Volume Eight: Synchroneity

== Summary ==
In the future, thanks to the Synchroneity corporation, alien technology has been integrated into the human body, making life better for all of humanity. Several citizens must weather a five hundred year storm inside the Sears-Willis Tower, also housed there are the Synchroneity research labs, and a research experiment has broken loose from containment. 
== Cast Roles ==
* Lilibet Becket (Kate Elliott) - Youngest daughter of English nobleman Henry Becket, the family recently moved to the States from England. Lilibet, her mother, father, and her sister, along with her sister's new husband, are at the tower to see a play. Lilibet is 21, but she acts younger than her age.
* Kurt Wellington (Mike Ginn) - College dropout, recreational drug user and a bit of a shady character, Kurt is at the tower to talk to his father about joining his investment firm.
* Mandi Storm (Markeia McCarty) - Film director/vlogger, visiting the tower to see the human run coffee bar.
* Alexia Martin (Cristina Vee) - Mysterious survivor of the events in Synchroneity labs.
== Chapter Summaries ==
=== Prologue ===
It is the year 2218, Chicago, Kurt
Wellington sits alone in a bar pod on the 20th floor of
the Sears-Willis tower, overlooking the river. On the incoming media
feed we hear about the ever-growing five hundred year storm Gemma,
making its way across the mid-territories. “Originating just
outside of Seattle, Washington, the most that can be said about this
behemoth is: wow. Nothing to fear though, it is not the first five
hundred year storm this year and it won't be the last. Put in your
drone order before 10am in the event that...”
	A knock on the glass disturbs Kurt's
reverie, it's his old freshman dorm buddy Jason Jeffries. Jason was
supposed to have had an interview with Synchroneity but they canceled
on him. Kurt is here to meet with his father, he wants his son to
join the family firm, Goldman-Wellington, also headquartered here in
the Sears-Willis Tower. Jason had heard that Kurt had had a 'run in
with drugs' after college but Kurt assures him his father has been
looking after him.
	Mandi Storm walks South Wacker street
below, her personal camera drone hovering above her, listening to an
audio tour piped into her earpiece from her wristband. “To your
right, Sears-Willis Tower, the only Chicago tower structure to
survive the Great Quake of 2018. Once the tallest building in the
world, it now ranks 1,324th on height alone. Particular to
your interests, there is a coffee shop inside modeled after those of
great popularity at the turn of the century. The only coffee bar on
the east coast run by human workers. Please note that they accept
coin and NFC chips only with no terminal for biometric scan. This
should not pose a problem for you.” Mandi rates the shop five stars
and heads into the tower.
	The coffee bar is on the ground floor
of the tower, connected to the main lobby, the patrons appear to be
mainly people who work in the tower and she stands out a bit. Inside,
a young man waits to take her order, he recognizes Mandi and tells
her he subscribes to her. He pulls back the skin of his palm to
reveal a small screen implanted there and shows her her own MeFeed.
She tells him that she hasn't gotten any implants herself, she
prefers the body she was born with. She tells him she's in Chicago to
film a music video with a new, unheard of, band. Mandi orders her
drink and the man, the only worker in the shop, turns and hits a
button, then tells her it will be ready in a minute.
	They talk while the machine makes her
coffee and she learns his name is Grifter, he is a musician, and he
doesn't have a MeFeed account so he can't link her his stuff. He
tells her she is free to have a seat and hang out, this is one of the
only places left where people can sit down for free.
	Walking through the lobby are Lilibet
Becket and her father, Henry, they are on the way to a play. The
theater here in the tower is one of the last in the country to do
live plays. “Lili you know your mother will not appreciate us being
late,” the man tells his young daughter. They are talking about
their move to the States from England, Lilibet says it has been
easier on her sister because she has her husband to help. Henry tells
her that there are opportunities here that the old country hasn't
accepted. Lilibet has a future here, all their titles and ins with
the powers in England were going nowhere. He places his hand over a
scanner on the door to the theater and it buzzes, he asks if she
brought any coin with her.
	Henry walks over to a man behind a
desk, his name tag reads Harold Eldridge, and he tells him there
seems to be something wrong with the biometric scanner. Harold is a
bearded, somewhat grizzled older man, he wears a wrist tazer and
security uniform. A beeping sounds from the desk and Harold quickly
starts scanning screens and cursing. Lilibet sees his eyes go wide
and gloss over with a sheen that signifies he has connected to
retinal displays. Henry tells Lilibet to call her mother and alert
her. Harold's eyes return to normal and a key appears from his
wristband as a cylinder rises from his desk, he connects the two and
an alarm begins to sound.
	“We should get mother, and Georgie,
and (her husband) Berty.”
	Harold's eyes gloss over again and he
says, “Lockdown secured. What about the civilians? Scans show 486
signatures outside Synchroneity operations...but they're
civilians!..understood.”
	Inside the coffee bar, Grifter shouts
to Harold, asking what's going on as metal shutters slam down over
the windows. “This is not a drill!” Harold shouts. “I need
everyone to follow me to the storm shelter, now! We will do this in
an orderly fashion, single file. No running, if you get out of line
you will be apprehended by Synchroneity security.”
	“Hey can you tell us what's going
on?” Mandi asks.
	“We will head to the storm shelter,
now.” Harold ignores her question.
	Ten floors up, Kurt sees the shutters
fall and the bar pod goes dark, the screens repeat a message: please
stay calm, head to the lobby. “The storm wasn't supposed to hit
'til tonight. What's going on?” Jason asks. Kurt calls his father
to see if he knows anything.
	“What did you do?” Kurt's father
asks. “Head to the lobby! Security will notify me personally if I
need to leave. Just make your way to the lobby.”
	Kurt and Jason head to the lobby, they
have to take the stairs due to the lockdown. A flood of people is
moving down the stairs, jostling each other as they descend.
=== Chapter 1 ===
They are being ushered into a large,
concrete room. A remnant of the old building from before the 2018
earthquake. It's filled with linens, cleaning supplies and a very
large steel door that had swung open to admit them.
	Henry and Lilibet search for their
family but can't seem to find them. Henry pushes back through the
crowd to ask the security officer. As he approaches, and Jason and
Kurt enter with the last few people, Harold shuts the door and locks
it with loud bang. The security officer enters a ten digit code,
scans his wrist key, then puts his eye to a scanner. They all hear
large locks slide into place.
	“This will be your new home for the
next couple hours!” Harold shouts, “I need you all to remain
calm. Everything will be fine, you have access to your phones, your
communication devices, your outside feeds. Just please remain calm as
we wait for this to blow over.”
	“What's going to happen to everybody
that's still out there?” Lilibet asks.
	“I'm sorry, I was only allowed to
let people in that were on Synchroneity properties in the building at
large. Certain rooms and or properties that are not public access as
referred to by Synchroneity are held by other companies and we are
not liable for the people in those establishments.”
When Henry asks about the theater he
adds, “The theater is not a part of Synchroneity, nor are many of
the offices in the building. You had access to public areas that were
provided by the general owners of this building, and that is why you
are safe right now.”
	“What about other people who were in
the building? Are they also in a room like this? Are they safe?”
Lilibet asks.
	“I am not at liberty to discuss
anything other than the fact that I need you to remain calm until
this all blows over. Feel free to use your devices as you see fit.”
	Henry starts poking at the biometric
device in his hand, no one answers his call. All Kurt can see on his
device is posts from other people within the shelter saying that
they've been locked in, nothing about anything happening outside.
Mandi contacts her agent, Jamie and asks about a storm in Chicago,
telling him she is locked in a storm shelter. No storm is happening,
it's supposed to hit tonight, but the whole building is locked up,
people outside are sharing photos of it and a local news crew is on
the way. “You got your camera on you right? Record everything, take
notes, names. How much data you think you can get outta there.”
	“I've got the usual, but I don't
know if I can upload from this building, basically everyone is
biometric here.”
	Her agent presses her on how she
should have gone biometric then tells her to get him whatever she can
before hanging up. Mandi goes over to Grifter and talks to him about
using his link to upload data. Grifter wants fifty percent, Mandi
tells him she'll see what she gets from this. They talk about what
this could all be about, since it's not a storm is it a Synchroneity
coverup? Shouldn't their phones be blocked if that is the case? Mandi
asks about possible targets for questioning and Grifter points out
that Lilibet seems out of place here. He also tells her that the
security agents are outside hires and they probably won't know much
more than the two of them. Mandi tells him she'll go talk to people
and will meet back up with him later.
	She speaks to Mandi and her father and
they exchange stories.
	Jason and Kurt are sitting in a
corner, Jason pulls out a pill and pops it into his mouth, letting it
dissolve. “It's for anxiety, I don't like being closed in,” he
tells Kurt.
	Kurt asks Jason if he has any more
info on what Synchroneity is doing here. Jason tells him they are
headhunting people, he didn't want talk about it too much earlier to
not make do-nothing Kurt feel uncomfortable. Kurt tries to call his
father's company, no one answers. He tries another company he knows
within the building and there's no connection there either. They
decide to go talk to Harold.
	Harold stands in front of the door,
watching the crowd nervously, with one hand on his pistol. Kurt asks
if there is any additional information and Harold tells him to back
away and remain calm. He has his orders and they are to remain in
this room for their own safety. “Stay calm, and you'll get to go
home no problem once this is done.”
	Under pressure from Kurt, Harold
reveals that he was only supposed to let executives into the shelter
and he ignored orders to let in civilians as well. He doesn't know
anything about the situation outside other than that, but he can't
have everyone else knowing that because he needs them to remain calm.
	Kurt and Jason leave the tense
security guard alone and go back to their conversation, Jason
continues to press Kurt about how he thinks the way Kurt is running
his life is bullsh*t. Kurt 'chooses' to keep spending his dad's money
on drugs, dropping out of college without a care in the world. Jason
walks off into the crowd.
	Grifter walks up to Mandi and tells
her that no one is talking to him, he doesn't think anyone in here
knows what is going on. Mandi sends her drone into the air to get
some high angle shots and walks over to Harold to see what he knows.
Harold shoos Grifter away and then asks Mandi to turn off her drone,
contractually he is not allowed to be on film. She tells him that
there is an auto-blur feature on for faces.
	When she questions him, he tells her
he has no information for her, he is just doing his job. “When my
supervisor calls and gives me an operating order, it is my job to
uphold it. Not to ask questions, not to say why, to just do it.
That's my job. And, it is to keep people safe. Literally, you are in
here to keep you safe. This is the best place to be right now.”
	“What is going on out there man?”
	“I don't know,” he insists.
	“What
is going on out there Harold?” Mandi presses.
	“What is it
with people and me not f***ing knowing?!” he shouts at her. People
start to turn and look at them and becoming uneasy, talking in a hush
to each other.
	“I just need
everyone to remain calm for a few hours until we can get out of
here.” Harold says.
	“You were
saying something about Synchroneity execs being in here,” Kurt
pipes up.
	“I didn't say
anything...This drunk idiot, you can small the booze coming off of
him...” Harold objects.
	“Why would
Synchroneity mix in normal people and executives?” Mandi asks.
	“Apparently
Harold kind of strayed from his job and brought in others he wasn't
supposed to,” Kurt stage whispers.
	“Can you turn
the camera off?” Harold asks again.
	“I can't, it's
on cycle right now,” Mandi lies.
“Can
you please turn the camera off, ma'am,” he insists. When she
doesn't, Harold points his taser at the drone and brings it down. “I
asked you to turn the camera off, it is in my contract to not be on
camera.”
	She yells at him
and he points the taser at her.
	“How does this
look for you, in front of these Synchroneity execs?!” Mandi yells.
“Does it look good for you to destroy personal property? To lock
people in a room?!”
	“You just gave
yourself away,” he sighs.
	Another
individual walks up, “Yeah, Harold, why are there non-Synchroneity
people in this vault?”
	“We got
Synchroneity right here,” Kurt says, “You Synchroneity?”
	“Yeah, so are
most of the people in this room,” the man says.
	“Do you know
what's going on?” Kurt asks.
	“No, we don't
know,” the man answers, “but we know this room is here to protect
us.”	
	“Well you're
just gonna have to let the non-Synchroneity people out, right?”
Kurt says.
	“Harold can you
please tell me why this...riff-raff was allowed in this vault?” the
man asks.
	“I was just
trying to help. I know what this room is for and I knew something bad
was happening. There were civilians in the building and I'm trying to
help you!” Harold shouts.
	Eventually Mandi
admits that she probably shouldn't have kept filming him.
	“Look I was
told not to let civilians in here, and I couldn't do that. So you're
here, and I'm breaking protocol to try to save your asses and if
anyone at Synchroneity has a problem with that...f*** you!”
	Kurt also
apologizes to Harold for his part in all of this. Harold now reveals
that he has been trying to contact his superiors and there has been
no response.
	“Harold can you
just open the door to see if...” Lilibet starts.
	“I will not
open this door,” Harold tells her.
	Mandi picks up
her fried Go-Drone and manages to get it working again, she keeps it
on her shoulder though, to make it less noticeable to the security
officer.
	Henry gets a call
from his wife, Lilibet's mother, but all he hears is static, not
something he is used to hearing on these integrated communication
lines. He tries to call her back to no avail.
	Harold addresses
the crowd, “I know a lot of you in this room work for Synchroneity,
I am unable to contact my supervisor so if anyone has any pertinent
information that could help us in this situation it would be greatly
appreciated. As you can see I feel like we are going to have an issue
with individuals in this room if we are unable to provide them with
anything. So if anyone has anything, please share!”
	When no one
speaks up, Kurt and Mandi voice their disbelief that no one has any
information. Kurt tries to get Harold to tell them who the
Synchroneity executives are, but he doesn't want anyone to know for
the safety of the execs. One of the people from the I.T. side of
Synchroneity speaks up about how the company keeps information
segregated on a need to know basis. When they are told 'go to the
bunker', they go.
	When Kurt brings
up calling emergency services, several people mention that they have
tried that, they were told that emergency services were not allowed
in the building and are kept out by the metal shutters in any case.
	“It's as if
they were trying to keep something in,” Mandi speculates.
	As soon as she
says this, the lights go out. Harold tells everyone to remain calm,
the generators will kick in soon. When the lights come back up, Henry
has stolen Harold's armband and is fiddling with the locks on the
door. When Harold tries to stop him, Henry elbows him in the nose and
goes back to work. Suddenly, he starts to jerk as electricity travels
through the door into his arm. Henry collapses to the ground and a
nurse comes forward asking for any stimulants, Kurt has some Working
Class Hero on him. The stimulant brings Henry back to consciousness.
	Meanwhile Harold
tells them that the wristband, which is the only way out of the
shelter form the inside, was fried as well. While they talk about
this, the lights go out again. This time they stay out. The only
light within the shelter now comes from peoples wrist bands,
biometric screens, and other tech.
	Grifter comes up
to Mandi and says he has lost his uplink to the outside world,
there's some kind of interference with the signal.
==== Truths ====
* History: Lilibet has a split personality she doesn't know about and her other side is much darker then her normal self. (Turned into a GM power and reworked into her dis-associative identity disorder)
* Discovery: Kurt finds a gun (for GM only: it's jammed). (This is reworked to one of the wrist tazers but it never really comes up again as Kurt never uses the weapon.)
* Discovery: While wandering around the shelter, Mandi discovers a replica of a late 20th century replica. It is a fish mounted on a wooden plate hanging on the wall. As Mandi approaches it the head and lips move. The fish has had wings glued to it. (Zac gives this one a big old nope.)
=== Chapter 2 ===
The people trapped within the shelter
hear a noise outside, and the locks start to unlock one by one.
Everyone inside takes a step back, unsure of what is coming in.
Alexia Martin enters, telling the people that they don't want to be
outside right now, their lives were saved when they were brought in
here. A man pulls her aside and they have a whispered conversation.
“What are you doing?” the man asks.
	“I can't go back out there,” she
says, “We can't let anyone know what's going on, just keep them in
here.”
	“Yeah, if anyone finds out who you
are, this is going to go south very quickly. I was grabbing coffee
downstairs...did the experiment... nobody can get a hold of anyone,
is anyone still alive upstairs?” the man asks.
	“I don't know,” she replies.
	“Okay, just play it cool. They can't
know that we know what's going on until someone gets us out of here,
okay?”
	He then introduces her as his 'friend
Tressa'. They build the narrative that 'Tressa' was also pushed into
the shelter to keep her safe with the rest of them. No one is really
buying it, but Alexia and the man tell them that 'something bad' is
happening out there and that they are all safest in the shelter. Kurt
intimidates the man by pushing him up against a wall and grabbing him
by the neck. Alexia and the man tell them that poison was released
into the vents, then Kurt threatens the man with a wrist tazer he
stole from one of the Synchroneity workers in the shelter.
	“Someone is doing this to us, it's
an attack,” the man says.
	Harold doesn't remember ever seeing
the name 'Tressa' on the security ledgers and he then asks her about
her key and his supervisors. She tells him everyone is dead out
there, if they go out there they will die too, so they should just
stay here for a while until things are under control upstairs.
'Tessa' tells them that she was in the basement seeing her lover,
that was how she escaped the poison.
	Grifter comes up and tells Mandi that
he found a way around the firewalls and has a connection to the
outside, the storm has arrived sooner than expected and the
government is evacuating the city. Also, there is a man standing atop
the tower, not wearing any clothes. He shows the screen on his hand
to everyone, and asks who this is. Immediately, Jeremy, the man who
talked to 'Tressa' earlier, calls her 'Vessa' now and pulls her
aside.
	“The subject is on the roof,
somebody's got a live feed, they're showing the subject on the roof
right now,” he whispers.
	“Get me out of here, safely.”
Alexia orders him.
	“Holy f***! He just got struck by
lightning and he's just standing there!” Grifter shouts. “The
lightning is like channeling through...”
	Mandi sends her drone to capture video
of Grifter's palm screen, the body of the Subject starts to separate
and flow with the lightning energy as it pours into the man. The
Subject kneels down and starts to glow as the lightning comes to a
stop. Then the Subject stands up and opens its arms wide, releasing a
pulse of orange light, the feed shuts off, the lights go out.
Everyone with bio-tech implanted within them starts to scream,
Henry's body begins to writhe as he screams in pain. Ninety percent
of the people within the shelter fall to the ground, screaming.
	Jeremy starts to panic and tells
Alexia that they have to get out of there, this time using her real
name. “The Subject..that signal brought the storm here faster than
we thought, it sent out an EMP, that was probably an EMP. It showed
signs of electromagnetic distortion befor, that's probably how it got
out of its restraints. Alexia, at what point in the testing did we
get through any aspect of the mind control aspects of the
subject...or...I'm trying to remember what stage we were at in the
project when this all went down, we need to figure out what stage
it's at if we are going to isolate the problem and get out of here,
and what signs were being exhibited up to this point.”
	“It woke up, after being
unresponsive. Then it killed everyone in the room. We tried to
contain it but someone triggered the alarm and sent us into
lockdown.” Alexia tells them.
	They talk about what their next move
is, Jeremy brings up that the subject may have cut a hole somewhere
upstairs they could get out of, but the Subject had called the storm
to them. The storm originated in Seattle, but they tracked a signal
through Kolob, Oregon. “This thing that we created just hailed a
five hundred year storm on us, Alexia, I think we're out of our depth
here.”
	“You think? Look, figure out a way
to get me safe, and we'll fix this somehow.”
	“Someone's going down for this,”
Kurt interjects, “You two definitely are.”
	“Shut up, man,” Jeremy tells him.
	“Shut up? You just told me you're
responsible for all this...”
	“And if you want to stop it, you're
gonna need both of us,” Jeremy tells them. “We're the only two
people in the whole wide world that know what's happening right now.”
	“And you're probably the only two
who made this all happen,” Mandy says, trying to turn her drone
back on, but it remains unresponsive. All tech seems to have been
destroyed by the pulse.
	The room goes silent. The screams
stop. Everyone that had biometrics in their body are no longer
moving.
==== Truths ====
* History: Kurt takes drugs to cover up his demons, his killer tendencies. He lost control when he was younger and it led to the death of someone very close to him.
=== Chapter 3 ===
Lilibet cradles her dead father in her
lap, the weight of what has just happened lies heavily on the
survivors. The lights are off, their screens are off, all electronics
appear non-functional. Jeremy has slumped to the ground, his head in
his hands.
	“I have reason to believe that the
pulse was amplified by the storm to affect the whole area...”
Jeremy says.
	“How large of an area?” Kurt asks.
	“Chicago. Someone get to the door!
Hold the door shut! The electronics are down, that door is open.”
Jeremy, panicked, starts moving quickly toward the large door.
	“Are you saying that thing is coming
for us?” Mandi asks.
	Alexia suggests using the bodies to
block the door and Lilibet shouts at them not to touch her father.
	 Two other individuals, Scott, the
Synchroneity I.T. guy and Kurt's friend Jason, start stacking bodies
in front of the door.
	“Is this thing going to start
looking for the both of you?” Mandi asks.
	“The other people of the city will
keep him plenty busy,” Alexia coldly proclaims.
	“Alexia, do you really think it's
going to go after people? This was supposed to be for human
advancement, not human destruction!” Jeremy protests.
	“Looks like you've failed then,”
she responds.
	“What is this thing?” Mandi asks.
	Alexia tries to keep Jeremy quiet, but
after some back and forth, including a slap from Lilibet to Alexia.
“Someone get this child off of me,” Alexia looks around for back
up but no one moves, Alexia also recognizes Jason as someone she had
planned to hire had bigger issues not come up. When Alexia goes to
slap Lilibet back, Kurt grabs her hand.
	Jeremy speaks up and they learn that
Alexia owns Synchroneity. “I'm realizing now that it's all true,
Alexia. All of the books, the research, the symbols. They weren't
just roadmaps to science for us to understand. They were all true.
They weren't stories, but things that happened. That thing just set
off some sort of energy pulse that I don't fully understand.”
	“Perhaps this is all nature's way of
destroying the weak,” she says.
	“But it's not nature, you know that.
Your grandmother (who started the company and has been dead for
years) knew that. Look, this thing, it's tapped into things we don't
understand: energies, dimensions. It's pulling from places that we
can't track, can't follow. Places that our brains have a hard time
comprehending. It's not human. We started with a body. An infected
body. Hundreds of years ago.”
	“Infected with what?” Mandi asks.
	“Alien blood,” Alexia answers.
	“Where did you find it?”
	“The Alps,” Jeremy continues, “it
was still human, we believe, it chose to remove itself from people.
According to our records it was someone that used to work for the
governemnt, a Director Bunny. He went on a murderous rampage in late
2020, then disappeared. We found his body later. That's where it
started.”
	“Then you harvested the DNA from
this murderous being then what, played go go lab with it?” Mandi
asks.
	“Create, like, what? Weaponize it?
Create clones from it, something like that.” Kurt adds.
	“This is the stuff that I expose all
the time. Big private government doing things like this. You did
this, you killed these people. That's was you, both of you!”
Mandi accuses.
	“We were trying to better mankind,
the experiment failed. How do you think we got to where we are now?”
Alexia turns to Lilibet, “How do you think your father lived until
now? With biometrics!”
	“He never should have touched it!”
Lilibet shouts, “It's sinful and it's wrong and look where it's got
us!”
	“The amount of tech we created with
alien artifacts is astounding. You use it in your everyday life, it's
a part of the fabric of our society,” Jeremy tells them.
	“So if it's alien tech, you think
that absolves you from your misstep?” Kurt asks.
	“You need to understand how to stop
this thing. The alien DNA, we thought, could help cure cancer. It had
the ability to take the form of other things, replicate itself,
sustain itself, as DNA. Quite remarkable.” Jeremy continues. “The
DNA was enhanced with some orbs that we found. Synchroneity records
indicated that divers rescued eight black orbs from a sunken house
outside of Atlanta. These orbs appeared to have the ability to open
small dimensional portals through psycho-enhancement, thoughts,
feelings. Whatever else we did was outside of my department.”
	“So you took alien DNA, from this
murderous being, souped it up with inter-dimensional tech, then grew
it in a lab and expected that this would be better for mankind?”
Madi asks.
	“It wasn't alive! We were just
gene-splicing, doing what we had done for generations to better
mankind.” Jeremy protests.
	“But then it became alive, and you
let it live and you let it grow. That was a full grown being on the
roof of this building!” Mandi says.
	Jason interjects that he would like to
leave, to go home.
	At this point Alexia draws a gun, “No
one is leaving, because I have uses for all of you.” The gun has
survived many years in Alexia's family, possibly composed by
Synchroneity using unknown materials.
	
In the year 2213, on Alexia's 75th
birthday, she has just had her youth treatment, her brother holds a
gun on her. However, her bodyguard has come up behind her brother,
undetected, and Alexia gives her guard the nod to kill her brother.
She doesn't feel remorse, only a twinge of greed, assuaged when she
reaches down to take the gun off of her brother's body. She silently
thanks her brother for the family heirloom.
	“Whoa
whoa whoa, Alexia calm down, What are you doing?” Scott asks.
“It's
about time you recognized who's in charge here,” she says.
“In
charge of what?” Scott asks. 
“Whatever's
left of humanity, I will come out on top. And you're gonna help me
get there.” Alexia says.
“You're
a psychopath,” Scott tells her, and she points the gun at him and
pulls the trigger. Nothing happens, and after a tense moment, Scott
stumbles back and away from Alexia, hyperventilating. He trips on a
dead body and the others begin to feel a heat, they begin to get very
hot, very quickly. There is a smell as well, that of cooking flesh,
they look over at the bodies piled by the door and see a steam rising
from the pile. They begin to hear the sound of moving, joining flesh,
a squirming like that of a horde of maggots, as the bodies within the
room begin to glow orange.
The
glow seems to be stemming from whatever piece of their body was
enhanced by Synchroneity tech as it begins to burn its way free of
their bodies.
=== Chapter 4 ===
Lilibet's
father Henry's body begins to lift from the ground, led by his heart,
glowing orange. His arm is left behind on the floor as the corpse
rises into eye contact with Lilibet, looking through her. The bodies
in front of the door are beginning to congeal, joining together as
the Synchroneity tech within them merges.
Mandi
reaches for the jacket she has left on the body of Grifter. As she
does she jerks her hand back when a pair of metal shards tear through
the jacket from where Grifter's eyes would be. They elongate into
long leg-like structures that reach the ground on either side of the
body's head and push his face forward through the remains of the
jacket. Mandi wraps the torn jacket around his throat and football
kicks the head off of his body. It spins across the floor, hitting
another body and sinking into it's leg where it is absorbed.
Bodies
begin to arise all around the group and Alexia takes refuge behind
Scott, who immediately tries to elbow her in the face. This time,
Alexia pulls a knife, which she stabs into his back, whispering,
“Don't make this harder on yourself than it already is.”
After
reacting to this, Kurt and Mandi, Mandi on the brink of madness, go
to move the bodies away from the door. They succeed, but see the
remaining hundreds of bodies with the shelter rising and merging
together.
The
door is pushed inward, the light blinding them, and a voice calls
out, “Move aside!”
They
do, and a beam of energy lances into the nearest body, it vanishes
from existence. A woman stands in the doorway, covered from head to
toe in blood and wearing a lab coat. She holds a large energy weapon
that fires the blue beams that makes the creatures vanish. Alexia
drops Scott's body as they run out of the shelter. The woman takes
out a small welding device and welds the door shut.
Alexia
asks if the woman works for her and she clubs her with the butt of
her gun. Alexia tells her she's fired and then asks how the woman's
gun is still working. She says that she reconfigured it after the EMP
blast then introduces herself as Linda “Maverick” Bellows, she
was a pilot before she worked here.
Lilibet
cries about her family and Mandi asks whether it's safe here.
“This
is about as good as it gets,” Maverick tells them,
“Everyone's...they're all...”
“You
mean, in the building, they're all like this?” Mandi asks.
“I
haven't been able to contact anyone on the outside, including my
husband. The man you,” Maverick points the gun at Alexia, “sent
to the west coast.”
“It
can't have spread that far so fast,” Alexia protests. “We just
have to get out of the range of that EMP bomb, or whatever that was,
and we will be connected again.”
“This
is your fault. You had a chance. They warned us. My husband called me
and said that he passed on the information to you that Kolob warned
us. And said if we handed things over to them, all this could've been
avoided. But you went ahead anyway, and now my husband is gone, and
somehow a storm made it across the country in two days,” Maverick
accuses.
“Listen,
I'm probably the only one who can get us all out of this. So let's
just work together, no more hostilities...”
Maverick
shoulders the energy rifle and says, “Or I could help.”
The
group seems more on board with Maverick's help than Alexia's.
“Are
we talking about everyone with bio in the building? In Chicago?”
Kurt asks Maverick.
“We
lost connection with everyone on the outside the moment that blast
went off. I haven't been able to contact anyone, get any news feeds,
I tried rigging a short wave communicator but ran out of luck. I
noticed a large heat signature in the basement and came to check it
out. I assume what's happening down there is the same thing that
happened upstairs.
“Everyone
with any sort of biotech, and luckily the military wanted me clean
for space travel, but everyone else, the second that wave went out,
just hit the ground. Until they started getting back up, I barely
made it down here.” Maverick tells them.
“Are
they getting back up to kill? Are they getting back up to go
somewhere?” Kurt stammers out.
“I
think it is safe to assume that whatever this is, whatever we
unleashed, has no value for human life whatsoever and will stop
anyone that gets in their way.” Maverick tells them.
Lilibeth
begins to hyperventilate and drops to her knees. Maverick goes over
and puts a hand on her back and then addresses Alexia again, “I
need to know if there is anything outside my clearance level, that
could stop this. Or did you just keep blindly moving forward?”
“It
wasn't supposed to wake up yet. Somebody...I don't know what
happened. It got out of our control and...it was supposed to help
humans, not do this.” Alexia tells her.
“I
think that the 'helping humans' line was something that we just told
ourselves so we could sleep at night.” Maverick says, “We'd read
the scriptures, we've explored this things past. We know that
whatever we dug out of the ice murdered dozens of people.”
“But
we had it under control,” Alexia protests, “It was foolproof.”
“Apparently
not.” Maverick shrugs.
“Then
we hide. Wait this out and let mother nature take it's course and 
then we rebuild...” Alexia says.
As
she says this the group hears the building groan as it sways back and
forth. Through all the commotion they failed to hear the churning
wind of the storm outside until right now. They hear the building
move and creak in the devastating winds.
Lilibet
freaks out and Maverick steps in again to calm her down. Kurt offers
Lilibet some happy pills and she takes them. Maverick talks to
Lilibet calmly and Lilibet tells her about her sister, brother in law
and mother being in the theater. Maverick tells them that she hasn't
checked the theater yet. She also gives the others a warning:
“Nothing
in this building is safe right now, I've probably got twenty more
charges with this,” she hefts the energy weapon, “but it comes at
a risk. I think it is important for you to understand that what we
are dealing with isn't...we don't fully understand what it can do or
what it will do. This is alien technology that is somehow connected
to mysterious elements in our universe that we don't fully understand
and it often leads to very...unpleasant side effects. I activated and
re-calibrated it at a risk. It operates off of the tech we developed
from the same thing that is inside their bodies.” Maverick informs
them.
“What
do you mean by risk? Is it because you don't really understand it?”
Mandi asks.
“It
depends on what you believe, and right now I'm starting to believe
everything.” Maverick answers.
Alexia
suggests going somewhere that didn't get biotech, an island or
something. Kurt suggests they arm up and Maverick leads them out with
an: “As long as you understand the risks.”
As
they walk, the lights continue to flicker and they can hear the storm
raging against the metal sheeting around the building. As they enter
the main lobby, they see blood on the ground, the storm outside is so
loud that they have to shout into each others' faces to be understood
at all. 
Maverick
asks Lilibet, “Where?” and she points out the theater entrance.
They see more and more blood as they move on, streaks lead toward the
main doors and the sheets of metal there have large indentations in
them, as if something was trying to punch its way out. Maverick makes
her way over to the theater doors, they are locked and the electronic
systems are smashed to pieces. Lilibet wants to try to get in, but
the others drag her to the stairway for a conversation.
As
they talk, Maverick hears something upstairs, the sound of wind
blowing through the building. They assume the man from the roof has
gotten in somehow. Alexia gives Lilibet her knife for protection and
Lilibet's second personality, Margo, comes out. She seems much more
capable than Lilibet.
A
door thumps open upstairs and Maverick shushes them as footsteps
sound on the stairway.
“There's
a rhythm,” Maverick whispers, “They sound human. Very slow, they
may be injured.”
“Does
your...gun? Do I call it a gun?” Mandi asks.
“It's
an interdimensional transport device, it removes whatever it's
pointed at through space and time.” Maverick tells them.
Alexia
panics and runs for her private washroom on the sixth floor, she sees
a face peer at her from the railing above as she enters the sixth
floor. She shuts the door behind her and the face of the man she put
on ice drives her to jam it shut with a chair. She is unable to find
one before the door bursts open.
“Bunny,
darling, I'm so glad you're safe,” Alexia says softly, placatingly,
“We were so worried about you.”
“Who
the f*** are you? What year is it? And where am I?” he asks.
Bunny's body is soaking wet, the cryo-chamber he was kept in was
knocked offline by the EMP. 
“It
is 2218, and I saved your life. You're alive.” Alexia says.
“The
last I remember, it was 2101, the Alps.” He looks at her, “You
can't be around me, it's not safe.”
As
she lies to him about children being here, trying to get him to
leave, his eyes turn jet black and a cry of inhuman pain escapes his
lips. “What is...something's not right...something's here. What did
you do? What did you do?!” his voice is a mix of human and inhuman.
As Alexia places a hand on his shoulder, the Blood underneath his
other shoulder breaks free from the skin and he pushes Alexia away.
“What did you do? It's calling...close the loop...close...close the
loop,” his eyes return to normal and he stumbles against the wall.
“Who
are you?” he asks again.
“I'm
your friend,” she murmurs.
He
grabs Alexia by the neck, holding her up against the wall, “You are
not my friend. Who
are you and what did you do?”
“I
saved your life!”
“I
wanted to die!” he responds.
“It's
one hundred years too late for that,” Alexia says, jamming her
knife into his neck.
His
body pushes the knife out of his neck, the Blood congealing around
the blade and dropping it to the ground as the wound closes over.
“I
have been trying to die and keep this f***in' thing inside me, now
what did you do?” he repeats.
“I
didn't do anything, I tried to save your life,” she says.
“I'm
not the only one. I can feel it. It's calling, it won't
shut. The f***. up!” his voice
turns briefly inhuman before returning to normal as he asks, “What
did you do?”
“We
tried to use the alien DNA inside you. And we failed.”
Director
Bunny punches a hole into the wall near Alexia's head and drops her
to the ground before sinking himself, putting his head in his hands.
==== Truths ====
* GM: Please incorporate THIS somewhere in the episode (doesn't have to be right away). MaverickZeroXII (as Maverick) and Rex705 (as Rex) would like to join the madness.
=== Chapter 5 ===
The others debate going after Alexia.
Perhaps she knows of a way out of here, but Maverick knows she is a
monstrous person: “That woman is vile. My husband was sent to
negotiate some sort of barter, or something. They used this alien
tech that we found, they called it Devina, as a guide. And it led us
to a signal and this place called Kolob. And we were supposed to
bring back whatever tech had sent out that signal. But my husband
called and said we needed to stop what we were doing immediately, the
fate of the world depended on it. We needed to bring everything we
had to Kolob. She wouldn't listen. She ignored him and moved forward
anyway and I haven't heard from him, and then the storm came, and the
creature woke up. This is her fault nad I don't know if this is a
bottle we can put the cap back on.”
	“Well what do we do next?”
Margo/Lilibet asks.
	“My only plan now is to survive,”
Maverick says.
	“Well if anyone has resources it's
Alexia,” Kurt offers.
	“And it's on the way to your lab,”
Mandi adds.
	“Just stay behind me,” Maverick
says as they begin to head upstairs.
	Director Bunny sits on the ground,
breathing heavily. Alexia can see him growing larger, gaining mass
with each breath in, then back to normal on the exhale.
	“You need to destroy yourself for
the good of everyone else on this planet,” Alexia tells him.
	“I've been trying, for hundreds of
years. That's where I was when you dug me up! Why do you think I was
in the Alps? I was as far from humanity as I could get. And there's
also a part of me here. You took my blood, created something. I can
feel it calling me. It is here, in this building. If I can feel it,
it can feel me. Now, I am not this...loud thing. So what else did you
do?” he asks.
	“You should go to it. Defeat it.
Save humanity.” she tells Bunny.
	“I'm doing everything in my power
right now, to keep from devouring you. I stopped being human a very
long time ago, and I've used every bit of myself to contain it and I
often fail. I have killed hundreds of people. Devoured them and made
them a part of myself.”
	“If I were to lead you to more,
could you save me?” Alexia asks, seeking to preserve herself.
	“I don't want to be this,” he
tells her.
	“I can help you, I built this
company from the ground up,” she says, “I have the technology. We
can go back to the lab, we can fix this.”
	“I can feel that this part of me you
took is different now. I need you to tell me what else you did. This
thing inside me, I used to spend my life researching it. It wants to
be whole. Did you give it a chance to do that?”
	“We made a clone of you. That's it.”
She says.
	“You're lying, I want you to tell me
what else you put inside of that thing. It is much larger than I am
and it is calling for me. And if it's calling for me it is calling
for the others.”
	“We might have found some other
alien artifacts and tried to complete you. But it was for the good of
humanity and I still believe you can be our savior.”
	Bunny laughs, “Is that what you tell
people? You dig up a psychopathic murderer and use his blood. Merge
it with ancient artifacts that I know...what's this company?
Syncroneity? I know you. Your company sent this blood to me in the
first place. Destroyed me. My everything. Your company killed a lot
of people to keep what I am, and what I originated from under wraps.”
	“That was hundreds of years ago.
That wasn't me.” Alexia assures him, “This company is purely
humanitarian, we help people through cybernetics and genetic
enhancements. So in a way you were quite useful. Your legacy is one
of healing and hope and human technological advancement.”
	“What do you know of the Devil? Hell
is me. Hell is where I come from. What you know to be Hell, I know to
be my past.” he snarls. “How have you made it this far with my
blood, and not know where it comes from? Did you never stop to ask
why?”
	“Inconvenient truths are best
ignored.”
	“You've seen me. You've seen my
blood in paintings, in dreams, in stories. Everything that makes me
whole, every bit of myself that is spread across this world, is what
inspired every dark thought you've ever had. Every dark thought
humanity has ever had.” Bunny's voice is now inhuman most of the
time, “And you just lit up a fire in the sky. The smoke signal to
the heavens, find me here, rejoice! Close the loop. We can be
together again! Let's do it everyone! Let's watch the world burn!”
	“I don't believe in fairy tails. I
believe in cause and effect. And right now you're just an effect of a
mistake that my company made. And you will be dust again...” Alexia
snarls. Bunny stands, rising over her, his body disassembles in front
of her. The Blood shoots out in great spears, lancing into the walls
and desks around them. His body is hangs in the air, held up by a web
of the Blood. 
	“What do you know?” he asks.
	“So you're saying you're the
anti-Christ?”
	“No.” He calmly starts to withdraw
the Blood into himself, breathing deeply.
	“Are you saying that thing is the
anti-Christ?”
	“Take me to your lab. I'm losing
control, I need hypobromite. It's the only way I was able to calm the
creature and keep it from assimilating. All it wants to do right now
is take every fiber of your being and soak it into itself. And
continue doing that until it has spread across this entire planet.
That is what you have unleashed. Now, take me to your lab.”
	As they open the door, they meet the
others on their way up. To the rest of them Bunny looks like a very
old, frail man. His skin sagging off of the bones, as if his human
form is hundreds of years old but continuing to move on it's own.
	As Maverick's finger tightens on the
trigger of her gun, Alexia pushes the barrel of the gun down. “He's
the only one who can save us from himself. You can't kill him I tried
to stab him in the neck.”
	“I'm not trying to kill him, I'm
trying to send him to another dimension.” Maverick says.
	“You can remove me from this earthly
plane?” Bunny asks.
	“There is no guarantee that this
other plane is paradise.” Alexia says.
	“I wish to do whatever it takes not
to breathe another breath inside this hellish form.” Bunny assures
her, as he walks toward Maverick, pulling the gun into his chest and
pressing the trigger. Bunny vanishes.
	As they take this all in, Margo
recedes and Lilibet comes forth. They tell her that they decided the
people in the theater, if any were left alive, were safer left locked
in. The next step, they decide, is to send the Bunny clone to the
other dimension as well. An inhuman wail from the bottom of the
stairwell urges them to get moving and they rush up the stairwell. As
they go, the orange glow of the creatures below raises along with
them.
	“Where's the nearest lab?” they
ask Maverick, “Bunny said to use bromite.”
	“Bromite, that makes sense, it's in
immune cells. Maybe it's toxic to this creature. Uh, my lab! Ten more
floors. Go go!”
	They burst through the doors and
immediately push lab equipment against them as a creature slams into
the glass of the small window in the door, five eyes glare at them as
the creature's jaw bone begins to remove itself from it's face as it
lets out a wail.
	A small voice calls out from within
the lab, it's a small, older woman in a wet hooded trench-coat. She
carries a brittle wooden cane. “I'm sorry I was looking for
someone,” she says. Alexia draws her knife and the woman gestures,
the knife flies from Alexia's hand and her arm is slammed into the
wall and stuck there. The woman lifts her head, her hood falling back
to reveal two glowing orange shards in her eye sockets.
	Mandi starts to reason with the woman,
explaining they were trying to escape some tech zombies.
	“Ohh they don't want to hurt you,”
the old woman coos, “they just want you to join them. Who called
me? Someone called for me. Was it you?” she asks Alexia, letting
her arm fall.
	“It wasn't, I know who it was
though. He's waiting for you. Would you like to join him?” Alexia
says.
	“You have a mouth,” the old woman
smirks.
	“I'm just trying to be helpful.”
Alexia tells her.
	“No, no I think it was you
that called me. You see, you can't lie to me.”
	“What are you?” Alexia asks.
	“Who are you?” Mandi asks at the
same time.
	“It's not important. I've been
waiting a very long time to come home. I feel closer now than ever
before. You called me here, to this place. I can feel it.” The old
woman's voice turns harsh, “But something's not right. It's
bastardized, just like me. I'm beginning to believe we'll never be
whole, not the way we once were.” Her voice softens again, “I'm
excited though, I've never gotten to meet all my brothers and sisters
before, except...” she sniffs, “I can smell her here.” She
moves towards them, and everything in her path is swept aside, the
old woman gets in Alexia's face. “Where is Devina?”
	Maverick speaks up, “She sent her to
Kolob.”
	The old woman sweeps over to Maverick,
“Sister...Devina. Who took her?”
	Maverick mouths 'What do I do?'
looking at the others.
	“Who took my Devina? It's a shame
she can't be here to meet all of our new brothers and sisters. It's
been so long, and I can smell Devina here, feel her in my bones, she
was here. Who took her?” the old woman asks.
	Kurt looks around for any bromite,
finding a syringe injector and some hypobromite.
	Seeing this, Mandi calls out to her,
“Mama,” she moves over to focus on Mandi, exposing her back to
Kurt. Who takes the opportunity to attempt to inject her. He drives
the bromite home, and she falls to the ground.
	“Maverick, shoot that bitch!” Kurt
calls out. She begins to slowly raise the gun and the woman turns to
Kurt and begins to cackle. “Oh dear boy, you think you can hurt
me...it won't be that easy.” Her hand comes up and Maverick's gun
starts to crumple and is slung across the room. A needle lifts into
the air and flies into Kurt's arm, he ducks behind a shelf and more
needles slam into it.
	Alexia tries to barter with the old
woman, offering to help her find her 'sister' and end this.
	“Let's be clear here, what do you
mean by end this?”
	“You and your kind leave our plane
forever and go back to your own. You don't belong here, you're
abominations.”
	The old woman laughs again, “You
kept us here, against our will. Held us. Used us for your own gain.
You have to close the loop my dear. The only way through, to keep
this from ever happening.” The lights stop flickering and the old
drops to the ground, readjusts her poncho, and, summoning her cane to
her hand, walks to the door and pushes the blockade aside. The door
opens, the creatures outside part and October Eventide makes her way
through them and up the stairs.
	There is a pause and the creatures
turn back to the room, calling out in their inhuman voices
“Joooiiiinnnn uuuusssss.”
	They slam the door closed and begin to
block it again.
	
Alexia flashes back to her youth,
70 years ago, when her father would lock her in the closet. She would
hear her parents shout and argue and she would feel powerless, she
just had to sit there and feel much like she does now: helpless.''
	Mandi flashes back to a video she
was filming about unfair treatment of tribes in the Congo. Her and
two camera people were hiding from the secret police of the area.
They were trapped in a tiny shelter until they almost died of
dehydration. The stink, and the feeling of it, made her hate enclosed
spaces and being trapped.''
	Mandi
notices a set of eyes looking at her from inside a locker and hears a
rustle as they vanish. Inside the locker is a man wearing a jumpsuit
with the name Rex on it. He holds his hands up in a defensive posture
and they coax him out. He's making hand gestures and they figure out
he is mute and a janitor.
Maverick
notices that Jason is missing and before they can look for him the
building starts to shake and sway. Maverick tells them about old coal
tunnels that run under Chicago and that a lot of the older buildings
have entrances into them.
Margo
comes out as Mandi suggests looking for a dumb-waiter to get into the
basement.
“Lilibet
must be incredibly stressed. I never come out more than once a day,”
Margo says.
“Wait,
wait. Lili gets stressed, you come out.” Maverick observes, “That
creature said something about 'close the loop'.”
Margo
says that Lilibet says something like that to keep her from taking
over, something like 'the Gate, the Door, close the loop', but she
doesn't know why Lili wouldn't want her to come out. When Lilibet was
competing in a horsemanship contest, her horse broke both of its legs
and Lili took it hard, causing Margo to manifest.
“Just
a reaction to trauma? Nothing to do with ancient alien artifacts?”
Maverick asks.
“Or
an orange glow?” Mandi asks.
“Lilibet?
Are you serious? Everyone knows her real name is Elizabeth, she just
can't say it. That's why everyone calls her Lilibet, she's an idiot.”
Margo tells them. Meanwhile, Mandi goes on the search for a
dumb-waiter.
Alexia,
feeling threatened, grabs Margo's hand and pins it to the wall with
her knife. Margo recedes and Lilibet starts screaming, dropping to
the floor and cradling her hand.
The
others accuse Alexia of distracting them from asking her any question
by casting suspicion on to Margo/Lilibet. Alexia asks Lilibet about
Margo, who comes forward and breaks Alexia's nose with a right hook,
then fades back into a screaming Lilibet. Maverick gets between the
two of them and talks calmly to Lilibet, telling Alexia to shut up.
Mandi
discovers a large freight elevator, with the ability to operate it
manually, behind a wall after using liquid nitrogen and a fire
extinguisher to break through it. They take the freight elevator down
to search for the coal tunnels. As they descend they hear the inhuman
cries from above, and some of the creatures tumble into the elevator
shaft, smashing apart on impact.
They
fashion a torch from one of the creature's arms and one of their
jackets. The elevator arrives at the lobby and they search for an
entrance to the underground. Alexia finds an oxygen tank nearby and
breaks open the wooden floor of the freight elevator, as she does one
of the creatures lands on top of her. Its biomass begins to wrap
around her, she can feels its bones pushing against her rib cage,
vicously craning is neck to move its face toward hers.
==== Truths ====
* Discovery: Maverick remembers the old Chicago coal tunnels that run under a lot of the old buildings and thinks this building might be connected to them
* History: Mandi witnessed a family member become obsessed with implanting bio-tech in search of perfection. She is disgusted with becoming like October, and will do anything to remain whole.
=== Chapter 6 ===
Mandi takes the remains of the contents
of the canister of liquid nitrogen she used earlier and splashes it
across the creature. It hardens and Mandi kicks the creature to
shatter it, Alexia feels a twinge of pain in her hip where the liquid
nitrogen seeped through. Mandi and Kurt help her up and they follow
Rex to a place he knows of where there might be an entrance to the
underground. As they move through the lobby, they notice a hole that
has been pushed from the outside in, and the wind howls as debris is
pushed into the lobby.
	They look into the stairwell they went
up earlier, the stairs are gone and the inside of the stairwell is
blackened as if something made it's way up the shaft. Rex picks up a
trash can and smashes open the tile floor, opening a trap door into a
dark shaft with a ladder going down. Rex descends and Kurt starts to
follow, when a voice says “Where do you think you are going?”
	October Eventide stands on the other
side of the lobby and a creature moves across the ceiling of the
lobby. Its body is just flesh and muscle, blood like tentacles guide
it down behind October where it stands, eight eyes staring at them
over her shoulder. October's eye shards start to dim as the creature
envelops her within itself. It grows larger and larger, screaming in
agony, more of the zombie creatures come running from the lobby, and
from the shelter, throwing themselves onto the growing biomass.
	The biomass hits the ceiling of the
lobby, now 40 feet high and still growing, cracks form along the
ceiling and the group scrambles for cover. A large steel beam is
ripped free of the ceiling by one of the creature's flailing limbs,
separating the group. The creature, bathed in orange light, begins to
push itself off of the ground, sending more debris tumbling toward
the humans.
	Maverick puts her arms over Lilibet
and Kurt and they hunker down. Mandi and Alexia scramble for the
ladder to the underground while the others will have to run around
the beam first. The creature is taking on a humanoid aspect, but the
arms are long tentacles, as it continues to grow it rips its way out
of the building, the theater is crushed to rubble as the back half of
the building is now open to the storm. 
	In this new debris the creature has
created, Kurt sees a folder sticking out of a file cabinet, the
folder has his father's name on it. Kurt pops a few pills and makes a
bee line for the cabinet, narrowly avoiding death several times.
Arriving at the cabinet, he sees a file with his name on it and snags
it, then turns to run back to the tunnel.
	Maverick gives Lilibet a pep talk and
counts down, “Here we go in 3...2...” and before she can get to
one, the tentacle of the creature wraps around Maverick's waist,
hauling her away from Lilibet. In reaction, Lilibet, with a little
help from Margo, holds on to Maverick tightly, noticing one of the
other tentacles forming into a spear and Margo says “Stop.” Margo
feels a strange flash, the world around her fades away, in front of
her, Margo recognizes a feeling she doesn't understand. But she says
“Stop,” again, and the tentacle drops Maverick. Margo hauls
Maverick to her feet and they meet Kurt at the trap door.
	The creature exits the tower on to
South Wacker street, smashing into the buildings across from the
tower.
	As Mandi and Alexia climb down the
ladder, Alexia admits to her that this might be her fault. “Let me
save you,” Alexia says, kicking Mandi off the ladder and into Rex's
waiting arms. Once they are all safely down into the underground
area, things are much quieter, but they can still hear the creature
moving down the street as dust drifts down from the ceiling.
	Kurt convinces Alexia to go reason
with the creature and the others carry on without her. While this is
all happening Mandi flashes back to the last time she saw her mother.
It was in the foyer of her mother's building because her mother
wouldn't let her upstairs. Mandi's mother was berating her for being
a guerilla film maker. She delivered the ultimatum to either change
her ways, or never return.
	Kurt, meanwhile is poring over the
file he grabbed earlier. Kurt Wellington. Subject #2323. Kurt is a
clone, his father lost a young son to cancer years ago and partnered
with Synchroneity to take his son's DNA and enhance it to remove the
cancer. Clone Kurt survived past the point where his predecessor
died. Synchroneity held this to be a success, but Kurt's father
contested this. He documented several changes in his son that he
posits came from whatever Synchroneity put into the cloning process:
an addictive personality, prone to violence. Within the folder he
sees other subjects of his cloning trial group with similar side
effects. Kurt's father was building a case to sue the company and the
name Lilibet Becket appears on several documents as well, possibly
displaying similar side effects.
Kurt flashes back to his early years,
his father was a neglectful parent, running his business and all, his
mother was a busy lawyer, often high on drugs. He took out his
feelings of abandonment on his mother, slipping a little something
extra into her daily drug cocktail that lead to her death. He has
been avoiding these demons through mood enhancers and relaxants.
	Kurt then pulls Margo aside and shows
her the files. Margo sees all the horrible things that Kurt has done
over the years, documented by his father, including the death of his
mother. She also sees Lilibet's name, along with her father's:
Lilibet Becket. Test subject #2721. Lilibet is also a clone, but
these sheets hold no information on the real Lilibet or why this
Lilibet was cloned.
	Margo goes back in her mind, trying to
pinpoint the moment she came into being. No one else in the family
ever mentioned the equestrian incident, maybe Lilibet's therapist
lied to her, maybe Henry Becket knew more than he let on.
	A rotten egg odor begins to fill the
tunnel they stand in, Rex pulls out a hand lamp and shines it around.
The tunnel is a long straight line into darkness, but, to quote Kurt,
they ain't going back up there.
	Except for Alexia, as Rex mimes to the
others that his light won't last long while they walk off, she climbs
the ladder and pushes away some debris. She walks out of the building
into the storm, she cannot see the monster through the winds and
debris, bodies line the streets. She also sees people who did survive
the blast, but are no longer human, running after the monster,
wanting to become a part of it.
	Alexia begins to move in the same
direction, trying to avoid the notice of the non-humans, as she
tracks after the monster. She uses a trash can lid to protect her
face as she limps, bleeding from her wound, down the street. Slowly
but surely catching up with the monster. The creature is now taller
than the buildings it walks among, it pushes them aside as it walks.
The air above its head swirls with blackness, it and the storm are
one, as Alexia arrives in the eye of the storm a calmness descends.
	She attempts to get the creature's
attention, “Hey! Heeeeeey!!”
	At first, it does not respond, as
several of the smaller creatures run out from the surrounding
buildings, swirling around the large creature's feet, staring at
Alexia. She notices movement on the giant's heel, a kind of tear
forms in its flesh and the clone of director Bunny strides out, a
suit forming upon his body as he walks.
	“Ms. Martin,” he says, “it's a
pleasure to finally meet you.”
	“Listen, I'm not long for this world
and you know that. I just ask that, as somebody who helped create
you...”
	“You created nothing,” he
interrupts, “But an abomination.”
	“Be that as it may, I ask you to,
let me...”
	“You can ask nothing of me,” he
interrupts again, “Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. You've spent a life in
power. Here you have none. You ask nothing, you can beg all
you like.”
	“If not somebody who can be your
equal, because I am not, at least let me be a part of this. Absorb
me, take me with you. Please,” she begs.
	“Ms. Martin, I think you over
estimate your value. Why do you think you matter?”
	“I don't, but this is my fault, so
let me see it through. What use is there for me to die in a cave with
some strangers who hate me?”
	“I think we need to set some base
line understanding of our current situation. You,” he pauses for
effect, “are completely irrelevant. Merely a pause, a curiosity.
The closer I get to my original form, the more I understand. I do not
care to, or want to, but it could be useful to keep this from
happening again. This moment, right now, I will most likely forget it
because you don't matter.”
	“You say that, yet, instead of
killing me instantly, you took the time to create a form to speak to
me like a human. Which shows that, one: somewhere deep down inside
your monstrous body there is a part of you that acknowledges my
importance in this. And two: there is a part of you that is still
human, be it as little as it may.” she tells the clone.
	“Human,” it repeats, “human,
human. This abomination. You brought this on yourselves. We wanted
nothing more than to live, as all things, as you do. That I can
relate to. To be whole, to be one. Curious, yes. What use are you to
me? To us? To the future?”
	“Maybe I don't serve any purpose.
But I humbly ask that instead of wasting the carbon matter, the
energy that I am, the 80 years of creating and building which
ultimately led to this. Instead of just snuffing it out like a
candle, let me be part of the end that I created.” she finishes.
	“Fair enough,” he turns, walks
back into the larger creature, and she can hear his laughter as the
being moves off again, leaving her there in the midst of the
destruction and decay.
	Alexia Martin slumps into the street,
letting her mask fully fall away for the first time, and lays in the
street, waiting, hoping, to die.
==== Truths ====
* Feeling: Because Maverick has been taking care of them, helping them, Lilibet is growing to rely on her when Margo isn't around. And Margo is proving her worth and courage to Maverick.
* Feeling: The scale of Synchroneity's failure is cracking Alexia's stoic facade, she's beginning to feel like this is a hopeless situation.
* GM: Kurt always felt out of place, but never knew why. His father did. After his real son died, he sought out Synchroneity to clone Kurt. The imperfect tech resulted in an addictive personality and a genetic marker which may be detectable by the creature.
* GM: Hydrogen sulfide gas is slowly leaking into the mine. Smells of rotten eggs. Symptoms in increasing order are eye damage, sense of smell going away, strong stimulation of central nervous system, rapid breathing, death. Increase at your leisure.
=== Chapter 7 ===
Underground, the others continue
walking, searching for another way out. They notice Alexia is missing
and don't much care. Their vision starts to get blurry and Maverick's
head is spinning. Mandi grabs the light from Rex and they all run
through the tunnel, their vision getting worse and worse, they hear
the booming steps of the creature above. Their vision gets darker and darker as Mandi is pushed over the brink of madness.
=== Chapter 8 ===
The others catch up to Mandi, finding
her hunched over the light, muttering to herself, and weeping.
Maverick tells them that she can no longer feel the left side of her
face. Mandi, shouting about how there is no end, throws the light
further down the tunnel. Margo hauls Maverick along and Kurt picks
Mandi up as they chase the light.
	They hear a thud behind them, Maverick
has collapsed and Rex is nowhere to be seen. Margo tries to rally
Maverick but Maverick can no longer see. Maverick's eyes grow dim and
lose focus.
=== Chapter 9 ===
As they look down at Maverick's body,
the three of them start to feel a tingling numbness stealing into
their limbs. Mandi shouts that she's found a grate, Kurt discovers
that it is real and they wrench it free, leaping down the hole into
rushing water. They are bashed around and swept along by the flow of
water until they pop out of a drain pipe downtown. In the distance,
lightning illuminates a silhouette of a giant figure. Smaller figures
join up with it and lightning strikes it, it's body taking in that
energy to grow. Mandi mutters about the end of the world. Kurt and
Margo take their mad friend with them into the nearest home. They can
feel each step of the creature even though it is over a mile away.
	Kurt takes some drugs and, as they
enter his system, he looks out a window and feels a calm wash over
him. His vision tunnels on the creature, he recognizes its pulse, the
orange glow pulses from the creature in time with his heart. He sees
the creature in the distance turn toward him, one of its tentacles
lifts and comes down hard, sending a wave of destructive force in
their direction.
	Kurt looks down at his hands, seeing
the veins in his arms match the pulse of the creature's energy.
	Ten feet away Mandi grabs Lilibet by
the wrists and shakes her hands back and forth, staring at them
intently “You're glowing!” Mandi giggles, seeing the same orange
energy pulsing in Lilibet.
	Kurt opens his mouth to say he
recognizes this energy when the wave of destructive energy rips
through the wall where Kurt was standing, showering the women with
debris where they were hunched deeper within the house.
=== Chapter 10 ===
The two women look up from their
cowering to see pieces of debris and pieces of Kurt strewn about the
room. Margo still sees the orange pulses travel through her arms,
Mandi suggests she bring back Lilibet, perhaps this is only happening
to Margo. Lilibet returns and reacts in horror to the orange glow and
grisly scene before her.
	Lilibet slowly feels a sense of calm
come over her, looking out at the destruction outside. Mandi scuttles
about looking for a dumbwaiter to take them outside where they'll
'warn the world.'
	Lilibet starts to repeat her mantra to
her self, “The Gate, the door, Lili, the Gate, Margo, the Loop. The
door, the Gate, the loop, the door, the Gate, the loop..,” as she
continues to mutter she feels for the first time in her life that
Margo and Lilibet are one. “We should run, we should stay, we
should his, no, we should fight, the door, the Gate.”
	Mandi sees a door under some steps at
the end of a long, dark hall begin to open. One of the smaller
creatures begins to crawl from within, it appears to be the remains
of the family that once lived here. Lilibet doesn't seem to see any
of it.
	However, at the brink of madness,
Lilibet/Margo hear Mandi mutter 'Behind,” and Margo turns, puts out
her hand and says, “Stop.” It does, seeming to wait for a
command, like a lost dog, not necessarily meeting its owner, but
recognizing a command it should obey. Margo says, “Shoo,” and,
seeing the creature begin to obey, Margo takes Mandi's hands as they
begin to back away. However, several more of the creatures begin to
emerge, staring at Lilibet curiously. Lilibet tells Mandi to run as
she keeps the creatures at bay.
	Mandi leaves, seeing more and more of
the creatures emerging from the wreckage, seeming to communicate with
each other, she also sees the massive creature turn it's gaze upon
the building she just left. She heads to the only other place she
knows in the city, the hotel she was staying at, where she left the
rest of her broadcasting gear, perhaps she can still get a message
out, what little remains of her sanity tells her. She takes the
stairway up to her room, the door hangs off of the hinges. She goes
inside to her kit and starts to record a message to her mother and
her agent, “I'm not going to make it out this time, I'll try but
it's not like the other times. I'll try to find a way to get this
out, to upload it...”
	The camera pans out on a mad woman,
speaking to an inanimate object, desperately trying to get out a
doomsday message to those she cares about, in her hand a stuffed
bunny is clutched to her.
	Backing away from the creatures.
Lilibet feels an enormous step land behind her. Her hand is now a
bright orange, she can see the bones and veins within. Long tentacles
lower around her, creating an orange cathedral around her, a figure
steps out of the mass: it wears the form of Henry Becket.
	“You will never feel whole, have
never felt hole,” it tells her, “your kind...identifies us as
evil. We find that to be...ignorant. We did not take a part of
ourselves and create you. Your kind did that. Your people. This form.
How is that not evil? How are we at
the hands of your destruction in our peaceful existence? Unaware of
your kind. Alone in the universe. How are we to
blame for this. You have always felt something missing. Denied a part
of you, because you belong with us.”
“What
about everyone else?” Lilibet asks shakingly. 
“All
the people?” Margo adds, firm.
“We
don't care.”
“What
do you want then?” Lilibet.
“What
do you want with her?” Margo.
“With
who?” it asks.
“Her.”
Margo
“Me.”
Lilibet.
“We're
giving you an opportunity to be whole again.”
“I
was whole when I was with my family, you took that away from me,”
Lilibet says.
“No,
you weren't...” the creature counters.
“They
loved me, w-whatever that...”
“Whatever
that means, whatever that is, doesn't matter to us, and that means to
a part of you as well.”
“What
happens to us if I join you? If we...”
“Oh,
see I'm not talking to you, or you.”
the creature tells Lili and Margo, “This isn't a discussion, it is
a reclamation. We are collecting. You are not whole, a part of you
wishes to be, we can feel it. Where they took me, to make you. And
I'm just letting you know we'll be taking that back.”
In
that moment, within a flash, Margo and Lilibet cease to exist as the
body that contained them is ripped apart a molecular level. The Blood
 that was contained within the body is reclaimed by the creature
before it moves on.
Category:Core Volumes