Twist

**Twist** is a series of books written by Ghandaiah. It is the longest book in The Nameless Mod, at 112 pages. The story ends in a cliffhanger and was never completed.

## Text

### Chapter One

**--- --- --- ---**
**CHAPTER ONE: Change of Fate**
**--- --- --- ---**

He brushed from shadow to shadow, as though he were a part of the darkness himself, slipping silently from place to place, evading anything and everything that crossed his path. He was nano-augmented; A born and bred killer, someone had said about him, about all nano-augs. Maybe that was true. Maybe. But he had reason, and he had enough human in him to realize that the certain actions of one Bob Page were not to be taken lightly. He would put an end to it. All of it.

His name was JC Denton - former employee of UNATCO, the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition, now on the other side of the fight. They called the NSF terrorists. If anyone could be called terrorists, it wouldn't be the NSF, they weren't terrorists. It would be UNATCO and their brainless nano-aug thugs.

They had captured him - locked him in a cell deep below UNATCO HQ on Liberty Island, expecting him to sit nice and snug so that they could doubtlessly slaughter him later on. Right. He escaped, of course, by the help of a disembodied voice that persisted in talking to him over his infolink. He didn't know who or what it was. He didn't care at the moment. He just wanted to break out, and so far, he had almost made his way up to the top floor of the compound.

Almost.

Stepping into the light, now, looking blankly up the second last set of stairs he'd have to climb, he saw the last obstacle and potential threat in his way.

Anna Navarre. Nano-aug, UNATCO colonel, colder than steel. There wasn't a bit of heart in the woman. Most of her body was metal, all augmented, whatever skin showed was pale white. Charming when combined with her hateful, violent personality.

*He should have killed her when he had the chance.*"

"Move or be moved," JC warned, gun in hand, willing to return that favor.

"You are pathetic. You are weak. You have joined the NSF, and you have become part of the enemy. I will not let you leave this building alive."

For a moment, they both stood silently.

Then JC almost felt a smile come to his face. It was almost amusing, how sure of herself she was. And there was a bit of irony in there - She tells him he should have killed her when he had the chance, yet she makes the mistake of not killing him immediately. Just for the glory of having the last word, too. You could almost say she killed herself with her own terrible personality. "You disobeyed your number one rule, Anna. I'm surprised."

"What?"

"Your rule. Shoot first, ask questions later. Good thing for me though. And here's another tip: 'flatlander woman'."

Her killphrase. He saw it in her eyes the split second she had just before she died. She knew it. She knew he had just killed her, and she couldn't believe it. And there wasn't a single thing she could do before her body twitched convulsively, then fragmented in an ear-piercing explosion. The ground shook, the whole building shook with the force of it - and it wasn't a very pretty sight to see, either.

He almost felt bad for the janitors.

*JC pushed himself up, realizing that the force of the blast sent him slamming against the wall, collapsing down on the floor. He had to get out of there, and he had to do it fast - there wouldn't be a man in UNATCO who didn't know something was wrong by then.*"

Stopped. Stopped dead. Literally.

He never felt the bullet tear through his head. He never felt it come out the other end, exploding in a crimson mess. He never even felt his body hit the ground.

JC Denton was dead before he knew it.

And the man that fired the single bullet stood accross the courtyard, on the helipad, gun still pointed, blank expression on his face. Gunther Hermann. Another nano-aug. Another heartless bastard. You'd think that on the killing of another human being you'd feel something. Guilt, maybe, regret, even if that human being was a lifelong enemy. No. The only thing Gunther felt here was an insane kind of satisfaction as he stared blankly at the mangled corpse bleeding across the grass. This was what the government was trying to build. This. Emotionless killers. People who will follow orders and plant bullets in the heads of those ordered to kill. Maybe Gunther knew it. Maybe he just didn't care.

Maybe he just enjoyed it.

--- --- --- ---

"SHIT!"

Dom smashed his forty against the wall, enraged, thinking too quickly, so much going on... He paced back and forth, worried out of his mind, then depressed, then something else... he tried to calm down, but it just couldn't have happened, no, it was impossible... "Son of a... God dammit!"

*He fumbled for the correct words.*"

Everything Dominic Bishop ever hoped for, everything he ever tried to make a difference for - all of it. Gone. The NSF was in shambles. In complete breakdown. The one man that killed most of them just died after finally seeing their side of the story and committing himself to it. They lost the shipment of ambrosia, most of their men, supplies...

Any leadership they had. Paul and JC were the only hope the NSF ever had at that point, and now they were both dead.

Completely erased from the picture, a decaying band of soldiers left in their wake.

It was a complete and total mess. Nobody was in charge now. Commanders had been killed or captured, too. There was absolutely nothing they could hope to do.

Dominic couldn't keep up with all of it in his tired state of mind, couldn't contemplate it now. All he could do was accept it. "Jesus." He massaged his forehead with his hand, glancing around at all the other troops in the room. Some of them stared at him. He realized he had been standing there, staring thoughtfully.

"What do we do?" one of them broke out with a shaken voice. "What the hell do we do?"

Dom sighed, not knowing how to answer that question. "What can we do?"

Silence.

*This is what their cause had degraded to. Cowering in some abandoned warehouse division like you see in the movies. They really did look like terrorists to most of the world, and that just killed him. They weren't the bad guys. Someone had to pick up the pieces. There had to be some command out there, someone left who knew how to clean up this mess. Maybe it was him, hell, he didn't know.*"

### Chapter Two

**--- --- --- ---**
**CHAPTER TWO: Point Blank**
**--- --- --- ---**

Dominic stared at himself in the mirror.

There he was, under that dirt and blood. Thirty three years of living. Thirteen years of fighting. And most of it might as well be going down the drain with the running water.

He paused for a moment, stared blankly at himself. It had been a while since he paid any attention to his body. Stubble was growing on his face. He smelled, and he knew it. His hands were still dirty from the last mission...

The last mission. Jesus, he thought. The airfield. Might as well be the last one of all time. His band of soldiers lacked morale completely. They had spent the last week camped together in a New York warehouse block. Oh, they all had homes, but they couldn't return to them. Couldn't face their families now. Too much on everyone's mind. They just wanted to sit. And think. And stare at themselves in the mirror. Wondering where the hell it all went.

Dom leaned over the bathroom sink, shirtless, splashing water over his face. He tried to wash the fatigue out, to get a clear thought process... they had already wasted a week sitting there. He knew they had to do something.

Hell, Dom Bishop was the closest thing to leadership his group had, and he knew it. Their commander was killed at the airfield by a bunch of UNATCO troops, himself and the rest of his group barely escaping from the docks...

*He could remember the look on his commander's face. Vividly. Dom watched the bullets tear across the poor guy's chest.*"

Their commander said the NSF were not terrorists because their objective was not to fight. But their objective was also not to blow their time in an empty building, feeling sorry for themselves.

"This is bullshit," he said, loudly, making sure everyone heard him. A dead silence hung in the air after that. Everyone looked at him. One of them, Brian, a small, energetic guy, came from around a corner, eating the same stuff from a similar container.

"I don't know, it's pretty good to me, Dom."

Bishop looked down at the soup/oatmeal in his hand. He threw it down onto a table, discarding it. "No. This. Look at us. What are we doing?"

They looked at each other. There were seven of them, not including himself: Brian, Jake, Albert, Sandra, Mitch, Jess, Geo... they all looked up to him, knowing if there was anybody who knew what he was talking about, it would be Dom... but at the same time, sharing a certain contempt, or curiosity. Dom had not been with them his whole NSF career. He was only with them one mission. The last one. And it failed. So now here he was, their commander telling the squad to put complete trust in him... but how could they do it, after a disaster like that? This mix of their emotion only created something deep and empty in their eyes as they looked at him, unknowing, only hoping.

Dom shivered, and continued. "We're wasting our time, that's what we're doing. We're not getting anything done."

*"What are we supposed to do?" Al burst out, suddenly irritated. "You're telling us to do something. Right? So what do we do?"*"

Al buried his head in his hands, curling up against the wall. "And then what?"

"And then we fight back, people. We do what we've been doing from the-"

"Dammit, Dom, we're civilians," Mitch remarked in an uncomfortable tone. "Look at us, we're not the military, we're not even trained. We're civilians, doing what we can to make a difference."

"Right, and then someone gets killed, and you all suddenly want to back out?"

"Yes!" Al shouted. "We're not in this to get slaughtered!"

Dom stared at him. "So then you expect to make a difference by sitting in an empty room, eating shit, basking in your own self-pity."

Everyone was quiet. Jake, off in a corner, buried in shadow, shook his head. Sandra rested her head on his shoulder.

There was a very long, very uncomfortable pause. Nobody wanted to say anything any more. Nobody knew what to say.

Brian shuffled over, pointing to the container on the table. "You gunna eat that?"

*Dom ignored him. "Look, I know the commander told you to put your trust in me, and I know how hard it is to trust someone you don't even know. But John and I knew each other since the beginning. He trusted me. I'm not asking you to blindly trust me now. I just want you to put a little faith in me. We'll contact whatever of the NSF is left out there. And you're right, we're civilians. But we're not making a difference here. You can't expect to make a difference or fight for a cause without fighting. And I'm sorry if none of you are willing to do that."*"

Geo looked over to Jess.

"I'm forty five years old. I have a wife and two daughters." He hung his head, and let out a deep breath. "I'm too old for this."

Nobody said anything after that. Dead silence hung over everything.

--- --- --- ---

"Here." Gunther shambled into Joseph Manderley's UNATCO HQ office, Denton's corpse hanging over his shoulder. He flung it onto the desk like a cat would bring a dead mouse to a doorstep.

Manderley looked from his book, first up at the massive Gunther Hermann, then down at the seeping body on his desk. He shot up from his chair, eyes wide. "My God, get him out of here!"

"I thought you'd like to see it in person," Gunther said. Nano-aug humor. "Only took one shot. He was weak. He got what he deserved."

"Right, okay, and good job, agent, but please, get this thing the hell off of my desk and out of my office!"

*"Of course." He picked the body up with one hand, like it was a rag doll, carrying it back out of the room. Manderley looked down at his freshly bloodstained desk, ran one hand through his grey hair, and swore softly. Something was wrong with that man, Manderley knew it since the beginning, but he was a good agent, he got the job done. He wasn't going to suddenly abandon UNATCO for the NSF, like both Denton brothers did, so he was worth keeping. Anyone was worth keeping, now. He would recruit someone with a history of aggravated assault as long as they wouldn't just defect.*"

JC and Paul were more human than machine. That was what was wrong with them. They got confused too easily, they thought they were following the right path. That's the difference between JC and Gunther. You take JC, and what is he? He's a human, with mechanical implants. So naturally, he'll have human emotion. He sees all aspects of things, everything is carefully thought about, carefully chosen. They try to make sure they have their morals in order, and so on. But then you look at agent Hermann, and what is he? He's mostly robot. Every part of him has some kind of augmentation. What does a robot see? A robot sees reason and order. There's no emotional response; It's do-what-ordered-to-do and respond-to-current-situation-to-see-that-orders-are-carried-out. That's it. That's what made a good soldier. It wasn't emotion, it wasn't "doing the right thing." It was following orders. It was not asking questions. And that's what JC got wrong.

JC would've still been alive and well if he didn't ask any questions.

If he were more robot than human.

Manderley rocked back in his chair, suddenly aware that his eyes weren't on his book at all, but instead staring thoughtfully at the wall in front of him. Sometimes he wondered if he were doing the right thing, taking bribes straight from the pockets of Bob Page, being the insider, keeping a normally good corporation under the influence of corruption. But then he would remember: What's making me money here? Doing the right thing, or doing what I'm told to do, and not asking questions? Frankly, he didn't care how this affected anyone else. He didn't care if he was now considered a "bad guy" on the game of life. He just wanted to be able to support himself and his family. If that meant taking bribes, then he'll take bribes.

*Manderley finally returned to his book, a bit more calm and at peace than usual.*"

But Manderley did not like feeling.

Manderley was a human, but he did not feel. So under the flesh and skin and organs and blood, what was Manderley?

No more than Gunther Hermann. Machine.

--- --- --- ---

Under sagging eyelids and dry eyes, under a tired body and worn flesh, underneath everything that ever amounted into a man and managed to get erased in a split second, somewhere deep down there, in the foggy gloom, there was a man named Jaime Reyes. Jaime watched his world from a suddenly distant point of view, lights and shapes suddenly indistinct and vague. The room was suddenly sterile. Everything was less alive.

They had just towed the body of JC Denton through Jaime's medlab, so that they could take him down to the lower levels of the UNATCO building, where somewhere in some lab in the bowels of Liberty Island they'd probably disassemble his body and salvage what they could.

Jaime was a doctor. Jaime was not a murderer. He didn't want to have anything else to do with this place. It had been corrupted a long time ago, and they were all blind to it until now.

*Alex Jacobson, tall, thin guy, usually in charge of comm. equipment and other technologies Jaime didn't really understand, stood next to him… Not knowing what to do. Reyes sank down into an office chair. He felt completely helpless.*"

"We can still go to Hong Kong," Alex said, turning to leave.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. Then repeated himself: "We can still go to Hong Kong, Jaime."

Reyes frowned, crossed his arms. "How? We won't even be able to leave the building after this. And when we get to Hong Kong, we wouldn't be able to find this Tracer Tong. That's all JC gave us, Alex, a name. If he were still alive, I'm sure he would have contacted us, or had someone contact us. If there really is a Tracer Tong, and if he does what he does, it would be impossible to get within a mile of the man, let alone find where he is. We need someone that could get us in. Paul knew Tong. JC had Paul. We had JC. Now they're both gone. We can't go to Hong Kong, Alex."

Alex stood halfway across the room, back turned. He took his glasses off, wiped them off on his shirt, replaced them, turned back around… "You're wrong, Jaime. We already know who he is, where he is, and how to get to him. We have those connections."

At that moment, UNATCO pilot Jock stepped into the room and looked at them both with a blandly serious expression. It almost seemed like nobody knew how to show some kind of emotion anymore. The world turned gray.

"Jaime," Jock greeted. "I'm your pilot. I can get you to Tracer. We'll go to Hong Kong."

Maybe it was worth the risk, maybe it wasn't. But when you have nothing to lose, risk means nothing, and everything just becomes chaos and luck. You could pull a gun in public just to see how the public reacted. Nobody would care. They would just walk by. Expressionless. The whole world turned to mechanical people, mechanical values. Nothing had impact on chaos and luck. Nothing had impact when there was nothing to lose. Trying to leave UNATCO unnoticed was like trying to dodge a bullet after it's been fired at point blank range. If you're not in a movie, if you don't live in a changeable matrix of code, you can't do it. But it was the only thing you could do when you had a gun to your head at point blank besides let it fire, wasn't it? So what the hell. Leap. Maybe the hand holding the gun was a really bad shot.

*Jaime smiled. He didn't know why. "I hear there's a place called the Lucky Money."*"

### Chapter Three

**--- --- --- ---**
**CHAPTER THREE: Dead Eyes**
**--- --- --- ---**

The worker peeled piece by gooey piece from every nook and cranny of the deceased body in front of him, digging remnants of metal and augs of all kinds out from under the whitening skin, hearing bones snap and seeing the last blood the body contained ooze out like porridge. Sometimes he would have to reach a gloved hand in, dig around the intestines or other various organs manually, extracting as much as possible for recycling or even further use on another body. It was a gross job, but somebody at UNATCO had to do it.

Andreas tugged softly on another aug sample deep within the body. This one in particular had been specifically attached right to the nerves - some of them were like that, welded right into an organ or flesh. Most of them were like that. Some of them were nice and loose - the kind that were just implanted, the kind that were easy to take out. Andreas liked those. He pulled those out first every time they gave him a new body to disassemble. Then it was the attached suckers. He hated those.

He pulled at the piece some more with his tools. He'd have to sever the flesh and bone and nerves around this one, clean it out, sterilize it. But he had enough of that for the day. He'd rather filter the organic matter of the damn thing with a torch. Maybe he could borrow a flame thrower from Sam Carter. He chuckled through his surgeon's mask at the idea.

Andreas gave the piece one heavy yank. He watched the fleshy mass around it stretch to unnatural limits like pulling a slice from a hot pizza, and finally snap, splattering a bit of liquid up on his uniform. He got the aug out, but it still had a chunk of fleshy tissue hanging on it. It could be cleaned. He threw it into the pan that held the rest of the smaller, lesser gadgets and augmentations he had removed so far.

*"Now here's a Kodak moment." Malcolm Whiteman stepped up behind him, looked down at the pale and just-beginning-to-decompose corpse. "Finally got your ass kicked, eh, JC?" he jokingly asked the carcass. Andreas grinned a bit.*"

"Oh, yeah, buddy, I mean, I gotta get this thing hung on my wall. Beautiful."

"I can't believe they actually took this guy down."

"Gunther did. Hermann. You know who he reminds me of?" Whiteman took a sip from a soda can he had been holding. "Arnold Schwarzenegger."

"Schwarzenegger? Nah... Schwarzenegger is Austrian. Gunther seems more like a..." Andreas pulled another piece out the forceful way, resulting in a loud snap as the surrounding tissue broke. "Ralph Moeller. Remember? He was Hagen in that old ‘Gladiator' movie."

"'Gladiator'? I never saw that."

"Oh, come on! You don't watch those old movies? ‘Gladiator'. What's his name, Russel Crowe was in it. That movie was great."

"I don't know..." Malcolm said, looking at the floor. Then something seemed to pop into his head. "Oh, you know what I think was great? ‘Killer Zombies from Mars'! Drowning in blood was cool."

Andreas stopped and stared at him.

"What?"

"Never mind," Andreas said with a sigh. There was a pause. He extracted a scalpel from one pocket and circled around the table to the other end. He stood next to the body's head. "Want to see how I take out eye augs?"

*"That depends." Malcolm grinned a little. "Will it be as disgusting as the mess Nevarre made when JC took her out?"*"

"Yeah. Nasty. Blood all over the place. The janitors were pissed."

"That woman was a bitch anyway." Andreas plunged the scalpel down into one of the dead JC's eye sockets with a slight thuck. He started twisting the tool around a while, viscously tearing at the tissue on the sides of the socket, so that he could eventually work down to the muscle behind the eyeball. Nobody actually had the physical strength to just rip someone's eye out in one yank - You would see that in the movies all the time. Somebody would dig somebody else's eye out with a pen or something. But there's so much thick flesh and tissue holding onto an eyeball that it's just not possible without taking the time to literally saw your way through it.

Vision is augmented my ass, he thought.

"Yeah," Malcolm finally said, carefully watching Andreas's less-than-orthodox dismantling procedure. "Anna was definitely a bitch. And Gunther freaks me out, too. He seems obsessed with her or something. He got so pissed about JC fraggin' her like that that he went berserk all over the place until Dr. Reyes had to sedate him. And he's sick, too." He shifted towards the corpse. "He dragged this thing into Manderley's office and put it on his desk just for show. Both him and Anna were sick. Maybe they belong with each other. Heh. I bet they had some kind of sick little machine romance thing." He laughed. "I wonder if they ever tried to nail each other." He started laughing harder. Andreas shifted nervously, still digging and sawing at the eye. Malcolm kept rambling. "The two of ‘em… appliance porn!"

Andreas suddenly froze. Stared at Malcolm wide-eyed.

"What?" Malcolm said, smile fading.

Andreas wasn't staring at him. He was staring behind him.

*Malcolm started to turn around slowly.*"

He found himself staring into the eyes of none other than Gunther Hermann. The agent had Whiteman pinned up against the wall by his throat, holding him with one clenching fist, seething with rage, staring into him with cold eyes.

Malcolm made a gurgling noise. He realized he couldn't breath.

Gunther squeezed harder.

"I... am not... a machine." Gunther shook slightly. He looked like he was going to explode.

Malcolm made further gurgling noise, trying to respond, trying to gasp for air, felt trapped.

"You're going to kill him!" Andreas shouted from across the room, backed up against the wall, still holding his bloody scalpel. "Agent Hermann! You're going to kill him!"

Gunther paid no attention. Only squeezed harder. His metallic body resonated a livid heat, his augmented muscles tensed... For a moment, there was just a long pause. A long pause of anger and regret and worry and pain and helplessness. Just a long, breathless, dead pause. Nobody moved. Time seemed to tick by like it was stuck in slow motion. Every second that passed amplified the normally quiet tick of the clock into a blaring, monstrous thud. Every breath lingered in the air for eons.

And then with abrupt speed, everything returned in a blur.

*"GUNTHER!" Andreas yelled one last time, and Hermann finally and immediately dropped Malcolm to the floor and stared at him with big, remorseless, dead eyes. Gunther glanced down to JC's corpse.*"

They shared the same eyes. The same perspective. He and the corpse.

And then Gunther picked up the partially disassembled body with one hand and threw it through the glass window of the medlab. Broken shards and sparkles exploded into the air, suspended in time and space, then all hit the floor in a shattered, soundless opera.

The body hit a wall and collapsed.

Unmoving. Gray.

Malcolm wheezed, his windpipe finally opening after the pressure that had been applied, allowing the dull air of the facility to rush back into his lungs. He coughed, violently, spitting up blood, holding his chest as though he had an open wound.

Gunther gave him one last empty stare before stalking out of the room.

Andreas breathed a moment. Just stared into nothingness. Stared down at his blood-drenches hands. He had dropped his scalpel somewhere along the line.

Perhaps you could say that Gunther was not completely a machine. He had human in him. But he wasn't any more human than he was machine. And that human part of him was struggling to feel things - To separate itself from the machine... This was not a good thing. Gunther was only tormenting himself, and being tormented. His humanity was twisting itself in cruel ways. The man would go insane if he weren't helped.

Andreas looked at Malcolm, crumpled and hurting on the floor.

Idiot, he thought.

*--- --- --- ---*"

Maybe he should just give them time to let their emotions settle.

Maybe he was just trying to push them too hard.

He didn't know. He didn't really care, either.

Whatever Hollywood tells you, whatever you see on the screen, whatever the media invents or you see in the next issue of National Enquirer magazine, there are no heroes. There are winners and there are losers. But they're all ordinary guys.

Dominic was not a hero. Dominic was just a guy with a cynical view on the world.

He could stare out on the city all he wanted. He could put bullets in as many heads as he wanted. He could jump around in slow motion wearing an overcoat, dodging bullets like raindrops in a storm. He could even wear a cape and give himself a stupid name.

That wouldn't make him a hero. He could still die, just like everybody else.

But it was his job to take a bunch of ordinary people and fight a bunch of other ordinary people for their cause. All those bureaucrats and killer suits out there were just fleshy masses called people, too. Even the augmented ones. Even JC Denton.

Even JC Denton wasn't a hero. He could die just like everyone else.

*And he did.*"

And that side could hide behind their desks and their stupid ties and their armies of goons all they wanted. But they were just ordinary people. They thought they had limitless power. They didn't. All it takes is a bullet fired in the right direction and boom, it's all over. They don't seem to get that. They take everything they have for granted and try to take everything they don't have and then take that for granted too.

Idiots. All of them.

Anyone who thought he was better than someone else was an idiot. Anyone who thought he ran the world was an idiot. They would kill themselves with their own ignorance.

Dom yawned. He was tired all the time. It was getting late, but that didn't matter. He was tired all the time because his sleep schedule hardly even existed. He would rest whenever he could, which was not often, and at sporadic times.

He turned around, meaning to head downstairs, back into the building, when he saw Jess standing in the doorway. She was looking at him.

"Want something?" Dominic asked, pulling a cigarette from one pocket and a lighter from the other. He put the cigarette in his mouth and clicked the lighter, once, twice, each time emitting a fluorescent glow that broke the surrounding blackness.

"You smoke?" she said.

*"Not really." He looked at the pack of cigarettes in his hand. He'd been going through a pack a day.*"

"Don't." He turned around and leaned on the railing again. There was a long pause.

"Dom," she said, walking across the gravel rooftop to him. "I know you're having trouble dealing with the squad. They don't understand you. They don't know you."

"I know."

"You ask them to put their trust in you... And then all you do is push them away."

Dominic shook his head. He released a breath of smoke into the air. It curled away like it had a mind of its own.

"You also keep telling them we need to do something," she continued, "but then you do just what they're doing."

"Which is what?"

"Sitting around, feeling sorry for themselves."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Look, Jess, I'll tell you this once. I don't feel sorry for myself. I don't feel sorry for anyone else, either. Don't try to get to know me. Don't try to feel sorry for me. What you can do right now is leave me the hell alone."

Jess stared at him for a while. "Bullshit."

"Good for it. Go away."

"Bullshit, Dom." She started walking back to the building.

"And tell the guys we're moving tomorrow," he shouted after her.

*She gave him the finger and disappeared back into the building.*"

Tough girl. Beautiful, too. Not too many of those. He liked that.

--- --- --- ---

Jaime was nervous.

They were leaving for Hong Kong the next day. Jock, Alex, and himself had been formulating a plan for how to slip away as quickly as possible. It'll be a piece of cake, Jock told them, as long as we have our timing right. Slip out before they have a chance the lock onto the chopper and things'll be fine. As long as nobody gets suspicious or they don't have any heads up about or departure, it'll be a piece of cake.

Pretending not to be nervous was not a piece of cake.

I could use some chocolate cake right now, Jaime thought.

Reyes did not handle stress well. It was visible. He wore it like a suit. He wasn't nervous for himself, really, he was nervous for Jock and Alex. Jaime was taking a public flight to Hong Kong, so he was really out of the danger zone. But Jock and Alex... they had to leave in the chopper. Alex could've taken a public flight, he just insisted on going with Jock. Jaime didn't understand him.

Jaime also did not like taking risks.

"Doctor?"

Reyes snapped back to reality and looked at the eyes of the patient he was treating. He felt dazed. He had lost himself in his train of thought for a moment.

"Sorry..." Jaime murmured.

*"You okay, doc? You don't look so good. Maybe you should see a doctor."*"

"Oh."

Jaime looked down at his hands. They shook visibly.

"Doc? You sure you're okay?" The soldier glared at his hands curiously.

*"Sorry," Jaime murmured, burying them in his coat.*"

### Chapter Four

**--- --- --- ---**
**CHAPTER FOUR: Blood and Tears**
**--- --- --- ---**

"He's gone, sir." Corporal Collins stepped into Manderley's office, with less than welcome. Manderley was startled - he swiveled in his chair, paused a moment, then snapped his attention back to the holographic man hovering over the stout generator tucked into a small nook in the wall. It was a device used for communication - A visual telephone. Collins noticed the figure and tried to make out who it was, but the image flickered and disappeared before he had the chance. "I'm, uh, sorry, sir."

A vain in Manderley's head began to pulsate. "Corporal. Make this quick."

Collins swallowed. Manderley had a reputation for his anger fits. "Dr. Reyes, sir. He's gone."

Manderley looked at him for a moment. "What do you mean, 'gone'?"

"He was supposed to be in his office today, sir. He's been gone the whole day. I've looked around the entire compound. Nothing, sir. Nobody knows where he is. It's like he just... vanished."

Manderley blinked. There was an awkward pause.

*"Collins," he said finally, "You know damn well we've already taken care of this. Employees don't just vanish. We've taken precautions. Put them to use. And if you're still too inept to find him, then search the building again, search the island, hell, search the entire city of New York. Just find him and bring him back. But don't come bursting in on me like this ever again. You hear me, Corporal? I have important business to attend to. More important than your problems, or your job, or your life. Don't come pestering me every time you can't find Dr. Reyes because he's taking a leak in the restroom."*"

He lingered in the doorway a moment before moving.

"Out!"

"Sir." Collins immediately slipped out into the hall.

Manderley sighed. He lifted a tissue and wiped his forehead. Surrounded by incompetence, he thought. I'm completely surrounded. He turned his chair back to the holographic display and re-activated it. The figure popped back into view.

"Sorry about that, Simons," he commented.

--- --- --- ---

Jaime Reyes sat nervously in his seat on the 747, row 7, seat A, near the window. Departing for Hong Kong. And twitchy as hell.

The coffee hadn't helped. Neither did his unspoken fear of flying.

Neither did his worries about getting his equipment through customs in Hong Kong.

A flight attendant rolled a cart stacked with drinks up to his side, and looked at him, querying silently. If Jaime drank alcohol, he wouldn't even hesitate to demand a glass brim-full of it. But he didn't drink alcohol. Not ever. Canned beer was disgusting to him. No scotch, no vodka, not even wine. Soda, to him, was almost worse. It didn't quench your thirst. It just further dehydrated you.

*Water. He asked for water. Healthiest drink on the planet, he thought.*"

Jaime became suddenly aware that he was sweating more profusely than before. He felt warm. He pulled his collar out with one finger.

Reyes leaned back to the window. The world was getting smaller, still. Things blackened. The planet got impossibly far away. Stars glimmered in view. The world vanished. Gone, lost in space. Higher than imaginable.

It got hotter still.

The plane sagged. Colors slid down the walls like wet paint. Everything moved in impossibly slow motion. A stewardess walked by, each step amplified to a tremendous, booming crash. Every tick of Jaime's watch pierced the air like nails in the back of his neck.

And hotter still.

The hulls of the plane began to suck themselves in. Walls were stretched towards each other like chunks of elastic rubber. The ceiling drooped. Pools of dripping color formed on the floor. People were frozen in place. Somewhere in the back of the plane, a baby cried.

Darkness out the windows.

Hotter still.

*His watch boomed.*"

I'm hallucinating.

--- --- --- ---

Gunther glared inside the holding cells from the shadows.

Two of them.

Alex Jacobson and the pilot, Jock. Both unconscious in one of the cells.

A troop walked over to Gunther. "Figures they'd try something stupid, huh, Agent?"

Gunther only acknowledged the statement with a stiff tightening of muscles. He didn't change his fixated glance. He didn't speak. Just stood and stared, breathing heavily in the shadows.

"Word is we just got the third one. Reyes. Caught him on a plane departing from the airport. Almost missed him, too. Right on time. Those bugs we planted really worked."

Gunther did not move.

The guard looked at the agent, raised one eyebrow, shrugged, and then walked away.

Gunther Hermann was losing himself.

--- --- --- ---

*Static. For a long while, there was nothing but static. After a moment, Dominic thought he heard rustling in the background. Then voices. Finally, the man on the other end of the line returned.*"

Dominic didn't really know how to respond to that. "Status is... Crew is in tact. One casualty... our commander. He was shot in the escape. I was left in charge. We've been hiding ourselves in warehouses since. Anywhere we can get away from UNATCO."

The NSF man on the other end sighed. "Like beaten dogs," he remarked. Dominic flinched. Of all the NSF out there he could've contacted, he had to end up with this guy. People with the it-has-no-direct-impact-on-my-life-and-therefore-does-not-matter point of view irritated him infinitely.

Suddenly, the static interfered. The noise spurted up over the other guy's voice.

"Hold on - ... -Trying to- ... -frequency is- ... -noise- ..."

Whatever the guy was trying to say wasn't coming through. Bishop swore under his breath and adjusted the radio. It just made it worse.

"Damnit," he said, giving the radio a forlorn glance. Then he just lowered his brow and stared at it like it would respond.

It continued to resonate null noises.

Dom started to push himself up out of his chair and go back to the main room of the warehouse, where the rest of the squad resided. But the radio spouted a clumsy noise. It was difficultly distant, and barely recognizable, but it was there.

Dom blinked. He looked at the radio a moment.

Nothing.

*But then, again, it made the noise. It sounded like the guy on the other end was starting to clear up again. It was a voice. A chattering voice.*"

It was not the same voice.

This voice was shifting, was robotic, was skipping and fluttering and changing pitch and speed and tune. It sounded electronic. It was babbling incoherently, trying to separate word from word, an odd process, twitchy and inhuman. Like a child learning to speak all at once. It slowly formed a sentence, chattering mechanically, syllables into words.

"D-D-D-D-Dominic... Bisho-o-p," it sang. The voice fluttered again, the static re-emerged, then was quieted... The voice struggled. Struggled furiously. It almost seemed desperate.

"Dominic," it said, shaky and uncertain. Then "Dominic," again, in a much lower pitch.

Bishop stood. Stunned.

"Dominic Bishop," it said again, now more of a statement than a question.

"Hello?" was the first thing to slip out of Dom's mouth.

"I require you to perform a task."

Silence. It seemed to wait for an answer.

"What?"

"I r-require you to perform a task," it repeated, voice glitching, pitch jumping. This was not a human voice.

"Who are you?"

*"Not important. The task."*"

"You are going to break into UNATC-C-CO headquarters."

Bishop's heart thudded in his chest for a split second. What the hell? he thought. Break into UNATCO? ...Jesus... What the hell? Who the hell?

Silence.

The faint sound of a confused breeze, confused breathing, and remote static.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Dominic insisted. He didn't know what was going on, but he didn't want to be left out in this thing's little game.

The voice was quiet for a moment. The static sputtered. Then it faded completely.

Nothing but the breeze.

And then the most terrible sensation hit Dominic Bishop square in the forehead. A tremendous, blinding pain, his ears rang like mad, his head felt like it was going to explode and paint the walls crimson. He uncontrollably dropped to his knees before he could even think, act, do anything. He grabbed at his head, desperately. He clenched his teeth. Terrible sensation! The ringing proceeded. God!

No change. Pain. Surging pain. Explicit and raw. No breaks. He lost his vision. Everything blared bright white. His senses flooded with an unstopping, unforgiving, unimaginable hurting.

*The voice eventually began again. It was louder than the ringing. It shook Dom's body with every syllable, every word causing his body to flinch. Every sound pronounced, another violent, aching shiver of pain spread through his body.*"

Dominic was suddenly brutally tossed to the wall, slammed against it, hard, bone snapped, he screamed, the blinding light continued, the noise, the suffering, no end, no escape, no control, helpless.

He was tossed again. Hit a wall. His ribs snapped.

"There is no escape from my demands."

Thrown again. Smashed the table, the radio. His knee shattered. Blinding brightness. Noise. Pain. Boiling down to basics. Sensation. Instinct. Reaction.

"I cannot be ignored. Do not think I have no control."

Thrown again. He couldn't see. He felt his head hit a ledge, or a doorway, or something. He didn't feel anything else, because his neck broke with an audible snap.

He crumpled to the floor.

And instantly, the blinding was gone.

The pain was gone. He couldn't feel anything anymore. His spine was severed.

Completely broken.

He could see. Everything returned to normal. Everything disturbingly peaceful. The sound of a light wind. No voices. No more voices.

*The moon shone serenely through a window.*"

He was alone.

Utterly alone.

*Everything darkened.*"

### Chapter Five

**--- --- --- ---**

Jaime Reyes sat on the single stiff cot planted in the cell he'd been thrown in. He couldn't do anything in that room. The walls were bare concrete, a single drainage grate, too small for anything to fit through, was on the floor. One window, through which he could only see another cell, the one that Jock and Alex Jacobson were both in. The thick metallic door was completely impenetrable, and the one small mirror on the wall he had already reluctantly smashed to use as a means of looking through the window, around the corner.

They had been deserted for hours. Every time he inched up to the window and held the shattered piece of glass in front of him, all he'd see would be an unoccupied desk and a single swivel chair that never had anyone in it.

Reyes still clenched the mirror shard in his right hand. His left shook uncontrollably. His clothes were dampening with sweat. He knew it was a bad idea to begin with. He knew they'd get caught.

Jock stared at him from the other cell.

He looked down at the grate on the floor. Something dark had stained and dried around it. Old blood.

Jaime sucked in a breath and stood up. He started pacing around the cell. Cement. Concrete. Metal. He was claustrophobic. He leaned up against one wall, breathing heavily. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. He felt like he was going to have a heart attack if he didn't do something.

*Something tapped on the window. He turned his head.*"

"You shouldn't have tried it, Jaime. Manderley got paranoid when JC broke out and tried to blow the joint. Every one of us got bugged. Manderley didn't want anymore... valiant escapes. Figures the three of you would've been on Denton's side."

Jaime didn't say anything. He just turned around and looked at the floor.

"Doesn't matter now," the trooper said. "They're both dead."

Jesus, Jaime thought. They got Paul. They killed him.

"You're lucky we only drugged you and tucked you away into a comfy cell instead of letting Gunther beat your head in," he remarked.

Reyes stared at him. He clenched the shattered piece of mirror forcefully.

The small door flung shut. Footsteps were heard fading away.

Jock had vanished from his window.

Jaime Reyes was once again alone.
--- --- --- ---

Dominic stood up.

At that moment, he probably wouldn't be able to tell you his name. Where he lived. What city he was in. His birthday.

*The velocity of a fired bullet varies between 600 and 5000 feet per second.*"

But did it really happen?

He was in the same room he remembered passing out in. The radio to his right crackled with static. It haunted him.

Dominic didn't think he had a single memory that seemed more real than that one.

Somebody called his name. It was distant; muffled. He didn't respond. His body was confused; being sent signals that it couldn't interpret. Everything was still hazy and incomplete.

He heard his name again.

Everything was back to normal.

He looked. Jess stood in the doorway.

"Dominic, what the hell happened to you?"

He blinked. Looked down at his clothing. He was covered with blood. Looked back up at Jess.

*"Is that your blood?"*"

He still didn't say anything. He just walked up to her. Stood very, very close. Stared at her with the most abandoned, forlorn, empty look she'd ever seen in her life... And then slipped past and vanished into the next room.

Jess stood in the doorway, unmoving, completely stunned.

--- --- --- ---

Garrett sat at the desk at the entrance to the cell block. Paperwork. Things to sign and forms to fill about the prisoners, so that they could end up on Manderley's desk, unread, because he already knew everything about them, but it was part of the job, and the papers had to exist for the men in black suits that brushed in and out of Joseph Manderley's office on occasion, just because that's the way it was.

*Garrett sighed, put his pen down, leaned back in his chair... Grabbed the coffee mug on the table, had a sip. He looked at Agent Hermann over the top of the mug. Gunther had been standing in the cell block all day. Just staring at the prisoners.*"

And vicious cycles, regardless of their names, always end. More often in a very, very bad way than a good one. A vicious cycle would stretch itself so thin, that it would snap. Like a rubber band being pulled to its limits.

This is exactly what happened when Garrett, the UNATCO trooper, the man with a wife and three children whom he loved, with dreams that he had accomplished, with things that he approved of and things that he did not, a man with his own beliefs and absolutely nothing that the world could possible hold against him, walked over to Gunther Hermann to ask, "are you okay, Agent? Would you like anything?"

*But Garrett would never get to finish that statement, because the moment he opened his mouth, Gunther Hermann's vicious cycle finally came to a kicking, screaming, burning, halting, murdering end, and something in his head finally snapped, and before he knew what he was doing, he had UNATCO trooper Garrett's head pressed up against the window of Alex Jacobson's cell, using only one metallic arm, clenching down on the man's head like it were the world between his fingers.*"

And this is what happened as Alex Jacobson and Jock watched from inside his cell. Watched as Gunther Hermann pressed the body of Garrett up against the window. Watched as the trooper's head exploded into a red mess, regardless of his helmet, completely soundless. Gunther dropped the crumpled body onto the floor. Fresh blood oozed down the glass.

Complete. Dead. Silence.

Gunther stared at his drenched hands. He looked up at Alex. Said nothing. Made no motions. Breathed heavily. Alex stood in disbelief. Mouth hanging open. Eyes full of soundless shock. Jock swore quietly.

Jaime, in the other cell, turned around to vomit.

Gunther Hermann left the building.
--- --- --- ---

Dom stepped into the room. His entire squad was bored. Didn't know what to do. Did the same nothing every day. Wanting to see their families, but not allowing themselves to. Feeling too lost.

"Go home," Dom said.

Everyone stared at him.

*"Everybody go home. Visit the people you want to visit. You don't have to be a part of this anymore. Things are going to get dangerous. I want you to go home. All of you."*"

"Leave. Now."

People started to get up, reluctantly. Puzzled. Jess walked in, looked at what was going on.

"What's going on, Dominic?" she asked, quivering. "Tell me what the hell is going on. Tell me what happened to you."

"I am going to break into UNATCO headquarters," he said without looking at her. "And you are going to help me."

She blinked. "What?"

"UNATCO. I'm breaking in."

"You're insane."

"Probably."

She laughed, cynically, completely embarrassed and confused with Dominic. "Fine. Go ahead. Break into UNATCO. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. We'll all go home, if that's what you want. You never wanted this from the beginning. You don't want it now. Some leader you turned out to be, you idiot."

Dom turned, grabbed her by the shoulders, pressed her against the wall.

*"I am serious, Jess, God dammit! I feel like I'm going insane! I can't tell you why I'm doing this! I don't know why! But I'm doing it! And I want all of them to go home while I still have a shred of my mind left in my body! They don't want to be a part of this! I'm not going to make them a part of something so fucking stupid! I need to do this!"*"

"Brian! You, come here! Everybody else, go home!"

Everyone got different looks on their faces. Disgust, annoyance, confusion. But they all left. They didn't care anymore. They didn't want a leader like Dominic, they were completely disturbed by him. And now they would all go home and feel like their fight for everything the NSF believed in was worthless, and think that Dominic was complete trash, but everything in the world was screwed over enough as it was, and nothing really made sense anymore. All Dom knew was this. He wasn't thinking straight. He couldn't. He was following a voice in his head, a gut instinct, a very small shred of hope.

"Dominic, please-" Jess started.

"No, stop. You're not listening to me. I'm doing this with or without you. But I need you."

Brian stepped over, puzzled. "What?"

"You're coming with me too."

Brian shrugged. "What?"

"We're breaking into UNATCO."

Jess lost it. She hit Dominic in the face as hard as she possibly could.

Dom stumbled backwards. He stared at Jess.

*Dominic walked over to her. Stared at her with that completely empty, forlorn look he had before. "I know this sounds completely insane. It is. I know you don't understand. You don't need to understand. I am going to do this, whether you like it or not. It is the last thing left in my head. The last hope I have. You can help me or not. But I'm doing this."*"

Jess looked at Brian, then back at Dom. She shook her head softly. "You're right, Dominic, I don't understand what you're talking about. Truthfully, I think you're completely insane. I think what you're talking about is stupid. And I know that if I help you, I will one day regret it."

Dominic didn't say anything.

"I'll help. But just because I'm afraid of you getting yourself killed if you don't."

He nodded.

"When are we doing this?" Brian asked, seemingly completely unshaken by all of this.

Dominic turned around and walked out of the room.

*"Right now," he answered.*"

### Chapter Six

**--- --- --- ---**

"This," Joseph Manderley began, staring at the wall before him, avoiding eye contact with his prisoners, "has been a most... interesting experience. Our billion-dollar experiment defects, and gets flushed down the toilet. So, naturally, we tie up all his loose ends... Which would be you three, apparently... Perhaps more, but if there's anyone else, they'll be caught soon enough... You were all tracked, you see. We were watching you rather closely. Two of you try to leave via unscheduled helicopter flight. One is caught... Drugged, actually... on an unscheduled flight to Hong Kong. The cattle are rounded up back to their pens, and everything seems to be under control." He paused for a moment.

Alex Jacobson watched Manderley closely through the glass window in the concrete wall between them. Jock looked at the floor, thoughtfully. He tensed.

Jaime massaged the back of his neck, sitting in his cell, across the hall.

Manderley took a sip of water from a glass he held in his right hand. He glanced down at his watch... Then continued his stare at the wall.

"But of course it isn't. That's just not possible, is it?" He slipped out a twisted chuckle. "No. Then one of our best agents has to go apeshit and paint the walls with his colleague's head. Hermann's gone. We don't know where the hell he went." Manderley now seemed to be talking more to himself than to the prisoners. "Vanished. Blocked us from tracing him. We'd hit his killswitch, but so much money... We've lost so much money already, maybe we could... If we could just salvage this one..."

*Manderley trailed off. He stared blankly at the wall. A bead of sweat hung on his chin, then detached, and fell to the ground in slow motion.*"

Manderley suddenly turned and hurled his glass of water at the cell window. The glass shattered, and water spread limply across the window and floor. Manderley stood uncomfortably for a moment, then chuckled sickly again, and straightened his tie. Suddenly his expression became very grim.

"Someone has to sweep this God damned coalition back together," he said.

**--- --- --- ---**

After the NSF invasion, Liberty Island turned into a crime scene. Nobody was allowed on it, not even UNATCO troops. UNATCO Headquarters was the only active place on the isle, and even then, things become much more security-stricken.

This was good news and bad news for Dominic Bishop and his squad of two, Brian and Jess. This meant breaking onto Liberty Island would be much easier, because the area was empty save for the occasional group of suits and troopers. However, this also meant that breaking into UNATCO HQ would be much more difficult.

*Of course, by now, one might expect to have a motive for committing such a dangerous feat. Dominic did not. All he knew was some kind of presence... Something about him felt different, like he expected an alien to burst out of his stomach at any moment. This presence wanted him to break into UNATCO. This presence could hurt him if he did not. This presence practically controlled his body as though it had a remote, and was sitting somewhere, hidden behind a bush, playing with Dominic like he were a toy robot. Yet it was not a physical presence... It was a mental tumor, a black cloud inside his head. Part of him, yet something alien, something dangerous about it. It sickened him. It aroused fear.*"

Brian wanted to do it just because he thought it'd be cool. Jess didn't want to do it, but she didn't want to leave Dom to get himself killed.

So they, a mighty group of fools as they were, scrambled out of their boat, and plunged into the frowning ocean, surrounding themselves with the cool liquid. They swam, one by one, and carefully climbed out onto the dock - The very same one, coincidentally, that JC had, so long ago, met his brother on, at the beginning of our Deus Ex saga.

The three of them were clad in black, equipped with the best gear they had at their disposal. They joined with the shadow, engulfed in it, becoming part of the night, undetectable, untouchable. They made their way along the barren island, and eventually found themselves at the wall surrounding the beast, UNATCO Headquarters.

It was time to take the most difficult test of their lives as of then.

It began with getting in. The doors of the facility were impenetrable from the outside. One could be buzzed in by someone watching through the security cameras, or the doors could be opened using a button on the wall inside the facility, but there was no exterior means of breaching them.

*The security cameras lining the facility used a rather primitive automatic technology. Certain identities and uniforms were coded in to be recognized as friendly, and everything else was foe. If a camera detected an unfriendly presence, it would examine the given person more closely, and then set the alarms. If that person were to escape from the camera's view before it did that, however, the camera would eventually forget that presence, and reset back to its slow, brainless rotations. UNATCO soldiers were, indeed, assigned to watch the camera viewscreens, though nobody really wanted to. It felt unnecessary, and was just another burden upon the troop's current jobs.*"

One must also account the guards outside of the compound. There were two of them standing at the gate - Which, by the way, was no threat whatsoever, because the brick walls could be scaled, avoiding the gate altogether. From Dominic's current location, no other sentries could be seen.

UNATCO Headquarters was well protected. There was no other means of entry. Any ventilation shafts were conveniently too small for entry, and no "back door" was present. This meant that Dominic's party would have to enter through the front doors, despite all security threats mentioned, get past the guard at the front desk, and pass into the facility. Where to go from there... Dom left that up to the black cloud in his forehead.

**--- --- --- ---**

"Really?" Paul laughed enthusiastically, flicking the lit stub of his spent cigarette onto the pavement ground. "She actually said that to you? To your face?"

His friend, Sam, blushed, and nodded. "Yeah. She said that."

"What'd you do? What'd you say to her?"

"I don't know. Stood there for a bit. Just in shock, you know? Then, I... Well, I said..."

"What? What?!"

"Well, I said, ‘You're not my mother, damnit.' And then walked away."

*" ‘You're not my mother'? Oh, God!" Paul laughed hysterically. "That is so lame!"*"

...Right?

Suddenly there was a noise. A repeated chirp. It was the security camera above the front doors of the compound. Sam and Paul halted their conversation and stared at the camera.

It looked off to the left, its right, straining as far as it could turn.

Nothing could be seen in the shadow around the corner of the small building. A soft wind rustled through the grass.

"Well that's friggin' creepy," Paul said, looking back towards Sam...

Who was suddenly pinned against the gate by his neck, two dark hands clamped around his throat, pulling him violently. He struggled for air. It was difficult, because he was, at the time, both high and drunk.

"Jesus!" Paul shouted, not knowing what to do. Then, with a swift dark movement in the corner of his eye and a soft thud against the back of his head, he lost consciousness.

Sam was let go from the steel grip of his attacker, and then the shadow that had clubbed Paul over the head seized him, and he fell.

The two unconscious bodies were dragged out of sight.

*The security camera reset, turning back to its routine rotations. It saw nothing further other than the original figure that had distracted it.*"

**--- --- --- ---**

A heavy knock came at the door, disturbing Private Lloyd's newspaper-reading. He looked up to his monitor, and stared at the viewscreen for the camera above the front doors.

A figure in a UNATCO uniform stepped backwards, into the view of the camera, and held up an empty box of cigarettes. Lloyd frowned, mumbled something about Paul's ridiculous addiction, and reached one hand under his desk to push the button for unlatching the doors.

He then turned back to his paper.

"You know, Paul, you might as well just bring forty packs out there with you tomorrow," Lloyd said cynically. "I'm not letting you in for that crap next time."

Lloyd paused for a moment, then realized he hadn't actually heard anyone enter the room. He turned and looked at the front door. It hung open, but nobody entered.

"You coming in or not?" Lloyd shouted. "I'm not gunna play games with you, Paul."

There was no answer.

"Man, are you guys drunk again?" Lloyd rose from his seat and stomped over the smooth, tiled floor to the front doors. Once he reached them, he remembered no more than a sharp pain on the back of his head, and then blackness.

**--- --- --- ---**

*"This is too easy," Brian remarked after Dom had dragged the body of Private Lloyd out onto the grass. "This is way too easy. Are these people really idiots?"*"

He still couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't in control of his own body. He felt like he could dodge bullets. He'd been moving more stealthily, and been more agile than he could ever remember being before. It disturbed him greatly. And on top of all of it, he sensed a looming presence of danger somewhere ahead. He had a very bad feeling about all of it.

Spontaneously, he snapped to attention, and stood upright. He turned to Brian, and said, with a very odd tone, "I'm sure there's much more in store for us inside. The games, after all, have just begun."

He then proceeded to bolt across the UNATCO HQ lobby, letting the security camera there momentarily spot him, and reset.

Brian followed shortly afterwards. Just as he entered through the doorway he could hear Jess mutter something about Dominic not acting right.

**--- --- --- ---**

Yet another UNATCO servant dwelled along the path of Dominic's invasion. This particular one was stationed at the retinal scanner, his desk sitting in that tiny secured room behind the glass window. His job was to make sure nobody entered the compound that wasn't supposed to, and to occasionally glance at the camera viewscreens before him, through which he had views of the lobby above, and the front doors outside of the compound.

*This soldier had been bouncing a rather worn tennis ball against the wall, catching it again, and throwing it again, when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that the guard who were supposed to be stationed at the gate outside, and in the lobby, were seemingly... missing. Entirely gone from their posts.*"

**--- --- --- ---**

Sarah was six years old. It was her birthday that day, and her grandparents, who lived in New York City, wanted to see her. Naturally, it was easier for her and her mother to come to her grandparents than for her grandparents to come to her, so on they went, booking a flight to LaGuardia Airport.

When they arrived at their destination, they picked up their luggage, and decided the easiest way from the airport to Sarah's grandparents' apartment would be the subway. That's where they are now, riding along through the stretching tunnels beneath the streets and buildings of Manhattan.

Being six years old, sitting calmly and quietly was not an easy thing for Sarah to do. Eventually, she abandoned her mother, and found herself wandering through the crowds of strange people.

Sarah did not like this. She now regretted leaving her mother, and searched desperately for her. She followed one woman into the next car, but she was not the woman Sarah was looking for.

Eventually, this six year old girl found herself in the last car on the train, staring awkwardly up at its only occupant: A large man, sitting in the last seat, his hands over his face, curled up, weeping. Sarah gawked at the monstrous man for a moment, then ran quickly away into the previous train car, shrieking.

Gunther Hermann looked up from his hands at the frightened girl.

*Sarah disappeared into the flood of bystanders.*"

*The games had just begun.*"

### Chapter Seven

**--- --- --- ---**

Jock sat in his cell. Probing his mind. Searching for questions and answers. Remembering all the bits and pieces of possible conspiracies he'd ever learned. Suddenly trying to fit them together, as though he now had the missing piece that would complete the Big Picture. Then he wandered to escape.

His mind fell blank.

Then the alarm sounded.

--- --- --- ---

"Jesus!" Jess yelled, backing against a wall, staring at the crumpled body on the floor. It oozed a growing red puddle. "Dom! Shit! You didn't need to shoot him!"

Dominic still held the gun with both hands. Still pointed the smoking barrel at the fresh corpse. Then he swiveled around, looked at Jess... and winced. Some sudden look of struggle flashed through his eyes, and then his face blanked from all expression again.

The guard who had been sitting at the station just down the stairs and inside UNATCO HQ was the one sprawled across the floor, newly dead.

Just before he was shot he had said into his radio, "We might have a situation here."

Somebody deeper in the compound heard the faint gunshot, put two and two together, and sounded the alarm.

*The guard's eyes stared up at the ceiling.*"

"Let's go," Dom said, in a deadpan voice.

**--- --- --- ---**

Manderley was sitting in his office. He jumped out of his chair and stormed out into the next room.

"What the hell is going on, Janis?" he bellowed at his secretary.

"I don't know, sir," she said, wide-eyed. "I think... something's very wrong."

**--- --- --- ---**

"Let's go!" the lead UNATCO troop shouted at the other three. "Let's move!"

They bolted up the stairs and towards the single glass door leading to where the gunshot had sounded from, all of them locking and loading their weapons as they ran.

The lead trooper reached for the handle...

And before he knew what was going on, the glass exploded in front of him, shards of all sizes bursting all over the room, slicing his body. The floor hit him in the back of the head. Then there was the sound of thunder, and he didn't draw another breath.

*Dominic, splattered with fresh speckles of blood, did not hesitate to shoot at the other troops after diving through the door at the first one. He rose one arm - Pointed the 10mm pistol at the first guard he saw - And squeezed. As he dove to his right immediately after that - Feeling bullets fly so close past his head that his skull vibrated - he watched the soldier's head cave in as the bullet tore through it.*"

Dom fired again. The bullet pierced the man's neck. He gurgled, spouted a stream of fluid as he attempted to say or yell something, and then stumbled against a banister, toppling over it, and fell.

The fourth remaining guard's face burnt with anger. He furiously sprayed a line of bullets, but Dom was gone before a single one of them even hit the floor.

The guard bolted towards the staircase Dom had fled down - Tore around the corner - And stopped dead when his knee exploded.

He stood there for a moment, looked down at his splintered kneecap... Then back up at Dom, who stood at the bottom of the stairs, pointing his gun upwards.

Dom's hands shook. He breathed heavily. He suddenly hated himself. Then he fired again, and the fourth guard went down.

Dom heard a door open to his right - He whirled to face it, and there was Joseph Manderley, leaning out of his office, staring down the hallway at him.

Then time slowed down. The image of Joseph Manderley's face burned in Dom's vision, pressed itself into Dom's memory. Suddenly Bishop remembered something he once heard a bum say - A homeless man who thought himself as part of the NSF... "Now all I need's a rifle," he said, "and then it's just me and Satan... Yes, Satan... One last look into the devil's red eyes..."

"YOU!" Dominic screamed as time sped up again. He lurched toward's Manderley, who quickly popped back into his office.

*Another guard suddenly burst out of a conference room door right in front of Dom, spilling out into the narrow hallway.*"

And felt someone else's barrel press against the back of his head.

"FREEZE!" the voice screamed. "PUT THE GOD DAMN GUN ON THE FLOO-"

The voice ended with a gunshot, a splatter, and a gurgle. Dominic took this signal to go ahead and shoot the guy in front of you, so he shot. Four times. The guard never had a chance. He crumpled.

Dom turned around. The soldier that was behind him was a mess on the floor. Bishop glanced up the stairs. Jess stood there, the barrel of her gun emitting a wisp of smoke.

She had a hurt look in her eyes. A very hurt look.

Dominic looked down at the dead rookie in front of him, and once again reflected on how much he currently hated himself.

Then, just as he was before - Driven by something alien, piloted, feeling like a puppet on strings, he forced himself down the corridor. Manderley stared at him in awe as Dom passed by his office. He turned to his secretary.

"Janis," he said, mouth hanging slightly open. "Who, in all fiery hell, is that?"

"I don't know, sir," she said, wide-eyed.

**--- --- --- ---**

*When a coalition's four best agents are eliminated, things go wrong. Paul Denton defects. JC Denton defects. Anna Nevarre is blown up. Gunther Hermann loses his sanity. What is the coalition left with? Rookies and grunts. Security at UNATCO Headquarters had become a joke - A boy in third grade making good use of his imagination. "You can't get into my base," he would say, referring to his cardboard-box that he had scribbled "Home Base" on with a red crayon. "It's mine. Go get your own base."*"

The maimed and bleeding bodies in the hall made him gag. He felt as though he were going to vomit, but his rage kept him from faltering. Manderley jogged down the stairs, finding a few more similarly disfigured bodies along the way. He followed the sound of gunshots to the now dusty Agent Nevarre's office, and then to the prison.

There he found the three culprits, standing around other bodies.

"This is ABSURD!" he screamed.

The three black-garbed figures turned and looked at him, two of them holding pointed guns. Manderley didn't care. He was already well down the road Gunther had gone down.

"This is INSANE!" he shouted again. "How is this possible? How did this happen? Why does God find humor in watching me take it up the ass every chance something can possible go wrong? Look at you people. Three of you. Three of you destroy this. Everything. Three of you kill SO GOD DAMN MANY OF US! Three of you make this mess."

He spontaneously laughed.

"And now you feel the need to point your guns at me. Oh. Oh, you've done enough damage. I don't care. You're here for the prisoners, right? Take them. TAKE THEM! They're a nuisance. This company is a nuisance to me. Life is a nuisance to me. You don't have to kill me. Let me do it."

With that, Joseph Manderley swiftly turned his gun to his chin, and blew a good portion of his head halfway across the room.

Jess turned away from the sight.

*Dominic and Brian stared. Dom slowly lowered his gun.*"

The three of them became aware of how quiet the entire compound was. The only thing that disturbed the silence was the soft whirring of the fans.

The compound was painted. The compound was murdered.

Dominic dropped his gun. It hit the floor with an ominously loud thud.

He looked down at his hands.

They never looked so unclean.

**--- --- --- ---**

Minutes later a helicopter would arrive at UNATCO. Men in black suits would step out, and discover the first of the bodies.

The compound would be swarming with UNATCO soldiers who had been out on assignment within minutes. The mess would be exposed. The discord revealed. The prisoners gone. The culprits gone.

Word would be leaked. The story would be crawling all over every news station, channel, and show within minutes.

At that time Dominic, Jess, and Brian would be sitting in the warehouse they had originally come from, with their new friends, Jock, Alex, and Jaime.

They would be sitting in silence. Their occasional glances would pierce Dominic's consciousness.

*Dominic's head would hang towards the floor. His mind would be furious and lost. His senses would be flooded as they digested everything that had gone so fast. All of the things he had just done.*"

All the while, in the back of his head, he could hear something. Some distant voice, whispering, haunting him, saying, "This will do nicely. This will do very nicely." He wanted to reach out and strangle that voice - To wring every last bit of life from it. To destroy it, and be himself again. He wanted to cleanse whatever devilry plagued his mind. But he couldn't. He felt very helpless, sitting there and listening to the back of his mind, his conscious, and himself all at once.

Jess had lost the Dominic she knew.

Dominic had lost the Dominic he knew.

**--- --- --- ---**

"Earlier tonight," the news reporter said, her voice faintly resonating from the television, "three unidentified assailants broke into UNATCO Headquarters on Liberty Island and mercilessly killed every guard in the complex. Also found was the body of Joseph Manderley - Head of UNATCO - who had apparently committed suicide. Others were found still alive, but shaken, like secretary Janis Reede, who said to reporters minutes ago, ‘I don't understand what happened tonight. I don't understand the destructive mood the entire planet is in. This is it, you know. This is as good as it gets for a long time. It only gets worse. So many people I knew are dead." She refused any further comment."

Bob Page turned off the television with the remote.

He turned away from the screen, new thoughts flurrying through his mind.

*He couldn't decide whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. UNATCO would be down for a long time, recovering from such a blow... But Joseph Manderley was dead, and the prisoners were gone.*"

### Chapter Eight

**--- --- --- ---**

The sword killed more men as an argument than it did as a weapon.

The triads of Hong Kong were at war. The Luminous Path blamed the Red Arrow for offenses it did not commit, and vice versa. Stuck somewhere in between the two, in the middle, writhing out in the proverbial No Man's Land, was everything and everybody else. Both triads operated openly on the streets. The Chinese government did not interfere, because in their eyes, the triads protected Hong Kong from outside influences, and operated as what they pretended to be: businessmen. Very harsh businessmen. Both groups forced the populous into associating with them, both groups attempted to grow out over the other, to control the city and flourish with strength.

Presently, however, no such things were being accomplished. The triads had become too destructive, backing even the most minor of all squabbles with force, bringing damage not only upon their enemies, but upon themselves. The Luminous Path frequently shrank back into their abode, Tracer Tong residing amongst them, and the Red Arrow continued to do the same, running their popular club, the Lucky Money.

The Chinese government had actually become more fond, if you could say they were very fond of either triad, of the Red Arrow because of its influence upon, not only the population of China, but also the economy. The Red Arrow ran its clubs, ran its businesses, but sometime ago, it had crossed a line not meant to be crossed. Its former leader had been discovered stealing from Versalife – forsaken technology – and was murdered soon after. MJ12 was responsible for this death. MJ12 was responsible for Versalife, and when the Red Arrow stepped into its business, it pushed it back out. Forcefully. And then established securities that would make sure it would never happen again.

*The Red Arrow had a pet project, a secret weapon, called the Dragon's Tooth. It was a very special sword that utilized nanotech technology to remain permanently, extraordinarily sharp.*"

One of MJ12's countermeasures was its deployment of Maggie Chow. Maggie, a former actress, and snake as she was, came into power suspiciously after the murder of the former Red Arrow leader. Chow stole the Dragon's Tooth, in the name of MJ12. Nobody knew it. Some suspected it, but nobody could prove it, because the right people covered it up. And thus MJ12 successfully occupied both triads with each other.

The Red Arrow blamed the Luminous Path for the disappearance of the Dragon's Tooth. The Luminous Path denied. Debate spread. Guns were drawn.

For a while, the Red Arrow seemed the more powerful of the two. But after Paul's death, and then JC's, the Luminous Path began to resist and lash out with such great force that surprised the Red Arrow. Of course, fire was fought with fire, and things slipped into a very grave state of skirmishes and assassinations. Neither triad was growing. Only shrinking.

Gordon Quick reflected on all of this as he masked himself in the shadow of an alley on the Hong Kong Canal Road. All of this except MJ12, of course, which he and most others knew nothing about. To him it was just an escalating war that he finally admitted needed end, no matter what the fighting traditions of the triads might say. Good had yet to come out of the spent bullets and the bodies.

The towering structures of Hong Kong stretched endlessly above him, tossing their stonework, metalwork, and glasswork hands upward to the sky with a frowning, anxious expression. Radiantly lit signs hung at their sides, like a sad boy holding a set of brightly-colored balloons. The sidewalks running along the rows of structures had no street between them, but instead, formed a deep canal. Its water lapped lazily. A chill wind crept along Gordon's skin. Nothing else was heard.

*Gordon, belonging to the Luminous Path, had been returning from business on Tonnochi Road to the triad's compound in the nearby Won Chai Market. He had been ambushed, intentionally or not, he did not know, by a small band of ill-tempered Red Arrow patriots.*"

Gordon stood still. From his current view point he could only make out a couple of Hong Kong police officers standing against a brightly-lit poster decoratively covering the wall of one building.

He heard a boat glide by in the waters beneath him, but could not see it. Carefully, he stepped out onto the pavement, and glanced over the rail with one hand closed around it. The small fishing vessel had stopped at a lesser wooden pier on the water below. Its worn owner clambered up onto the dock, and it rocked slowly beneath his weight. He reached back into his sanpan and from it fabricated a bundle of meats. Stuffing them beneath one arm, the soiled man disappeared into an alcove, and through a thick metal door.

Gordon resolved that he had lost his pursuers, and drew his hand away from his concealed weapon. With one palm he rubbed the beading sweat from his shaven head, and began to walk vigilantly along the road.

He had not let his guard down when the knife spun, cut cleanly through the air, intended for his head. He leaned backwards. It brushed past his body and struck the wall with a clatter, then fell. Their second ambush attempt had met similar failure.

Gordon heard patting footsteps behind him. Drawing his gun and spinning around with an extended leg at the same time, his foot immediately met the attacker's neck. The attacker stumbled stupidly, momentarily stunned. Gordon seized this opportunity to execute a series of hits – A combination of kicks – And a final jab that sent the attacker tumbling down into the water.

Gordon saw three others. Two were on one side of the canal. One of them had been the knife thrower. The other sported a sidearm.

*The third approached from the same direction the first had come. He brandished a shotgun, and aimed in Gordon's direction.*"

Not too far away, the two Hong Kong police officers reflected on the situation.

"Who do you think is going to win?" the first asked plainly.

"I don't know," the other said. "Think I can hit one from here?"

He raised his pistol.

**-- --**

Gordon smashed the newly approaching assaulter on the temple with a precise blow. He landed a kick to the Red Arrow follower's teeth, and then spun, and kicked him in the side. The man crumpled to the pavement.

A bullet grazed past Gordon's shoulder. He hit the ground, and rolled, pivoting between the columns of the railing, and hung on the ledge for a split second before dropping into the ominously dark water that seemed to swallow all sensations.

Bullets soundlessly pierced the surface above him. They trailed slowly around him, like metal raindrops, gleaming reflections of whatever light they caught. Gordon could see the twisting visage of the one firing the gun. It was the one that had been with the knife-thrower. The gun-wielder's red cloak was a distorting smear seen through the water's surface. He stood out against the black sky, leaning over the railing. Bright bubbles of fizzling light appeared in front of him, and with each such flash, a new bullet came.

There was a pause. The gun-wielder stopped to reload. His head suddenly seemed to rupture, and he leaned forward, and toppled into the canal. Gordon watched the corpse explode through the soft shell of the water's surface, a bursting mist and excited crowd of bubbles momentarily swarming around the limp body like a crowd of locusts. Then all went still.

*The corpse stared at Gordon. It drifted motionlessly, an image frozen in time.*"

"Nice shot," the officer said. He raised his own rifle and pointed it at the last participant in the preceding skirmish, who had turned and began to flee. The officer squeezed, and with a jolt, he saw the last man seem to catch his foot on something, his back projecting a crimson mist, and then land face-first on the ground and lay still.

"Think the Luminous Path associate got away?" he said.

"Who knows," the other spoke, and holstered his weapon.

**-- --**

Gordon grabbed hold of the dock and lifted himself out of the canal. He would have to follow the sanpan owner's path to get out onto the streets again.

He suddenly noted that the thick metal door in the alcove was actually the back door to a kitchen, and that he was very hungry.

**--- --- --- ---**

"There's something wrong with him," Alex Jacobson said.

"I know there's something wrong with him!" Jess paced back and forth in the warehouse they had retreated to. It was the same one the rest of Dom's team had occupied nights before. They had nowhere else to go. "I know there is. Damn it. He's not himself."

Jaime gnawed at his nails. There was a pause.

*"That was..." Jacobson stammered with a look of deep anxiety. "That was too much. I mean, sure, UNATCO deserved a little shaking up for what it had sunk into. Especially Manderley, he was a snake. But most of those people were just doing their job. I knew a lot of them. Jaime, Jaime operated on some of those people. Saved their lives. You can't just... walk in and slaughter everybody."*"

Jaime blinked. "They got us out."

"Yes," Jacobson said, turning around, "they got us out. They also destroyed everything in their path." He shook his head and sighed. "I'm sorry, I'm just having trouble handling this. All of this."

He began to massage his temples, eyes closed.

"We're out now, and we're with them, so there's not much we can do about it," Jock suddenly stated from the shadows. He had his hands in his pockets, and his eyes were hidden beneath the sunglasses that he still hadn't bothered to remove. "What matters is now. We have to leave this city. They'll be tearing it apart by sunrise. We probably have a bounty on our heads already."

"Where would we go?" Dom asked. He had stepped into the room while Jock was speaking. Nobody noticed. Now they all looked at him like he had a tumor, as though he had forty eight hours to live, fear dabbled with anger mixed with anxiety swimming in their eyes. "And how would we get there?" Dom finally continued, realizing he had paused and no one had yet answered.

"We'll need a chopper," Jock said. "They impounded mine when they detained us. And we can't take a public flight. They don't know your names, but they know ours. And we're going to Hong Kong."

If Dom was surprised, he didn't show it on his face. "What's in Hong Kong?" he asked dryly.

"Tong. Tracer Tong," Jacobson explained. "JC, Denton, he planned on going to Tong, to Hong Kong, after he escaped. Tong had the power to stop JC's killswitch."

*"Killswitch?" Dom inqueried.*"

"Tong is a powerful ally," Jock said. "He's part of the Luminous Path, the triad in Hong Kong. Things are violent over there right now. I'd give you the full story, but we don't have the time. We should already be on the move. Tong knows things about UNATCO, about all the conspiracy theories and about MJ12. He-"

"MJ12?" Dom interrupted. His head was still swimming.

"He was a close friend of Paul. He trusted Paul. We can trust him."

Dom glanced at Jess. He said, more to himself, "Where else would we go?"

Jess nodded. They had to leave the city, and they had to go far away, so what better place than somewhere where they might be able to gain a friend and pick up the pieces.

"Right," she said. "We'll go. How do we get a chopper?"

Jock frowned. "I know it's a long shot, but we'd be much better off with a stealth chopper. With my old one. It's been taken to an isolated helipad in Manhatten. MJ12 has those in Hong Kong, too, so we'll have to be careful when we go."

"How do we know where to find this helipad?" Jess asked.

"I've been there, I've seen other choppers impounded there. Every chopper gets impounded there by default. We just need to hope it hasn't been moved yet. Oh, that reminds me, the chopper was bugged to begin with, which I can easily purge if we recover it. That's why we got caught the first time around."

*There was another uncomfortable pause. Brian was scribbling on a crossword puzzle in a newspaper he had found. Dom doubted he had heard anything that was going on.*"

There was something wrong with him.

"We're still bugged," Jaime suddenly said, standing up.

"What?" three others said at the same time.

"Jock, Alex, we didn't have time to talk about it at UNATCO because we were separated. They didn't just bug your chopper, because how was I found? I was bugged. And if I was bugged, you were bugged. Hell, they'll know where we are within hours. Minutes. They'll recover some kind of order and realize that we're gone and need to be accounted for." He paused. "They might already be on their way."

*"We're going," Dom said, regardless of his weariness. He probably hadn't slept in 48 hours. "Now."* "

### Chapter Nine

**--- --- --- ---**

"Like I said," Jock began, pointing straight ahead, indicating a low helipad structure encased in a perimeter of chain link fence, "I've been here before. Many times. I could describe every room, every security terminal. The only thing I can't give you is an easy way in. They've got it bottled up." He fidgeted suddenly, closely pondering the situation. "I think- ...The best way would probably be through the back door, and there's only one of those. That'd be the cargo gate. Trucks come, empty their loads, helicopters bring stuff out." He pointed to one corner of the building. "You can't see it from here, but it's around there."

Dominic lifted a pair of binoculars (that he'd stripped from a body at the UNATCO Headquarters) up to his eyes. He could make out several figures standing or patrolling around the compound. He also caught sight of short, metallic silhouettes - They slid across the freshly wet pavement on treads, navigating their preprogrammed path in an endless loop.

"Security bots?" Dom asked, turning to Jock. Everybody was there, the six of them. Jock and Alex were particularly uncomfortable ever since realizing they were still bugged, and by now, probably tracked. Brian said nothing, only followed. Jess kept to herself. She consistently looked at Dom like a stranger on the street. That sort of empty gaze, the thin recognition of another human being. As though she were merely imagining something she had misplaced. Nothing more.

All of them were lingering in the shadows of a portside warehouse, where on one side they had sight of the blackened silhouettes of the sleepless city, and on the other, expanded the flat, rippling expanse of ocean. Straight ahead of them was their targeted helipad. It, too, was on the coast.

*Jock answered Bishop with his gaze still fixed on the structure ahead. "Yeah, they have bots. And not just the little ones you see around the place. Those ones have bigger brothers, but they're all locked away unless an alarm goes off. And then there's the bad-ass of the bunch."* "

Dom gave an empty nod. "You sure this is worth it?"

Jock looked at him blankly.

"Going after your chopper," Dom clarified. "Seems like we're about to bite off more than we can chew." Dominic suddenly noted that the pains in his head had subsided. He no longer trembled, or felt as alien, as invaded as he once had. The presence was still there; He could feel it all the time. Maybe he'd just gotten used to it. Adapted for the time being.

"There's not exactly an open market for stealth choppers," Jock explained. "And we're going to need one if we want to get to Hong Kong in one piece. Trust me when I say this is the safest way possible."

"That's fine," Dom said. "It's not like I have anything to lose at this point. Except a few more hours of sleep." Strangely enough, he wasn't tired in the least. "So we're going in the cargo bay?"

"Hold it," Brian unexpectedly broke the conversation. "Jock, you said you know the locations of every security terminal?"

"Every one," the pilot confirmed.

"And what they do?"

"No, not all of them. But some. What do you want to know?"

"You said there's a military security bot in that shed, right?"

"You want to turn it on, in our favor?"

*Brian smiled, like a mischievous child. "Yeah."*"

Everyone abruptly looked at Dom. He rubbed his unshaven face with one hand. "We've already made a mess at UNATCO. And I don't think they're going to appreciate it if we walk up and knock on the front door."

"That doesn't mean we have to kill them," Alex interrupted.

"Right," Dom nodded. "So it'll be a fallback plan. First we try the back door. That fails, we wake up the... the beast. Agreeable?" Nobody moved. It was an unspoken, hesitant yes. "Okay. Not all of us need to go. Some of us can stay here and wait, which would make sense, we could pick you up once we get the chopper, and less people usually means less noise."

"Good," Jaime stated, "because I'm staying right here. I'm a doctor. Not a spy."

"Anyone else?" Dom asked.

"No doubt about me going," Jock said, and then: "I'm the only one here that can fly that thing. And by the sound of it, I'd say the small one wants in on this," to which he got an eager nod from Brian.

"I'll stay," Jess selected slowly. This came as a bit of a surprise to Dominic.

"So will I," followed Alex. "I've had enough destruction for about a month."

It was decided. Moments later, Jock, Dom, and Brian were over the poorly constructed fence, merging quietly with the enveloping body of night.

--- --- --- ---

*"Here's how it works," Jock whispered hoarsely, sliding a fresh clip into his gleaming pistol and making sure everything was in check. The three of them were crouching behind a series of stacked crates outside the cargo bays.*"

Dom wondered why everyone counseled him with all the group decisions to begin with. When he became the leader of Jaime, of Jock, of Alex. Maybe they were just scared shitless of him after what he did at UNATCO. Then again, probably not. "We'll do it. Who's going where?"

"I think Brian is the only one among us who knows how to hack into a security terminal. Am I right?"

Brian nodded.

"So," Jock continued, "I say Brian and I head for the hangar. You get into that control room, open the doors for us. It's just a button, no hacking required. We activate the bot, slip out during the commotion, and meet at the helipad. You can't miss it. Sound good?"

"Works for me. Where's the control room?"

"See that window?" Jock pointed at an illuminated glass square high up on the compound. It was a window; An unrecognizable figure moved within. "Right there. I'd say your best way in is through the roof. You ready?"

*"Yes."*"

--- --- --- ---

The wind lashed against his jacket. He peeled it off and watched it tumble away in the breeze, floating towards the dark body that everything faded into...

Someone might see it. The alarm might be activated. Dominic didn't care. His pain had come back tenfold. His head throbbed. His vision reddened.

He had found a maintenance ladder on the side of the building. It was difficult to get to; There were several guards along that side of the building, but eventually the opportunity fleshed into existence, and Dominic brushed past them like a shadow...

Now he clung to it like an angered animal, slowly ascending upwards rung by rung... Eventually the top found him, and his body eased over the ledge, and he laid flat on his back on the wet gravel of the rooftop. The night sky swallowed his vision. He could not move. He felt as though thousands of knives stung their way through his flesh and cut at him with jagged edges. And then even the stars were gone, and he realized he was passing out just before he lost consciousness.

--- --- --- ---

He was standing in a great void. He couldn't make out which color it was, only that it was a void. It might have been black, or white, or gray, or brown, or a swirl of those. It was undefined, indescribable. It rippled as though it were a liquid. And something rose from within it: A face. That of a man. It was completely hairless, and entirely smooth.

It was a machine. A great steel head, protruding from Nothing, writhing soundless lips. It was blue. The color stood from the surrounding nonexistence like a light in darkness.

*Then it collapsed. The countless pounds of metal came down, with a silent crash, a silent groaning, nothing, as it was part of nothing.*"

--- --- --- ---

He woke up.

He didn't know how long he was unconscious. It could have been seconds. It could have been hours. He was standing now. He didn't remember standing up.

Dominic was then fully impacted by the duty that had been assigned to him, by his objective that he did not currently pursue, by the sudden alarming weight of others depending on his actions. Everything became very clear then, and he lost all thought. He acted.

Glass broke beneath his feet. He came crashing down through the glass panel on the roof. He landed in the control room. In the midst of five armed men. They all looked at him in the same instant.

There was a defining silent moment. And each of them knew what was about to befall them.

Death came down around Dominic like he had never experienced it before. Hot metal pierced his flesh. He was being shot. He did not feel pain. He grappled one man... Threw him through the window... He heard the faint crushing of bone seconds later...

He was upon another... A gun was pointed to the man's brow... Dominic's gun, being held by Dominic's hand... It fired... Blood sprayed...

Bodies fell around him. The room was devoid of life then. Only he stood in it.

*A button gleamed in the corner of his eye. Immediately he knew its function. He pushed it. Through the window he could see the great door of the hangar open... And two small figures slip in...*"

Dominic was falling. He must have been knocked from the room... Out the window... His body was twisting within the gripping fist of gravity, and below him, he now saw as he flailed, the space between him and the ground stretched infinitely, completely out of comprehension. Blackness formed around the corners of his vision... He must have appeared to others as death itself, the tumbling, broken figure, drenched in red, his own red, the red of others...

Beneath him was the released security bot. The beast. He landed on it, and clung to its mighty back.

It shook beneath him. It vibrated with unquenchable thirst for conclusion, its body blistering with heat, firing round after round from its incredible arms... It sprayed explosives from itself, it fired constantly... The heat rose... The metal shook... The ground shook... Dominic felt and saw nothing but that massive hulking monstrosity beneath him, and then the familiar pangs of unconsciousness gripped him once again.

--- --- --- ---

He was lying on the ground again. The surface under his back was different now. Not the gravel of the roof as he had felt before, but the flat, rough texture of concrete. The glittering sky again filled his eyes.

He suddenly became aware of the gunshots all around him. They were distant, like a war being fought in a far off plane of existence...

He looked down at his body. He was completely riddled with the puncture wounds of pistol rounds, rifle rounds...

He could not see his legs. They were somewhere else. There, off to his side... The other half of his body...

*--- --- --- ---*"

Someone looked at him.

He sat up.

Everyone was there, Brian, Jess, all of them.

Dominic was astonished. He was astonished at his own life. He wondered if he were dead. He looked down at himself. There was not a wound on him, not a scratch... He was only drenched in blood, most his, some not...

"We found you passed out on your back outside the compound." Dom recognized the voice that had spoken. It was Brian's.

"We picked you up on our way to the helipad," Jock said from the pilot's seat. "Dom... Did you fall? From that height? There's no other way you could've gotten down from that roof that fast."

Dominic had trouble finding his voice, but eventually, it came to him. "Yes. I remember falling..."

They stared at him. With complete disbelief. Not the kind in which one does not believe the story of another, but the kind of disbelief that denies the reality of an event, even when its truth is obvious.

"You were soaked in blood..." Jess said as her voice quavered. "You didn't have a scratch on you..."

*Dominic became abruptly aware of his own immortality. He tore the pistol from Jock's holster and turned it to his own mouth. He wanted to test it. He wanted to confirm his disbelief. It was impossible to believe.*"

### Chapter Ten

**--- --- --- ---**

Dominic was sitting in a chair. It was elevated from the ground slightly; His feet did not reach the floor. No, it was placed on a short pedestal. The carpet beneath was red, with gold lining. Where were the walls? There. He could see them now. The room was stone - Not the kind of decaying stone one might expect from ancient fortified castles, but a sort of polished stone. Almost like marble. Some sort of red draperies hung on all four sides of the chamber.

The wall before Dominic was penetrated by a single wide doorway. It cut through the stone a few feet, then ended in a curtain, which was suddenly pushed to one side. A figure passed through. It was a very large man, dressed in a very dark suit. Whether his head was placed incorrectly on his body or he was merely walking backwards, Dominic could not tell. His vision was not functioning at an optimal level.

"You still don't know who I am," the man said. It took Bishop a moment to realize he was being spoken to. "Would you like a drink?" The voice was deep, and resonated through the room as though it was no more than three feet wide.

Dominic tried to move his feet. He could not. "No," he said, though his mouth was quite dry.

The man looked at him for a moment, then produced a rag from one pocket. "I'm afraid your forehead is dirtied. Use my handkerchief."

Dominic saw his hand reach and remove the rag from the man's grip, though he made no effort to do so. It was then applied to his forehead. Removing it seconds later he could see that it was completely drenched in blood.

*Glass clinked. Bishop turned and saw that the man was pouring himself a shot of liquor.*"

Dominic felt like a helpless child being addressed by his teacher. The room was beginning to fill with liquor.

Some words were in Dominic's throat. He vomited them into the air: "What is this place?"

The man smiled, though he was reversed, and gave no answer. The liquor rose to Dominic's knees. Then to his head. It was inhaled. He drowned, and was dead.

--- --- --- ---

"A lot of this has been hard to swallow," Jock said. He rotated his beer bottle on the table, turning it so that the label became distorted, then faced him again, he, all the while, remaining expressionless... He paused and waved his hand in a general collecting gesture of his surroundings. "All this, I mean. What's been going on." There was silence. "But the world is very different... Everything's changing. Occasionally I wonder if the whole mess we've gotten into is bigger than any of us. Sure as hell seems that way."

Jess nodded. She lifted her bottle and drank. "Everything and everybody." She couldn't stop thinking about Dominic. None of them could. They had just witnessed him fall from a building and shoot himself in the head, and yet, there he slept, in Jock's Hong Kong apartment, without a scratch on him. "Dominic's not himself," she continued, an obvious statement that had already been spoken multiple times.

"I know," Jock said.

*"No. I mean it. He's never been this empty. This... dark." Her eyes started to water. She still couldn't believe or understand any of the transformation he'd gone through.*"

Alex leaned in from a wooden doorway. "Jock," he said, and motioned into the room behind him. "I checked out your machine. So far your e-mail hasn't been traced, which means nobody knows you're here. Yet. That's definitely good. But they can and probably will figure it out soon enough, so I'm going to make backups of all your e-mail, and trash everything, probably install some new securities." He paused and sighed. "We have to be very clean from now on. This is a very dangerous game we're playing."

Jock nodded. He had adapted to the risk long ago.

Jaime was unconscious on the couch. He had passed out minutes after their arrival. Everyone was tired. The night seemed omnipresent. Daylight would soon break.

There was a shuffling noise. It was Dominic. He had risen from his sleep, and was wrapped in the blanket of the bed, though he was already fully clothed. He shivered. His body dripped with a cold sweat. "Where are we?" he whispered hoarsely, to no one in particular.

Jock raised his brow. "This is my apartment... We're safe here."

Dom nodded faintly.

"What's wrong?" Jock asked.

"Nothing," Bishop said. "Bad dreams. Nothing." He looked at Jock's beer. "I'm thirsty as hell."

"Right," Jock said, and got up to grab a drink for him.

*Dominic was staring at Jess. He had just noticed her presence in the room. His head had been swimming, but he saw her now. She seemed to bring to him some sort of ultimate steadiness, yet simultaneously, he felt completely broken and inadequate.*"

Yet there he stood, shaken, manifesting no motion, feeling completely naked to the fact that he had just shot himself in the head and was still breathing.

--- --- --- ---

The Wan Chai market breathed around them, masses of people netting together and slithering through each others' paths in the pockets of street created by the surrounding illuminated towers. Quaint little pottery shops and humble restaurants held their ground, opening each day to the wafting smell of flesh (mixed with the usual city scents) emanating from the nearby meat shop. There was a newspaper stand, a police station (which was dug into a small, protruding, thick-walled compound), and nearby could be found the intricately crafted temple, the Lucky Money, VersaLife, and the destination Jock sought: The secured, barricaded compound home to the Luminous Path.

Dominic stood shaded against a concrete pillar. There was a pet shop before him, and through the glass he viewed a small, short-haired puppy curl up and fall asleep in the midst of its own warmth. Dom couldn't help but smile. He tried to remember the last time he'd smiled.

Jess put her hand on Dom's shoulder. He hadn't noticed her approach. She turned and pointed towards the approaching Jock, who they had been waiting for as he spoke to several police officers about an undisclosed subject. Dominic briefly wondered whether most, if not all, of the Wan Chai patrols were capable of speaking English. Probably. Wan Chai had been a bit of a haven for tourists, before the Triads started ripping at each other's throats.

*"Things have only gotten worse since the Dentons were killed," Jock said as he grew closer. When he was a few feet away he stopped and looked around the market as though he was searching for a specific person. "The Triads aren't being patient with each other. There's been a lot of arguing and violence recently. It's a very touchy subject." He looked at Jess, then at Dom. "That's all I could get out of the police. They told me to read the papers if I wanted news. Too bad I can't read Chinese very well."*"

"The Luminous Path compound is right there," Jock said, pointing towards a high wall of brick. What it encased could not be seen from their position, and the only opening piercing this impenetrable box was a rusted metal door, much too high and flat for scaling. In front of this door stood a man dressed in white. He held a harsh-looking automatic shotgun.

Dominic sighed lightly. "Are you sure we can trust them?"

"Yes." Jock's answer came immediately, and his faith in it was apparently strong. "I trust them. Paul Denton trusted them. Listen, Dom..." Jock removed his sunglasses and Dominic saw the deep, naked eyes concealed behind them for the first time. "Tracer Tong is the only ally we have right now. He's a very important figure. More important than you think. We need to speak to him. Unfortunately, the Luminous Path is not going to let strangers like you two walk straight into their headquarters. They already know me. I can go in and try to convince Tong that you mean him and the Luminous Path no harm..." Jock's voiced trailed a bit on the final words of the sentence, as though he suddenly realized that he, himself, was not completely confident in that statement. "I can convince him, but it won't be easy. Honestly, I think his scientific curiosity will be our best shot, what with your, uh..." He waved his hand unknowingly. "Immortality."

Dominic nodded comprehensively. In truth, he did not care where he would be dragged next. He had nothing better to do than let the leash lead him and follow obediently. He stopped questioning things when he started doubting his sanity, his very existence.

Abruptly, Jock raised one arm and pointed towards the man in white before the great metal doors. "That man is a brick. He won't let you in unless it's proven to him that you are not an enemy of the Luminous Path. Or, if he's ordered to let you in." There was a pause.

The woman at the newspaper stand could be heard yelling. The small boy ran away, wailing.

*"Wait here," Jock said. "I'll see what I can do."*"

--- --- --- ---

The luminescent glow of computer equipment draped across the light blue uniform of Tracer Tong. He had his back turned to Jock, and leaned stiffly with both hands pressed against the control panel before him. Through the large glass window he viewed the operation room a few floors down. The gargantuan machine within looked like something out of an old science fiction movie. It was unattended. The speech of the surrounding lab equipment was all that could be heard.

Tong raised one hand to his forehead and brushed his hair back, following through with a loud cracking of the neck. He was largely uncomfortable. "I don't like it, Jock," he said. "I don't like it."

Jock sighed. "I know. I don't either. It's complicated. And barely believable." He thought for a moment. "The man out there... Dominic... Yes. He's unstable. Yes. He's violent. But, damnit..." Jock shook his head. "I don't know what to tell you. I watched him put a gun... my gun... to his own head and pull the trigger. Jesus, he fell at least five stories and didn't have a scratch on him." Jock stepped closer. "I know everything's been shit lately, Tong, everything's just been really screwed up. But there is definitely something weird about this guy, and it's huge. It's very important, and I think it's bigger than anything else we've seen so far. I don't..." he suddenly realized he had been speaking very rapidly and took a deep breath. "I don't think he means any harm to anyone. I don't think he even knows what's going on. Hell, he was part of the NSF. At least he was fighting for the right cause. But now he's just broken, Tong. He's just battered and confused. He didn't even know about MJ12."

Tong turned around. His aging face was very grim.

"What else have we got to work with, Tong? We've lost Paul and JC. We're in pretty bad shape right now."

*Neither of them spoke. Tong seemed to be turning everything around in his head. Things had just gotten much more complicated.*"

"We'll let them in," he said.

--- --- --- ---

The woman behind the news counter was screaming in panic. The man in red was screaming in anger. People were staring. The man in red reached into his clothing, probably to access a weapon and make use of it on the woman. The little boy watched from the shadows.

"Dominic!" Jess shouted. "Dom! Leave it alone!" Dom ignored her. He kept walking towards the disturbance. She swore under her breath.

Bishop grabbed the man's shoulder. An elbow hit him in the face. Blackness swelled around his vision, but then he was still standing. Blood ran down his face.

The man in red realized that he had just stricken a complete stranger. He looked around, as guilty persons do when feeling the pressure of imminent authority.

Unfortunately he made no use of judgment. When he saw no officer or official in the general vicinity, he turned and hit the woman in the face. She fell.

Dominic was upon him. He knocked the man to the ground, and punched him heavily with one fist. Speckles of saliva flew. Dominic struck again. Blood trickled on the cement. A crowd started to gather.

Suddenly Bishop was pulled back. Jess restrained him with both arms. "That's enough, Dom," she whispered firmly. "Let's go."

Dominic shook himself from Jess's grasp and looked down at the man in red, whose nose was broken. A hush had fallen upon the assembly. People stared.

*Bishop disregarded them and approached the woman.*"

"No, no," Dominic said. "Here." He lifted her to her feet. "Are you alright?"

*There was blood on her shirt. "No," she said quietly. "Never."*"

### Chapter Eleven

**--- --- --- ---**

There was a sudden light. Excruciating light that cannot be comprehended by sight, and so expands to all other senses, drowning Dominic in a nonexistent expanse. For a moment he felt completely peaceful, for peace often comes wrapped in void, and then the smell of his own sweat entered his nostrils, and he returned to the physical world.

Now the brilliant white changed to various shades of every color imaginable. These colors swam around his body like a magnificent wind, manipulating the appearance of his clothing. It was almost beautiful, the multitude of things he could see. He tried to turn his head, but it remained stationary. He wanted to see all of it. He wanted to drink the beauty around him. And then there was a loud noise.

A whirring, followed by several noises made only by machines. Noises fathomed only by great bodies of metal. The colors paused. Then began again. And then paused.

Everything shut down with a low hum.

Dominic was once again standing in the large operating room, beneath the behometh of a machine that Tong used for a wide range of tasks.

The room was suddenly very plain. The walls were of blank metal. The brilliant colors were gone. Dom looked at his hands. Nothing changed. The process was completely painless. He looked up, to Tong, who was framed in a lit window near the ceiling.

*There was the whine of an intercom. Tong's voice cut through. "There doesn't appear to be anything physically wrong with you. Actually, you seem to be in perfect health. That's a good sign." He paused and pressed some buttons on the numerous terminals before him, then allowed a frown. "Okay, you can come back up. This analysis has told me nothing of use."*"

Jaime and Alex had disappeared to other places in the compound. Their tracking bugs had earlier been deactivated and destroyed.

Jess was nowhere to be seen.

"So," Tong began, still facing the operating room window as Dominic approached. "You can't die."

"Yeah," Dominic quietly acknowledged. His mouth was rather dry.

Tong turned around and looked at him.

"Forgive me if that's a little hard to believe," Tracer said. He swallowed. "Though it's hard to doubt, with as many witnesses as in your case. But people sometimes hesitate to believe things that have happened immediately before their eyes."

Another pause.

Tong shifted. "I don't suppose there's an easy way to prove it."

"There is," Dominic said. "I could crack my neck in front of you. You could shoot me through the face if you wanted. Or maybe I could just mash my head against this terminal until it became no more than pulp. My head, that is. Any way you do it, I still feel pain. Pain has become..." He trailed off.

Tong didn't know what to say. Dominic looked around, and drew a heavy breath.

"Is there anything else you need from me?"

*Tong shook his head.*"

--- --- --- ---

Jock looked upwards, towards the majestic, wispy array of clouds in the deeply orange sky. Framed within it was the dark silhouette of his destination; It loomed upwards before him, ascending to its lofty glass pinnacle, lost somewhere in its own elevation. Maggie Chow's hotel did not impress Jock. Neither did Maggie Chow.

It was common knowledge that Miss Chow was a snake. She was famous; The young, beautiful actress appeared in films worldwide. Men lusted for her as they did for their cars. Large sums of money gradually became pocket change. This situation led to the most probable outcome imaginable for the weak-minded: Greed. Unstoppable self-indulgence, and the vicious decay of morals.

Maggie worked for MJ12.

She tried to keep it entirely secretive, and it was, but not entirely. Youth and greed often equates folly. Maggie Chow was no different. People knew things that were dangerous to her, and she was clueless to that.

The Luminous Path had suspected Miss Chow for longer than desirable. Either of the Dentons would have already investigated her operations if either of them still existed in a form other than rotting flesh. Jock was the only one left who could be trusted with the job.

He didn't like it.

But there was no one else who could have been sent. Dominic was unstable, and he'd already gotten into trouble with the Red Arrow. If they were to spot him on the streets, there would only be further chaotic engagements. The others did not even have a desire to go, even if they were trusted to do so. Jess was far too tired of everything all at once. She needed sleep.

*But that didn't stop Jock from not liking it*"

The man behind the counter, dressed stiffly in a dark blue suit and tie, displayed his fake smile for one of many times in his day, addressing Jock plainly, and initially in Chinese. Jock stared, rather stupidly, having only a small grip on the language.

"I'd like to speak to Miss Chow," Jock said, in English.

The man's smile immediately collapsed beneath a frown. He made a simple, hesitant gesture towards the elevator behind him, then returned to whatever business he had been performing beforehand.

She's probably watching me right now, Jock thought. She probably listened to what I just said. He would have been more surprised if she hadn't.

--- --- --- ---

Bishop sat at the well-kept bar in the Luminous Path compound, propped upon a stool, leaning with his elbows upon the reflective countertop... Lost, as he usually was, amongst the activity of his thoughts, disassembling things in his mind until they became great nothings, then piling them back together again...

Dominic tried to remember when any sort of routine left his life. He stopped sleeping on a schedule long before any of the changes had begun. He ate when hunger hit him. He drank when needed. He lived in whatever quarters were available and urinated in whatever spot was convienient.

*His life, not different from his mind, had collapsed to chaos long before he ever actually acknowledged it. Not to say that the NSF had impacted his life negatively; On the contrary. He was lost before them... And then when they came to him, or he came to them, he belonged to something, and he achieved a reason. Fighting the shadowed enemy. Outcast into the dark corners of the world.*"

A man sharing drinks came to him then and allowed a bottle to regurgitate further liquids into Bishop's emptied glass.

Dom retrieved it. He abruptly noticed a fleeting, pulsating pain in his arm.

Probably nothing.

He drank.

--- --- --- ---

"That's terrible!" Maggie Chow blurted, blatantly feigning distress. Her acting sucked. "Paul and I were... We were close."

"Yeah," Jock said. "I'm sure you can barely see through your frantic, distraught tears. But I'm here for a reason and I want to be frank about it. Tong is getting impatient. The Triads, as you surely know, are at war. This needs to end, Maggie."

Miss Chow frowned. The situation was no longer so amusing for her. She knew where the conversation was about to lead. She didn't want to have to deal with it. Neither did Jock.

Chow's maid, a short, plump woman who seemed as excited about her job as a chicken would be about getting its head lopped off for butchery, stood readily at the bannister. Maggie motioned for her and instructer her to fetch some aspirin. The maid vanished quickly. Jock couldn't decide whather Maggie had done that to get rid of the maid for more open conversation or whether the woman sincerely had a headache.

*Maggie leaned back on her expensive couch, lifting her slender legs from the colorful, wonderfully crafted, no doubt priceless carpet. She glanced tiredly at one of the surrounding floor-to-ceiling windows.*"

--- --- --- ---

The pain in Dominic's arm wildly intensed. He clenched his glass... It shattered in his fist... The drinking man looked at him without comprehension.

Dom grasped his head between his palms. There were screams... Such a collection of screams that they bled into one overwhelming unit of white noise, a noise like no other... And within it there was a great driving force, a new pressure. Something Dominic had not felt before. A new presence gracing his body... And suddenly he knew that Maggie Chow was guilty as hell.

Then there was a voice. Unmistakable. He'd heard it before.

"Ignore this," it said. "It is a temporary disturbance." It was the blue-faced man.

--- --- --- ---

"You're not the least suspicious person, Maggie," Jock doggedly persisted. "You've got something going on, and it probably involves the Dragon's Tooth."

"I find that accusation insulting," she stated firmly.

"So pretend to be insulted. I don't care. You probably don't even know the half of what you've involved yourself in. You're probably too stubborn to find out."

--- --- --- ---

*He knew she had it. He just knew. The screams told him... The driving force showed him that sword, licked with blue, electric flame... He grasped his head. He could feel them... So many. They drowned him... He felt his spilled drink begin to wet his clothing.*"

--- --- --- ---

"This is ridiculous. You will cease your rude behavior immediately or you will be removed from my hotel."

"Don't worry. I don't plan on staying. I came here on business. Maggie... Listen to me. Do you know anything about the location of the Dragon's Tooth?"

Miss Chow remained silent.

"Do you?" Jock persisted. "Forget, for a moment, the money, and the... opportunity, or whatever the hell it is you're being bribed with, and consider what's going on around you. Don't be oblivious. Where is that sword, Maggie?"

She squinted. "You will leave immediately or you will be made to leave."

There was a pause. Jock shook his head.

"You are disgusting," he told her, and then rose to leave.

--- --- --- ---

The screams halted.

Dominic stared. Blankly. He did not move, or even blink, for ten minutes. The drinking man made several attempts to offer him a new glass. The drinking man received no response. For ten minutes. All was blank.

Then Dominic returned to the bar. He still sat in his stool.

*He felt clean.*"

Something different had just happened to him.

He was used to having strange experiences. He was used to the ringing in his ears and the way the headaches built towards the front of his head, then tingled slowly, languidly throughout the rest. But this was new. Never before had he heard the screams. And they seemed to cleanse him, as though the experience was a desirable one.

As though something unusually pure had just touched his brain.

Yet he remember the blue-faced man. Ignore it, the man said.

Somewhere, perilous and shadowed, there was a deep rift.

--- --- --- ---

Rain poured down.

A great vertical apacolypse; Thunder shook ominous clouds brooding overhead. The weather frowned upon Wan Chai.

The sun had almost set, and even if it were still hanging at its peak in the sky, the thick, angry storm would have blackened all light. Sullen darkness lingered. There was serenity within chaos.

Jess stood in the downpour. She could have waited inside, but who cares? Water is water. The rain was cooling. The noise soothed her. She toyed with her weapon. It gleamed, reflecting light of unknown origin.

The magnum was powerful.

*There was a noise at the gate;*"

She leaped down the few steps before her and met the pilot halfway through the courtyard.

"Jock," she prompted.

"Yeah?" He paced towards shelter, with grim expression, his arms crossed.

"Tong wanted to talk to us."

"All of us?"

"No. Everyone except Dom."

He looked at her and then nodded.

--- --- --- ---

Dominic was lying on one of the numerous bunk beds positioned in the large lower floor of the Luminous Path compound. He stared thoughtfully at the ceiling above him.

A clock ticked.

Someone coughed.

There were several men sitting at tables. Reading. Writing.

Everything was very vivid, very bright, very clear...

--- --- --- ---

*Four of them made their way to Tong's lab. Jess, Brian, Jock, and Alex.*"

They both looked at the newcomers with a mutual expression of deep concern, or despair, even pity...

--- --- --- ---

Dominic opened his eyes.

All light had fled. Had he fallen asleep? He thought he had. The room was silent. He must have fallen asleep. It must have been late, all the others present must have been sleeping as he had been.

Perhaps he hadn't?

There was a snuffling noise. It was almost inaudible at first. Dominic was almost ready to conclude that he had simply experienced a fault of hearing before he heard it again.

A snuffling. Like a noise a small animal would make.

He sat up and attempted to look around him, but his eyes had not yet adjusted to the blackness, and he could not even detect his own hand in front of his face.

The snuffling noise...

Hair on the back of Dominic's neck rose.

His stomach twisted.

Abruptly he had a very, very bad feeling.

*For minutes there was only silence. But not peaceful silence, as silence one experiences before falling into an unbroken sleep.*"

There was the pattering of small feet. Very soft, quick feet. Where had it come from? Dominic scanned the - blackness. He could see nothing. He was blinded. He wished for a light, or-

He suddenly experienced the greatest feeling of utter, undescribable dread he'd ever experienced in his life.

He felt it now. There was a weight on the sheets that covered him.

It moved slowly. Up, towards him...

There was the snuffling noise, unbearably close.

Dominic's eyes began to water.

Oh, my God.

There was the angered hiss of an animal. A very fierce animal, ready to slaughter its prey, ready to gnash at the throat of its enemy and suck the marrow from its victim. Silence broke. Skin crawled.

--- --- --- ---

The heavy door rumbled open behind Gordon Quick. He turned and looked. Dominic stood there, pale-skinned, frantic, appearing as though he'd seen the most disgusting of atrocities just moments before.

"Where are you going?" Gordon asked with puzzlement.

"I have to leave," Dominic yelled, his voice quavering with absolute terror. "I have to-... There's something-..."

He had to go kill Maggie Chow.

He had to go retrieve the Dragon's Tooth.

*His muscles burned as light exploded and he was gone.*"

He had to go kill Maggie Chow.

He had to go retrieve the Dragon's Tooth.

*His muscles burned as light exploded and he was gone.*"

### Chapter Twelve

**--- --- --- ---**

A cooperating sensual binding of thought and senses... A homeless man coughed. Spittle flew into the air... It was vivid. Rain poured down, making the roads sleek and wet, stirring the filthy scent of city into the air. The clouds churned above. Night. All safety had fled.

Each step proved more exciting... Like he was accomplishing something, finally... The universe turned, and there was a blinding point of focus, and it was within him, and he knew it, and shaped it as sculptors do their sculptures. He knew all that was around him. And he walked through it. Down the center of the road... Slowly. In the wet blackness.

Dominic stopped. He stood in the center of the street in the rain. And he smiled.

He was feeling the world again. Like a marionette freed from its strings, there stood he, in the rain. Two police officer stared at him. Someone smoked a cigarette beneath shelter; The fumes it emitted bound with the very fibers of the universe and came only to Dominic. He knew what was there, and what was around the corner, and what was above him.

He walked again.

Shadows pooled hungrily over whatever surfaces they could find. Moments of gleaming light shimmering on surfaces that might mate with it broke the otherwise swallowing blackness.

The lights of Hong Kong illuminated everything.

Dominic slowly walked beneath those lights.

*On occasion we have moments of breakthrough. Times when we feel we have discovered something wholly staggering, and some ultimate realization impacts us heavily.*"

He looked up, and saw that up was not a direction, nor a boundary, but a possession.

His body blurred. That is the only way to describe it seen from eyes other than his. He blurred, darkly and violently, as though escaping from himself, and then he traveled, in such a means as is not easily imaginable. It was not flying, nor was it running. He simply moved - Sliced through space before him in a darkened haze of motion, traveling down a corridor not in our own perception or knowledge so that if someone were to look upon him as he traveled then they would see only a ripple, and then it would slither from their detection like a shadow into void.

He impacted. He impacted at such a velocity upon the window that he broke through it like tissue, and the resulting explosion of glass was fierce.

And his feet touched carpet.

Again he stood as a man, simple and vulnerable and obscene.

He did not recognize his location though he had guided himself to it. So he turned with a moments pause and glanced out the large window, which was now without glass, and saw that he was very high above the ground, in a penthouse comprising the pinnacle of... whichever building it was that he was in.

He turned again to face his surroundings.

The carpet was finely made and red. There was extravagant furniture filling the room which he occupied, and the walls were of intricately carved wood.

*From somewhere came shouting; It occurred muffled and indistinct. Then footsteps.*"

Her face contorted beneath shock, then anger. In her hand was a gun.

She was beautiful.

She was a demon, born from the fires of all that might be called Hell.

Dominic walked to her - Though it seemed much too fast to be a walk, for he was before her in seconds - And the gun was in his hand. He fired into her. She crumpled as bodies do when they are emptied of life.

Men came, dressed in black and gray, their arms filled with tools of slaughter. They were armored and helmeted. They were MJ12. Bishop knew it when he saw them.

He went to them, quickly, in blurs. They shot at him, and perhaps hit him, for he was quickly drenched in red. He bled and he felt pain as men do and he thought as a man does and reacted as a man might, but Dominic Bishop, in all his flesh and blood, in his flood of motion through which he spilled the life fluids of his attackers, was not a man. He was not a human, though he before thought he was, and this came to him then as his revelation, his better understanding of everything at once, and yet, all at the same time, an encore of complications struck him.

They struck him so that he staggered from their force, so that he collapsed to his knees.

And yet it only calmed him.

His eyes watered and spilled tears. He was without his plague of pain. He was without the blue face that had been crippling him for so long. What he had to do was before him. What he had done and what he had once been vanished behind him as though part of him had wholly left altogether.

*He took the Dragon's Tooth from its pedestal (tucked in the hidden chambers of Miss Chow's apartment, which were then empty), and was gone.*"

There was blood in the streets.

The market of Wan Chai was emptied as though it had never been occupied by more than ghosts. Jess ran through it and stopped at a corner.

She did not know where they went... There were several of them. She hadn't counted them all.

Rain poured in whatever gaps between the buildings that lacked roofing. It was as though the crashing torrent filled in those spaces entirely, creating hollowed chambers - prisons, almost - of stifled sight and sound. It was impossible to hear anything other than the crashing of water, which came so fast it sounded like the static of a neglected television.

But there was a footstep.

Jess turned, and pointed her large, silvery magnum - the reflections of the rain darted across it in a visual game.

She advanced towards the source of the noise.

Stopped at another corner, and leaned outwards, weapon pointed before her.

There was only a small shop, and within it sat an obese cat.

The cat stared in an uninterested manner at Jess, lazily lolling its tale. Careless. Sleep came even within the storm. It rolled onto its side.

The footstep sounded again.

*She looked. She couldn't determine its direction.*"

That was one. The others were nowhere to be seen. Jess could only imagine that they had either fled, went into hiding, or were circling her now, as a predator does its prey.

The cat hissed.

Jess turned, ran, fired, sprinting as quickly as possible. Rain hit her in the face. She fired. Again. Bullets hit her targets. Two of them bled. One of them shot at her. She rolled.

There was a pause.

She leaned out from behind the wall, which a bullet struck, generating splintered debris. She squinted and fired at where the flash of light had split the air - There was no more firing.

Her chest heaved with breath. She staggered back behind the corner and sat, with her gun in her lap.

Gordon Quick's corpse was before her. It stared blankly at the ground. A part of its neck had gone missing.

She breathed heavily. There was no more firing.

--- --- --- ---

The sky was calm.

*Dominic stood on the slick pavement, and looked down upon it. It reflected everything so that there might have been a parallel world beneath him, so that while he might have been looking upon his own surroundings, there was indeed a second copy of the same Earth beneath his feet, turned upside down so that everything was reversed, and that is indeed how he felt.*"

There were corpses about him. Some wore red, some wore white. He recognized the split face of Gordon Quick. He saw dead policemen, and a military robot which had apparently been destroyed.

Burning flesh filled his nostrils.

He returned to the Luminous Path headquarters as quickly as possible. He ran. He ran so that his legs burned with the anger of exhaustion.

There was no longer a Luminous Path headquarters.

There was a pile of debris larger than any he could have ever imagined. More horrifying than anything he had ever previously seen.

He was on his back.

Looking towards the parting sky.

And there was a black dot.

It descended upon him so that he saw it was a helicopter.

--- --- --- ---

*"There was light," Jess said, shivering beneath the blanket draped about her shoulders.*"

They had landed on an appropriate building somewhere in Hong Kong. They didn't know where. They didn't care.

Jaime was with them. Jock was there. Dominic, and Jess, and Alex.

Everyone else they had known was dead. Even Tong.

"Dominic," Jock said suddenly, "You're... Tong told us something, when we saw him last. About you."

Bishop knew what was to be said before it was said.

Jock shook his head. "You're not..."

"I know."

He had the Dragon's Tooth sheathed beneath his belt. He did not until then realize that he had no idea for what purpose he had gone to get it in the first place. But he had done so, almost as though he had been driven, but it was entirely his own doing. No, it was just that he knew it had to be done. He accomplished something... But then that accomplishment fell to ruin, along with Tong and his compound.

As far as he could see there were two forces at work. One directed him as an officer directs a soldier. The other destroyed, and did all it could to get in the way of the first.

*--- --- --- ---*"

He sat there now, and he rose, and the blue man entered the room.

This was only a product of his unconsciousness, Dominic knew, only an environment fabricated by his idle mind. But the blue man was real. He merely no longer had any power over Bishop.

"You defied me," the blue man said.

"You used me," Dom responded. "As a weapon."

The blue man smiled. "Yes. I did. Because that is what you are. A weapon. In a sense." He stopped. He went to the table to pour himself a drink, which he swallowed quickly. "You have capabilities beyond any other as you now know. I could have helped you master them. I could have helped you become the greatest power on this planet."

"There is something more powerful than I."

"Yes, and you saw it today. You saw what he can do. But you have already made your mistake of deceiving me. It was a small deception, I admit, but small deceptions only act as evidence of future deceptions. I have no more use for you, but I have no more control over you."

The blue man paused and poured himself another drink.

"Which puzzles me, but it is a minor issue. You are as much of a threat to my objectives as a regular man."

"What is it? What other weapon do you have? What caused so much destruction today?"

*There was no answer.*"

The blue man only smiled.

"See, that is your disadvantage. You are foolish as a man is. You have the disadvantages of emotion. Emotion is always the folly of power. Always. Emotion ruins good things. No. What I have is better than you. You are hopeless without me. And you can do nothing about it. Good day."

*And then they both vanished, and Dominic awoke.*"

### Chapter Thirteen

**--- --- --- ---**

An elevator ground languidly up its shaft. At a high elevation it halted. For a moment it paused, as an old man might before recollecting a word - And then its doors, with the sound of a soft wind, smoothly opened, and an indicating tone resonated throughout its heart.

Two people, darkly clad. Not so much in the color of their clothing, but in the grim aura which they held. The wet soles of their feet came slowly from within the elevator. One step outward, and then both figures stopped, as though waiting for further direction from some master presence.

A guard shifted uncomfortably, eyeing them both. He approached, his middle-aged face twisted under a fake warmness of greeting (distorted beneath an apparent confusion). Stifly he stood, and allowed a silence before speaking, so that the air seemed to become thick. "Welcome to VersaLife... May I be of assistance?"

The words crawled.

Dominic shook his head, and then turned quickly, and approached a small set of steps.

The lobby was quite lavish. Tiled floors welled and reflected distorted shapes, so that creatures of abnormality seemed to dwell within them. The ceiling reached as high as the topmost floor - An extraordinarily tall window ascended a wall just beside the principal stairway, which itself groped up a perpendicular wall. Bright lights beamed from places above. It was a very richly sterile atmosphere.

There was a front desk, in the shape of a doughnut. Within its center sat a young woman in a dress. Her attention quickly fixed on the visitors.

The woman shaped her mouth as though to begin speaking, but Jess approached the counter and placed her palms firmly down upon it. Leaning forward, with a curious expression of familiarity, she asked, quite softly: "May we tour your offices?"

*--- --- --- ---*"

Dominic knew he had to get into those labs. He knew his objective but not his method, and though he did not consider himself to be an educated man, he was not at all stupid. The direct approach would be a thorough waste of time.

No, he had to get a pass from someone in those three floors of offices, from one of those underlit, absurdly identical cubicles (which seemed as though the people who worked within them would shed all visible differences upon their entrance).

Most of the cubicles were empty. What few were occupied contained single individuals, all of which were pale-faced, concentrated, and some sweating. They appeared to have no more authority than corpses.

But there was one man, walking about as though he had nothing better to do (which was probably not so far from the truth), swimming in the boundless infinity of his own ego. He was a man of power, and blatantly so.

Dominic approached this man - Hundly was his name - and stopped before him. Suddenly there appeared to be an electronic interruption across Bishop's body; A dark folding of presence, so that there was a brief duplication, one disconnected from reality... And then it dissipated with frozen luminescence in the air so that it appeared as a final shape of contrasting light would as it momentarily lingered on a deactivated screen.

Hundly stepped backward.

*"Can I help you?" he asked before swallowing. He was nervous. His false charisma had been disturbed.*"

Hundly stared at him with confusion. Sweat gathered in his thick, black moustache, and he slicked back his hair with one hand. "Oh? You are?"

"Absolutely."

"And how will you do this?"

"You will give them to me."

Hundly made a dissmissive gesture. "That is absurd..."

Dominic, in an unexpectedly swift movement, stepped forward, and grabbed the swaggering fool by the front of his suit jacket; Hundly made a frantic attempt to push himself loose, but Bishop pinned him against the wall. Then they were still. Hundly again squirmed in an attempt to shake himself loose, which was an awkward failure, and he swore. Again they were still.

Hundly found it necessary to laugh. "Is this some kind of threat?"

"No, I'm not going to kill you," Dominic said, shaking his head with amusement. "Or even hurt you. I don't have any reason to hurt you. That doesn't mean I couldn't. In fact, I could level this entire building. I see by the disgusting look on your face that you don't care, or that you think you're going to call security in a few moments, and have this idiot before you removed. I can assure you that's not going to happen."

He drew a knife. It shimmered cleanly. For a moment Hundly watched it fixedly, and then Dom handed it to him. He stared at it stupidly.

*"Stab me with that," Dominic commanded. "Go on. There's no one on this level." Indeed there was not. Each dark cubicle lacked its occupant. The two men were hidden from view of the lower floor. Jess stood in a doorway several yards away; For a moment Hundly's existence seemed to dwell in the distorted reflections of the tiles beneath his feet.*"

"Again," Dominic said, and repeated the motion. His shirt darkened.

The knife was removed and replaced in its sheath. Hundly shrunk in a disturbed manner. He looked as though he were ready to collapse.

Dom straightened him on his feet. "Now I have been stabbed twice. Do you see me wailing in pain? Am I rushing to a hospital? No." He violently swung the man before him so that his head impacted the wall. Hundly flinched. "This is above you. This is above your money. This is above your job. This is above whatever the fuck you think is important." The electronic disturbance returned. Dominic appeared to spread outwards with a dead expansion - There was a dark twitching, and things distorted, flickering in an electronic way. Hundly pressed his free hand against Dominic's face... It was forced to the wall and clamped. Hundly shook. He refused to look directly at Dom. He shrunk again, letting his knees collapse. Dominic let him collapse. The man of so much false power sat against the wall.

No threat had been made.

--- --- --- ---

Jock descended a set of metallic stairs. He entered a room. It was very long, and one wall held several floor-to-ceiling windows. He had seen them from the other side. They were only mirrors from out there.

In the middle of the room was a large conference table. Its marble top had been recently polished.

*The rest of the room was red, and so were the men who occupied it.*"

Jock raised his hand to stop them, and said, "Jesus Christ, we just had a massacre out there, we don't need another one in here." And with his other hand he drew the Dragon's Tooth, which shone with its blue radiance. One of the men allowed his jaw to drop open with obfuscated amazement. Others merely frowned.

In moments Jock was before Max Chen, a thick man with eyebrows that pointed upwards in such a way that made him appear malicious. His clothing was lavish; He was a man of power, and capably so.

Jock approached over a thin bridge that spanned several small pools of crystalline water. Fish swam within, lazily and hungrily, oblivious to their own beauty. The ceiling was high, the air cool, and smoke lingered.

Chen sat in a chair before a marble desk, flanked on each side by bodyguards, who held automatic shotguns and said nothing.

Chen narrowed his eyes so that they became slits. He saw what Jock held in his hand. It was, of course, the Dragon's Tooth, and somewhere within Max Chen, a well of pain tightened, so that he was forced to shift in his chair.

"How did you get this?" he demanded (in english), his frustration apparent, as though Jock had violated some universal law.

*"The Luminous Path was not responsible for the sword's disappearance, Chen. They're dead now anyway. All of them. You know that already. Tong is dead." He paused, and removed his sunglasses, which he had forgotten he was wearing. His eyes were tired and deep within his face. "Maggie Chow had the Dragon's Tooth. That is where it was found. MJ12 had it the whole Goddamn time. And you and everybody else have been at each other's throats for it. Classic. Absolutely classic."*"

"And now there's just you and this bar and your gang," Jock continued, and threw the sword down on the desk before him. It appeared forlorn, as though its luminous presence was a complete waste. "Congratulations."

"We had nothing to do with-"

"I know, you're not responsible for that slaughter. It's going to take them months to clean that up. Jesus. It's going to take months to wash up all the blood."

Out in the club, there were only mirrors, and people were drunk and blissful, and they danced, looking into the glass and seeing only themselves.

--- --- --- ---

There was a man in a tan suit. His demeanor hardly differed from that of Mr. Hundly.

"Welcome to the VersaLife laboratories," he said, and his voice carried arrogance. "You may tour them but do not stay long. Our labs are a sensitive matter. Do not violate any security rules. Do not doubt that you will be watched. The lower levels are inaccessible to your level of clearance. Do not try to enter them."

He turned and stiffly retreated to some other place ideal for such arrogant people as himself.

*Dominic and Jess exited the small crevice allocated for the elevator and stepped into the biggest corridor they'd ever been in. The ceiling spanned so far above their heads that it seemed impossibly high, as though it should be cutting into the floors above, protruding above the earth. The expanse was illuminated with red, red reflecting from the floors, red draping along the walls. Dark spines of metal climbed opposing sides of the corridor and met at the top in archs. And the most unsual part of all stood at the opposite end, on the floor: A massive, marble statue of a hand, twisting its fingers about a rotating globe, as though it were ready to crush it with ease.*"

The man looked as Dom and Jess passed. The machine did nothing and said nothing, and it occured to Dominic that there might not have been a man within the shell at all.

Jess looked up. Somewhere at the top of the corridor there was a frame of darkness. Within it stood a pinkish figure, suited in black.

They were, of course, being watched.

--- --- --- ---

Walking into VersaLife with weaponry of many categories had been easy enough. The elevator upwards had been unguarded; It required only a combination that had been provided by Jock.

There had been security in the lobby, in the offices, and there was security in the labs. But they did not expect a man, or an existence somewhere beyond a man, to acquire lab passes through explicit fear. There had been security cameras and guards. There had been locks and combinations. There had not been a single weapons check or search.

Their fault was in their assumptions.

Jess knew that somewhere within the belly of the labs was their goal. She knew that beyond all the security and protection and armaments was where they had to be.

She stood now in a concrete hallway that had a glass floor. Through it could be seen the lower labs, though whatever experiments were being performed there were undeterminable.

*And then, somewhere high above, Mr. Hundly, who had just before come very close to urinating his pants, realized what shame had been put upon him, and it angered him.*"

Jess looked up from the glass. They had seperated. Dominic had gone elsewhere. She didn't know where he was.

She began to jog back to the hallway with the hand statue.

Then paused.

There would be guards. The entire place would begin swarming with guards.

She went back to the glass floor.

There was an elevator at the end of the hallway. It was ascending. It held occupants.

Behind Jess, around a corner, there were footsteps.

She drew a shotgun from within her jacket and pointed it straight downwards. There was a glass hallway immediately below her.

There was no other place to go.

She fired. The end of the shotgun erupted so loudly that the walls shook. The glass beneath her was so thick that it did not immediately shatter.

Again she fired.

And began to fall.

*For a moment she was suspended in air filled with delicate shards of glass, or shards of glass filled with delicate pockets of air - She found herself in a place of complete disarray, debris constantly rearranging itself at random as it does, and then a thick pane of glass seemed to leap at her face, and it struck, so that she was no longer falling.*"

Jess sprang up and ran - So fast that each footfall proved capable of blowing the glass out from beneath her - And then she leaped, and fired downwards again, and fell in such a way that she landed inside the corridor at its end, upon metallic floor.

She bled. Her flesh proved not so durable as Dominic's.

--- --- --- ---

Men rose out of a hole in the floor - Dominic saw that it was a panel before the statue which had opened. Stairs descended from it.

Somewhere, he heard a shotgun blast - Then a second, and the shattering of glass.

He rose. Running for the hole in the floor, he leaped towards its stairs.

A rocket sliced the air above him - So close that he felt the rush upon his head - And then it impacted stone, and exploded with such force that fine, piercing shards lodged themselves deep in the flesh of Dominic's back and shoulders. He collapsed, striking the floor before him, crumpling into a ball. He shouted between tighly closed teeth.

Pain was no less real than it had ever been. He had maintained that much.

Rising and turning simultaneously he drew his knife and threw it. It lodged itself in the mechanical man's neck. Blood oozed through the cracks in the metal and glass, organs spilling through bone, rotten core pouring through the healthy outer shell of a fruit. Indeed there was a man somewhere in there, and he was dying.

Dominic vanished.

*He was a man of power, and miserably so.*"

## Links

* http://mirror.deusexnetwork.com/planetdeusex.com/features/twist/index.html