He'd been tasked with finding Petter Vangen and interviewing him 
about the "Stuff" company. Dodger had done the hard part, and now 
Hong brought Vangen in to an MCF office nearby. It was strictly 
voluntary, an invitation to lunch and a discussion. Hong had come in 
holding Vangen under the arms, the man sobbing uncontrollably and 
wailing for his mother, or brother; the accent and the blubbering 
made it unclear. 


"Po... police?" He whimpered. 
Caecilia patted him again, "If you want to go home, we can take you. 
You're not in trouble, we just want to have a friendly conversation. 


Do you understand?" 


He looked up at her, then over at Hong, and back to her, "I didn't 
mean. I'm sorry. Not mean to be creepy to redhead girl." 


Dodger. Caecilia sighed. Why couldn't the woman just be normal for 
once? 


"That's fine, Petter. It's all okay. Are you feeling better now?" 


He nodded his head, still slumped over in his seat. 


wife for the past two months? 


Dr.: That's not true, and you know it. Anyway, as | said, 
I'm here to talk about you, not me. 


735: Yeah, you're right. Like how you couldn't get it up 
last night, even though that fat [expletive] (Dr. _'s wife) 
was pounding your [expletive] with a [expletive] while 
that [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] porn was on, huh? 
See, | knew you were a [expletive] [expletive]. 


Dr.: (becoming visibly agitated): Alright, now you know 
that's really uncalled for. 


735: You mean like the stink that's coming off of you? 
God, no wonder your [expletive] [expletive] wife is fooling 
around, you look and smell like a [expletive] rotting 
buffalo, you eunuch. You know she has her tongue in 

's [expletive] right now? She loves doing that. She 
would never do it to you, you hairy, bloated [expletive]. 
But that's okay, you like getting that from men, anyway. 


Dr.: Shut up! Shut up! | can't help it! | work in this hole all 
day just to afford that house she made me buy! | can't 
help it if | never have time to go to the gym! 


735: Ha, you miserable [expletive], you haven't seen 
your [expletive] in five years anyway, it's too late for the 
gym. And you're still not making enough money to satisfy 
that [expletive], that's why bought your [expletive] 
wife that new blouse last week. 


Dr.: She said it was on sale! 


735: She would. She's a [expletive] liar and you're a 
pathetic [expletive] moron to believe her. 


Dr.: YOU PIECE OF [expletive]! YOU TAKE THAT 
BACK! 


735: Like you took back that car you bought because the 
[expletive] wife made you? Jesus, she's got the whip 


"Let's get you something to eat." 


"She asked about Stuff Company. | want to say, but... they all 
around..." 


"Perhaps you'd better start from the beginning." 


Hong slipped into the bathroom, catching Dodger leaning over the 
sink, rinsing out locks of her hair. She heard him enter and whirled 
on him with wide eyes, "What are you doing in here, you idiot?" 


"It's a unisex bathroom. And you didn't lock it. What are you doing?" 


She snatched up several paper towels, pressing it to her head, "I hit 
my head getting into my car. Thought | was bleeding so | felt around 
my scalp to check. My fingers were full of ketchup." 


"Do you take pleasure in being a pretentious twit pretending to be a 
loveable screwball?" 


"The fuck did | do?" 


"You had us waste a week tracking down and harassing a mentally 
challenged man," Hong held up a notepad, and pushed it against 
Dodger's chest before turning and leading the way out of the 
bathroom, "You spooked him, then ran off with the wild idea that he 
was an anomalous ghost-whisperer or some shit. Read." 


"|... what?" She glanced at the notepad. It had notes taken down by 
Hong of the interview with Cortez and Vangen. 


"Final analysis," Hong explained without letting her read it all, "The 
guy's not anomalous and doesn't speak to strange people. He's 
mentally disabled and you cornered him without his handler and 
freaked him out. He thought you were playing games with him, so he 
played along. Fed you some shit from a movie. Fight Club or some 
shit." 


"| didn't even..." She looked down at the notes, heart racing as she 
foresaw the pancaking layers of shit coming down on her for this, 
"What the fuck did | do wrong?" 


Hong snorted, seeing Dodger apparently on the brink of a panic 
attack, "Calm down, Christ's sake. Story's clear-cut, exactly as it 
appears; Vangen starts a company, loses his shit somewhere down 
the line. Add copious amounts of alcohol and he's fried. Company 
closes down and he gets the help he needs. Good for him." 


"What about the board? The lab techs, office people, no one 
knowing shit about each other? Who organized them and kept them 
up and running and paid for a decade?" 


"Don't know." 


"What about the products they put out? The profits they turned? 
Why can't we find any of it?” 


"As far as we know, they probably dumped it all, or sold it on the 
black market." 


"How did they get started? Did he tell you?" 


Hong shrugged, "Guy says they had a packet of paper. Paper had 
some kind of portal on one side. Only had like four sheets." 


"How did they make more of it? How did they make the miracle 
pills, the blacksmith robot, the whatever-the-fuck-else they've got 
floating around out there?" 


Hong spread his arms out in a helpless gesture, and turned away to 
leave. Dodger crumbled up the paper and threw it at his departing 
frame, "There's more to this, Hong!" 


"There probably is. If you find out what it is, you'll be a hero." 
"What about his brother, Siggy? What if | find him and talk to him?" 


Hong quickly knelt down, scooping up the crumbled paper, and 
tossing it back to Dodger, "I told you to read. There is no 'Siggy'. 
Vangen made him up. Alternate personality, alias, or imaginary 
friend, doesn't matter. Vangen himself doesn't even know why." 


"Someone must know something." 


"Someone probably does. But with the amount of people we've 
tracked down and talked to already, what are the chances of getting 
any definitive hold on this joke of a company, much less actually 
finding some of their remaining unsold products?" 


Dodger cracked her knuckles, and pressed them into her lips, 
thinking back on all she'd heard and gone through thus far this 
month. "A lone nut starts a company, suddenly it occupies an entire 
office building and staffs hundreds, churns out anomalous products 
and makes a profit, and no one involved has any clue how..." 


"Dodger —" 


"It's like everyone in a single place suddenly gather together and 
start to dance. No one knows how to dance, or what kind of dance 
they're doing, yet they all dance, and they dance well. Better than 
average." 


"Dodger, it's done. This is not worth our time and resources to 
pursue any further. These people aren't the only peddlers of 
anomalous garbage out there, and nowhere near the best. 
Personally, I'm fond of Wondertainment's crap. And Wondertainment 
actually donates things directly to us. What if we find a 'Stuff Co.’ 
product and the owner doesn't wanna part with it? What then?" 


Dodger kept her knuckles against her lips, hopes of any salvaging 
this situation dying away quickly. 


"Enjoy your vacation, Dodger. When you come back, Cortez and 
Kone have got some work for you to do in Somalia. | recommend 
doing some research on a place called Laascaanood." 


"Bye," She mumbled, slumping against the doorway, finally letting 
Hong get back to work. 


« Week 2 | Week 3 Day 3 | » 


The Works Of Doc Burns 


Single white male, 20-25, wanted for questioning in conjunction with 
multiple homicides. 


Hiding Beauty 
The Tailor 

Daddy Long Legs 
On The Third Day 
The Samaritan 
The Designer 


Hiding Beauty 


He is taken aback when the waitress smiles at him. The steam 
coming off the coffee gives her face a wavering, ephemeral look. It's 
genuine. Not the smile you give a customer, but one of gentle 
knowing; a "had trouble sleeping didn't you" smile. 


He wonders if it's a pretty smile right down to the bone, if the skin 
and muscle clouds true beauty, pale and gleaming. He wonders if 
that smile would be so friendly if she knew he was imagining her 
ribcage, laid bare for all the world to see, light trickling through to 
illuminate the vertebrae. Bundy could have felt like this, a monster 
walking through the world of men, unmotivated by money or desire 
for peace. Just wanting to imprint his own fractured reality over the 
world. 


He's slipping and he knows it. He used to only think about the 
beauty underneath the skin once in a while. A passing fancy. It 
consumes him now, constantly trying to distinguish the bone from 
meat, mentally butchering those around him. Soon enough the 
butchery will stop being mental. 


Sometimes he feels trapped. His skin too heavy, the muscle below 
restraining him. Breath is constrained by lungs. His organs are a 
weight that bends him forward, a hunch he could shake if only he 
were truly free. 


It's odd, planning someone's death. It starts as a mental exercise, 
something he insists to himself is never going to happen, not ever. 
None of the meticulous ritual, the precise timing will ever be more 
than a fantasy. This is the lie he tells himself as he mentally runs 
down the checklist of when the waitress will end her shift. The map 
of her route he has pinned up in his bedroom says she'll be taking 
the subway, past that dark alley between the abandoned 
warehouses, in the district where no one reports screams to the 
cops. 


The coffee cup is white, and, staring at the sparkle from the lights, 

he wonders if her skull will have the same gleam, or if he'll have to 
steam it; heat stripping the last particles of meat from between the 

teeth. Maybe a lacquer, to give it a glorious shine. Well, there'll be 

time enough to think of that later... He wrenches himself from that 

line of thought. No. Not yet. He doesn't want to walk away from the 
rest of the world yet. 


There's nothing sexual about it. Indeed, the very act of sex disgusts 
him, too much sweat and fluids and the noise of meat striking meat. 


The steam from the coffee fogs the window, and he can almost see 
it, phalanges glowing in the light of the street lamps, the eternal 
friendly grin of the passers-by. The world he should have been born 
in. 


He sips his coffee and feels the patina form on his teeth. Still hiding 
beauty. For a while. 


On The Third Day 


After the third day since the first injection, Brian knew there had 
been a mistake. 


He could even pinpoint the exact moment he figured it out. The 
nurse had pressed the tip of the needle to his skin, and as it broke 
the flesh, every nerve in his body lit on fire. His wild, enraged 
backhand had caught her right across the jaw, the animalistic, 
pained bellows coming out of his mouth drowning out the noise of 
her neck snapping like so much dry cordwood. It had taken ten men 
to hold him down, and the sedatives had been another bonfire of 
agony coursing throughout his system. 


They never said it would be like this. When he’d signed up for the 
enhancile treatments he was promised that he would be faster, 
stronger, invincible. He would be a god, no, a titan, striding through 
the battlefield, laying waste to anything that dared to cross his path. 
Day Four was spent having his contract explained to him. In all his 
frenzied daydreaming he had missed the part of the contract that 
said, in the finest small print military dollars could buy, ‘Mark | Serum 
is still in alpha testing phase’. In English that came out ‘we fucked up 
and when we boosted your muscles, we also heightened your 
senses, to the point where every breath of air is burning pain’. His 
gratitude had been overflowing, then, later; it had just been a rage 
fueled punch to a doctor’s face, interrupting some bullshit 
explanation about how it wasn’t their fault. 


In the middle of day five there had been talk: talk of ‘testosterone 
overproduction’, and ‘exponential aggressiveness growth’. Brian 
found he was beyond caring as his fists drove into the concrete, 
splinters puncturing, pain searing up his arms. Pain was good. He 
liked the pain now. It made all that beautiful red appear in front of his 
eyes. He could lose himself in it. Drown out the screaming, (and it 
was screaming now, someone was very frightened, maybe of him, 
and Brian laughed in his chest at the thought as the men in the other 


room went dead quiet) about ‘mutagen coalescence’ and how this 
was all Thomson’s goddamn fault. 


He hadn't cared. By day six, everything had gotten so very simple. 
He'd wanted food, so he'd hunted down a scientist and bit off a 
piece. His head felt different, like there was more bone there. The 
red fog never went away and his thoughts drifted across it as the 
soldiers poured into the room. The first few bullets lodged in his 
chest, the force absorbed by the spiny plates growing just under the 
skin. He had swung one massive hand, ridged with white protruding 
bone, and pulverized a helmet. The men at the end of the hall had 
screamed about backup and how ‘firebreak’ needed to be used. He 
ignored it, with all the men firing at him it had seemed unimportant, 
and the red whispered to him how good it would feel to just take the 
tattered remains of his skin off and let his muscles breathe. It was 
only when he ran out of soldiers that he looked around. The idea of 
retreat no longer had any place in his fury-soaked brain. He’d run 
through the halls of the base and roared, daring them to challenge 
him. The beeping echoing was just another distraction. He ignored 
it. 


As aconsequence of this, the slow inability to breathe and the soft 
fall into blackout from oxygen starvation was less surprising than the 
fact that he could still die. 


"Goddamn mess. The whole thing." 
"Look General, we said-" 


"You said it was goddamn safe! That we would have a working 
prototype in a year, and mass-production in two more!" 


"And we thought we were right! No one could have foreseen that, 
that THING being created!" 


"That's your fucking job isn't it?! To think ahead! Not to fuck up so 
badly we have to pump halon into the goddamn vents! And don't tell 
me that's nothing to worry about! You were five seconds from dying 
yourself you little shit!" 


"We'll figure a way to explain this all away. We'll be fine-" 
"No. There is no 'We’'." 
"... You're not seriously suggest-" 


"It's either | throw you to the dogs, or we all get nine-millimeter 
retirements. I'm gonna have a hard enough time spinning this 
towards the equipment and specimens saved, rather than the 
dozens of personnel dead." 


"You knew the risks when you signed up for the job. And I'm not 
going to die because you tried to be God. Good bye Doctor." 


"...Well. | guess I'll see you in hell then?" 


"Not if that thing is waiting for you there." 


The Samaritan 


The smell of the place was putrid, rotting meat and formaldehyde, 
along with the coppery scent of blood. 


Michelle's first reaction was to turn her face way from the breeze 
carrying that awful smell, as her mind began to struggle through the 
haze of drugs into consciousness. When she finally managed to 
crack her eyes open, she was greeted with a bare bulb hanging from 
a dirty concrete ceiling, rather than the expected sight of her 
bedroom. Michelle’s confusion at this strange sight was dulled by 
the fading, yet still pervasive fog of sedatives clouding her brain. 
She attempted to sit up, but all that she accomplished was a weak 
wriggle of her back muscles as she pushed up against the ropes (7?) 
holding her down to the table. 


A face appeared at the edge of her vision, the surgical mask 
stretched across it stained with old blood. A shaved head shone in 
the glare of the bulb, the pale flesh almost luminescent. Glassy, 
slightly manic eyes stared down from above the mask.