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YOU — Sleep comes with an unexpected suddenness. One moment, you’re lying in your threadbare bed, letting the usual ache overtake your bones. The next, you’re sitting up in bed, eyes screwed up against the bright red blur of dawn. You put on your glasses.
PERCEPTION [Easy: Success] — It’s even brighter and redder than you initially thought. You try your best to blink away the sparks in your eyes, looking away from the window and down at your lap.
HALF LIGHT — The red sunlight looks like blood on your hands.
YOU — You quickly dress yourself, pulling your gloves over your itching palms.
WHIRLING-IN-RAGS — You step out into the inn. Everything is silent and still. No sounds of music or laughter from the bar below, no smell of freshly smoked cigarettes smoldering in the ashtray. No partner. No signs of life.
YOU — …
WHIRLING-IN-RAGS — You walk down to the bar.
WHIRLING-IN-RAGS — Empty. Dead.
HALF LIGHT — A bombed out ruin. Something drove everyone from this place. They ran far and fast.
INLAND EMPIRE — They left you behind, Lieutenant.
YOU — You pay none of this any mind. You’re very good at turning a blind eye when the situation calls for it. So you walk out into the street and do not flinch when you find it just as empty.
AUTHORITY — No one to scorn you anymore.
ENDURANCE [Medium: Success] — The thought makes you nauseous the moment you think it. You swallow it down and keep moving.
VOLTA DO MAR — You have work to do. There’s always work to do.
YOU — You walk to the courtyard. The hanged man awaits you. You steel yourself for the putrid stench, but…
COMPOSURE [Challenging: Failed] What you aren’t prepared for is the sight of the body, crumpled on the ground, mangled nearly beyond recognition.
EMPATHY — If there had even been anything recognizable left by the time that you finally bothered to try and free him from the noose.
COMPOSURE — Anger surges in you at the sight. You throw your notebook to the ground because it’s all you have in reach. Something breakable would have been better.
YOU — “God damn it!”
YOU — You rush to kneel beside the corpse. You know exactly what happened here. You’ve seen it so many times before. Processing has massacred your crime scene.
EMPATHY [Medium: Failure] — And left a man to rot in the sun. But you forget, sometimes, that people are bodies, and bodies are people. It’s easier that way.
YOU — Swearing all the while, you try your best to assess the damage. To your horror, it looks less like a botched field autopsy and more like a robbery. Stripped of his putrefied organs the same way he was stripped of his clothes.
CONCEPTUALIZATION — For what purpose? You cannot begin to fathom.
INLAND EMPIRE — They opened him up and found nothing but the rot that ate up everything he was. And then they left the empty shell of him behind.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] — Don’t think about that. Think of music shaking your ribcage. Think of a steering wheel under your palms.
HALF LIGHT — Your red, red palms.
YOU — You shake your head as if to dislodge the thought. Back to work.
THE HANGED MAN — You turn the poor bastard over onto his back. There is not much left of him. Just a festering cavity. A hole in the world.
VOLTA DO MAR — …It isn’t like you to think such things. Something is wrong.
YOU — “The detective is rubbing off on me,” you mumble. To whom? There’s no one here but you and…
HALF LIGHT [Easy: Success] — HE SEES YOU.
THE HANGED MAN — A thrill of horror shoots down your spine as you look at the corpse’s bloated face. Sure enough, his glassy eyes are looking right at you.
Measuring you.
YOU — You stumble back, leaping to your feet. The corpse’s eyes follow you.
THE HANGED MAN — “WHY DID YOU DO THIS?”
RHETORIC — Words fail you. Your mouth goes dry. Almost as dry as his.
VOLTA DO MAR [Heroic: Success] — PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, LIEUTENANT.
It’s all right. You surely understand now. The dead don’t talk.
YOU — “…This is a dream.” Your voice comes out not quite steady, but still calmer than you would have expected.
THE HANGED MAN — The corpse laughs a horrible, groaning laugh.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Easy: Success]— You know this sound. You heard it so many times in Processing. The final breath leaving a body postmortem.
The first time you heard it, you were young. It took every ounce of strength in you not to cry. Now, you don’t even flinch.
THE HANGED MAN — His voice sounds just like his laugh. That final expulsion of air drawn out to seemingly no end. “Of course this is a dream. This is the only kind of dream you have anymore.”
YOU — You don’t deny this. The truth of it sits in the pit of your stomach, where it has sat since the day you realized that the air brigade died with the Revolution.
INLAND EMPIRE — Who killed it, Lieutenant?
THE HANGED MAN — “You gave up dreaming a long time ago. You gave everything up. You don’t believe in anything anymore.”
ESPIRIT DE CORPS — That’s not true.
YOU — “…I believe in the RCM,” you say.
VOLTA DO MAR — But… you hesitated. Why did you hesitate? That really isn’t like you.
THE HANGED MAN — His voice dips low. Scornful. “That’s right. That’s what you told your partner, wasn’t it? In the same breath that you told him that this place was orphaned. By you and yours. ”
INLAND EMPIRE — Orphaned and alone. Small. Frail. Treated as a burden no one wanted. Bearing the scars of bombshells.
AUTHORITY — Maybe things would have been different if the people had a little respect for the RCM.
Maybe this man never would have ended up in the tree.
THE HANGED MAN — He laughs again, as if reading your mind. A horrible wheeze of a laugh. “Do you remember your parents, Lieutenant?”
PAIN THRESHOLD — You don’t. Sometimes your heart breaks just thinking about it.
THE HANGED MAN — “But you do remember who killed them, don’t you?”
YOU — …
AUTHORITY — It was hubris.
INLAND EMPIRE — YOU KNOW THAT ISN’T TRUE.
VOLTA DO MAR — Steady, Lieutenant…
THE HANGED MAN — The corpse does not wait for your answer. He already knows the truth.
“ You killed them. They died for you, dreaming of a world that would be kind to you. They dreamt that you would live a life of dignity and freedom. That you would never again have to live with a boot pressed to your throat.” He laughs again, and again, and again.
“WHAT A FUCKING JOKE! YOU STEPPED RIGHT INTO THE BOOT THAT CRUSHED THEM!”
YOU — “That isn’t true.” Your voice is even less steady than before.
VOLTA DO MAR — …There’s no conviction behind those words, Lieutenant. In all honesty, there never was, was there…? Surely, you can do better… You can start now. It’s okay. Keep steady. Nulla sarà cambiato della luce…
YOU — You swallow hard. Your palms are sweating inside your gloves, clinging to the material. “The RCM is a peace corps. It is the legacy of the ICM. It’s… all that’s left of the revolution… Of what they tried to build for us children…”
ENCYCLOPEDIA — …There’s no way of knowing that for certain, Lieutenant. Pure sentimentality, to your own admission.
THE HANGED MAN — He isn’t laughing anymore. There’s hatred in those eyes. “For the children,” he spits back at you. “You were a juvie cop for fifteen years. Tell me what good you did for the children in all that time.”
REACTION SPEED [Impossible: Failure] — There is nothing to say for yourself. You have tried so hard to forget those years. Failing that, you tried to recontextualize them instead.
You tried convincing yourself that you made a difference, at least to some of the young addicts and vandals you endlessly harassed, preached to, and punished. When you realized how few of them ever got sober didn’t really stack up against how many of them had their lives ruined, families split apart, bank accounts drained— You changed your tune.
It was a necessary evil, you decided. You couldn’t do anything to change the system. Not from where you were standing, anyway. But if you aimed higher… If you used those children as stepping stones…
ENDURANCE — Stop. You’re making yourself sick.
INLAND EMPIRE — You are sick. Whatever it is that’s kept you on this path for twenty years is a sickness of the soul.
VOLTA DO MAR — DON’T LISTEN. Remember, what a beautiful day, what beautiful weather…
THE HANGED MAN — “You’re no revolutionary.” Everything that he is loathes you. He is made of loathing. “Worse, you’re not even a moralist. You’ve given up on the future. You sit on the shore, watching the pale swallow this world, bit by bit, and you do nothing to even slow the crawl.”
YOU — “What do you want me to do?” You finally crack. “What can I do?!”
THE HANGED MAN — You’ve made a mistake. The rage emanates from him like the stench of putrefaction, gagging you as he roars: “ SOMETHING. ”
HALF LIGHT — He’s gonna kill you.
INLAND EMPIRE — You’ll deserve it.
THE HANGED MAN — The corpse moves. By some unholy force, the rotten mass of his body lifts itself from the ground. He sits up. Pieces of him drop from the frame of his skeleton in horrible chunks. His eyes are glinting.
EMPATHY — Full of anger. Full of despair. And most of all, disappointment.
REACTION SPEED [Formidable: Failure] — His hands are on you before you even have time to comprehend the horror of it all. Terrified, you stumble backwards. A pair of glasses crunches under your boot.
THE HANGED MAN — You look into your own eyes as the last of the air leaves the corpse in one final, agonized moan.
“YOU FAILED MY CHILDREN.”
YOU — Blackness. Total annihilation. And then…
WHIRLING-IN-RAGS — You wake up with a start. Your heart feels sick and unsteady, and for the first time in a long time, your eyes are blurred with tears.
VOLTA DO MAR — Come back now, Lieutenant. Back to the shore. Breathe. Breathe and forget. It was only a dream.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] — You close your eyes. You breathe. You let your body shake off the dregs of this nightmare. It’s all right. Nothing will be changed about the light.
Nothing will ever change.
YOU — You force yourself to sit upright and reach for your glasses. Your fingertips brush against a pack of cigarettes, and for a moment, you consider breaking your one-a-day rule.
And then you let the moment pass. You won’t give in. After all, without control, what would be left for you?