Unexplained Phenomena Unit, session 13 recap: A Devil Sick of Sin, part 2
- samcyb
- Nov 18, 2023
- 31 min read
Updated: Feb 7, 2024
Played 19/11/23. This game was guest-GMed by Paul M Bradley, the player of Mike Jones. Recap was mostly written by Paul.
That night, as darkness falls across Hong Kong and a thousand little beads of light flicker into life through windows and across the streets, the team drive down cramped little back-alleys in search of the next drop-off point. The mood is quiet and tense, the sound of windscreen wipers shovelling away light rain proving to be the only steady rhythm they can rely on.
“Remember the plan,” John murmurs.
“No interaction if we can help it, just observe.”
Salem nods. He turns to Zoe.
“You ok?”
Zoe stares into space. Salem snaps his fingers in front of her.
“Wha-?” “I said, are you ok?” “Uh…yeah…” she mumbles. “I just…I feel a bit…”
“You’re used to desk-work, aren’t you?” says Ping Cho, not unkindly.
“Y…yes…”
“That’s it then, it’s the adrenaline. I used to get that myself when…when…”
She blinks. Shakes her head. Blinks again. Salem frowns, turning to John.
“What? What is it?” “I…I just…I’m feeling…”
Suddenly the van begins to shake, lurching to the left. John rushes to the driver's seat and grabs Ghost by the shoulders.
“Watch where you’re driving, you ass…!”
He stops. Ghost is looking glazed, dizzy and confused.
“Ghost? Ghost?!?”
“It…I’m…I, uh….”
“GHOST?!?”
Zoe rises to help, but vertigo immediately overtakes her and she collapses back into her seat.
“What the hell’s gotten into them?!?” barks John.
“Whatever got into all the coma patients, I expect,” says Salem, panicking.
“What the fuck are we gonna do?!?”
“LISTEN TO ME!” cries a voice in Salem’s mind. The back of his neck begins to throb and his ears prick as if someone were whispering behind his ear.
“DO EXACTLY AS I INSTRUCT AND THEY SHALL SURVIVE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“Who is this?” he thinks in response.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!?”
“Yes.”
“GOOD. GO TO THE KITCHENETTE AND GRAB THE SALT. POUR IT IN A CIRCLE AROUND THE VICTIMS.”
Salem obeys, starting with Zoe. John looks on in confusion.
“Now what?”
“PICTURE A SWORD IN YOUR HAND, AS CLEAR AS POSSIBLE. IMAGINE IT GLOWING WITH DIVINE ENERGY….NOW, TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND DRAW THE ENERGY OF THE COSMOS INTO YOUR BEING…”
“Salem, I hate to sound like a broken record, but what the fuck are you-?!”
“SHUT HIM UP.”
“Sir, please, trust me.”
John backs off.
“Now what?”
“RECITE THESE WORDS AND SLASH THE SWORD DOWN IN FRONT OF THEM: SHI-RA DIO-TA!”
“Shi-ra dio-ta!!!”
He slashes the imaginary sword down and Zoe instantly recovers.
“Woah! That was so weird, I felt like-”
“Not now!”
Salem dashes to the front and performs the same ritual to Ghost, saving him mere seconds before the final, devastating effect could take hold.
“Quick! Ping Cho!” cries Zoe.
“Leave her!” says John. “It’s one less problem to deal with!”
Salem rushes over.
“Too late, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Ping Cho lays sprawled on the back seat, her eyes vacantly staring into nothing.
“Chen must have noticed the struggle outside of the Jadelight building and realised you three weren’t employees.”
Ghost staggers over to meet the others, having slowed the van to a gentle stop.
“So what now?”
John searches Ping Cho. He finds the hidden compartment in her watch, revealing a small blinking red light.
“Just as I thought. Tracking device.” he stands up.
“That settles it, we dump her out in a dumpster somewhere round here and let her comrades find her. What they do after that is their own problem. Not like she can bother us now.”
“But-” Zoe begins.
“No.” says John, bluntly.
“This time it’s not a debate. We have a drop-off to spy on, we haven’t got time to worry about this. Understood?”
“...Yeah, ok.” Zoe says uncomfortably.
The team mobilise with Ghost and Zoe grabbing Ping Cho by her arms and legs while John goes scouting round for the nearest empty dumpster. As Salem sits on his own, guarding the van, he begins to think.
“That voice, I’ve heard that voice before…deja vu…”
At last they arrive by the reported drop-off point, a crumbling, long abandoned building. Ghost climbs the fire-escape of an adjacent building while the others take position around various corners and back passages.
They sit. They wait. The seconds tick by, blending into minutes, for a moment it feels like the drop-off is a hoax. Until…
A man on a motorbike, a thick white metal box strapped to its back, comes speeding into view. He stops the bike, unloads the package, places it under a tarpaulin and marks a nearby wall with a small eagle insignia before speeding off again.
Salem smiles to himself.
“The eagle, of course…”
“What was that?” asks John in his earpiece.
“Nothing, sorry.”
Salem switches it off.
A few more minutes pass and then a new vehicle comes into view. A sleek black car, no plate, no identifying features. It glides in, a couple orderlies in suits emerge, they pick up the box, load it into the boot, get back in and drive off, leaving a fire insignia layered over the eagle.
“Ok, we’ve got movement,” says Ghost. “Let’s roll.”
The team mobilises in an instant. Ghost slides down the fire escape and onto his motorbike, speeding ahead of the others with Zoe in tow. Salem and John follow behind in the van. On they go, trailing the car at a distance from two different angles. They follow it as it winds through highway and street, passing through the monolithic towers as if they were the walls of a great labyrinth.
Soon they’ve left the developed area of Hong Kong altogether and have begun to wind through paths surrounded by thick wildlife, the buildings becoming sparser and sparser. Then they dip back into the urban zones, then out into the wilderness, urban, wilderness, urban, wilderness, until finally they arrive at their final destination. It’s a new block of seven plush apartment buildings, tall as any building in Hong Kong, but all completely empty, waiting for their rich clientele to buy them up - all but one. One single light shines out from one of the windows of tower number three, the tower now being entered by the orderlies with the box.
“Jackpot,” whispers Ghost as he stops the bike.
The others arrive shortly after, making sure to park the van in an area where it cannot be seen. The team approaches the complex, scouting it out.
“Ghost, think you can get a good look through that window?” asks John.
Ghost nods.
“If I can break into tower one, there’s a window that looks right out to it.”
“Perfect. You scope it out, Salem, Zoe, you check out the apartment itself, I’ll wait in the van in case we need to get away.”
“How come you’re always the one who gets to sit in the van and do nothing?” asks Zoe. John shrugs. “Easy, I’m 54 years old, I’m better at it, kid.”
Through the scope of his rifle, Ghost watches as the orderlies walk into the apartment. The space is sparse and clean, but still with an innate sort of sophistication. It looks like a model bachelor pad, but for one strange detail. A glass wall segregates off nearly half of the space, behind it the decor becomes far more old-timey with a large oak bookcase dominating the back wall, beside it is a door leading to more unseen areas. The orderlies enter and punch in a code on the keypad by the wall. An invisible glass door slides open and they enter with the box, carrying it through the other door and into whatever may be beyond. A few seconds later they return and leave, movements as smooth and orderly as machines.
“Ok, they’re leaving now,” says Ghost into his earpiece.
“Move in, you two.”
“Roger that,” says Salem and he and Zoe begin to make their advance towards the tower building, slipping by the orderlies utterly unnoticed in the thick looming shadows.
Ghost sighs in relief as they enter the building - well, it all seems nice and clear now, nothing to…
And then he notices something move. An ornate leather armchair sits by the bookshelf, its back facing to him. There’s something in that chair. He squints, what is it? A sack? A hanging coat? And then it moves, a hand slipping out from its black folds and flopping out onto one of the armrests. Shit!
“There’s someone in there!” he hisses.
“Watch yourselves.”
“Are they wearing a black robe, perchance?” asks Salem. Ghost confirms.
“Ah, then I was expecting as such. Don’t worry, Ghost, I’ve got this.”
Ghost tenses once again. Please, God, let him be right…
The door creaks open and Salem silently gestures for Zoe to remain outside as he enters. He walks slowly, but confidently, until finally he’s facing the glass wall.
“Greetings” he says.
The hooded figure shifts once more, pushing itself up and rising to full height. It lurches over, grabbing a wooden cane topped with an ivory carving of a rams head, and presses a button embedded on a nearby wall. A speaker on the glass wall crackles into life.
“You’re…here…at last.”
Salem gives a half smile, stepping closer to the divide.
“Of course. It’s good to see you again… Mr Haig.”
The figure turns to face him, the hood falling from his head. Salem flinches slightly. The man is bald, thick scars crisscrossing a face made of bruised and swollen skin, his eyes blue and piercing. The robe, now open a fraction, exposes the monstrous hybrid of metal and flesh beneath. His legs and pelvis are almost entirely chrome, but woven through the robotic framework is a patchwork assembly of human organs, packed in tight and held in place by transparent plastic film which wriggles and pulsates under the undulating guts. Salem watches in dark fascination as the man's lungs expand, his heart beats, his stomach rumbles, all naked and open as if inviting him to watch a parody of his own biology. The scar-riddled face cracks into a grin. “Salem. I’m gratified that you refer to me by my true name.” Salem pulls his eyes back up to meet his opponents. Strange, he thinks, that in spite of the face being made entirely of stolen parts, it still resembles the one which greeted him on the viral video. Perhaps a soul can inherently warp the body it occupies - or perhaps he just chose stolen parts that looked comfortable and familiar.
“I thought it had to be you,” he says.
“I followed the clues. The eagle, the fire. That was a liver being delivered to you just now, I take it? You’re acting out the fate of your namesake.”
“Except I intend for my suffering to end!”
The figure takes another step forward, resting a shaking hand on the glass.
“I am no longer Prometheus, Salem. That is an old name I now reject. I am Raymond Haig, I am a devil sick of sin, and I throw myself at your mercy.”
“Salem? Can you hear me?” says Ghost into his earpiece.
“Salem, what’s going on?! What the hell is that thing?!?”
No response.
“Dammit, Salem, pick up!!”
And then, in shock, he watches as Salem removes his earpiece and switches it off.
“The fuck does he think…?!”
“What’s going on?” asks John.
“No fucking clue,” says Ghost.
“But I don’t fucking like it.”
Zoe steps in, nervously, unclipping her earpiece on orders from Salem. Her eyes widen as she sees Raymond Haig, instantly recognising the face even through the scars and the swelling. She saw his soul, after all.
“Miss Gadzooks!” Raymond smiles.
“Delighted to see you again. It is gratifying to meet once more the woman who saved my very existence.” “It’s…it’s you…” she whispers. “But how?”
Haig turns the armchair towards the pair, lowering himself into it. The others find chairs of their own and return the gesture. Suddenly it's less of an investigation and more of an after-dinner chit-chat.
Haig takes a deep breath and begins to tell his tale.
“When you and the others saved me from Xannis and overthrew my plans to topple creation, I found my soul untethered from the earthly plane. For a while I drifted across the astral planes, drawn - as all souls are - to return to the great omni-soul from which all life springs. But I refused to go, not me, not now. I was free of the influence of other beings and I wasn’t yet ready to have my essence recycled for other souls to be born from. I wandered the realms of reality, witnessing all the permutations that life took on, and I saw a world where Xannis was victorious; the world of of Tocksolok. It was once an interesting place, a clockwork planet, an intricate ecosystem of clockwork plants and creatures that all served to keep their world spinning. Motion and movement was god. But Xannis enslaved them. Diverted their efforts to building thousands of computers, servers that his mind could inhabit, and increase his reach. Tocksolok stopped spinning. It became a tidally locked world, one side forever in day, the other forever in cold, uninhabitable night. Billions died. And they were the lucky ones."
He sighs.
"I knew then that Earth must never fall to such a fate. I was…grateful for my defeat. And then I drifted, on and on, always feeling the vengeful eyes of Xannis at my back. For a while, I thought this would be my fate, that my execution had been merely delayed. I contemplated going towards the great light after all, in spite of my fear, in spite of my conviction that my purpose in life was not yet fulfilled. I saw my whole biography, from birth to youth to death and rebirth, and I felt that every second had been wasted…and then I heard it…a voice from beyond.”
“What was it?” asks Salem.
“I don’t know. It was a being, an infant, but so powerful, so much like a god and yet still not even at its full form. It offered me a road to redemption…and I took it. And suddenly I was back on earth, my soul born into the one vessel which was still open to me…”
“The final prometheus drone.”
“Precisely. It was laying on a scrap-heap, the Hong Kong government ready to break it down and end the Prometheus gambit forever, but I got lucky.”
“Of course!” says Zoe.
“The whole deal with Jadelight and the stolen metal!”
Haig nods.
“Chen wanted the final drone for himself, to study it and learn its secrets for his own gain. He didn’t know what a valuable asset he had until I began to speak to him.”
Salem nods in understanding.
“Let me guess, you offered to teach him the ritual that put his enemies into a coma in return for…” he gestures to the organic components of his body.
“All of that.”
“As a machine, I was still vulnerable to Xannis’ influence,”
Raymond explains.
“My brain was a micro-computer, cold and logical, it would have been easy as anything to simply return to my old plan. I had no connection to humanity, no sense of the being I once was. My time in the astral realm began to feel like a dream, but I held onto it with all my remaining will. Even now, with the cybernetic brain substituted for an organic one and my old biological systems slowly returning to my awareness, I can still feel the pull towards the inhuman, the clear, the cold.”
“Does it help?” asks Salem.
“That distance from humanity, does it help you to organise all those dealings with Morningstar?”
“I am morningstar. Luc McStarr was the pseudonym I used as Prometheus to organise all my affairs, to hire the gunmen who attacked you at the warehouse-”
“Who killed Demonaco.” Zoe interrupts.
Raymond nods.
“I revived the operation upon my return to Earth. Chen provided the money and the materials while I organised the grander plan. We would fund assassins across the world, giving them all the resources and tech that they would need, and in return they would harvest the compatible organs of the ones they killed. That way I could gain the materials needed to pull myself from the brink of inhumanity while not attracting suspicion from the outside world. It was an…efficient solution.”
“It’s fascinating,” Zoe rasps.
“Horrific, but fascinating.”
“That’s not all, though, is it?” says Salem. “Why are we here?”
Raymond rises, slowly, beginning to pace like a caged lion around his enclosure.
“That voice, the one which pulled me from the Astral realm, it told me to seek you out, to surrender myself to the institution that once sought to destroy me. I knew, trapped as I was in Hong Kong, that I would have to spark an official investigation so I began, slowly, to tip things towards that end. At first it was little things. I knew Chen would never be able to communicate with the souls he untethered; that was my function, to implant suggestions that would make them come round to Chen’s side, so I used that to my advantage. I changed their mindsets a little too much, made them far too different from their former selves, not enough for Chen to notice, but enough for others around them to grow uneasy. And then of course it was simply a case of goading Chen to perform more and more such rituals. Any minor offence, any tiny slight, eventually it became his sole means of dealing with problems and he forgot that people were watching.”
Salem raises his eyebrow.
“And Phantom?”
“A perfect opportunity. When I saw that Brenda woman wanted to attack a UPU agent - not just a UPU agent, but an agent from your very team… It was an opportunity too good to pass up. I sent the agent most reliant on Jadelight technology and waited for the UPU’s hatred of the company to ferment into action.”
“But what if she’d killed them?” asks Zoe
“Mike, John, Ghost, the whole Jones family?!”
“Then the desire for retaliation would have been even greater. It was a calculated risk…If it’s any consolation, I knew you would be fine.”
Salem smiles, darkly. “Well, I’m flattered you think so highly of-”
“Not because of you or your team,” he interrupts.
“With all due respect, my true admiration is for Helga Jones.”
Zoe looks confused. “Mike’s Nana?”
“Indeed. I’ve met her before, many years ago now, before Xannis dug his claws into my mind. She followed me to England along with a cult I had taken control of and we did battle at the altar of the ancient one. She wiped me out along with all twelve of my comrades. I was lucky to escape with my life. I knew you had nothing to fear.”
“Okay, Haig,” says Salem, rising from his own chair.
“So you want us to smuggle you out of here, is that it? To free you from Chen so you can seek redemption?”
“To try and redress the dent I have made in the world Karma, yes.”
“And what do you ask for in return?”
“Shelter, protection from Xannis, and the resources to complete my transition back to humanity under more…desirable circumstances.”
“You’d submit to being locked in a faraday cage, for instance? To make sure you couldn’t do any Prometheus or Morningstar stuff?”
“I would not only submit to it, I would demand it. As I said, I am a refugee from Xannis, anywhere there is technology, I am at risk.”
“And you’re sincere? You truly want to make amends?”
“I’ve hidden nothing from you so far, have I? You were able to see through my depict before, you tell me now whether I am lying to you.”
Salem looks at Haig for a while. He relaxes.
“Okay, let’s get moving.”
“What’s going on now?” asks John. Ghost’s eyes widen.
“I don’t believe it, they’re trying to let it out!”
“It surrendered?”
“I dunno, they’re still not…”
Ghost pauses, a car is pulling up to the building. The door opens and out from it emerges Leo Chen, smug and confident as an overgrown child. Ghost’s finger hesitates over the trigger. God, it would be so easy to wipe the smug smile off his face, probably save the others too… but no, can’t risk it just yet.
“Guys,” he whispers into his earpiece.
“Leo Chen is…wait…shit!”
Of course, of course they’re still disconnected! He rushes out the building and towards block three. Once again it’s his job to save the others' asses…
The apartment door opens once more. Salem and Zoe freeze. Chen strides into the room. “Me again. I just wanted to… Oh.”
He looks at the agents, completely unfazed.
“I wasn’t expecting guests tonight. Good evening.”
For a moment the two are dumbfounded, unsure of how to respond to him. Chen smirks.
“You look like a pair of rabbits staring at an oncoming car, you know that?”
Salem regains his composure, he pulls out his gun and points it directly at the CEO.
“Don’t move, we’re taking your guest back to his home country.”
“Oh, are you now?” says Chen, barely masking is contempt behind a smile.
“Haig, these people are supposed to be in comas. Have you been arranging little deals behind my back?”
“M-Mister Chen,” Zoe stammers, remembering the lessons taught to her about asserting authority.
“Raymond Haig is no longer your prisoner. We have come to-”
“Prisoner?! Is that what he’s been telling you?”
Chen pours himself a brandy from the mini-bar and strolls over to the glass wall.
“Haig, do you have so little faith in me? We’re partners, you and I!”
“In that case, Chen, I wish to leave. I will no longer provide my services to you.”
Chen shakes his head.
“Now, now, why would you do that?”
“My karmic debt is steep enough, I don’t wish to add to it with more-”
“Your debt! Yes, of course!” Chen laughs.
“Tell me, Haig, doesn’t helping me count as paying it off? After all, my company employs millions, provides services and essential aid to billions, are you really so wretched that even this cause isn’t worth it?”
Raymond’s nostrils flare in anger.
“You are a parody of yourself, Chen.”
“Very well,” says Chen, swaggering away from Raymond and brushing the others away as if they didn’t exist.
“I’ve been lenient to you in the past, even risked criminal charges to help build your disgusting little meat prison, but if you truly think I’m the monster here, then I’ll play along. Here’s the new deal, instead of working for me in exchange for my help, you will work for me in exchange for your continued existence!” He snarls the final words, bearing his teeth like a rabid dog.
At that moment, the door bursts open once again and Ghost charges in, machine gun pointing straight at Chen.
“Freeze!!!”
“Ah, there you are,” says Chen, right back to his civilised demeanour.
“The other so-called health inspector. I was wondering where you would be. Let me guess, you’re with the American government? Yes, dumb, brutal, loud and inefficient, that seems about right.”
“Oh, great, he’s a smartass as well as a madman.”
“Yes, yes, now run along little pigs,” coos Chen.
“Haig is mine and I shall do with him as I wish.”
Ghost turns to look at Salem.
“Sorry, he does realise he has two people pointing guns at him, right?!”
“Yes, and what an empty gesture that is,” Chen smiles.
“You won’t shoot me, not even an American would be that stupid.”
“You wanna bet?” growls Ghost. God, he wants to shoot this bastard so bad!
“Oh, go on then.” says Chen.
“Shoot me, you go and shoot a prominent international businessman with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party. You go and murder a man who is on first name terms with Xi Jinping. I’d love to see what that would do for America/Chinese relations, no, really, I would. Do you think WW3 would be more or less likely when they discover it was an illegal operation on foreign soil? Do you think your own politicians would be able to spin that in any positive direction? Go on, pull the trigger, let’s find out!”
Salem and Ghost remain frozen like statues.
“He’s right, you know,” mutters Zoe.
“I’m always right.” Chen finishes his drink and leans back against the bar.
“Now, go on, run along, I have work to do!”
He turns and begins to pour himself another brandy.
Ghost lowers the gun, thinking for a second.
“You smug prick. I might not be able to kill you, but there is something I can do.”
“Oh yes?” says Chen, not even looking up from his bottle.
“What’s that, then?”
“THIS!”
Ghost charges forward and smashes Chen on the back of the head with the butt of the rifle. Chen topples over, the front of his head colliding with the marble surface of the bar. He collapses onto the ground, blood pouring from his nose.
“Oh God!” gasps Zoe.
Ghost checks his pulse.
“No worries, he’s just out cold.”
“Yes, and I’m sure that won’t have any disastrous international consequences!” says Salem, sarcastically.
“It won’t if I can get out of here.” says Raymond.
“I’ve been working on a plan for a while now. Chen’s empire won’t last until the end of the day."
Salem dashes over to the keypad and unlocks the door, Raymond staggers out, holding himself aloft with the help of his cane.
Ghost looks at him, sees the mechanical parts mingling with the flesh, and finally puts it all together.
“Chen called him Haig, like Raymond Haig?!”
Zoe rushes in, leading Ghost away to guard the door.
“It’s more complicated than that, he’s not Prometheus anymore.”
“Is that why Salem disconnected? Did he offer him another alliance?!”
“He’s offering to surrender himself to the UPU, he could be useful.”
“He caused the fucking data leak! He nearly destroyed the entire organisation! How the fuck are we supposed to trust him?!?”
“Like I said, he’s not Prometheus anymore, just…just hear him out.”
Ghost’s eyes are like daggers.
“You and Salem have got a lot of explaining to do once we’re out of here, and I wanna talk to Haig myself.”
Salem drags Chen’s unconscious body into Haig’s former quarantine zone. Beyond the door next to the book shelf is a corridor leading to three additional rooms, a small bathroom, an operating room and a room painted entirely in black. On the floor, etched in chalk, is a circle marked with a complex sigil in its centre. Around the perimeter is a string of photographs, all faces of Chen’s victims.
“I take it this is where Chen performs the ritual,” says Salem, dragging Chen into the room.
Raymond nods.
“Before you ask, allow me…”
He steps into the circle, hands Salem the cane, and begins to draw several bizarre shapes in the air with his hands. He recites a string of incantations and then, with a final cry of “Shi-ra dio-ta!” causes the circle to glow bright blue and then disappear, the pictures instantly combusting into ash along with it. Salem is about to applaud the performance, but the gesture is quickly interrupted by a cry of pain from Raymond.
He staggers, collapsing into Salem’s arms as a small rip appears on his liver. For a moment he lays there, limp as a ragdoll, before finally his strength returns and he lifts himself once more with the help of the cane.
“What the hell was that?” asks Salem.
“Magic takes a toll on you,” Raymond rasps.
“Why do you think Chen had to learn to do it? Without training or an arcane artefact, even a fully healthy person will receive some injury to their astral body. I used to be an adept at it, but now?” He shakes his head. “Now , all my charms are overthrown and what strength I have is my own, which is most faint…”
Salem smiles.
“The Tempest.”
“Indeed,” says Raymond.
“It was one of the books I read during my imprisonment. The story of a sorcerer who renounces his lust for power, it seemed…appropriate.”
“Right,” says Salem.
“Let’s tie his hands together and lock the door. That plus the glass wall, that should keep him stuck for a good long while.”
He removes his tie and wraps it around the unconscious man’s wrists, but just before he goes to leave, curiosity overtakes him. He places his hand upon Chen’s forehead. Images are bubbling inside the man's unconscious mind, rising and falling into each other like lava.
Chen standing at a podium.
Chen sitting proud in his office.
Chen dictating policy to every government of the world.
Chen making Jadelight the only tech company in existence.
Chen stamping on the face of his enemies.
Chen ruling the world.
Chen, Chen, Chen, always his own face at the front of every thought, but there was something else there, too. A dark cloud looms just behind the billionaire, one the man can barely make out the edges of.
“...Xannis. He’s here, in his mind…”
Haig’s eyes widen in sadness and horror.
“That’s how it starts,” Haig explains to the crew as the van sits parked on the side of a road, Zoe attending to his wounds. “Xannis always begins as nothing more than a whisper, an impulse in the back of your mind. You don’t even recognise it as anything other than your own thoughts, not at first. Slowly he preys on your vanity, your ambition, steering them towards his own interests. By the time he makes his presence known to you, you’re already well on the way to serving him. As you align yourself more and more to his cause, he’ll still let you believe that you’re the one who’s really running things. He demands no loyalty as he knows he already has it, knows it long before you ever do. The more you collaborate, the more your thoughts are eroded, replaced by his will, his ambitions. Finally you abandon your physical body altogether and place yourself into a machine, filtering your soul not through the subtle interplays and nuances of the flesh, but through the stark and binary code of a computer, and now you cannot even think in the same way as you used to, cannot even see how far you have fallen because your value system itself has been altered. Your soul is whittled down to something barely above a robot. Even if you do notice your own degradation at this point…well…’the death of the cell is the vigour of the organism.’”
“That’s what you said when we were fighting,” says Zoe.
“Yes, indeed.” Raymond replies.
“I was unconsciously quoting Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. An apt description of Xannis’ perspective on life. The individual is worthless, just a node in a computation matrix, if that.”
“Fascinating…” Zoe whispers.
Ghost sneers.
“You call it fascinating, I call it convenient. You seriously expect us to believe that everything evil you did was just brainwashing from Xannis?”
“No,” says Raymond, sharply. “My lust for power runs far further back than the Prometheus gambit. Xannis saw in me a tremendous opportunity to finally manifest on Earth, similar to the opportunity he now sees in Chen, I imagine.”
“Do you even care about what you did?” says John.
“You talk a lot about Xannis and yourself and Chen, but people died because of what you did! Not just Demonaco, but innocents. You ruined lives, you know that?”
“I…Understand it.”
“You what?”
“As I said, Xannis eroded my soul as part of his scheme. I poured my consciousness into a thing incapable of emotion, I lived in that machine for over a year. Before that I had already separated myself from the rest of humanity and renounced all love and connection. I was an instrument of power for power's sake, it was the path my whole life had been going down. Now I sit here, only partially human, and still entangled in the ways of my past. My capacity for empathy is…underutilised. I understand that what I did was wrong, my journey through the astral realm showed me that, but in truth, I don’t feel much of anything when I recount the deeds that I committed.”
“So you don’t feel any remorse?”
“I... feel remorse... for my loss of remorse. I wish to regain a capacity for that feeling.”
“And if we give you that chance. What do we get in return?” asks Ghost.
“Everything.”
“Specifics, please,” says John.
“All my knowledge of occult practices and metaphysics, aid in any investigation I may be needed for and all the information I know about Xannis’ cult.”
“The Sacred Order of the Fleshless,” John recalls.
“Yeah, I met one of them a while ago. Sounded like they were on the verge of collapse.” “Don’t deceive yourself, Mr Moore, they’ll regroup in time. I served as its leader for a long time. I know intimate details about their organisational structure, their hierarchies, their key members. You’ll need that information one day.”
“He’s got a point,” says Salem.
“God-fucking-dammit,” mutters Ghost. Of course he did, that’s what pissed him off!
“First thing’s first,” says John.
“We need to get out of here. Zoe, is he all patched up?”
“All clear!”
“Good. Ghost, get behind the wheel. We’ve only got a couple hours before the plane gets here to take us back. Let’s roll!”
They drive in relative silence, only the sound of traffic providing any sense of time moving on. Ghost sweeps through lanes and down turnings, but slowly he becomes aware of a series of detour signs. They filter the traffic down and down, the signs changing and switching until finally it’s just them. The van rolls on until finally it reaches a dead end, populated only by workers, industrial vehicles parked all across the road. The workers begin to shout in irritation, gesturing for them to back up.
Ghost looks around, confused.
“The fuck?!”
“Where are we?” asks Zoe.
A policeman begins to approach.
“Dammit.” hisses John.
“Hide Haig - now. And the weapons.”
As Ghost starts pulling over, Zoe quietly leads Haig to an empty locker and crams him inside, before setting a password to lock him in. The rest of the team, like a well-oiled machine, start flipping racks of guns, swords, and occult materials back into walls, hidden behind cupboards. They come to a stop at the side of a road. Ghost gives the approaching officer his best attempt at a warm smile as he rolls down the window. The cop's face is unreadable underneath his sunglasses.
“Do you know why I pulled you over, sir?”
“I’m sorry, officer, me and my family here are trying to find the airport, but there’s so many diversions around here today, the satnav can’t quite keep up. Looks like its lead us to a dead end.”
“Right. This is a restricted area. I’m gonna need everyone in there to step out of the vehicle while we perform a routine drug search.”
“...Alright. You’ve got it, sir - you hear that everyone?”
The team files out of the front of the RV, and the cop directs them to place their hands against the outside of the vehicle for a pat-down. Ghost counts four officers before he’s turned around. Sixteen construction guys working across the street. No lights on in the houses, despite it getting dark. In fact, the houses look dilapidated - abandoned. They’re alone here. He feels increasingly naked without a weapon on his person. They stand, facing the RV, pondering their situation nervously, waiting for the pat-down - but it doesn’t come.
John chances a look behind him. Oh fuck.
Twenty gasmasks stare back at him. The cop closest to him pulls the pin on some kind of gas-grenade. John swivels and kicks the grenade out of the cop's hand, and then sends the cop sprawling to the concrete with a punch.
“IT'S AN AMBUSH!” he yells, as he grabs the arm of another cop holding a gas-grenade, and pulls the gasmask off of him.
The other two cops drop gas-grenades, engulfing the street in a sweet smelling smoke. Ghost dives into the smoke as they turn to fire on John. In one swift motion, he trips one cop to the ground, grabs and breaks the arm of the other, and then throws the cop in the armlock face-first into the cop on the ground.
He drops to a knee, gravity twisting around him as the sleeping gas fills his lungs. A gasmasked John tackles him to the ground, as bullets screech over their heads. There’s a sickening thud as John cries out, grabbing his shoulder.
Ghosts' eyes scan the fog for Salem and Zoe - where are they? Are they safe? He hears the RVs engine revving.
“Don’t let them… fucking… drive my shit…” Ghost manages to slur before he loses consciousness.
The RV suddenly charges forwards, crashing against a lamppost. Then reverses. Then swerves wildly, knocking the lamppost over completely as it swings around to come between Ghost, John and the hail of bullets coming from the construction site.
Salem opens the driver's side door and beckons for them.
“COME ON!”
John runs, as fast as a man can while carrying his unconscious colleague with one arm, into the RV. As the RV tears off back the way they came, sirens start up as the gasmasked assailants leap into the cop cars to give chase, still hammering away at the RVs armour as they fire from the windows.
In the back of the RV, John drops Ghost unceremoniously on the ground as he sees Zoe and Haig sitting cross-legged in a ritual circle. Haigs eyes are closed, his forefingers on Zoes temple. Zoes head is snapped back, looking skywards, her eyes vacant.
“What are you doing?” John asks fearfully, deciding whether to attack their new prisoner.
“Miss Gadzooks asked me for help dealing with our new friends. To get into their minds and disarm them. I can’t do it like I did before, she agreed to be my conduit. Now please, I need to concentrate.” Haig says calmly, without opening his eyes.
For a moment, he is still, but suddenly he’s trembling, his skin turning pale, even his bruises are pale now. Zoe shakes in turn, her eyes rolling back into her head. John watches from the rear-view mirrors as the cop cars come slowly to a halt, their drivers slipping into a temporary sleep. Raymond screams, his liver practically bursting under the strain of the spell. He falls back and Zoe comes to. She rushes for the med-pack.
A few minutes later, they arrive at the airport and the van is loaded onto the cargo plane. The team takes a collective sigh of relief. They’ve made it…
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, we’ll be taking off in five minutes.”
The plane engines rumble into life and the team sit at their spots in the van, taking a moment to decompress from what just happened.
“Well, how did everyone enjoy their vacation?” asks John, sarcastically.
“Underwhelming,” smirks Salem.
“Didn’t even get to visit the street markets. I need a new wallet and I heard you can get a good one by the bay.”
“I wanted to take the cable ride up the mountains.” says Zoe.
“I saw this video once where the fog was so thick it looked like…”
She trails off. Her phone is ringing. She picks up.
“Hello?”
“Ah, yes, Ms Greene,” says Detective Aubrey.
“Or whatever your real name is…uh…I have someone here who wishes to speak to you.” Zoe’s eyes narrow.
“Who is it?”
“Government lady…uh…she’s not too pleased with you, if truth be told. I have no idea what this is all about, but she burst in with a bunch of people asking me about you and all your colleagues and, well, I’m not normally one to stand off against superiors, but really she was being an awful bull-”
“Oh, give it here!” comes the voice of Ping Cho in the background. The phone is snatched away.
“You- Suzie, isn’t it?”
“Uh - Zoe, actually.”
“Whatever. I see you skipped over our little goodbye present.”
Zoe leans back, her confidence boosted by the knowledge that she’ll be in the air in just a few minutes.
“Oh, you mean the sneak attack with heavily armed thugs? Look, for the record, we weren't the ones who knocked you out that last time, so if that's what you're sore about-”
“-Yes, it was Prometheus, I know. We knew it was him the whole time, we just needed to find out where and how. But we know you have him now. As soon as my squad found me, we tapped into every camera in Kowloon in order to track you.”
“Okay. Neat. What’s the paperwork like in your department?”
“Give us Prometheus, Zoe! This is your last chance!”
“What, so you can exploit him for your own ends?”
“Oh, and I suppose your motives are white as snow.”
“We’re leaving, Ping Cho.”
“We’ll be waiting, Zoe, the second you step foot on our soil, you’ll have the whole of the-” “Bored now.” She taps the red button.
Ping Cho stares at the phone in disbelief.
“Bitch!”
A man walks up behind her, slim and muscular with a mop of brown hair.
“What’s wrong, babe?”
“She hung up on me! MID FUCKING SENTENCE!!!”
“That’s cold.” he shakes his head.
“Well, we can’t win ‘em all. C’mon, Mr Jun’s waiting for us in the van.”
“I’m not gonna forget this, Yong, seriously! No one hangs up on me! That Zoe whatever-her-name just made a fucking enemy for life!!”
They storm off. A moment’s pause. Bernard looks back at the pair.
“So…Can I have my phone back now?!”
Zoe sighs.
“Well, guess that cable-car ride is off the table.”
The back doors open and Raymond walks inside, his liver now patched up; a rough job, but it will hold until they can get a replacement. Ghost and John instinctively move back an inch.
“Miss Gadzooks, if I could just make one last request, I would like to send a message on your phone to Mr Fu Peng.”
“The guy at the hospital we examined?”
“The same. I expect he will have now fully recovered from his coma.”
“Why?”
“I mentioned earlier that I had a plan to destroy Leo Chen. Well, this is it.”
Ghost frowns. “By… sending a guy a text message?”
“The message will contain a coded phrase which I secretly implanted into every mind I conditioned on Chen’s behalf. Upon triggering it, each subject will remember crucial pieces of incriminating evidence which I slipped into their unconscious as well as instructions on how to find more evidence, where to find the others like themselves, and a desire to spread the trigger phrase to as many afflicted people as they can. By the end of the day, there will be a full organised coalition specifically geared towards toppling Leo Chen’s empire.”
“Impressive,” mutters Salem, his eyes widening in awe.
“It is my finest manoeuvre to date,” smiles Raymond.
“And one worth each and every wound that it inflicted upon me.”
“Well, we’ve gotta stop him accusing America of spying somehow,” says John.
“I suppose destroying his whole career will do the trick.”
Zoe hands Haig the phone and he types out a single sentence.
He sends it. He sits down. He smiles.
“Thank you, Miss Gadzooks…”
She looks down at her phone.
ONE SENT MESSAGE: “THE EAGLE BURNS NO MORE”
Two days later.
Leo Chen throws back another handful of pills, shaking with horror at the fate Haig has inflicted on him.Communist party higher ups he’d once had under his thumb are denouncing him, international courts are dismantling his finances, colleagues defaming him, lawyers abandoning him. In just 48 hours the name Leo Chen has become forever bound to thoughts of embezzlement, fraud, blackmail, and horrified whispers of the name “Morningstar.”
He trembles as he paces around his emptying apartment. He can come back from this, surely. Of course he can. If he could just…just…
Another handful of pills, more than is healthy. He should be sleeping by now, but it’s as if his own fear is keeping him conscious. He looks anxiously to the door, waiting for the knock that will spell the end of him. He can already see it in his mind's eye, an official of the Hong Kong government, cold and collected, ordering him to accompany them to a life of staring at a prison cell wall.
“Much worse than that,” says a sickeningly familiar voice behind him.
“You knew the AID were after me. I imagine they’ll take out their frustration at the Americans on you.”
Leo turns. Raymond Haig stands as a half-apparent spectre in the corner of the room. He turns white with fury and horror.
“Perhaps they’ll use you as a test subject for something, or maybe they’ll simply mutilate you beyond recognition and leave you alone on the streets.”
“I’ll kill you!” hisses Leo.
Raymond shakes his head, smiling.
“I’m a projection, that’s all. You can no more hurt me than you could hurt your own shadow.”
“Fuck you! You think I can’t recover from this?!?”
“I know you can’t, I’ve made sure of it. You kept me prisoner, leveraged my salvation for your own petty ends. I took pleasure in seeding your downfall.”
“You’re trying to take the high ground?! After all you did as Prometheus?! I could have done what you never could! I could have made it! I could have been a god!”
“You deluded little quisling. I know the path you were planning to walk. You would have salted the earth and called it a garden.”
A ping. Leo checks his phone. Email after email of resignations, stocks plummeting, assets seized. The noose is getting tighter round his throat.
“Please!” he cries, falling to his knees in front of the phantom Haig.
“I’ll give you anything! I’ll do anything! Don’t let them get me! Please!”
Raymond shakes his head.
“I also know repentance, true repentance, and that’s not in your nature. You’re just trying to survive.”
“I gave you life! I gave you a body! You owe your existence to me!”
“And I’m eternally grateful. You were my springboard towards the light.”
“Then help me!”
“I already have.”
Leo’s eyes widen, he looks up at Haig like a lost little boy.
“…what?”
“The literature I absorbed was more than idle amusement, I’ve been re-learning my humanity through it. I now remember what mercy is, and I’ve decided to practise it on you.”
“Then…you’ll get me out of this?!”
“No, there’s no question about that. Your fate is sealed.”
“Then how are you going to-?”
“You know, Chen, don’t deny it. Deep within you, you know there’s only one way to avoid them, and I’ve already taught it to you.”
The penny drops. Leo looks down to the polished wooden floor and retrieves a piece of chalk from inside his jacket.
“Will it hurt?”
Raymond shakes his head.
“It will be like sleep, nothing more.”
Leo draws a circle on the ground, adorning it with runic symbols before placing his photo ID in the centre. He recites the words Haig had taught him and the circle begins to glow.
“…will I dream?” he asks.
Raymond smiles.
“Oh yes, Chen, beautiful dreams. I’ll make sure of it.”
Raymond emerges from his trance in his specially built faraday cage. He lifts his hand from his attendant's head, releasing him from the soul-tether, and wipes a fleck of blood from his lips.
“Thank you, Samuel, that was most helpful. I’d have suffered far worse damage had you not helped. You may want to rest for a minute or two.”
The attendant blinks and stands, swaying slightly on the spot.
“Sure thing. Did you manage to do what you were planning?”
“Of course.”
“Cool. Oh! And your new liver’s come in.”
“Marvellous.”
Samuel waits for a moment, debating how to phrase his question.
“…So you’re gonna…y’know..?”
Raymond smiles. “I am a man of my word, Samuel.”
He stands to his feet and walks to his desk. He grabs his quill and scratches out a list of instructions on a scrap piece of paper.
“This should help you on your little date with…Debrah, was it?”
“Dani.” Samuel chuckles nervously.
“So…this’ll work, right? She’s gonna really like me?”
“It won’t override her free will, if that’s what you mean,” replies Haig, a stern note in his voice, “but yes, it should help you glaze over any social faux-pas you may make. Have fun.”
“Great!” Samuel beams. “Thanks, Mister!”
Raymond looks up from the desk, staring straight into Samuel’s eyes.
“Hide that note as well as you can and not a word to your superiors. And don’t think you can use this as leverage over me. Even without a tether, I could light up every nerve in your body and twist your bones into knots should you cross me. Understood?”
Samuel stares blankly for a moment before slowly backing away.
“Ok, dude, chill out.” He places his hand on the door, but turns back before opening it.
“You said you were learning about humanity and stuff? Well, you’re clearly not trying hard enough, yeah?!”
A pause. Samuel rushes out the room.
Raymond slumps down into his armchair, pulling out his copy of “the tempest” and thumbing open. His face falls, his eyes vacant and mournful.
“I read the stories of humanity, but that doesn’t mean I fully understand them.”
His eyes cast down as he continues to read.
THE END.
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