom by now.” Your soup is almost gone now. You shake the mug a bit to get the last drops out, then crane your neck up to look at the rafters. Wherever the crab-man’s ascended to, he isn’t visible anymore. “He seems like a nice guy. You could probably just ask what he’s eating.”

ANDRE - “Sick, yeah, you’re right. We totally could.” He eyes Noid and Acele, who eyes him back.

EGGHEAD - Egghead is unperturbed.

NOID - “D’*you* want to do that, Andre?”

ANDRE - “I kinda thought it could be a, like, divied up task. Like,” he clears his throat as his voice starts to trail off, “you know… I come up with the idea, Acele writes up a question, Egghead gets his attention and Noid does the talking…” He grimaces. “Could be hard core?”

NOID - “Democratic processes are fundamentally flawed but, uh,” he glances at Acele, “you’re totally outvoted, man.”

ACELE - She drops her voice and leans into your little circle. You lean back a little to give them space. “We could ask Soona to,” she suggests. “She’s unflappable.”

SOONA - “No.” 

LEVERAGE - Her accent is especially harsh in her one word responses, cutting them out of the fabric of the soundscape with ruthless precision. They leave no room for debate. She wouldn’t make a good leader with those *yes’s* and “no’s,* but she makes a good worker. 

ANDRE - He cuts his eyes over to Soona, then looks hesitantly at you.

LEVERAGE [Medium: Success] - You let some of your Hardie-boy-drug-pusher-stone-dyke persona rise to the surface of your expression. Andre practically wilts under your gaze.

ANDRE - “I guess the mystery will stay a mystery until someone finds some clues,” he says morosely, “or one of the four of us grow a backbone.”

SOONA - Soona mumbles something inaudible about a third option she finds more likely than the first two and leans down to take a spoonful of her soup.

TOVARISCH - Dinner finishes smoothly. The sound of spoons against metal bowls scrapes through the church like the world’s least bourgeois hymnal, then the ravers offer to go wash your dishes in the freshwater spring they claim they found under the boardwalk. You shrug in agreement and they all vanish.

SOONA - Now that her meal is finished, Soona’s materialized at her radiocomputer again. Her notebook is in one hand and she types with the other. Her hand is spider-like trying to stretch and do the work of two. 

YOU - You amble over to her. “Transcribing?”

SOONA - “Yes.”

BLACK SHEEP - Her voice is clipped. You’ll get very little out of her right now- it would be better to accept this and settle into the paperback you recovered from under the Feld building.

YOU - “Sounds like a party,” you say dryly, and start to move back over to the pews. 

SOONA - Soona stops you by looking up, pushing her headphones down to her neck, and clearing her throat. “Ruby,” she says, “Just so you know, Isobel will let you bathe at her place if you ask. She does my clothes, too.” 

TOVARISCH - Soona looks vaguely ashamed to be relying on the kindness of strangers for her basic hygiene, beneath the thick layer of steel her face is made of, but you’re no stranger to asking the washerwoman for things like that. You feel a little silly that it hadn’t occurred to you.

YOU - “Shit, yeah, of course. I shoulda thought of that.” You sit down in one of the pews and get comfortable, spreading your arms along the back. “Sounds like I’ve already committed to something else, though.”

MAGIC BULLET - You could *really* use a cigarette right now.

SOONA - Soona’s eyes dart to the door. “Sounds like you have,” she agrees. There’s a hint of a smile in her voice. “Well, regardless, I wanted to make sure you knew your options. Do my part as a good citizen of Martinaise.” She puts her headphones back on.

YOU - You chuckle and flip open your pulp novel.

SPINE [Formidable: Failure] - You awake from the void of sleep like a fall into purgatory.

PARAPHRENIA [Legendary: Failure] - The hardwood under your back makes you feel sick. Not a dull ache like it should, pushing against your shoulders and hips, but a thick, psychosomatic nausea that permeates every cell. When you close your eyes and press your skull back into the vinyl material of your jacket, you can pinpoint where it comes from. The swallow. The two-millimeter hole in the world- the size a bit of trivia you never learned, but still know- suspended in matter and growing.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT’S HUNGRY.

THEW [Challenging: Success] - Your bones crack when you get up. 

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Easy: Success] - It’s dark, and so late it’s early enough the ravers aren’t awake. Soona’s radiocomputer flickers with new knowledge, flashes of light that bleed through the glass lungs of the mother of humanism. You can’t really see the floor beneath you, but you make it to the doors without stepping on one of the ravers. 

PERCEPTION (HEARING) [Challenging: Success] - Your Fritte bag rustles when you grab it and your jacket makes the soft swishing noise of thick fabric against itself when you pull it on.

THE INSTIGATOR [Formidable: Success] - The doors close soundlessly behind you.

COMPOSURE [Godly: Success] - You make it all the way to the boardwalk before you collapse into a heap of a woman. It’s disgusting, yes, mildew and lichen and the slime of seawater underneath you, but it's cold. Solid.

TOVARISCH [Heroic: Success] - You can see the stars above you. You’ve been all over Insulinde- all over *Elysium*- and you’ve always thought it was ironic that it’s only in the bombed-out, dirt-poor cities that that stars are visible. The ones that can’t afford to keep the lights on and drown them out. 

SPINE [Easy: Success] - You breathe.

JARGON [Easy: Success] - The radio parts are familiar enough in your hands that you barely need light to work with them. You flick on your flashlight anyway and fix it awkwardly into the fence, so the beam bounces around whenever the wind rattles it. It’s a little like constructing- or pruning- a tree. You start with the roots, tiny, strange gears and boxes that fit together into harmony. You don’t have the parts for anything sophisticated, and you have to jerry-rig the tuner, but the trouble of working around the pieces Du Bois broke occupies your hands and mind. The voices are silent.

JARGON - Then, slowly building up, the trunk of the operation and the branches of antennae spreading from the top. You knew coming out here that you wouldn’t have enough wire to make any meaningful connection. Most of the copper wire had oxidized in the sand by this afternoon and it’s cheap and plentiful enough in Martinaise that it hadn’t even occurred to you to bother attempting to salvage it. 

JARGON - That means that, even an hour and a half of work later, with a meter of radio transmitter trellising up the boardwalk fence, all you can get coax out of it is a thick fuzz and the surreal feeling of voices through the pale passing over your head.

ELSEWHERE - Pzzzt - zzz - t - t - t - Lucia, I - pzz - the weather in Su- pttttz - zzz - t

TASK UPDATED : FINISH SOMETHING MUNDANE

SPINE [Godly: Failure] - You don’t go back inside for the rest of the night. You don’t know if you fall asleep, either, just lie back on the boardwalk with your head on your jacket and your eyes on the sky. The constellations seem to flicker with the radio.

EGGHEAD - “I FOUND HER!”

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - DEI ABOVE. IT HURTS.

YOU - You lurch awake, clutching your hands to your head. 

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Easy: Success] - The edges of the sky are beginning to purple in anticipation of the sun, but night still blankets Martinaise.

THEW - Shockingly, boss, sleeping outside was no better for your body than sleeping inside. Instead, it was pretty damn worse. There’s frost on your jacket. You’re lucky the temperature didn’t drop more- and that it was nearly morning when you stumbled out here.

PARAPHRENIA - You’re damn lucky it was the ravers that found you and not someone worse. You practically put up a beacon with that monstrosity of an antennae last night.

ANDRE - Andre jogs over to you. “Heya, boss,” he says, “you totally freaked us out. Noid thought you got dragged off by the Moralintern.”

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - If you squint your eyes against the just-cresting sun, you can see Acele and Noid poking around the marsh. Noid is wearing her prototypical scarf.

ANDRE - “It’s a good thing Egghead found you, ‘cuz we were seconds from leaving you for dead and going to jump in the lake without you.” 

BLACK SHEEP - He’s consciously projecting an unbothered reaction to finding you sleeping outside. Whether it’s real or not is hard to say, but he’s at least in his late twenties and studiously into anodic dance music. He probably doesn’t think you’re too neurotic.

THEW [Challenging: Success] - You grunt and pull yourself to your feet. “Thanks,” you say.

EGGHEAD - He flashes you a grin and bounds off to rejoin Acele and Noid.

ANDRE - Andre loiters while you gather up your things. His hands are stuffed deep in his pockets and his eyes dart to your newly constructed antennae every few seconds. The question is obviously on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t want to ask it.

SPINE [Medium: Success] - You ignore him and scoop up your Fritte bag. “Gonna drop this back in the church,” you say. 

ANDRE - He nods. 

YOU - You half-jog to tuck the Fritte back into the entryway. Soona is at her radiocomputer again, headphones on and far too focused to notice you. You let the doors slam behind you this time, just because you can.

NOID - Noid shoots you an unreadable look from the reeds he and Acele are crouched in. “Loud,” he comments. 

BLACK SHEEP [Legendary: Failure] - Who knows what that means.

PEDAGOGUE [Trivial: Success] - ‘Loud’ is an adjective which refers to sound and means great in volume. It is a relative term and can have different meanings in different soundscapes.

YOU - You just raise an eyebrow at him, to conceal the fact that you’re not particularly skilled at decoding cryptic remarks from strange ravers.

TOVARISCH - You and the ravers tromp through the packed snow to the top of the inlet. A few times you consider asking why the hell they go to the point instead of stopping at any one of the equally freezing, gray-blue stretches of ocean, but then you look at their gaunt, young faces and it seems too obvious to inquire about.

TOVARISCH - Finally, you all reach the end. The wind whips around you and your hair blusters just like the reeds. All of the world is gray and night except for your red knuckles and the brightly colored hair of your comrades. Even those are thrown into shadow by the early morning sky.

ANDRE - Andre whoops. He throws his arms in the air and the raggedy towels he’d been in charge of carrying fly like birds.

EGGHEAD - “TRANSCENDENTAL ADOLESCENCE!” he screams.

NOID - The ex-carpenter screams, high pitched and raw, head tilted so far back you’re sure he feels seconds from falling over.

ACELE - Acele just laughs. Her face is broken in half with the lightness of being outside. The cold bites at her face and she spins, slow and halting but around and around and around.

COMPOSURE [Legendary: Failure] - You find yourself laughing, too. It’s a maniacal sound, choked out of you in a cold so thick that your lips are on the verge of going numb. When Noid stops screaming for a breath of air, the look he shoots you is approving.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Success] - OH, SISTER, IT HURTS! YOU LOVE IT.

TOVARISCH - Eventually they calm, Acele falling dizzily onto the thick crust of the snow and Egghead collapsing next to her. Andre collects the towels he’d strewn about and coalesces them into a neat pile. Noid begins to unclip his suspenders.

ANDRE - “Uh, usually we all just skinny dip, since walking back to the church in wet clothes is…” he searches for a word, “shitty. You don’t gotta if you’re uncomfortable, obviously, you can jump in in your lady boxers or your jeans.” His face is red, but he nods resolutely to himself, satisfied with the monologue, and sits down to start shucking off his boots.

YOU - “Thanks for the disclaimer, kid.”

ANDRE - Andre glances up for just a moment to shoot you a sheepish grin.

SPINE [Easy: Success] - You pull your shirt off and toss it onto the frozen-over ground. The rest of your clothes follow suit. You haven’t actually undressed since you were staying in the fishing village. Your bra, despite the fact that it’s been stripped of almost every single frill and wire, has left angry red lines across your chest. 

THEW - All of the reaching- above your head to pull off your shirt, behind your back to unhook your bra, down to pull off your wool socks- aches. The pain has dulled over the last few days, though, and it’s nearly pleasant. 

THEW - You pause before you take off your so-called lady boxers to stretch. 

NOID - Noid, the first to finish undressing, sits at the edge of the ice with his knees to his chest and his arms wrapped around them. His back is acne-scar speckled and bony. Andre joins him next, and then you come to sit with them. They both stare dismally at the gray water.

NOID - “It’s a bit intimidating,” he says soberly.

ANDRE - “We spend a few minutes havin’ a staredown with it most every time,” he agrees.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - It barely looks like water. You’ve never spent so much time staring out at the bay, since you can’t see it from the Whirling-in-Rags and you’ve usually got better things to do, but you can’t imagine it always looks like this. This isn’t an ocean, it’s a force of something. You could almost believe it manifested the warships itself to destroy the revolutionaries. This churning, icy emptiness could do most everything, you figure.

NOID - “We always eventually get in, though.” He turns his head and rests his ear on his knees. Age-old brown eyes look contemplatively at you. “What’s the pale like?”

YOU - You chuckle. 

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Success] - It doesn’t seem like as much of a non-sequitur as it is.

YOU - “It’s big,” you say. “They aren’t kiddin’ when they call it *vast.* It goes on forever. Once you get in you feel like you’re never going to get out of it.” The waves splash at the edges of the ice. “I’ve never even felt the true pale. They’ve got all kinda fancy shit for paledrivers and the people manning the stations now. Headphones, pills, radio shows that are supposed to counteract the crazy. I can’t imagine what it must be like without all that.” You lean back on your hands and move your gaze from the ocean to the horizon, so far away you can barely see it. It might just be porch collapse, too. Sometimes the bacteria look like a cloud line. “Before the revolution, they’d push people out there with nothing more than a pack of cigs and a salute,” you say. 

NOID - He scoffs. 

YOU - “It’s a messy sector,” you say with a shrug. “There’s no good answer yet. All anyone knows is what they’ve got going now ain’t it.”

ANDRE - “That’s crazy,” Andre says. His eyes are wide and glued hypnotically to the waves. “Mad props to you, Ruby.”

ACELE - Behind you comes the final clink of a belt falling against ice and Acele comes to join you all.

EGGHEAD - Egghead is a moment behind her.

PARAPHRENIA - Here you are, ducks in a row, staring at what may as well be the chopping block. There may not be malice in the ocean, but there’s no malice from the butcher either. Your heart isn’t young anymore, Ruby. Your joints are already stained red from the cold. There are a lot of ways to die in the ocean.

SPINE [Formidable: Success] - You’ll be fine. You need a bath, anyway.

ACELE - Acele eyes you and offers a small smile. 

BLACK SHEEP - Now that she’s not bundled in a few layers of winter clothes it’s apparent that she’s no more a teenager than the rest of her posse. There are scars littering her chest and she doesn’t hold herself with any of the awkwardness of adolescent nudity. She, like you, knows exactly what she’s done with her life to end up here. 

ACELE - “It’s warmer than it looks,” she reassures. “The kind of cold you can get used to after a while. I don’t really understand the science, but reportedly the fact that this water borders the pale gives it warm currents. Apparently the convection can be downright boiling when you’re way out there, but by the time it reaches the coast it’s mellowed out.” 

ANDRE - Andre leans forward to see his girlfriend. “Doesn’t quite reach bath temperature, but it’s not unbearable.”

COMPOSURE - A moment of silence as all five of you contemplate the ocean. The sunrise has begun to encroach onto the darkness more, and strains of blush-colored sky are reflected in the waves.

TOVARISCH - You begin to suspect that this ritual of waiting and thinking together is less about fear or true hesitation than it is community. Not in the same way the Hardies would drink together in the evening, but not so different either.

PARAPHRENIA - You are not a part of that fraternity, but you linger because you can’t be anything but the last person in the water. The fear of floundering as someone watches from the ice is primeval and unshakable. 

TOVARISCH - Finally, the silence breaks.

EGGHEAD - “COWABUNGA, MAN!” He screams, launching off the ice and into the ocean with a resounding splash. Acele and Andre follow suit almost immediately, Andre falling face first with his arms outstretched and Acele slipping from the ice without so much as a ripple left behind her.

ANDRE - Andre screams when he hits the water, then laughs.

NOID - Noid stands first and walks over to Andre’s pile of towels to retrieve a loosely woven bag of bar soaps, which he brings to the edge of the ice and opens. Then, finally, he raises an eyebrow at you. “Coming?” he asks.

YOU - “You first.”

NOID - “I’d prefer not to,” he says. “I like being the last one in.”

LEVERAGE [Easy: Success] - You stare him down.

LEVERAGE [Godly: Failure] - He stares back. He’s not an especially intimidating man, but he’s resolute. You won’t get him to back down no matter how much burl you put behind your death glare.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - He probably learned it from the old growth trees he used to work with. All the carpenters you’ve known have been stubborn mules when push came to shove.

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - Your stare-down is punctuated by the sound of Noid’s compatriots adjusting to the ocean. Soon they’ll move onto washing themselves and will want to leave. You should hurry this up.

LEVERAGE - Compromise is worth a try. Makes you feel like a five year old at a playground squabble, but it’s better than fighting with your paranoia until the sun rises.

COMPOSURE [Medium: Failure] - You’re also starting to feel a little ridiculous, staring Noid down while you’re both as naked as the day you were born. 

YOU - You scowl and cross your arms. “Count of three?” you suggest.

NOID - His face melts a little in relief. “Whatever you want, man.”

LEVERAGE - In the end actually counting down feels too childish. You both toe the edge of the ice and, with a beat of eye contact and a nod from Noid, you leap.

THEW - You’re flying, boss. The moment before you hit the water is barely noticeable in the scheme of things, but it echoes as you scrabble your way back to the surface.

COMPOSURE - Your breath has been well and truly knocked out of you. It’s *cold.*

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Success] - MOTHERFUCKER!

YOU - “MOTHERFUCKER!”

COMPOSURE - The words don’t even have to slip through your carefully maintained self-control. They flow- your persona holds no stock with these kids and the jump has, for a moment, managed to knock that into your head.

ANDRE - Andre, treading water a few feet from you, laughs and tosses his head back. His spikes have already melted away in the water and yellow hair lies plastered to his forehead.

EGGHEAD - “MOTHERFUCKER,” he shouts back. 

YOU - You dip under the water again and, when you open your eyes, find everything shrouded in a gray gauze curtain. Red light from the rising sun bleeds through and fractals, illuminating only very faintly Noid’s ankles, pedaling slowly to keep him above water. Anyone further away is invisible.

YOU - The cold begins to feel immaterial. 

BULLSHITTER - They weren’t lying about getting used to it.

YOU - You resurface with a gasp, feeling your hair glue itself to your temples like the veil on a petite-bourgeoise mourner. “Goddamn it,” you say. Admiration bleeds into the words. 

ACELE - "Yeah,” she says.

ANDRE - “Yo, Noid, you got the soap?” He raises his arms above his head, ready to catch whatever Noid throws at him. He nearly catches the underhand toss, too, but instead the soap flies over his head and lands with a light splash in the waves behind him. The offwhite bar bobs with the current.

ANDRE - Andre falls onto his back and paddles to grab it. 

TOVARISCH - The rest of the morning- or as much of it as you can all stand to spend in the water- is spent tossing a quarter dozen bars of soap between the ravers. You wash your hair as best you can without drowning and by the time you all emerge, shivering and dashing for the sun-warmed towels, you feel cleaner than you have in a week and a half.

TASK COMPLETED : SHOWER OR SOMETHING

YOU - You’re halfway back into your tank top when Acele, already bundled up again, sidles up to you.

ACELE - “Hey.”

YOU - You finish tucking the stretchy fabric into your cargo pants and pull on your jacket. “Hey,” you respond, raising an eyebrow.

ACELE - Acele nods to where the rest of her posse seem to be fighting over a stray sock with an unknown owner. “I think they’ll be a minute,” she says dryly. “Want to head back early?”

YOU - You shrug one shoulder in agreement and the pair of you begin to walk back to the church.

BLACK SHEEP - Acele is light on her feet. She’s likely a good dancer. It’s probably why she and Andre fell together- at least why he fell for her. Jury’s still out on what charms that guy has, beyond a healthy, grinningly mocking “respect” for authority and a receding hairline.

ACELE - As she walks, she shuffles through her puffy vest for a pack of Tioumoutiris, hits them against the flat of her hand, and pulls one out. She offers you the pack, cigarette hanging from the corner of her lips. “Want a smoke?”

TOVARISCH - Usually you’re more of an Astras dyke, but beggars can’t be choosers.

MAGIC BULLET - These ones won’t taste like shit, either!

YOU - “Yeah, thanks.” You take one and hold it between two fingers while you shuffle through your pockets for a lighter. Eventually you find the one Glen gave you half a year ago. It’s cheap, copper worn shiny on the cap, and machine printed with the image of a scantily clad Semenese woman on the side.

TOVARISCH - Definitely racist.

METHOD OF LOCI - Maybe the last thing you have of your friend.

YOU - You flick it into flame, light your cigarette, and hold it out for Acele.

ACELE - She leans in to light her smoke, then steps back and starts to walk again. “I’m a little curious where you came from,” she admits.

MAGIC BULLET [Easy: Success] - You take a drag of your cigarette. It’s almost cloyingly sweet, but the nicotine is worth it. Combined with the fading pain and your half-frozen hair dripping down your back, it makes you feel human.

YOU - “Just from under the Feld building. Ain’t that interesting.”

ACELE - “Were you born down there, ma’am?”

YOU - You grimace. “Call me Ruby. And nah, there’s a long, bumpy road from my mama’s uterus and the tent in that basement. You wouldn’t find it interesting.” You tilt your head up when you exhale. The top of the Feld building just barely fits into your sightline.

ACELE - “I was born in the Fou,” she says. “My parents are first gen immigrants from Graad. Well, my dad *was.* He took the brightest ticket available to him in Jamrock, and he was good at it.” She glances over at you.

BULLSHITTER [Formidable: Success] - She’s telling the truth, shitkid. You’re just not sure where she’s going with it.

ACELE - “Eventually he was killed by another mobster, and me and my mum changed our name and our hair and all that shit. I joined up with those idiots.” She smiles mildly. “You could say I know a little bit about running away. I think it’s interesting to see how other people are doing it.”

YOU - You exhale heavily. 

LEVERAGE [Easy: Success] - The church nears; if you hedge long enough, your secret can stay exactly where it’s meant to be. Acele’s a true silver bird. If you refuse to answer, or make it clear enough that you won’t, she’ll drop the subject and never breathe a word of whatever she suspects to her friends.

EMPATHY - If you tell her, too, whatever you say will go to her grave. She’s just curious. 

YOU - “You heard of Padre Madre?”

PARAPHRENIA - You can’t *really* be doing this.

ACELE - “Of course.” The answer is immediate enough it’s surprising to you, even knowing that Acele’s father held some sway in Faubourg. You glance over and Acele smiles, tightlipped. “La Puta Madre is a big name in Jamrock. Less so ten years ago, but you still heard his name around.”

YOU - “I figured. Anyway, I was on his payroll for a few years. My time on the pale repeater stations made me damn valuable- the fact that I was still sane even more so, and the cherry on top was that I was willing to touch a radio after all of it. I made bank, found myself in Martinaise on slow days…” you take another drag and close your eyes for a moment. “Then defected.”

ACELE - She whistles quietly. It’s barely audible above the wind. “When was that?”

YOU - “Couple’a years ago now. I’d hoped M had given up, but then the damn hanging debacle happens and he sends his human can opener after me. So I ran.” You chuckle. “There was shit before all that, obviously, but I figured you weren’t too interested in my childhood on the Esperance delta.”

ACELE - “No, I wasn’t. Unless you’d like to talk about it.”

METHOD OF LOCI - Running through the fields like there was something chasing you, kicking dust clods at sheep and watching them fritter nervously, reading palethrillers until your eyes swam. No, you don’t want to talk about it.

YOU - You roll your eyes and shake your head.

ACELE - “Who’s the human can opener?” she asks.

YOU - You sneer. “Du Bois. He’s so dirty his fucking jacket has mudstains on it. The kind of key player even M wouldn’t mention by name. But when I heard him on the RCM radio-” you fall silent.

THE INSTIGATOR - It feels idiotic to say that one of the notoriously unreliable voices in your head told you to run. But if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be standing here.

PARAPHRENIA - You'd be dead in the square in front of the Whirling-in-Rags like the rest of the Hardies, or killed by a cop with a vigilante complex, or an unrecognizable corpse on the side of the road. There are no good endings for you, Ruby.

ACELE - “Du Bois, huh.”

EMPATHY - She knows the name. The response isn’t emotional enough for it to be someone she truly cares about, but it’s someone she’s met, not just heard about.

PEDAGOGUE [Legendary: Success] - Du Bois is the third most common family name among white cops in Revachol. The Du Bois she knows could be anyone.

SPINE - No need to ask.

THE INSTIGATOR - At least, not yet. And probably not Acele. Andre might know, and he’s a much less cagey speaker.

TOVARISCH - You both walk the rest of the way in silence, leaving a thin, ephemeral trail of smoke behind you.

SOONA - “Ah, wonderful. I will no longer have to share my space with a quintet of skunks.”

PERCEPTION (SMELL) [Trivial: Success] - You do all smell quite a bit better. The soap was some kinda floral scent and any overwhelming perfume from it had been scrubbed away by the wind on the walk back. The five of you smell, at worst, like a yards-away garden.

ANDRE - “ ‘T’s the least we can do, Soona! Anything for you.” He darts forward to a duffle bag hidden in the pews and ducks down between the dark wood benches so that he’s barely visible. 

NOID - Noid leans closer to you. “Fixing his spikes,” he says conspiratorially. “He’s insecure about them.”

ANDRE - “FUCK YOU, NOID!” He bellows.

ACELE - Acele chuckles and, beginning to unwrap her scarf, turns to you. “What are you going to do for the rest of the day?” she asks. 

EMPATHY [Formidable: Success] - She asks casually, but there’s care there. She’s ready to help you with whatever it is.

BLACK SHEEP - Every cell in your body protests to accepting that help. Look where it got you last time: every damn person you care about leading Du Bois right into your nest.

TOVARISCH - On the other hand: you’re already leaning practically all your weight on the ravers. Why bother drawing the line here?

YOU - “I’d like to get some provisions and stuff from the Fritte. I wasn’t able to recover everything I’d need from under the Feld building.” You cross your arms and feel yourself start to scowl. “I’m not sure it’s safe to go back into Martinaise proper.”

PARAPHRENIA [Godly: Failure] - You’re not *sure*? You cross the harbor and you sign your fucking death warrent. Tommy’ll be waiting there with a hunting rifle on his shoulder and a shiny bullet with your name on it.

METHOD OF LOCI - Tommy didn’t-

SHIVERS [Legendary: Success] - The sturdy cop has a way with words. Hands tucked into pockets, wheedling and not quite- not *quite*- threatening, eyes bright and unblemished. Tommy cussed him out but eventually he choked on his words and La Revacholière’s poet laureate (its poet lorry-ate) caved.

SHIVERS - The city guided the knives into your back. It picked its side and it wasn’t yours. The cop knows this and it eats guiltily at his spine, so he fibs when he’s asked.

METHOD OF LOCI - Sad, sorry brown eyes lying through his teeth under the Feld building. Tommy didn’t give up the information easy, and Du Bois wanted to pretend that was the same thing as not giving it up at all.

THE INSTIGATOR - Tommy may have ratted you out, but he’s not going to shoot you. Neither would the Hardie boys. The mercenaries are what you really have to worry about- them and Du Bois.

THE INSTIGATOR - It would be worth it. Not *practically* since you could pick up the shit you need from any drugstore dotting the rest of Revachol, but something about it calls to you. You think, suddenly, that you need to go to that Fritte on pain of something worse than death.

ACELE - Acele eyes you. “We can go for you, if you want,” she offers.

LEVERAGE [Trivial: Success] - You shake your head without even taking a beat to consider it. “Nah. A change of clothes and a hat should make it safe enough. The guys I need to be looking out for barely know me from those Oranjese brats that run around town. Without my hair I’ll be a no one to them.”

ACELE - “Well, if you’re sure. I have a hat I can lend you. Noid can borrow you some sunglasses, too.”

NOID - “Can I?” he grumbles, but there’s no heat behind it.

SOONA - Her smile is sharp and, behind that, just a little nervous for you. “Shalom.”

YOU - You raise a hand and flash a grin back. “Shalom.”

BLACK SHEEP [Easy: Success] - The word is a little clumsy on your tongue, but something about the return of the goodbye softens Soona’s worry. She goes back to her work.

TOVARISCH - Minutes later you’re ushered back out the door, hands in your pockets and bundled up in a way you haven’t been since your mother died. The orange hat Acele offered you is slouchy and smells like beer, and Noid’s sunglasses are big. His possession of them seems to support the Aulay-copycat theory, but you’ve never actually seen him wear them.

THE INSTIGATOR - The fishing village spreads out in front of you. Wandering back through it feels duplicitous, wading through weeds to avoid the washerwoman and kids. Idiot Doom Spiral sees you, raising a hand in greeting. A flash of fear jolts through you, but if there’s anyone in town who knows when to keep his trap shut it’s that bastard, so you stifle the worry and nod back.

TOVARISCH - The square is empty, just the burnt-out remains of Girl Child Communism written across the tile. You can almost smell the blood.

TOVARISCH - *ONE DAY I WILL RETURN TO YOUR SIDE*

ELIZABETH - Liz sits on the bench next to the Whirling-in-Rags, paging through something a decade past your reading comprehension. 

EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] - She’s not actually reading the book. She’s adrift in something too vast to be pushed aside for The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice.

TOVARISCH [Heroic: Failure] - You bury your hands deeper in your pockets and stare straight ahead. You don’t walk faster or slower, because that would attract her attention.

TOVARISCH - Somehow, she still notices you.

SHIVERS - You hum the same frequency. Her mind isn’t pulled into taffy at the edges like yours, but her lungs expand and contract at the same speed.

ELIZABETH - “Hello there, stranger.” Her Semenine accent is thick with exhaustion.

METHOD OF LOCI [Challenging: Success] - Sitting with her at the bar of the Whirling-in-Rags, voices low so that Angus, lurking near the Karaoke machine, wouldn't gossip. Elizabeth was always tired in her law school days.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS, SISTER. IT HURTS HER.

BLACK SHEEP [Godly: Success] - You jerk your head in vague greeting and fake a grin, knowing it’ll come off as cocky and- more than anything- just barely you enough to leave room for plausible deniability. 

BULLSHITTER [Heroic: Success] - “Hey yourself, stranger.”

YOU - And then you keep walking. Her eyes slide off your back almost as soon as you turn away from her.

PEDAGOGUE [Formidable: Success] - Fritte is a chain drugstore brand established in ‘01 in Graad, which expanded into Insulinde in the years following the Revolution. It immediately grew to fill the vacuum of convenience in the years the isola spent rebuilding itself and established an empire. There are many conspiracy theories floating out there about the Fritte as an arm of the Moralintern, establishing Insulinedian dependency on foreign capital, but they hold about as much credibility as Infra-materialism.

TOVARISCH - What a fucking skeptic, man.

PERCEPTION (HEARING) [Easy: Success] - The bells on the drugstore door ring behind you without any cheer. 

THE INSTIGATOR [Easy: Success] - Astras, copper wire, pocky for Soona because you see it out of the corner of your eye and pull a box into your arm without even thinking about it, less bottled water than you need but almost more than you can carry, a .25 reál novel from the rack, beans, rice, and bandages.

THE INSTIGATOR - By the time you reach the cash register you’re satisfied with what you’ve gathered. All that’s left is getting your gun back.

BLACK SHEEP - It’s all incredibly mundane. The girl behind the counter raises an eyebrow at your hat and glasses, but she rings up your provisions without comment and calls you “sir” when she reads the total. And then you leave, knowing that it will be the last time you’re inside that particular Fritte.

TASK UPDATED : GET PREPARED

TASK UPDATED : GIVE SOONA THE FILAMENTS AND POCKY

SPINE - This was trivial. Picking up your groceries could have just as easily been done by the ravers. All this has lauded on you is risk and for what? A still-unfilled void in your chest that you thought “closure” would stitch up?

PARAPHRENIA [Formidable: Success] - It’ll stay there forever. You’re leaving everyone- again- and the wounds from flying a different coop a decade ago are still raw, you motherfucker. You will live with this.

PERCEPTION (HEARING) [Easy: Success] - The bells ring again when you leave. 

THE INSTIGATOR - A man and child are outside now. The child has two magazines from the stand under his arm and a jaunty sailors cap on his head. The man wears a suit. A few feet away a lorry driver lurks, only emphasizing how out of place the petit-bourgeoisie look in Martinaise. Even beyond class, this guy couldn’t be more obviously RCM if he tried. Not a detective or patrol officer, no, but he reeks of pig.

THE INSTIGATOR [Trivial: Success] - There is no reason for them to be here that plays out well with you. Walk fast and keep your head down.

SPINE - Ignore them like you did Liz.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “Hoy, sir! Do you have a light on you?”

COMPOSURE [Formidable: Failure] - Decades of muscle memory betray you and you pause just long enough to see a hopeful grin spread across the man’s face. 

TOVARISCH [Trivial: Success] - Well, you’ve got to stop now.

YOU - Your purposeful stride grinds to a half, much to the glee of the man. “Yeah, sure.” You eye the kid. “For both of you?”

MAGIC BULLET - There’s no cigarette in sight. You’re not sure where to hold out your lighter, so you just wrap your fingers around where it sits in your pocket and wait.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - He chuckles. “Oh, no, no. I don’t smoke anymore.”

BLACK SHEEP [Formidable: Failure] - Usually when people speak about quitting smoking their reasons are plain as day on their face: the behest of a girlfriend, sudden apprehension about lung cancer, religion. The man’s face, as pleasant as it is, is completely unreadable. 

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “In fact, I was just explaining a concept to my son. You, ma'am, have you heard this?” He holds up a taper candle. It’s dark green, with a charcoal wick and tears of wax running down the side. “When you burn a candle it’s not actually solid or liquid wax that burns, but instead the wax vapor that’s pulled to the tip of the wax. Most of the vapor undergoes a chemical transformation in the air-”

MIKAEL - “-but not all of it.” 

EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] - Now that you’ve stopped and become a captive audience for their miniscule father-son show, the kid seems to have warmed to you. His eyes are nearly glittering.

EMPATHY - He’s not from around here.

BLACK SHEEP - *They’re* not from around here. This whole thing is baffling, toeing the line between charming and macabre.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “No, not all of it.” He waves the candle slightly and chuckles at your expression. “Apologies for accosting you with this, ma’am. I hope you weren’t in any hurry.”

PARAPHRENIA - Oh, no rush, just trying to get out of here before this guy’s cop friends gun you down! By all means, stay for their science experiment. 

SPINE - Shut up.

PEDAGOGUE [Easy: Success]  - He’s not saying anything you don’t know yet. Understanding candles is really basic survival shit and the trick he’s about to do- igniting the vaporized paraffin wax floating in the smoke of a blown out candle- has been a popular party trick in Jamrock and the surrounding areas since you were young enough to frequent the clubs.

LEVERAGE [Medium: Success] - His son has seen the trick a dozen times, too. There’s something more to this lecture- something the man wants you to see. 

YOU - You hand over your lighter.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - He looks amused by the graphic on the side. The way he flicks it alight is strangely elegant.

EMPATHY - There was a period of his life where he did tricks when he borrowed lighters, flipping them along the knuckles of his fingers and spinning the flame, making it dance. He’s sobered since then, but familiarity with them is still muscle memory.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - He lights the candle. Blows it out. Holds the lighter to the thin ghost of smoke and watches as flame runs along it back to the wick. Then he lets it linger.

METHOD OF LOCI - It’s a tiny, daytime vigil. 

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - IT HURTS.

EMPATHY [Trivial: Success] - There’s a darkness in his gaze when he stares at the relit candle, like he knows just as well as you that holding a green candle in the dirty snow isn’t nearly enough.

TOVARISCH [Medium: Success] - The three of you (the father, the son, the insane Hardie girl) watch the flame waver in the light breeze, hypnotized. 

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Formidable: Failure] - It’s a small, toy version of all the fires people have lit in mourning over thousands of years on Elysium, tied to all of those other ones by a tenuous spider web of pale smoke drifting on winter wind. The great, great, great, great, great grandchild of the fires they lit when Dolores Dei was killed, the estranged niece of the fires that raged after the Coalition bombings, the sister of Girl Child Communism and the alight graffiti.

TOVARISCH - For a fleeting moment, you don’t feel so different to the man holding the green candle in his five hundred reál suit.

TOVARISCH - It’s a *very* fleeting moment, though.

TASK UPDATED : PROCESS LATER

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - Finally he waves the taper candle just enough to extinguish it and tosses your lighter back at you. “Thanks a million,” he says, rubbing invisible ash between his fingers. “I’m sure you’ve seen that trick before.”

YOU - “Once or twice.”

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “Or a thousand times.” He flashes a grin down to his son. “I know Mikael and his Uncle Jean are certainly getting tired of it. Still, I recently learned something interesting about it that I wanted to confer to Mikael."

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "I’m sure you both understand that such a trick can’t *originate* in any region of Elysium, being that the explorative nature of the human mind stumbles upon this sort of thing over and over again.”

MIKAEL - Mikael nods.

BLACK SHEEP [Trivial: Success] - You nod too.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “However, the first *recorded* analysis of it comes from Ubi Sunt? in an ancient manuscript that was recently recovered by Vespertine scholars. It describes the ritualistic routine of relighting candles after blowing them out the first time practiced by monks- specifically those monks closest to the Great Unrest of Ubi Sunt?- as relating to the pale. Of course, almost all Ubi Sunt? rituals are in some way connected to the pale, due to their proximity.”

MIKAEL - Mikael nods again. 

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “But this candle ritual was quite fascinating, actually, in the way that even we, thousands and thousands of years later, can see how disturbingly on-the-nose it is. Because what of this tiny miracle suggests anything *but* the pale? The consumption of something already extinguished. The end of history and, beyond that, the reiginition.” His wide smile softens a little and he ruffles his son’s hair. “After the world, the pale; after the pale, the world again.”

YOU - “The trick’s pretty popular among communards, too.” You speak almost without thinking.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - He looks delighted. “Why, yes! Some theories of Infra-materialism actually cite this hydrocarbon-chemical miracle as proof of their theory. A little gift from the low thrum of communist thought that constantly surrounds us.”

PEDAGOGUE [Trivial: Success] - An almost comically exaggerated example of confirmation bias: the logical fallacy of bending the world around them to fit their narrative. I suppose they think water boiling is proof, too?

TOVARISCH - Who's to say it isn't?

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “And, of course, the link between Infra-materialism and the pale is long and storied.” His eyes flicker over to the square, alight with recognition, then tighten almost imperceptibly. “But I won’t bore you with that. I’ve just been thinking recently about this sort of thing and- well, I won’t pretend to know you.” His smile widens. “But I will say this: I do think rebirth is possible. After life, death and after death, life again. If I were you, ma’am, I’d stick it out.”

TOVARISCH - He claps you on the shoulder and leans closer- enough that his voice won’t be heard by his son, but not so close you can hear his thin lips smack when he talks. 

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “And, still with the hypothetical walking in your shoes: I’d wait about five minutes until I passed back in front of the Whirling-in-Rags. My colleagues and I will likely be lurking until Mikael’s Uncle Jean can get his motor carriage warmed up enough to start.” 

THE INSTIGATOR - He knows.

BULLSHITTER [Formidable: Failure] - You don't know what gave you away but you know, suddenly, that you should have noticed. The too-meaningful warmth in his eyes when he flagged you down, the way he's called you 'ma'am' this whole conversation. 

COMPOSURE [Heroic: Success] - You keep your face impassive.

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - He squeezes your shoulder- once, with camaraderie and more strength than you’d expect from a man of his, well, everything- then leans back and raises his voice again. “Uncle Jean has quite the eye, doesn’t he, Mikael?”

MIKAEL - “Oh, yes.” He beams up at you. “He says he can spot a criminal from a thousand meters away!”

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - “He’s a clever man. May the Innocences watch over you, stranger. Adieu.” He gives you one last smile before putting his hand on his son’s back and ushering them both away from you. Both of their boots have heels to them and they leave little exclamation mark prints in the dirty snow.

YOU - You tilt your head back to breathe out of your mouth.

SHIVERS [Formidable: Success] - The stones of the square beneath the grave cop’s boots are almost soft, ushering him along his path to the motor carriage with the frozen oil. He and his partner join up with their consultant and La Revacholière wants to reach out with fingers she doesn’t have to smooth the concern in their brows. The city loves them, her sons and daughters. She keeps them safe when she can and she cries when they die anyway. 

TOVARISCH - The rest of you have to rely on the kindness of strangers.

THE INSTIGATOR - You were too close that time. Your day could have ended very differently.

BULLSHITTER - Or you would have walked past the RCM with your head down and none of you would have known any of the difference. “Uncle Jean’s sharp eye” may not mean anything. 

SPINE - Still. Thank Dei.

PARAPHRENIA [Formidable: Failure] - As you wait the advised five minutes, plus an extra three and a half for good measure, your skin begins to crawl. First your shoulder where the RCM man had touched you, then the point at the top of your spine the lorry driver is staring at, trying to figure out where he’s seen you before. The prickling spreads across the whole of your back. It feels like there are ants burrowing out of your spine and crawling.

COMPOSURE [Formidible: Success] - No such thing is happening. It’s a hallucination, at worst.

THEW - That doesn’t change what you feel, boss.

PEDAGOGUE [Medium: Success] - Your sense of touch is no physical thing like you like to think it is. Instead it’s simply the simulation of nerve endings that run under your skin, branching like the antennae on your passion projects. Neuroscientists in Graad are currently working on bionic arms that will interact with those nerve endings and imitate touch for those who have lost limbs.

PARAPHRENIA - You can nearly feel the individual feet on the ants, their sticky mandibles dragging across the fine hair of your back. The roll of the blood from the wound their exit tore in your skin. 

COMPOSURE [Legendary: Success] - It’s just psychosomatic. Ants don’t burrow in skin.

METHOD OF LOCI [Easy: Success] - You had scabies when you were a kid. It’s maybe not ants, but there are plenty of barely subdermal parasites that are known to take humans as hosts.

PARAPHRENIA - Crawling along your ribs, running beneath the thick cotton of your shirt. If you were to lie down you would feel them crunch.

COMPOSURE [Godly: Success] - You grit your teeth and walk.

PARAPHRENIA - The bugs infiltrate your boots and their guts paint your socks when you step.

YOU - You end up a few yards from your old lorry- stupid, if anyone’s looking for you they’ll look here- next to the old paledriver. You lean up against a shipping container. Her cigarette smoke, suspended far from her lips in a long, thin holder, trails away from you.

MAGIC BULLET [Trivial: Success] - A cigarette! That’s what you need. Nicotine. Something solid between your lips. A smell that isn’t the imagined, acrid flavor of squashed ants.

PEDAGOGUE [Medium: Success] - You think of the Ubi Sunt? monks and their rituals. The trick doesn’t work with tobacco smoke, because it doesn’t have the wax vapor candles do.

YOU - You hurriedly shuffle through your Fritte bag for the pack of Astras, shake one out, and light it. Your hands shake a little bit and you can’t bear to look at them while you light the smoke, just in case the ghost of an ant peeks out of your jacket sleeve and confirms what your nerves are telling you.

SPINE - You’re not sure what would be worse: the bugs being real or knowing you can’t trust your eyes either. Better to not even approach the possibilities of either.

MAGIC BULLET - The nicotine calms you a little. The bugs start to feel like just prickling skin again. Your hands are still shaking and it’s difficult to manage a slow enough breath to smoke.

PALEDRIVER - “Rough run, *pilota*?” Her voice rasps.

JARGON [Challenging: Success] - She’s far beyond *rough runs.* She transcends everything.

LEVERAGE - You’ve always postured around her. You want her to think you’re tough- want her to see you for what everyone else does. You never let the toll the interisola trips took on you show when you were still near her lorry. Now your mask has broken.

EMPATHY - Still, your reputation has suffered no hit in her eyes.

YOU - “No.” You lean your head back. “Rough everything else. For once. I haven’t gotten in my lorry in weeks.”

MAGIC BULLET - Maybe it’s withdrawal. Maybe when you thought you were medicating the pale exposure with drugs you were really medicating the drugs with the pale.

PALEDRIVER - “Ah. A rough life. I’ve seen many of those.” She laughs once, harshly and scraping the walls of the containers surrounding you with thick empathy. “You may as well leave it all behind. I don’t hear the bullets anymore and when I do, they just sound like Dolores Dei cumming.” She exhales smoke. “Better to see her dying again and again than someone *good*.”

YOU - “I- yeah.”

MAGIC BULLET - Oh, it’s tempting. 

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - L'APPEL DU VIDE. REVACHOL EXHALES IT LIKE CARBON DIOXIDE, SISTER.

THE INSTIGATOR - But you have things left here. A life that *you’re* living, not one that flashes past your eyes like flicks at the movie theater. The paledriver lives on voyeurism past present and future. 

PALEDRIVER - Her eyes are distant and starry. “Or stay here. Wait for whoever it is to return to your side.” She inhales deeply enough that her hair moves in the still air. “Cry first, *pilota.* Before you run back off.”

YOU - You’re not usually the sort of person who can cry on cue. Or at all, really. But the paledriver floats back away from you and plumes of her cigarette- she only smokes unfiltered, the kind that fill your lungs with tar until you choke on it- disappear into the winter sky. Eventually you find yourself wiping snot and saltwater tears from your face. You don’t have a handkerchief. It’s all disgusting.

METHOD OF LOCI - The only time you saw any of the Hardies cry was Alain burning his own tattoo off. You thought you saw Titus wipe watery eyes at Liz’s graduation, too. Maybe.

LEVERAGE - Thank god the paledriver’s the only one here to see this. Your reputation would be in shambles.

BULLSHITTER - It already is, shitkid. They all think you’re mixed up in some kinda homo-sexual homicide cult, remember? You’re not a Hardie boy anymore, you don’t gotta worry about what they’d say.

TOVARISCH - You’ll miss being a Hardie boy for the rest of your life. Your attachment to the rest of the men won’t ever leave you, even if it’ll fade, paradoxically, as you grow more and more comfortable with calling it love. You’ll miss them forever, but this is not the sort of thing you’ll rebuild.

TASK COMPLETED (AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE) : PROCESS LATER

COMPOSURE [Medium: Success] - You wipe your face onto the back of your hands, and then your hands onto your work pants. It’s all disgusting.

SPINE - You’re disgusting. Again. You really do need another shower- both for the snot drying on your wrists and the ghostly ant carcasses. Ideally before you go back to the church. 

TASK GAINED : BATHE (AGAIN)

TOVARISCH [Easy: Success] - Time to call upon Isobel, then. You push yourself off the container and raise a hand in goodbye to the paledriver. She doesn’t even glance your way.

COMPOSURE - Maybe you do feel lighter as you walk back to the fishing village, sticky teartracks drying on your face. Certainly your skin no longer crawls.

THEW - You feel more dehydrated too, boss. You’ve gotta save those water bottles you bought for the trek out west, but Isobel will have some clean- if tepid- water for you.

ISOBEL SADIE - “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again, dearie.” Dry, flaky hands endlessly rub stains out of cotton.

YOU - You start to rummage through the piles of rubbish along the side of the shack for her big washing tub- moving crates and brushing aside tarps. “I didn’t think so either. Plans have deviated a bit.”

THE INSTIGATOR - Isobel was supposed to be the last citizen of Martinaise you would ever see. It was all supposed to be over for your love affair with this city when you left her shack a week ago. 

ISOBEL SADIE - “Soap’s on the shelf in an old candle jar. I moved it when that RCM officer was staying here.”

COMPOSURE [Challenging: Failure] - Your back stiffens.

LEVERAGE [Easy: Success] - Isobel is the weather-worn sort of old woman whose every sentence is thought out with a precision most of the jackasses you know couldn’t even comprehend. She knows exactly what she said and exactly how you’d react. She’s pressing the subject. Now that you’re back, you’ve opened yourself to questioning.

YOU - “What’d he do to warrant hiding the soap?”

ISOBEL SADIE - She wrinkles her nose. “Not hiding. I was trying to make it more visible. The man reeked.” 

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - There’s sympathy in her tone.

ISOBEL SADIE - “Going sober is hard. I’ve seen a thousand people do it. *Smelt* a thousand people do it, and they all stunk.”

YOU - You chuckle.

BLACK SHEEP - So he was going cold turkey.

SPINE [Legendary: Failure] - You’re not usually a woman who wavers in your convictions. And yet Du Bois is slowly starting to seem like a stranger conglomerate than the bent copper you thought he was at first.

THE INSTIGATOR - Who cares. Dei willing you’ll never see the bastard again. Even if he’s a goddamn radical Maslovian feminist, he’s just another cog in a machine you’re never going to touch again.

YOU - “So Du Bois stayed here?” 

BULLSHITTER [Easy: Success] - *Even after I practically cried to you about how scared he made me?*

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Formidable: Success] - You spot the dull gleam of the tub beneath an old peach crate and tug it out. The scrape of metal against sand-encrusted boardwalk drowns out Isobel’s response, so she turns back to her washing and waits patiently until you get it all organized under the awning that used to be for selling fish. It gets set up on the finangled grill you built Isobel, a tangle of dark iron metal that the tub fits perfectly on to heat a bath.

BLACK SHEEP - Age-old fishing nets hang thick enough around the awning that you’ve felt comfortable bathing under it for years.

YOU - You perch on the edge of the tub and raise your eyebrows at Isobel. “So?”

ISOBEL SADIE - “He needed a place to stay, you were no longer here, and he was a nice young man. My shack is mine, sweetie. I get to rent it as I choose.” She raises her eyebrows back, then chuckles under her breath at your sullen expression. “I wanted to keep an eye on him as well, of course. You’re Martinaise’s girl, I can’t be letting cops like that run around unsupervised.”

YOU - “He found me anyway.” 

ISOBEL SADIE - “I’m not surprised.” 

LEVERAGE - Your usual scowl has never affected Isobel, unflappable as she is, but you attempt it anyway.

ISOBEL SADIE - “I’ve known you for years, Ruby. You’re a clever girl who doesn’t go swimming into whatever psychological nets men set up for you. Lilliene once said she doesn’t think it’d be possible for anyone with a mortal brain to go up against you and win. But that officer didn’t have a mind like you and I do.”

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Like in the basement. *INLAND EMPIRE* talking to you without words.

YOU - You don’t respond.

THEW - Hauling water up from the sea is slow and difficult business. The plastic 5-gallon bucket Isobel keeps on hand has a flimsy handle that cuts into your palm. Still, the muscles you’ve made since quitting M’s work make it easier.

SPINE - Also, the stubborn pain tolerance you’ve been working on since your teens.

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - Isobel hums “Surrender to the Night” as you haul water.

THEW - Finally the bath sloshes at a high enough level for you. You light the flame underneath and consign yourself to waiting at the edge of the boardwalk, one knee pulled to your chest and the other leg splayed idly. Your mouth is dry.

ISOBEL SADIE - She lifts the shirt she’s washing and looks it over with a critical eye, then slowly stands and takes careful steps over to her laundry line, where she tosses it over the clothesline and clips it into place. “Would you like some water, dear? I doubt you’ve drank more than beer in half a week.” 

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - She’s facing away from you but you can still nearly see the raised eyebrow on her wrinkled face. 

YOU - “Yeah, that’d be great. Thank you.”

ISOBEL SADIE - She disappears into the fishing village to retrieve it. At the beginning of your acquaintance, you had always tried to insist on gathering those things yourself. 

LEVERAGE - You have that sort of strict code of honor for yourself: always stop to light someone’s cigarette, don’t turn away women at your door, don’t let the elderly do things for you that you could do yourself. The Hardies had the same chivalric values: a convoluted reinterpretation of “from each according to her ability, to each according to her needs” that was occasionally irritating for everyone involved, but never swayed from.

LEVERAGE - Well, with no one but Isobel. None of the Hardies knew where she kept *any* of the things she’d offer them- her cookie tin, first aid kit, the damn water faucet- and they certainly couldn’t offer to wash their own clothes. Theo was the only one who even knew where she kept her meds, and that was because they had the sort of age-old agreement that the rest of the Hardies couldn’t dream of.

LEVERAGE - Usually the consensus between all of you was that it was just stubbornness but sometimes Glen theorized that it was because she liked to see you all squirm, your masculinity uncomfortable with sitting on the boardwalk and waiting for her to get back with your water and cookies, like you were a six year old boy or a bourgeois woman waiting on her afternoon tea. The theory was usually laughed off, but you, the only woman of the group, and Theo, Isobel’s suspected confidant, privately agreed it had merit.

YOU - You twiddle your thumbs while you wait for her return.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Success] - THERE IS BLOOD ON THIS DIRT TOO, SPILT BY THE SAME MONSTROSITY BEHIND THE TRIBUNAL.

PEDAGOGUE [Challenging: Failure] - Fish gutting?

BLACK SHEEP [Easy: Success] - Toxic masculinity?

TOVARISCH [Medium: Success] - Capital?

SHIVERS [Formidable: Success] - Revachol and the fish market breathe just like Isobel, made with the same stubborn cloth of women who saw the revolution come and go. There are too many things stifling their inhales to count.

ISOBEL SADIE - She returns a moment later with a tall, rusted tin cup of clear water and a trio of tea biscuits wrapped in a handkerchief. 

YOU - You jump to your feet before she can bend over to put them on the ground in front of you, downing the water gratefully.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Failure] - It feels like a knife down your throat. A lukewarm, low-viscosity knife.

YOU - Then you sit back down and start to peck at the cookies. They’re shortbread, dry and crumbly. They make you wish you hadn’t finished the water so quickly. Your back starts to protest sitting on the ground and you still feel dirty.

PERCEPTION (TEMPERATURE) - Behind you the tub takes its sweet time becoming anything but ice-frigid.

ISOBEL SADIE - “I’ve been seeing those ravers a lot more recently,” she says conversationally. “Running through here back and forth and back like they’re carrying messages.”

LEVERAGE [Easy: Success] - She’s not asking if you’re staying with them. She would never ask that.

BULLSHITTER - And you wouldn’t tell her, shitkid. Not if you know what’s good for you- or her.

YOU - You snort. “Psh, yeah. They’ve had to cancel a few nights at their club.” You shake your head. “Martinaise with a nightclub. Especially in that old church. You go underground for a week and when you surface again the whole damn economy’s done a 360.”

ISOBEL SADIE - “Oh, yes. You know, your Du Bois is the driving force behind that setup.” She smiles. “I’ve heard he’s the reason they’re not also distributing narcotics. My understanding is that he thinks there’s… enough drugs in town.” There isn’t judgment in her expression, but she’s certainly not taking your side.

PARAPHRENIA - Are you just gonna sit here and take this? That woman’s older than the millennium and you’re letting her *lecture* you? Show her her damn place!

THE INSTIGATOR - Shut up. You’re done with drugs anyway. Done with all of it. You’ve never cared if Isobel agrees with your work for the union or not. What irritates you with this, though, is…

BULLSHITTER [Easy: Success] - The goddamn hypocrisy!

YOU - “*Du Bois* shut down a drug lab? ‘Cause he thinks there’s enough drugs in Martinaise? The pig works for the biggest drug lord in Revachol. He just didn’t want any homegrown competition for M.” You sneer. 

ISOBEL SADIE - She hums and scrubs for a moment, leaving you wallowing in the echoes of your statement.

SPINE [Formidable: Failure] - You *hate* this. You hate thinking about what you say after you say it.

ISOBEL SADIE - “I think there is a bit more to that man,” she says. “You of all people should know something about second chances.” She raises her eyebrows.

LEVERAGE - The minute this became moral she won, and if she’s willing to compare *you* to *him* there’s no way you’ll come out on top in this conversation. Not that anyone could out-rhetoric Isobel in the first place. You better change the trajectory of this conversation if you want to stay on the topic.

YOU - “Fine. But was he really the lynchpin of the operation?”

ISOBEL SADIE - “Mmhm. Did all the going-between for Soona, Tiago, and those kids. He was an interesting man, scrounging around Martinaise for all the causes you Hardie boys wouldn’t champion. If he’d seemed more the type, I’d say it was some odd plot to undermine the union, but I think he was just lost. Wandering into alleyways and taking the graffiti on the walls as prophecy.”

YOU - “Uh-huh.” You lean back and resist the urge to roll your eyes. “Sounds like a real swell guy. A real modern Maslov, championing the working man. I bet he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

ISOBEL SADIE - “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” she says mildly, “but you’re still here, aren’t you? I’d say that means he’s unusual for an RCM officer. Even moreso for one reportedly in Padre Madre’s pockets. It may be worth reexamining him.”

THEW - Warmth from the bath radiates against your back, already soothing your aches and pains. You’d nearly forgotten about all of them until they disappeared, leaving only soft muscle and fat behind. Boss, this bath is going to be the best goddamn thing to happen to you this decade.

MAGIC BULLET [Easy: Success] - Except for the good trips through the pale. And the night you hooked up with the drag queen back in Jamrock, the one with pink lip gloss who you ate out in her shitty top floor apartment, golden light falling through city smog and dirty windows to purr on all of her curves, when you were both so blitzed out on whatever you’d been shipping for M that the glitter shoes she discarded looked like stars.

JARGON [Challenging: Success] - Also except for that one time you managed to tune your radio to listen to a Seolite opera without static, even on the high notes.

YOU - You let Isobel take the last word and start to fumble out of your clothes, eyeing the bath hungrily between every moment. When you finally sink into it, you open your mouth to sigh contentedly but no sound comes out. The hot water pressing down on your chest punches all of the noise out of you before you can make it. Your legs hang over the edge of the tub at your knees and the rim bites into the soft fat of your back, right below your shoulder blades.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Literally heaven.

ISOBEL SADIE - Isobel goes back to humming her song, notes drifting on the steam swirling around you.

SPINE [Legendary: Failure] - You drift to sleep.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Easy: Success] - There’s no one in your dream, just a soft, empty fuzz.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Trivial: Success] - Like a lovechild of the pale and your bath.

YOU - You flounder for an indefinite amount of time. The ripples your movements make are illuminated golden, glinting off some unidentifiable light source. 

SPINE - Eventually you notice movement in the water from someone other than yourself, and Sola appears on the scene. Half walking out of the darkness, half emerging from the water, from some faraway place where the softness of the horizon blends completely together. 

SOLA, THE ANTI-INNOCENCE - She’s naked and the water comes up to her hips, a v of bone disappearing into the blackness of the water. Her breasts sag on her chest, bra lines only faintly visible along her ribs, and her hair is sleek and not wet at all. She’s almost unbearably sexy, standing in front of you, but you feel it in a dull and faraway way. The memory of a Playboy magazine in someone’s older brother’s nightstand. She chuckles. “Well, this is a little less professional than last time.”

YOU - “I guess so.” There’s sand between your toes. It’s less rough than the hailstone sized stuff in Martinaise. Nearly silt.

SOLA, THE ANTI-INNOCENCE - “I’m long gone, Ruby,” she says, stepping closer to you. Her eyes rest behind your shoulder and her voice is distant. 

MAGIC BULLET - Your fingers itch for a cigarette to offer her.

PEDAGOGUE [Challenging: Success] - The era of the Solaien Innocence is nearly 45 years gone. It’s just the Moralintern now- a flawed woman replaced by the constant fear of an infallible, unforgiving system.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Success] - WAIT, SISTER.

SOLA, THE ANTI-INNOCENCE - Her eyes are too empty to be sad but you can read sorrow into them, in the shadows her eyelashes cast and the barely perceptible twist of her soft lips.

TOVARISCH - She let the people down, but *god,* she’s beautiful.

YOU - “I know basic history,” you joke, “It’s not a shock to hear you resigned.” Your hand moves without intent and lands on her mole-speckled shoulder. You squeeze it and Sola offers you a bemused, vacant smile.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Success] - WAIT. WAIT. THIS IS NOT WHO YOU THINK IT IS.

PARAPHRENIA [Heroic: Success] - Sola was not blond. The anti-innocence had thick, brown hair and unkempt eyebrows, smile lines and wide, faraway eyes. This is another woman, telling you another story.

METHOD OF LOCI [Legendary: Success] - Oh, fuck. 

YOU - Your face twists into something beyond your control, hand drifting down her arm, alighting on the bend of an elbow, the soft smoothness of blond arm hair and three chunky rings on her finger. “Klaasje?”

KLAASJE (THE HARDIE BOYS’ DARLING) - She shrugs. Gold-tinted wrinkles in the water emanate from her like rays. “Not quite.”

TASK COMPLETED : BATHE (AGAIN)

TOVARISCH - When you awake, the water is cool and your clothes are folded on the ground next to the tub, smelling of the soap Isobel uses. 

YOU - You groan. “Isobel, you didn’t have to-”

ISOBEL SADIE - “Ah-ah-ah. No protests. If you’re going to run away from us all, I’ll at least have you smelling fresh while you do it.” Her smile is thin, lips millimeters from cracking.

YOU - A smile slips into your sigh when you relax back into the bath. “You really didn’t have to,” you attempt one last time.

ISOBEL SADIE - Isobel just chuckles.

THE INSTIGATOR - Next will be the short trek back to the church, during which your only concern will be avoiding splashing through dirty, mostly melted snow in your scrubbed hiking boots. The sun is beginning to encroach on the top of the Feld building- not quite in danger of setting on you, but announcing the mid-winter-afternoon time- and so there’s a high likelihood of Soona being the only person still in there. 

THEW [Easy: Success] - You hope the ravers are out somewhere, canvassing for a rave tonight- you’d give anything to unwind your muscles. 

BLACK SHEEP - You don’t usually dance, but you also don’t usually hide from the ghosts of your best friends in an abandoned church with a radiocomputer programmer and four high school dropouts, so you’re already at a tenuous point with the norms.

MAGIC BULLET - You’d be able to get high *easy* at a club, too. 

MAGIC BULLET - And, even with that aside: Soona being the only person at the church when you get back is sounding pretty good for a *certain* urge you have. Homo-sexuality? More like Homo-sex-you’ll-have-ity!

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Yikes.

BLACK SHEEP - Your dark and handsome shtick is sobbing on the floor right now.

METHOD OF LOCI [Medium: Success] - You *won’t* be the only two people there, anyway. There’s always the crab man. 

YOU - “Oh, shit,” you mutter.

ISOBEL SADIE - “That sort of language isn’t benefiting of a lady, Ruby,” she chides.

YOU - You give her a rakish grin. “My bad.”

BLACK SHEEP [Trivial: Success] - It wins you some points with her: she likes when you play up your boyish charms or whatever of them you can muster; it reminds her of when she was young and men were fresh and New, gleaming with disco lights and blinding white teeth.

SPINE [Easy: Success] - Ask about the crab man.

YOU - “Isobel, do you know any crab men living around here? Muscular, dark, scuttling around ceilings like some kinda spider. Seems religious.”

ISOBEL SADIE - “Oh, dearie, you’ll have to be more specific. In this bustling fish market, I encounter dozens of religious crab men every day.” Her face crinkles into a fond, amused smile. “I do know him. His name is Tiago.”

YOU - “He venture out of that church often?”

TOVARISCH - She understands the intent of your asking immediately. She’s been privy to dozens of these conversations: prodding, with a thin veneer of nonchalance because the Hardie boys care but they can’t care *too* much.

ISOBEL SADIE - “Oh yes. I’m sure the ravers don’t see him leave. But I feed him when he ventures over here, and he seems to fend for himself rather well. It’s a diet of mostly fish, I’m afraid, but that *is* better than nothing.” Her smile is small and toothy.

THEW [Easy: Success] - *You* couldn’t survive on fish, boss.

BLACK SHEEP [Trivial: Success] - Tiago ain’t you.

TASK COMPLETED : WHAT DOES THE CRAB MAN EAT?

YOU - You pry your stiff limbs out of the tub, stretching where your skin has dried into a thin leather in the sun. You change in the shade of pergola.

JARGON - An almost obscenely bourgeois word for the simple shack you’re standing beneath  but accurate nonetheless. 

TOVARISCH - And should the proles not have beauty? Should you call the pergola a shack, or should you call it what it is? Syntax is a goddamn farce: “The oppressor's language, yet I need it to talk to you.”

MAGIC BULLET [Challenging: Success] - You know what’s not a farce? What’s smooth, easy, and maybe as far from a pergola as you can get? Anodic dance music. You know where you can find it?

MAGIC BULLET - The church. C’mon, little lady, make your excuses and then let's get this party started.

YOU - You say your goodbyes to Isobel, kissing her cheek and patting her shoulder before you set off through the shoals to the abandoned church. You just now begin to realize how late you’ve slept; the sun is starting to kiss the edge of the pale, and thick bass shakes the ground beneath your feet. By the time you reach the doors, your teeth are bouncing in your skull.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - OH FUCK, SISTER. OH FUCK! *YES.*

JARGON - As soon as you slip into the nightclub, your aches and pains and anxieties seem to fade away, left behind with the Fritte bag you drop in a crevice. Really fucking loud music has always ben able to do that, just like interisola radio transmissions or a really damn good sermon. You disappear into it.

MAGIC BULLET [Trivial: Success] - It might also be the pill someone offered you. 

METHOD OF LOCI [Easy: Success] - You used to do this all the time when you were the ravers’ age, with your shittily dyed hair and shittier jobs. Your joints could sustain it, and you loved it: drugs and girls and lights. Blitzed out in a disgusting bar in Jamrock with one of your coworkers at your side. Everything spun so fast, so etherally. 

SPINE [Difficult: Failure] - You’re not sure if the pale led to the dancing or the dancing led to the pale, but that’s why you stopped doing it.

MAGIC BULLET [Heroic: Failure] - You fucking shouldn’t have! This is the best you’ve felt in years. 

SPINE - The small of your back twinges as you lean to dodge a flying elbow. 

BLACK SHEEP - It’s an impressively packed crowd, actually. They must be pulling people from far past Martinaise, since even if people like Billie and René showed up the town couldn’t sustain an energy like this. Still, there aren’t enough kids this side of Jamrock to fill the full church, and you don’t feel like the odd one out with your crows feet and liver spots. 

NOID - You hip check him at some point, near one of the pews. He’s sweaty and glittering in the disco ball they’ve got set up. Shirtless with dark eyes, he looks like the Aulay Glen used to try to explain to you, some young god with pretty appeal. He cracks you a Commodore Red that sweats, too, and you take a swig. 

NOID - “Sweet sines, right?” he yells over the music.

YOU - You bark a laugh. “Kid, these sines are too short wave for someone my age.”

NOID - He waves his hand toward the door. “No shame here.”

YOU - “No, no, I haven’t gotten this far without learning how to ride the wave. So to speak.”

NOID - “So to speak,” he echoes. He rolls his shoulders.

THEW [Medium: Success] - You miss having shoulders like that. The memory of what it was like is deep in your muscles, the way your skin moved easy and it all pulled and pushed your bones exactly the way you wanted it to. The way you were a perfectly tuned instrument before you threw it away on the pale. Boss, you were something great. You used to be able to lose yourself into this kind of night without another care in the world.

THE INSTIGATOR - Now, no matter how much you try, there’s always something poking at the small of your back.

THEW - You can ride the wave, but it’s not how it used to be.

MONOMANIA [Impossible: Failure] - YOU CAN’T GO BACK, SISTER. IT HURTS. 

NOID - “You wanna dance?”

MAGIC BULLET [Easy: Success] - It’ll feel good, back in the crush of bodies and light. 

BLACK SHEEP [Challenging: Success] - He’s not propositioning you, you can tell in the quirk of his brow and the set of his mouth, but he’s not *not* propositioning you. He likes the people in the club that know more than he does, and likes dancing with people who have been dancing longer than him. It makes him less paranoid than his peers do.

BLACK SHEEP [Medium: Success] - And while he’s no more into middle aged women than you are young men, he still likes to dance. 

TOVARISCH - You’ve got the same blood in your veins as he does. The same pulse.

YOU - “Sure. But I’m warning you here, I always lead.”

NOID - “Whatever you say, ma’am.” He grimaces, a beat too late.

EMPATHY [Trivial: Success] - He’s a little looser in the nightclub. A bourgeois title like that would have never made it past his teeth this morning.

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