Ziritsa
As you lay in bed you place your hand to your chest thinking of your father. It is something you’ve done many times, but this time it’s different. The pendant that brought you comfort is no longer there.
Why did you never tell mom it was a key? I would have never given it away if I knew.
Nervously you look for the photo you found after Leo disappeared. You look at it and think on the hidden message it contains.
I have a brother.
Anger and pain go through you like a wave. Everyone you love disappears. First your father, then your mother, and now your brother before you even knew who he really was.
What else do I not know about you dad? What were you chasing? What were you running away from?
You re-read the message.
Well you found me Leo. I just wish we figured it out before Amarelyh took you.
You cuss at Perdu. Why did your dad want you to find Amoni Ram and what happened there that made Perdu erase his memory?
Where did you go dad? Did the Attien Combine military ever find you?
You pull away from your rumination and become aware of an object in your pocket. You put your hand over it, close your eyes, and listen. A rhythmic hum of the universe playing in your ears, calling you.
Henry
There is a path here. I can see the edges, but so much eludes me.
You look over all the facts in your little notebook, moving over the text with your fingertip as if trying to feel out every little bit of information, hidden between the letters.
Where are you Liz Thomspon? Why couldn’t I ever find you?
You think back at all the years you’ve searched, following the tenuous crumbs Dick left you.
How can someone vanish so completely?
You look over the letter that brought you here and stare at Perdu as his back is turned to you and say to yourself,
Are you really a man within a man? If I haven’t seen what I did, I don’t think I would have believed it. I’m not sure I do still, any of it.
You look at your cartridge and stare at the two missing bullets. The two you fired in this so called nightmare.
“Icarus”, Dick, you always had me grounded to what needed to be done next. You taught me to stick to the facts. But these facts have no ground to them. Why do I feel like I’m floating up in the air with nothing but questions in every direction?
You look at Perdu again. What is he up to? Hunched over some big old book. Curious. You are drawn and want to know more.
Ned
This world is confusing.
You spread yourself wide.
Everyone is so different than me. They are together, but so alone.
Their flesh seems so limiting. You allow yourself to enjoy taking on shapes and filling the space.
Am I also alone?
As you spread yourself you “hear” something. A subtle low frequency wave. As each ebb passes through your form, you let yourself enjoy the pattern. It feel familiar, like the sound of a mother’s voice cooing over a baby.
You look around, curious. No one else seems to notice.
Three harmonies on a pentatonic scale. How pleasant.
Listening to this rhythm fill you. It draws you. You find your mind drifting. In your mind you see a tower. You long for it and are afraid of it.
On top of that tower is a large window. You move towards its light, the harmony pushing you up until you are close enough to see a familiar silhouette. She stand strong and poised, looking at you.
You move closer but as you do the figure and then the tower dissolve like sand in water.
You wake from the reverie and find yourself spread across the whole room, your motes pulsing in rhythm, everyone staring at you. You feel scared, but not for yourself.
Sigma
You work yourself to exhaustion again with a crafting frenzy.
Stay busy.
You tell yourself. When you work, you feel closer to normal, like your veins are not filled with black liquid that has invaded every part of your body.
My heart is still beating. My mind is still working. My hands are still moving.
When you are working, your mind drifts into a tranquil zone. Peace. Purpose. Flow. You add reactants, mix solutions, feed them with catalysts.
Everything where it belongs.
You hand trembles and a beaker slips out of your grasp spilling onto the floor.
You look at your hand, the pale flesh peeking from underneath your fur. Your eyes focus on a subtle hint of a vein.
My heart is still beating. My mind is still working. My hands are still moving.
As you stare, the vein pulses in a steady rhythm. It’s oddly comforting, but there is something else.
You keep on staring, entranced. The pulsing grows. Thump. Thump. You feel like you can almost hear it. You focus so intently that everything else dims out of mind, until there is nothing but you, the vain, and whatever is flowing through it. The veins seem dark, as if filled with black ink. And the ink is writing the all over the story of your life.
You yell in your mind,
My heart is still beating. My mind is still working. My hands are still moving.
Everything goes black.
Slowly, your eyes adjust and small pinpricks of light appear. At first they appear all around you.
You find it hard to breathe. Liquid fills your nostrils. You flail about. The stars, they stars, they move about you. The ink, you feel the pulsing inside you. It grows louder. The stars move up and spin in a hypnotic rhythm.
You reach out and come to, staring at your hand. You shake out of the trance and check you pulse.
Is my heart is beating? Is my mind is working? Are my hands moving?
Constantine
You want to keep it cool, but the boredom is getting to you. Everyone seems busy, but you feel like you are not moving forward.
What the fuck kinda of bullshit am I in Constantine?
You go over the names of your squad-mates. Every hour spent sitting is an hour where you are behind and the enemy is making ground.
Where the fuck is everyone?
You say this out loud, but everyone is so engrossed in their own worlds that they pay no attention to you.
Where is your squad? Are they in the nightmare? Are they dying out in the desert? Are they down in that fucking hole?
Fuckin' hell.
You feel anger at being deprived from kicking whatever this Amarelyh thing was into a bloody pulp. At least that would have been an accomplishment. This. This is just waisting time.
You stand up loudly and make your way outside and stare down the hole. No one notices.
I guess you can’t get me out of this one dad.
Anger washes over you again as you think about his face, full of disappointment as he looked at you the day he got you out of jail, after the trial was so abruptly ended.
That was all kinds of fucked up. You can’t put that shit on me! I did my job.
You look around at the jagged cliffs and desert and then down again. Why does this feel familiar?
Knee deep in shit and staring down an asshole again.
You take a deep breath and swear to yourself that you won’t start pushing around these undisciplined civilians. It’s not going to be an easy promise to keep.
Fuckn' hell.