Modern/Delta Green - The Beginning of the End (COMPLETED)

[talien]

Grace Under Pressure: Part 5 – Who's There?

"No!" shouted Hammer.

Cho Chu-Tsao was momentarily distracted, turning to look at the satchel tumbling down towards the altar. Her defenses lowered, Hammer fired a bullet between her eyes. She slumped backwards, mouth open in surprise.

The ensuing explosion blasted the plinths off their bases. Guppy was nearly beheaded by one of the rocks as it whistled through the air.

The shockwave stunned the agents. In the ensuing dust and debris it was clear that the altar had been ruined. Hammer, Archive, Guppy, and Caprice struggled to their feet.

A figure strode towards them out of the cloud of dust. Hammer's pistols were up in a flash.

It was Jim-Bean. He dusted his hands. "Great, so now that's over…"

The rubble shuddered. A huge piece of stone slid off the back of the Deep One bodyguard. It was bloody and battered, with one goggle eye smashed in. In its arms was the frail Ko, looking like nothing more than a sickly child in its arms.

"The stars are right again," Ko whispered as he expired. "What we failed to do by design…you did…by accident…"

He died with a smile on his lips.

The bodyguard made a low moan. But it was not mourning over the dead man in its arms. As the dust settled, a horrible fact became clear: the door was open.

By blood and force, the seal had been penetrated, its doors blasted open. In the darkness, a mountainous mass pulsed softly with the same unnatural glow as the rest of R'lyeh.

Jim-Bean's mouth fell open. For once, he was without words.

"Run…" whispered Hammer, straining to tear his eyes away from the slumbering mass at the center of the dome. "Run!"

The agents turned. Archive, like Jim-Bean, seemed entranced by the fleshy mass that stirred within. A slit of yellow inched open, bathing the agents in an unholy light. Slowly, a fiery red orb rolled down into view. The dual-pupils winced tighter, shifting from the far-off dreaming of a slumbering titan to keen alertness. An eye that had just regained its focus.

Hammer shoved Archive. "RUN!"

A tentacle unfurled out of the dark recesses and, with a yelp, the Deep One bodyguard was gone.

Jim-Bean turned and ran.

The place shuddered around them. Onwards they ran, diving back through the submerged chamber. Stone plunged in great showers, puncturing the watery passageways. Of the Deep Ones and their dark lords there was no sign.

They burst out of the entrance through the Cthulhu statue's mouth. Struggling, with the water up to their hips, they lurched upwards, desperately scrabbling, crawling for purchase along the steep incline.

One of the statue's tentacles snapped off, spinning over and over as it bounced its way towards the agents. Caprice dove to the side but not fast enough. It smashed into his shoulder, spinning the agent back towards the void of the Cthulhu-statue's mouth.

Hammer caught him by the arm. Lugging the unconscious Caprice in a fireman's carry, he struggled on.

The other agents paused to look back.

"Keep going!" shouted Hammer. "Jimmy, tell Ho to fire up the Wallaby!"

Jim-Bean stumbled on like a man drunk. The psychic pressure was immense. They didn't understand, the fools, what was happening. They weren't running from a mere earthquake. They were protozoa fleeing a Baleen whale. Using his psychic powers was like screaming in a wind tunnel – he could barely concentrate, much less hear himself think.

Finally, they reached the Wallaby. The other agents piled in.

On his way to the sub, Jim-Bean suddenly fell to his knees, hacking and wheezing. It was as if someone was trying to pull his stomach through his mouth.

Blue fluid filled up his lungs and nose, choking him. Jim-Bean vomited it out in a spray. The effluvia swam away with a life of its own.

Jim-Bean found himself next to Power's corpse, staring at his vacant, dead eyes. They had milked over completely with a yellow film. His mouth was gasped open like a shark dying on land.

Jim-Bean grabbed the belt of grenades around Powers' torso. He wasn't going to need them anymore.

The ground continued to tremble. Jim-Bean staggered to his feet and clambered up onto the Wallaby. He barely had time to pull the airlock shut when the submarine submerged.

 

[talien]

Grace Under Pressure: Part 6 – Horseshoes…

The agents were all battered and bruised. Caprice lay unconscious on the floor with a bloody head wound, a strip of gauze over one eye. Archive sat rolled up in a ball, whispering to himself over and over: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!" Guppy was in the pilot's seat. Hammer sat at the co-pilot's seat next to Guppy, but he wasn't entirely sure what to do.

Ho had it the worst. He just laughed and laughed and laughed.

Behind them, Jim-Bean languidly kept one arm on each chair. He stared in fascination at the collapsing black mountain. Something was emerging from it, wings unfurling like a butterfly exiting a cocoon. It was so alien and yet strangely beautiful to him.

The psychic pressure was pounding now, like a heartbeat. Jim-Bean had trouble focusing.

The comm. crackled. "Mayday! Mayday! This is the RSV Horseshoe, we need immediate help, is anyone there? Christ!" There was the sound of banging in the background. "…They're outside now…listen, we're under attack! Repeat, we are under attack!" There was a muffled explosion. "Wallaby! Wallaby!" A sudden crack. Then a couple of heavy thumps and static.

Guppy yanked the wheel hard as the Horseshoe, still sparking and falling into the subterranean depths, suddenly loomed into view. The Wallaby skidded off the side as the huge metal form slid past as the Horseshoe sank into the depths, down towards the thing that was assuredly coming for them all.

"That's it!" Hammer turned to Guppy. "The Horseshoe is nuclear powered, right?"

Guppy blinked. "Yes, but…"

"Guppy, that thing can't reach the surface. We've got to stop it. No matter what it takes…"

Hammer and Guppy exchanged a look. They had their differences in the past. Guppy had threatened to kill Hammer; Hammer had Guppy committed. But in that moment they weren't enemies, or allies, or fellow agents. They were all that stood between humanity and the end of the world.

"Okay." Guppy spun the Wallaby around and dove after the descending Horseshoe. "I'm not sure how much pressure this thing can handle. We're descending fast."

"I just need you to get us on board." He brought up a map of the Horseshoe. "There!" Hammer pointed at the airlock near the bottommost part of the huge submarine. "Can you get us close enough to the reactor?"

Guppy punched the Wallaby into overdrive. "I can try!"

The Horseshoe was tumbling over and over, like an asteroid on a collision course. Alarms shrieked in protest as Guppy set the Wallaby into a spin.

"I'm going to have to match the tumble…so hold on!"

Hammer strapped Caprice and Archive into their seats. Hammer had just enough time to strap in before Guppy threw the Wallaby into a barrel roll. Jim-Bean stayed with feet firmly planted on the deck, unaffected by the Wallaby's gyrations.

Ho hit the bulkhead with his face, splitting it open. His insane laughter finally stopped.

There was a tremendous thump as the Wallaby bounced off the Horseshoe, Guppy leveled it out, and then the smaller sub scraped along its surface.

"Extending umbilical!"

The Wallaby confirmed they had made a connection.

"Jimmy, you're with me," said Hammer. "Guppy, keep this thing running. We're going to need to exit it fast."

"Do you have a plan?" asked Guppy.

Hammer stopped in the middle of putting on a pressurized suit. "We're going to cause a nuclear meltdown."

 

[talien]

Righteous Triad Fists: Part 7 – …and Hand Grenades

Jim-Bean and Hammer were dressed in pressure suits, which were sturdier than the diving suits. The Horseshoe had largely depressurized. Water streamed everywhere. They moved past dead bodies floating face up in cramped corridors.

Hammer's cistron was hooked into the HUD in his suit. "According to the deck plans, this is the entrance to the reactor." They both grabbed hold of the huge wheel on the door. Nuclear warning signs were plastered everywhere in bright yellow.

It wouldn't budge.

"The pressure from outside must be too great," said Hammer. "We'll have to blow it."

"We don't have enough explosives to blow it!" shouted Jim-Bean. He was always shouting now, because there was a roaring in his ears.

"That's the only way. We'll have to make do—look out!"

Jim-Bean turned slowly as Hammer extended one pistol and fired past him. A Deep One's head exploded. Deep Ones crept down the corridor, hopping along walls, jumping from pipe to pipe, swarming like ants down a tunnel.

Hammer raked the area with gunfire. Suddenly red warning lights began to swirl and klaxons shrieked behind him.

The Deep One corpses piled up. Hammer spared a glance over his shoulder. The outer door to the reactor had just slammed shut again.

"Jimmy! Jimmy, are you nuts? You can't survive in there!"

"Maybe not." Jim-Bean's voice betrayed no hint of concern for his plight over the comm. "But I can certainly handle it better than you can."

Hammer reloaded, fumbling with the pistols in the darkness. The suit's limited visibility and the gloved fingers made it difficult.

"Damn it, Jimmy!"

He didn't get a chance to say more. The Deep Ones, finding their courage, launched another assault. More of them plunged down the hallway.

Hammer sprayed their legs. He didn't have to aim, because they swarmed through en masse without regard for their own safety.

The door opened again behind him.

Jim-Bean staggered out of the room, gasping. Whatever had happened to him in the nuclear reactor was not visible; it was impossible to see through his fogged mask.

"Hammer?" asked Guppy, who could monitor life signs from the Wallaby via their suits. "What just happened to Jim-Bean? His vitals are off the charts."

The Deep Ones had stopped their advance, for the moment. "Can you walk?" asked Hammer.

Jim-Bean patted Hammer on the helmet. "I'm fine," he gurgled back. But Hammer knew he was not fine. The suits were not meant to handle radiation. The amount of exposure Jim-Bean had suffered was horrific.

Jim-Bean leaned heavily on Hammer as they half-limped, half-dragged each other to the airlock. The Horseshoe shuddered and groaned around them like an old man.

"Guys, hurry up!" shouted Guppy through the comm. "There's Deep Ones headed straight for us! I don't know much more the Wallaby can take!"

Hammer and Jim-Bean wheeled the airlock door open. The umbilical bunched and flexed precariously as the Wallaby struggled to stay attached to the tumbling Horseshoe. Hammer suddenly felt pressure on his back.

He stumbled forward into the lock as the door winched behind him.

Hammer whirled, struggling with the airlock door. "Jimmy, what the hell are you doing?"

Jim-Bean held up one hand, and telekinesis winched the Wallaby's airlock closed.

"Don't worry…" wheezed Jim-Bean, "this is…what I was…built for."

"Jimmy!" shouted Hammer, watching helpless as his friend stood framed in the airlock door.

Then the umbilical tore apart.

The Wallaby spun away, and Hammer could see Deep Ones hurled off in different directions from the violent maneuver. Lights sparked behind the distant form of Jim-Bean, silhouetted in the open air lock.

Hammer stripped off the suit, scrambling back to the bridge.

Guppy punched it. The Wallaby roared forward with every reserve it had left.

On the screen, Guppy was able to monitor Jim-Bean and Hammer's vitals. Jim-Bean's were flaring red.

"His suit's losing pressure!" wailed Guppy.

Hammer closed his eyes. It was worse than that. The explosion hadn't gone off.

He slowly slumped to the co-pilot's chair. Even Archive had finally stopped muttering.

All that sounded within the cockpit was the long, mechanical wail of Jim-Bean's stopped heart.

 

[talien]

Grace Under Pressure: Part 8 – The End of the Beginning

The Deep Ones swarmed Jim-Bean. He could feel their malice, their hatred, their fury at what he was trying to do.

He was wrong about them, Jim-Bean realized. He thought they were mere savages, gasping fish-monsters filled with an alien hatred of all life. But they were far more malignant than that.

They were cells. Single cells, shed from the greater being, the thing that men called Cthulhu. They were the castoff, its detritus. But it was their god, their universe, their source of life. Their fury was not out of fear for their deity, but out of love – they were trying to impress their misbegotten god.

It didn't notice, any more than Jim-Bean noticed the skin that flaked from his body. There was nothing to notice, after all. It was so small, so imperceptible, that the very notion was absurd. It was the ultimate vanity, a display of sheer ego, to think something so important could even notice, much less appreciate, the veneration of floating specks of insignificant life.

The muck at the bottom of the depression bubbled and swirled, and in one large area the glow intensified. Within a few moments something began to rise from the muck. Its head was an enormous, great rubbery slab of tissue with malevolent dark eyes and a writhing mass of huge tentacles at the mouth.

Claws rent Jim-Bean's suit. Water pumped in.

A sacrifice. That's what he would be. The Deep Ones, frustrated by the attack on their god, were going to pay obeisance to their master by ripping Jim-Bean limb from limb.

Jim-Bean knew all this. He knew what they were thinking, feeling. The psychic pressure of the titanic being below was immense, but now it was no longer threatening to drive him mad. He felt peaceful. It was joyous, the arrival of the One True God. All was right. He wanted to laugh, to sing, to dance…

Their sacrifice would be meaningless, realized the tiny part of Jim-Bean's brain that was still functioning. He'd be dead long before they tore him apart.

Jim-Bean drifted off into darkness, in the comforting psychic womb of his lord and master, who was now as much a part of him as he was of them.

The Deep Ones backed off, uncertain. Jim-Bean's head twitched as he drowned, body convulsing as saltwater exploded his lungs. The suit's faceplate was shattered, revealing his peeled flesh and the ruin of a face. The Deep Ones had torn one of his arms off, and it rolled hazily in the water, trailing blood like a misguided rocket.

Jim-Bean was dying. No more pain. No more worry.

The light faded. Jim-Bean was already blind, his eyeballs long since destroyed from the radiation, but there was a light within his own mind that shone brightly. Even that was fading. He was falling, falling, falling…

He deserved peace, didn't he? Jim-Bean had been abandoned, experimented on, treated like a dog. He had been betrayed, violated, and used. He was crazy anyway, increasingly losing his grip on reality.

Stupid humans. They could fend for themselves from now on. It was better this way.

And yet. And yet.

Jenny was in his mind's eye, straining. The babies were being born. His babies. His children. Boys and girls all jumbled together. Nurses whisked them away, except for one. One of them, only one, was stillborn.

The doctor said something to Jenny, holding the limp little creature up for her to see. She wailed a scream of anguish that woke Jim-Bean up out of his stupor. Dead? Dead!

No, not dead. The other six were alive. But the doctors were hiding it from Jenny, hiding it from him. Those were his children. This was his future. They were the inheritors of the earth, and Majestic was trying to cover it up.

Jim-Bean forced himself back into consciousness. He took a deep breath, and found that gills had formed in what was left of his chest.

The virus! The PI virus had infected him, turned him. Now he was one of them.

Though his senses were ruined, his mind's eye could still see. The Deep Ones chanted in a huge floating mass, ushering in their god's arrival. The beast rose from the muck, bigger than anything Jim-Bean had ever seen. It was coated in the phosphorescent stuff, so that it glowed dimly as it rose into the water. Its glow pulsed faintly and seemed to shift in patches, as if the glow itself were sentient.

No. No, that would not do. Jim-Bean reached out with his remaining good arm and grabbed hold of the handle near the airlock.

Down, down, down the Horseshoe plunged. It was heading right for Cthulhu.

Jim-Bean reached out with psychic tendrils. He could feel the grenades, positioned in a wedge, ready to rent a hole in the reactor. Someone just needed to pull the pin. Someone.

Jim-Bean reached out and pulled.

 

[talien]

Grace Under Pressure: Conclusion

Guppy wept. Cthulhu was visible as a dim glow off in the distance, approaching swiftly.

"That's it then," said Guppy. "It's over."

He put the Wallaby on cruise. There was no point in fleeing. There would be nowhere on Earth they could escape to.

Hammer didn't say anything. He just kept staring at Jim-Bean's heart monitor, listening to the mechanical whine heralding his death.

Cthulhu reached the Horseshoe. With slow, ponderous deliberation it rent the submarine, tearing great gouts in its hull.

Beep. Jim-Bean's heart monitor beeped once.

"Guppy," Hammer said slowly.

"What?" asked Guppy.

Hammer pointed at Jim-Bean's heart monitor. His suit had lost pressure and the sensors were completely missing on one arm, meaning he'd probably lost a limb. But the heart monitor still worked.

Huge bubbles fled to the surface as sparks and flaring light from electrical systems lit the scene of the Horseshoe's demise.

Beep-beep. Jim-Bean's heart monitor bleeped again.

"I think you'd better speed up," said Hammer.

Guppy gasped as Jim-Bean's heart roared back. Beep-beep-beep-beep! He slammed the thrusters to full throttle.

Dozens of Deep Ones swarm about the legs and torso of Cthulhu, seeming to rejoice as the submarine met its end.

Then the reactor in the Horseshoe went critical.

There was no nuclear explosion -- the Horseshoe was no nuclear warhead. Instead, Jim-Bean's grenades blew enough force to expose the reactor to water. The instant cooling effect from something so superheated caused a pressure wave of unimaginable power. It exploded outward in a shockwave, engulfing Cthulhu, the Deep Ones, and much of R'lyeh.

The wave caught up with the fleeing Wallaby, engulfing it and then--

 

[talien]

Chapter 54: In Media Res - Introduction

This story hour is from "In Media Res" by John Tynes in The Resurrected 3: Out of the Vault. You can read more about Delta Green at Delta Green. Please note: This story hour contains spoilers!

Our cast of characters includes:

• Game Master: Michael Tresca
• George "Incinerator" Jones (Pyromaniac) played by Joe Lalumia
• "Crazy Freddy" Morgan (Cult Leader) played by Jeremy Ortiz (Jeremy Robert Ortiz)
• Johnny "The Smasher" Morowitz (Brutal Thug) played by George Webster
• Billy “Taste-Test” Bean (Cannibal) played by Michael Tresca
  

John Tynes is very proud of this scenario. He referenced it in the book Second Person and he went into even more detail in his column at Escapist Magazine, The Contrarian. In both cases Tynes makes this scenario out to be the holy grail of Cthulhu gaming – or at least, a cinematic thriller as a role-playing game. He uses it to contrast the lack of the visceral in online role-playing games (a notion I agree with). It seemed that by just dropping players into a nihilistic game, with unpleasant characters with an equally unpleasant past, it brought out the worst of the characters and the best of the players. I just had to test it on my own group to see if it was everything Tynes made it out to be – or at least, if our experience would be as electrifying.

We were between sessions. I had originally planned a much more advanced story arc that would put the campaign on hiatus before the birth of my daughter, but when Jim-Bean sacrificed himself to blow up Cthulhu I knew I couldn't top that. So In Media Res was a chance to show how the world had gone down the tubes after the explosion, how a wave of malevolence had seeped into everything. And the best way to demonstrate that to the players was to let them experience it firsthand.

I tweaked the characters slightly. All four of these characters appeared previously in the campaign, all convicts, the worst of the worst. I only had three players, so that made the sickest of the bunch (Billy) my problem to deal with – and I played him like Steve Buscemi as Garland "The Marietta Mangler" Greene in Con-Air. He also wasn't mute. Other than those changes – and make no mistake, they're big changes – I ran the scenario as closely as possible to Tynes' vision. Joe Lalumia wore a mask I printed on parchment-colored paper to represent the skinned face. He was eating fries at the time, so I had him use a French fry as the tongue (I bought licorice for this purpose, but nobody wants to eat licorice after eating fries). With a print out of the inkblot on the table, I let them go at it.

It didn't go as well as I'd planned. For one thing, dropping this scenario on players expecting to find out what happened to their characters made for a tough transition. Jeremy in particular wanted to know what was going on and at one point thought he was playing his old character in some other form. Joe didn't have much speaking parts. It was George that shined here, immediately thrusting himself into the role and ultimately successfully navigating the scenario.

A key element of this scenario is mindset. Tynes sets out to jolt players out of their role-playing malaise, but what he neglects to mention is that players know that the gaming experience will be different. At conventions, they expect the unexpected, they expect to play with people they don't know, they are mentally ready for something and they're playing with John Effing Tynes, so that's got to influence how they approach the game. I sprung this scenario on players who had a steady monthly rhythm with the same characters for years. More explanation might have helped, but this scenario is called In Media Res for a reason…

Defining Moment: When one of the characters dies in a car accident…it's chow time!

Relevant Media

• "Leatherface": Paper Mask.
• Escapist Magazine Article: about In Media Res by John Tynes.
• [ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262083566?ie=UTF8&tag=michaeltresca&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0262083566]Second Person[/ame]: edited by Wardrip & Fruin.
• [ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013AVSR0?ie=UTF8&tag=michaeltresca&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0013AVSR0]Train to Miami[/ame]: by Steel Pole Bath Tub.
• [ame=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/188779722X?ie=UTF8&tag=michaeltresca&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=188779722X]The Resurrected III: Out of the Vault[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwOITaTwNmk]In Media Res[/ame]

 

[talien]

In Media Res: Prologue

These are my friends now, these are my friends now.
I'm all alone in a big white house, and...
I'm all alone in a big white house, and...​

--Train to Miami by Steel Pole Bath Tub​

SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE LIBERTY, MISSOURI—"I AM THE WAY!" shouted a strange voice.

They all came to facing an eighteen-inch by twenty four-inch Rorschach inkblot that looked familiar somehow.

It was a pleasant fall evening. They were standing in a dining room of a somewhat shabby and rustic house. Cheap prints of dogs hunting quail decorate the walls. A cabinet against the wall contained "fine" china and silverware. They were all dressed the same: wearing greenish-blue institutional shirts and pants with low-cost sneakers. Their name-patches read: MOROWITZ, BEAN, MORGAN.

Their gaze was drawn to the supine corpse on the table.

A beefy man dressed in police-style clothing lay tied by the wrists and ankles on the dining room table. His throat was cut and blood had sprayed and run across his chest and the table. In addition, his face was missing—cut off.

The cut line ran across the hairline, in front of the ears, and under the chin. He lay there, muscle and tissue exposed and eyes staring out dully with no eyelids to cover them. His tongue was cut out.

Back to the blot. On the wall was a large Rorschach blot painted in fresh blood. In front of it stood a fourth man whose name-patch read JONES. He held the guard's face over his own and had just finished speaking in a strange voice. It was Jones' voice they heard first.

"What the F**K is going on?" shouted Morowitz, a large black man covered in prison tattoos. He was big and beefy, with powerful muscles concealed under layers of fat. He took one menacing step towards Jones.

Jones blinked and pulled the sticky flesh away from his face. Then, gagging for a moment, he swallowed something.

"I think…" he shuddered. "I think I just swallowed a tongue."

Morgan, with wild hair and unkempt beard, suddenly noticed the presence of a weapon in his pocket. He pulled out the revolver, a .38. It was probably the guard's. He spun the chamber – two bullets had already been fired.

Jones backed away, taking in the scene and realizing that his face and hands were covered with blood. Bean, a bug-eyed slight man, watched him curiously. Morowitz crossed his arms.

"You gonna use that pistol?" growled Morowitz.

Morgan tucked the pistol into his pocket. "Not yet. Anyone know where we are?"

"Or who we are?" asked Jones. "I don't remember…anything."

"Well you remembered cutting that poor f****er up good," said Morowitz. "Nobody deserves that, man."

"I didn't do that!" shouted Jones.

"You were wearing his face," said Morgan quietly.

"Gotta be a knife here somewhere," said Bean. He twitched as he looked around. "Where's the knife?"

Morowitz bent down under the table and came up with a bloody paring knife. "Looking for this?"

Bean swallowed, going nearly cross-eyed focusing on the dull blade. "Yeah, that's got to be the one."

Morowitz tucked it into his belt. "I'll keep it if you don't mind."

"Sure, sure, sure thing big guy."

Morowitz rubbed his forehead. "All right. I'm not good at this planning s**t. I'm guessing one of you is and that's how we got here. So start talking."

Morgan shrugged. "Looks like we're inmates." He rifled through the dead guard's possessions. He pocketed the contents of the wallet after taking out a nametag, which he tossed on the table between the dead man's feet.

"Dennis Gelon," read Jones. "A guard at the Liberty Center for the…" he trailed off.

"Criminally Insane," said Morgan ruefully.

 

[talien]

In Media Res: Part 1 – …Said the Spider to the Fly

A polite voice called to them from the other room. Morowitz went in first, knife at the ready.

A dim glow beckoned, the only light in the house that was on other than the dining room. The glow came from the television airing a local news special report.

A reporter stood in front of the wreckage of a large bus labeled "Liberty Center for the Criminally Insane," across which rescue workers clambered and scuttled.

"The unprecedented flooding and earthquakes that shook the nation yesterday have been further complicated by yet another tragedy that has let four dangerous convicts escape a maximum security facility. Liberty Center inmates were transported by bus out of the flood zone when the earthquake struck, flipping several prison transports. Four inmates took advantage of the confusion and escape with a hostage, one Dennis Gelon. The fugitives are considered armed and dangerous. Police advise residents to stay indoors and avoid walking anywhere…"

Morgan grunted. "Now we know who we are."

Morowitz glared at him. "F**k you. We don't know s**t. All we know is that one of you is a sick f****er who cuts people up for kicks."

Morgan smirked. "How do you know you didn't do it?"

That gave Morowitz pause.

"I'm going to find a bathroom and change clothes if I can," said Morgan matter-of-factly. "There's blood all over these."

Morowitz looked down and noticed the blood spatter on his chest. "S**t," he whispered. It was as guilty an indictment in his complicity of the murder as any jury.

Morowitz stripped his shirt off, revealing more tattoos and his considerable bulk. He headed into the kitchen, with Jones and Bean in tow.

Jones immediately headed under the sink.

"What are you doing?" asked Morowitz.

"We may need explosives," said Jones as he puttered with the chemicals. "I'm mixing something."

Morowitz rifled through the utensils draw and came up unsatisfied. Then he spied a wooden block bristling with knives. "You remember how to do that, huh?"

"Yeah," said Jones, distracted.

"Well I remember how to shiv a man," said Morowitz, pulling a carving knife from the block. "So be careful where you throw that s**t."

"Uh huh," said Jones.

Bean's eyes bugged more than usual. "So uh…you gonna hold onto both knives? 'Cause I could use a weapon and I figure you don't need both knives."

"S**t, here," sighed Morowitz, tossing him the paring knife. "F**k all good it'll do you."

"It's not the size of the knife that matters," said Bean, running a finger along the bloodied side of the paring knife.

"So you the leader of this here outfit?" asked Morowitz.

"I don't think so," said Bean. "I think that other guy…Morgan, probably is. But he seems too good for us. It makes me want to stab him in the f****ing throat."

He said the threat without changing his tone, expression, or his gaze wavering from the blade.

"I know what you mean," said Morowitz. "I don't like him either. F**k him. We don't need him. I say we stick together until we're out of this." He gestured at the room that was behind them where the skinned body lay. "Then we grab some wheels, and split up. They'll be looking for all of us together."

"Good idea." Bean still hadn't looked away from the blade.

Jones didn't look up from his task. "There's a car outside. Saw it lying in a ditch."

"Come on then," said Morowitz. "Get your s**t together and let's get the f**k out of here."

 

[talien]

In Media Res: Part 2 – The Thing in the Trunk

Outside, there was a barn with a fenced in yard about forty yards from the house. Neighing indicated that there were horses inside. Morowitz shook his head in disgust at just how rural their surroundings really were and made a beeline to the car.

It was wedged tightly into the ditch. Morowitz put his bulk behind it and gave it an experimental shove. It moved, but not by much.

"Well don't just stand there m***erf****ers!" He shouted. "Get to it!"

Bean, pocketed his knife. Jones placed the homemade explosive down by the entry to the house. They both put their shoulders to the car and shoved along with Morowitz.

Shrieking and groaning, the vehicle slowly made its way out of the ditch. When it finally was level again, Morowitz checked the ignition.

"Keys are still in it," he grunted, pleased.

"Did we drive this car here?" asked Jones.

"Maybe."

"Uh, guys…" said Bean. "You may want to take a look at this."

The trunk had partially opened in their efforts to dislodge the vehicle. In the darkness, a single unblinking eye stared up at them, illuminated in the waning light.

Morowitz lifted up the trunk. "S**t."

Inside were two women, dead. The younger was just a teenager, not more than sixteen. The other was probably her mother, judging from the family resemblance. They shared more than looks – each had a red bullet hole in their forehead.

Bean craned his neck and then stuck his finger in the younger girl's bullet hole. ".38 caliber," he said nonchalantly.

"Who the f*&k murders a little girl and her mother?" asked Morowitz. "This is some f**ked up s**t right there."

"Somebody with a .38 caliber pistol," said Jones. They looked back at the house where Morgan was taking a shower and getting changed.

 

[talien]

In Media Res: Things Go Bust

Morgan rifled through the clothing of the man of the house, indifferent as to the fate of its owner. Dead, he decided, if they were lucky. Morgan was a cold-blooded killer, he knew that much. But he wasn't some psycho – not the type to skin a man's face off or eat his tongue.

He wanted to scrub the stink of the place off of him. They were into some weird, deep s**t – cult stuff, the kind of things that made the news. And Morgan didn't like the idea of making more news.

He was going to have to ditch the others, and fast. Morowitz was too surly and unpredictable. Jones was too quiet. And Bean was just plain too f**ked up. He didn't trust any of them.

Morgan turned the water on. After squeaking and shuddering in protest, the pipes complied.

The blood washed away. Morgan put one hand on the bathroom wall and bowed his head, letting the water pour over him, enjoying the sensation.

When he looked up, he saw that he'd left a fading, bloody handprint on the shower wall. It looked like the blot downstairs. And that reminded him of something...

He was fourteen. Morgan and a friend had broken into the house of an old man in a nearby neighborhood – it was Morgan's first robbery. His friend Terry was in the next room.

Morgan was in a small study with no windows and only one door. He stuffed his backpack with a bronze bust of Shakespeare from a bookshelf when he heard voices in the hall outside.

Terry yelled. A gunshot responded.

Footsteps.

Morgan looked around. He had no weapon other than the bust.

The door opened. The old man stood there in his nightgown holding a pistol.

Morgan struck with the bust and brought the old man down.

The bloody bust of Shakespeare. That's what the blot reminded him of.

And suddenly, Morgan remembered who he was.