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Your name is currently Ned Chicane. It hasn't always been, and it certainly isn't the name you were born with. You've gone by many, but you were starting to like this one. It had become yours, but after tonight, you don't think you'll be able to use it again.
You stand in a crummy motel. The corpse of your old partner in crime still lays in a crumpled heap in the closet. The Tv before you flickers with lights, bathing you in color. You're still talking—The you on the tv, you mean—but you can't hear it. The sound washes over you as your head fills with static, your mind reels as you try and fail to come to grips with the totality of how badly you've fucked this up.
Just moments ago, you—or rather a version of you, a monster wearing your skin and using your voice—announced to the entire town of Kepler the existence of the Arch, of the abominations, and of Sylvain. The biggest secret you've ever been entrusted with spilled directly from a perfect copy of your mouth on the evening news.
You feel sick. Your stomach does somersaults and the angle floor of the room seems to shift wildly. You take a few deep breaths. You're Ned Fuckin' Chicane, you tell yourself, you've been through worse; you've gotten out of tighter jams... like... like... You reach through your mind, cataloging your various exploits throughout your storied career as a professional thief. But nothing comes close to this. Not even the time you found yourself in prison in Turkey.
You gag, your stomach trying hard to rid itself of its contents. Nothing comes out.
Nothing is worse than this. Nothing is worse than knowing that everyone you've grown to care about is now against you. That no matter what you say, everyone you know, knows that you started a war against the very thing you swore to protect. Your stomach does another somersault and the room spins again. You keel over, gagging as you move for the first time in what feels like an eternity (although falling to your hands and knees as you gulp in huge breaths of air while your mouth starts over producing saliva like its trying to mimic Niagara Falls seems like a maybe a bit of a perversion of the concept). You're whole body is still frozen solid, encased by a cold, buzzing static. You're numb.
You gag again, but nothing comes up except the drool that's been stubbornly filling your mouth this whole time. You think about how you should really move to the bathroom, you try to move, but you can't.
You throw up. Your stomach convulses, ejecting half the contents of your gut, in a chunky brown and orange stream out of your mouth. The vomit coats the rug in front of you splattering messily onto your hands and the sleeves of your jacket. It smells foul.
You try not to dwell on the irony of having just shooed away a manager by inventing the very situation you have found yourself in. You try really hard not to believe that the universe has contrived a way to turn everything you've ever done against you. You never really believed in karma, or fate or god or whatever. Even after you found out that Bigfoot was real, magic was real, and that there was a whole planet joined to yours by impossible magical means, you still found the idea of fate to be unrealistic. You can't help but think, as you stare at the awful smelling vomit soaking into the rug before you, that you sure have accrued an awful lot of bad karma in your life.
Your stomach heaves again, and suddenly you find yourself able to move. You stumble over yourself as you rush to the restroom, knocking a standing lamp onto the ground in your mad dash to the toilet.
You barely make it in time, only just hunching yourself over the open bowl of the toilet before the second half of your stomach finds its way out of your body.
You dry heave a few more times, before your stomach realizes its empty. You sigh. It's a long, slow shuddering sigh. One that wracks your whole body. You push yourself away from the toilet, sitting flat on the floor of your the motel bathroom. You crane your head up, to look at the ceiling. Your head knocks gently on the wall behind you.
Your name is Ned Chicane, and you don't cry. You didn't cry when you got shot in the leg 30 years ago; you didn't cry when your mother died. Ned Chicane doesn't cry. But you're crying now.
The tears roll down your cheeks. You didn't even notice that you had started crying. Your mind keeps wandering to Aubrey, to Duck. You can only imagine what they're thinking. After you didn't show up with the laptop. After you vanished. After they saw you on television. You can picture them in you mind. Aubrey with tears in her eyes and her fists clenched, the rebellious spirit insider her burning with vengeance. And Duck, his mouth open and lower lip trembling. He was never good at hiding his intentions. He wore his heart on his sleeve and you can vividly imagine the exact look of pain and betrayal writ plainly on his face. You let out a shuddering sob and draw your knees in close to you.
You can see Mama, the thinly veiled contempt and hatred simmering beneath a paper thin facade of emotionlessness. You think about every single friend you made who now thinks of you as the enemy. You have to leave.
You wipe your eyes and steel your face. You stand up, and rinse off your face and hands in the sink. You start to plan.
You don't have much in the way of backup funds, and your loots missing, so you're not particularly fungible. You can't go back to the Cryptonomica, you can't risk meeting anyone on the way there and with the Chicanery empty there's not much use stopping by anyway. so you'll have to get with what you have on hand now, and what you've got in the van. You'll do some jobs, get a new identity. And vanish. You've done it before. You snort derisively. It's so easy. Leaving would be so easy. To avoid being tracked you could just swap your plates or hot-wire one of the cars in the parking lot.
So why don't you? Why can't you make your legs move? You've done this before. Burning bridges and vanishing without a trace is one of your core competencies. You're a liar, a cheat, and a thief. You know they all hate you now. So why do you stay? When in your life have you ever, ever owned up to your mistakes?
You stare at your reflection in the mirror, your eyes have dark circles under them. Your face is haggard, and clothes disheveled. There's still a few flecks of vomit on the collar of your shirt. You look so tired. It hits you. That you can't run this time. You've grown roots here. You've finally settled down. You can't bring yourself to run from this. You have to face them.
You shake your head, and tear yourself away from the bathroom mirror. Your legs, finally cooperating, let you turn and stumble over towards the door.
You have to fix this.