Kestrel came by the store yesterday, reminding me that I hadn't seen nor spoken to him since... since I haven't made an effort to see much of anyone. It's only been a few days since being out in the field, but they feel long and unending. And even though I've put up a fight about it, watching the store isn't at all the chore it used to be. It's quiet, comfortable, safe... very different than the world I found.
There's so much I wish I could tell him. But the words are harder to find than I thought. He knows about the Supernatural, sure... He's known about all of this long before I ever believed him.
It's nearing six months in this trend of "I'm not going to put labels on this" thing I have with him. Saying he hasn't tried, wouldn't be true... saying I haven't avoided the conversation the moment it comes up, would be lie as well.
Commitment has far too many letters to be a "four-letter-word" but it has that taboo to it in my personal history. I'm not opposed to the idea, but the practice is something that has always become my personal poison of choice. I'm too "loyal"... too "honest"... too "committed"... I have never cheated, hardly lied, and always find a way to defend the worst of the guys that wander into my realm. It's the one blind spot I have when it comes to judging a man.
Maybe I did fall in 'L-word' too quickly with some of the worst choices; it's not like I ever said it aloud. Hell, that's one of greatest differences between my ancestor and myself. Jacob never missed a chance to swoon a lady with the poetic language of a true love's confession... no matter if her husband lingered in the next room or not. Given the flashes of what I've seen, the dreams of his making, perhaps I would have fallen under his spell as well. His game was just potent enough to be super-effective today.
Kestrel seems to adapt a different tactic altogether. Taking a soft hand when I need it, a firm hand when I wish it. Being around him is distracting enough to melt away that red-glazed image from my mind's eye. And yes, maybe I am indulging a bit more into baser needs than normal, but it's such a wanted distraction.
Heike has been out, working with the team on something... looking into the research of another thing... I know well enough that hassling her into telling me something she doesn't want to won't work. As long as she's safe, I don't mind.
So I close the store early, I get more groceries than I can carry... and there's Kestrel. Waiting outside, offering to help me take them upstairs. Offering to take me out to dinner. Offering to hear everything that occurred since I last saw him. Wanting to hear everything about Ultor, and the others.
I'm vague enough. I know full well the paperwork I signed. The secret that I'm a part of. But there's so few people I can talk to. So few people that understand. How could I even begin to talk with the team? With Heike? I don't need them thinking I'm a weak link in this. So I'll bury it. Bury it deep in these half-coherent confessions and sinful indulgences and let the sweet toxic cocktail of denial, bourbon and completely NSFW behavior lend me the strength to keep this tough exterior strong.
I'll shake this soon enough, and return to the person I need to be for this position.
A keeper of Wilhelm. A finder of monsters. A completely self-destructive tornado of charm and wit with an immensely deadly capacity. It's all very 'Ender's Game'. By understanding my enemy, I also love them. I become a hybrid of the evil in the world, and the good I stand to protect it from. But is that really what Ultor wants? It seems of such little importance compared to what the others have revealed of themselves. A part of me believes that they were looking for our bloodline, sure; but they couldn't be certain which of us would be which. That perhaps, I was brought into this because they couldn't take the chance of losing Wilhelm Grimm. Of losing Heike.
Or maybe... I'm just over-thinking all of this. Maybe I'll be more useful as time goes on. Who knows.
-Yvonne "Late Bloomer" Schmitt
Page ##: Dec/04/2014
I will write this as best as I can remember.
Maybe, I will start everything with these set steps. Every single instance needs to be broken down as best as I can remember. To try to build those pieces up into something solid, whole and stable. But it's like reverse engineering a car-crash. Letting that explosion of sound and light and metal and glass shrink back into the two separate cars meeting at that set, fixed point in space and time that sealed their fate into the crash.
My head feels like a car crash. A terrible, bloody, unavoidable twisted jumble of jagged edges all unintentionally bent and penetrated into a conglomerate of a beautiful massacre that only I can find the beauty in.
It's December 3rd, 2014.
I had a coffee, because I'm running late. Heike wants to be prompt. She's always prompt. I always walk slower, more calmly, making me late. But we make it on time. A lovely compromise complementing the two of us.
The "therapy" has been filling my head like water in a cup... but it's filling over. Overflowing into this appreciation for all of my senses that I hadn't noticed I used. Colors are richer, smells are more distinct, music... and art... and words have such value to them now. I can savor them like wine and it's tannins tartly sting each individual bud along my tongue in some symphony of explosive flavor for life. And I can only wish for more life, and love, and adventure.
And I know that it will kill me.
For every sweet nuance I can see, I can feel an anchor, a weight, pulling me down into this darkness outside my door. It rearranges my thoughts. It kills my sleep. It takes all that love and life and adventure and robs me of my sanity.
I've seen such twisted, darker things that make me want to curl away and never see the world again. Jacob Grimm found the monsters. He went out into the world on the rumors of missing children and mangled corpses and =found= the monsters. Is that why Ultor is keeping me? Am I going to find them for Heike and the others? That gift of mine to tell me good from bad, right from wrong, light from dark, evil from misunderstood. . . I can feel it changing. Like learning I had a talent I never knew was useful.
I need to focus.
It's December 3rd, 2014.
Bobby is Bobby Belmont, a descendent of Simon Belmont. Vampire Hunters. They immigrated to America after some poor luck on their adventures, I think.
Conor is Conor Anderson, a descendent of "drunks that shot werewolves and vampires". Something about a fifth Conor. An angel. Somewhere there was an angel.
Louis Bonaparte is confirmed as Napoleon's own.
Lucas is Lucas Birch, a descendent of the Dark Ages named 'Crosmuat'. Germanic for "great terror" is what Heike said, I think.
I don't -know-. I think.
Heike is Wilhelm Grimm. I am Jacob Grimm.
Heike is a descendent of Wilhelm Grimm, and I am linked to Wilhelm's brother, Jacob.
I am older, and so was he. I am the more documented screw-up, and so was he. Perhaps History can repeat itself to those that are so unaware it existed. "Doomed to repeat"
I need to focus.
Jason Myers is alive and well. Beneath all that grizzly hair and terrified demeanor, he only needed help. Ultor is working through his rehabilitation, and he is learning to control himself.He looks so much better than when he was asleep in our trunk. He seems healthy, more stable, which is all the progress anyone could ask for in these few weeks.
We learned that Jason was a part of blind clinical trial through a pharmaceutical company known as Weylan Pharmaceuticals, which was then traced back as a subsidiary to The Cheiron Group (TCG in the code I'm supposed to be adapting).
I can barely remember what the talk covered about them. It went something like: The SOP with TCG is GTFO. They are not our BFF's IMO. And FYI, IDK & IDC. TTYL
Something about "carmel thrillas" and "cons sillying them"
My head was so heavy. I hadn't slept well in days. Between these newly found things keeping me awake, and dreams I can walk away through, nightmares I can run into, and Heike keeping me to schedule... I fell asleep.
The first rule about meeting someone new at work is: we don't talk about Ultor.
The second rule about meeting someone new at work is: WE DON'T TALK ABOUT ULTOR!
There is a second folder from Massena in front of me.
There was a terrible storm in Chicago a few years back, and the city was closed in a state of emergency. The National Guard came in. I am sitting on the stairs just inside the main door, outside our home with a gun and a bat. I'm letting Heike sleep. She doesn't know I'm scaring off looters or worse. I didn't sleep then either. Everything told me to run and to hide. Then Everything told me to defend, to fight. All of my Everything kept me awake until the storm so suddenly passed. I never slept so soundly when it did. Right on the stairs. "Doomed to repeat"
I need to focus.
This storm was a side-effect of "inter-planar entities" (not aliens), opening gates into our world. They were not friendly, and they were not negotiating. They "left behind" people touched by these planes deemed to be called "cultists". Our folder was about one of these. A cultist.
They take influence of the non-initiated humans and allow those humans the distinct pleasure of worshiping them. They become fanatical, out of their head, and violent. An army of pawns to throw at the Cultist's goal until victory is achieved.
The accounts that they have say that these Cultists have Supernatural abilities and share a trait of multi-limbed appendages or tentacles alongside their human-like body to make them all the more deadly in close combat.
We don't know where he is, what he's doing, or why he's doing it. We have no name, no pattern in times of appearances. A crime scene of a sacrifice... an offering... a display of power. That's all we have, so that's where we go.
And the lights are out, and Louis and I are first in the door. They turn on in a haunting red glow. The room was white once but the paint has faded. The lighting covers in the ceiling would have hummed a sickly beige, once. I would have given me a migraine. All that buzzing. Once.
This is the car's seeing each other. This is the sliver of a fraction response time missed. This is that jump of adrenaline squeezing your throat and causing your body to tighten. Making your heart stop a single beat and reminding every nerve ending in your body that you are human. You are mortal. You will die someday and be no more or less dead than the scene of the victim before you. That part of time where it all slows down and you see every detail of the terrible thing in front of you.
And to everyone else moving in slow motion, it feels like a blink. A breath. A second. Something so natural and fleeting that no one notices it because they know that it continues to happen.
Time froze.
And that horror is printed on the lids of my eyes.
But I don't move. I freeze. Heike wore the wrong shoes and give her mine. I hold hers. And I stand there, barefoot, until I remember to move. I know the floor is cold. And I know it is dirty. I know that to wait outside means being closer to the December cold, standing in my socks with a hole on the pinky toe. My nail polish is chipping off of it. It's barely turquoise anymore.
Louis turns the corner quickly and gets sick. I should get sick. But I can't. Time is still too frozen. The snow is falling too slowly. All the sound stops. Then it all rushes back in a numbing blast of endorphins. Everything speeds up to make up the time I perceived them. The scene is cleared before I open my eyes again. We are in a car.
We go to where Heike predicts the next attack will be, and she is none the wiser. I am as scared as I was on those stairs that night. When guns fired off in the distance, with no city noise to hide them. I am holding my gun and I am praying that I don't have to fire it. I am preemptively forgiving myself for the lives I will take if the people that committed such a horror came near me, near Heike.
It's a lower class side of town. One of the many I haven't seen before. We split up, and I can't trust myself to protect her. The moment we hear Louis ask us to divide up... I tell her to pick someone else. I blame it on the "two women alone, at night, in the big city" bias. I know that she knows I'm right and she heads away with Lucas. I know he's a good shot, so why should I complain. He'd be a far better shot than me right now. I stay with Conor, defending the car.
Until he mentions the bar across the street. How he mentions that there might be the information we need there. I don't care. I don't care about the information. I need a drink. God, there wasn't enough liquor in the city to cut that anchor from me. That immense weight on my shoulders. How it feels like drowning without water.
I play along, let him go ask his questions, and I drink. And drink. Nearly 3 pints. Guinness, of all things. But he was buying, and it'd be rude to ask for the top shelf paint thinner that I'd need to even take a crack at shaking this.
When he found himself unsuccessful, I pretended to try myself. But didn't. Went to the bar and asked for the time instead. Said he didn't know anything. Why would I do that? Why would I lie like that?
The others found out what we needed, to an extent. Maybe some part of me knew that they would. That they didn't need me there. I hadn't done anything worth while. I barely remember these details presented here. Like I dreamed them. Like it was all some terrible trick.
There was a derivative of Sumerian graffiti-ed on a wall that Heike found. Said something along the lines of "This is the One".
Others found out that many people from Hillsbend, Illinois have been coming into town. Hillsbend is a ghost town after a chemical spill caused a massive evacuation. Heike panics about having to visit.
I'm very short in answers. I can't let them see that I'm weaker than I should be. Even when every little nerve in my brain is firing so rapidly that any scan would look like a fireworks finale on the Fourth of July. My Everything is telling me that I know what this is. But I don't know the word. Like hearing the music to a song I knew once, but none of the lyrics.
We go back to the building and I make Heike take a picture of the graffiti. I'm not entirely clear on why, but I knew it was important. Document it. Learn from it, or you're "Doomed to Repeat".
It's dark inside. It's cold. It's abandoned. It's a gaping, unlit vigil to monument this building once was. Some windows are boarded; the city deemed it condemned. Did they condemn it before, or after it came? I'll never know.
It's dark and it's cold and it's abandoned.
A door opens to reveal a toy train chiming it's way out the door. And I notice I had a gun in my hand this whole time. It doesn't show my hand shaking. The darkness is hiding my eyes scanning, darting on occasion in the shadows that drape over this place.
Others go in and look around.
And I pick up a toy train.
Others scan and hypothesize and piece it all together before dismissing it and carrying on.
And I pick up a toy train.
It's important.
Because it's the way it communicated through it. A simple, innocent thing. A unimportant gesture to garner such attention. I put it back on it's track with the other cars behind it. Five other cars. Six, like the six of us. I got so hyper-focused again.
The building had very little in it, and yet, this. It's probably not even important. . . it's so unimportant. And yet I found it worth the time to put back together. To make sure it went along the track a little correctly.
I didn't see the shadows curling.
But Lucas did. But the others did.
I remember Lucas saying to leave.
I remember Heike telling me to move faster in German. Schnell! Schnell!
I remember Bobby moving his arm around me to usher me out first....
and seeing him be sucked back into the room by dark tendrils.
How the door slammed shut.
How it wouldn't open.
The knob wouldn't turn.
Before Louis could put his help in, I remember how hard I kicked it in.
How angry I got.
How pissed I was at feeling so scared.
How it melted into something different, something that felt like all the new things I'm feeling.
How instantly frightened I felt again once Bobby and all of us got outside.
How crippled.
Heike pours salt on the doorway. I know it won't work. I don't discourage her.
I walk with Lucas in silence to get the paintball gun from the car, so he can go and shoot the graffiti away with Heike. Take away the creatures influence. Take away it's mark. They leave.
They are gone minutes when I feel the street dying. There is no sound. No life. No warmth.
It's dark and it's cold and it's abandoned.
They are coming back up the street towards us when streetlights started going out in pairs, two by two, from East to West along the street.
How they are barely regrouped with us when flashlights no longer work.
How the lighter in Heike's hand jumps to a foot tall green flame.
How the building we just left looks down with sinister green eyes. A large tentacled figure in the center of one. The door an open, crimson maw.
How a fog rolled in.
How we ran.
How it caught me.
And it's dark.
And it's cold.
And I'm abandoned.
We woke up on the stairs of the building. "Doomed to Repeat".
We seemingly slept outside in the snow. And while I am drained of all my energy, I haven't slept so soundly in what seems like a lifetime. My body aches, and shivers, but my mind is more alive than ever. If only I could think of something to say. the few things I try seem trivial. They seem... unimportant. And that song plays again, and the lyrics are beyond my grasp.
We report to Massena. And remind Heike about the photograph. She's angry. Why weren't we saved? Why were left alone like that? Why wasn't Ultor there to swoop in and save us?
Oh Heike... you weren't saved because I couldn't save you this time.
I'm sorry.
I wish I could tell you I'm sorry.
All I have is the chance to try again with you. And maybe that is the greatest gift to come out from all of this. Something could of happened and I... I wouldn't have forgiven myself.
I love you Heike. And you out-shined me in everything this time. You found all the clues. And knew where to go. You weren't afraid. And even if you were, you didn't let it paralyze you. When did you grow up so much?
I'm sorry.
- Yvonne "_________" Schmitt
Maybe, I will start everything with these set steps. Every single instance needs to be broken down as best as I can remember. To try to build those pieces up into something solid, whole and stable. But it's like reverse engineering a car-crash. Letting that explosion of sound and light and metal and glass shrink back into the two separate cars meeting at that set, fixed point in space and time that sealed their fate into the crash.
My head feels like a car crash. A terrible, bloody, unavoidable twisted jumble of jagged edges all unintentionally bent and penetrated into a conglomerate of a beautiful massacre that only I can find the beauty in.
It's December 3rd, 2014.
I had a coffee, because I'm running late. Heike wants to be prompt. She's always prompt. I always walk slower, more calmly, making me late. But we make it on time. A lovely compromise complementing the two of us.
The "therapy" has been filling my head like water in a cup... but it's filling over. Overflowing into this appreciation for all of my senses that I hadn't noticed I used. Colors are richer, smells are more distinct, music... and art... and words have such value to them now. I can savor them like wine and it's tannins tartly sting each individual bud along my tongue in some symphony of explosive flavor for life. And I can only wish for more life, and love, and adventure.
And I know that it will kill me.
For every sweet nuance I can see, I can feel an anchor, a weight, pulling me down into this darkness outside my door. It rearranges my thoughts. It kills my sleep. It takes all that love and life and adventure and robs me of my sanity.
I've seen such twisted, darker things that make me want to curl away and never see the world again. Jacob Grimm found the monsters. He went out into the world on the rumors of missing children and mangled corpses and =found= the monsters. Is that why Ultor is keeping me? Am I going to find them for Heike and the others? That gift of mine to tell me good from bad, right from wrong, light from dark, evil from misunderstood. . . I can feel it changing. Like learning I had a talent I never knew was useful.
I need to focus.
It's December 3rd, 2014.
Bobby is Bobby Belmont, a descendent of Simon Belmont. Vampire Hunters. They immigrated to America after some poor luck on their adventures, I think.
Conor is Conor Anderson, a descendent of "drunks that shot werewolves and vampires". Something about a fifth Conor. An angel. Somewhere there was an angel.
Louis Bonaparte is confirmed as Napoleon's own.
Lucas is Lucas Birch, a descendent of the Dark Ages named 'Crosmuat'. Germanic for "great terror" is what Heike said, I think.
I don't -know-. I think.
Heike is a descendent of Wilhelm Grimm, and I am linked to Wilhelm's brother, Jacob.
I am older, and so was he. I am the more documented screw-up, and so was he. Perhaps History can repeat itself to those that are so unaware it existed. "Doomed to repeat"
I need to focus.
Jason Myers is alive and well. Beneath all that grizzly hair and terrified demeanor, he only needed help. Ultor is working through his rehabilitation, and he is learning to control himself.
We learned that Jason was a part of blind clinical trial through a pharmaceutical company known as Weylan Pharmaceuticals, which was then traced back as a subsidiary to The Cheiron Group (TCG in the code I'm supposed to be adapting).
I can barely remember what the talk covered about them. It went something like: The SOP with TCG is GTFO. They are not our BFF's IMO. And FYI, IDK & IDC. TTYL
Something about "carmel thrillas" and "cons sillying them"
My head was so heavy. I hadn't slept well in days. Between these newly found things keeping me awake, and dreams I can walk away through, nightmares I can run into, and Heike keeping me to schedule... I fell asleep.
The first rule about meeting someone new at work is: we don't talk about Ultor.
The second rule about meeting someone new at work is: WE DON'T TALK ABOUT ULTOR!
There is a second folder from Massena in front of me.
There was a terrible storm in Chicago a few years back, and the city was closed in a state of emergency. The National Guard came in. I am sitting on the stairs just inside the main door, outside our home with a gun and a bat. I'm letting Heike sleep. She doesn't know I'm scaring off looters or worse. I didn't sleep then either. Everything told me to run and to hide. Then Everything told me to defend, to fight. All of my Everything kept me awake until the storm so suddenly passed. I never slept so soundly when it did. Right on the stairs. "Doomed to repeat"
I need to focus.
This storm was a side-effect of "inter-planar entities" (not aliens), opening gates into our world. They were not friendly, and they were not negotiating. They "left behind" people touched by these planes deemed to be called "cultists". Our folder was about one of these. A cultist.
They take influence of the non-initiated humans and allow those humans the distinct pleasure of worshiping them. They become fanatical, out of their head, and violent. An army of pawns to throw at the Cultist's goal until victory is achieved.
The accounts that they have say that these Cultists have Supernatural abilities and share a trait of multi-limbed appendages or tentacles alongside their human-like body to make them all the more deadly in close combat.
We don't know where he is, what he's doing, or why he's doing it. We have no name, no pattern in times of appearances. A crime scene of a sacrifice... an offering... a display of power. That's all we have, so that's where we go.
And the lights are out, and Louis and I are first in the door. They turn on in a haunting red glow. The room was white once but the paint has faded. The lighting covers in the ceiling would have hummed a sickly beige, once. I would have given me a migraine. All that buzzing. Once.
This is the car's seeing each other. This is the sliver of a fraction response time missed. This is that jump of adrenaline squeezing your throat and causing your body to tighten. Making your heart stop a single beat and reminding every nerve ending in your body that you are human. You are mortal. You will die someday and be no more or less dead than the scene of the victim before you. That part of time where it all slows down and you see every detail of the terrible thing in front of you.
And to everyone else moving in slow motion, it feels like a blink. A breath. A second. Something so natural and fleeting that no one notices it because they know that it continues to happen.
Time froze.
And that horror is printed on the lids of my eyes.
But I don't move. I freeze. Heike wore the wrong shoes and give her mine. I hold hers. And I stand there, barefoot, until I remember to move. I know the floor is cold. And I know it is dirty. I know that to wait outside means being closer to the December cold, standing in my socks with a hole on the pinky toe. My nail polish is chipping off of it. It's barely turquoise anymore.
Louis turns the corner quickly and gets sick. I should get sick. But I can't. Time is still too frozen. The snow is falling too slowly. All the sound stops. Then it all rushes back in a numbing blast of endorphins. Everything speeds up to make up the time I perceived them. The scene is cleared before I open my eyes again. We are in a car.
We go to where Heike predicts the next attack will be, and she is none the wiser. I am as scared as I was on those stairs that night. When guns fired off in the distance, with no city noise to hide them. I am holding my gun and I am praying that I don't have to fire it. I am preemptively forgiving myself for the lives I will take if the people that committed such a horror came near me, near Heike.
It's a lower class side of town. One of the many I haven't seen before. We split up, and I can't trust myself to protect her. The moment we hear Louis ask us to divide up... I tell her to pick someone else. I blame it on the "two women alone, at night, in the big city" bias. I know that she knows I'm right and she heads away with Lucas. I know he's a good shot, so why should I complain. He'd be a far better shot than me right now. I stay with Conor, defending the car.
Until he mentions the bar across the street. How he mentions that there might be the information we need there. I don't care. I don't care about the information. I need a drink. God, there wasn't enough liquor in the city to cut that anchor from me. That immense weight on my shoulders. How it feels like drowning without water.
I play along, let him go ask his questions, and I drink. And drink. Nearly 3 pints. Guinness, of all things. But he was buying, and it'd be rude to ask for the top shelf paint thinner that I'd need to even take a crack at shaking this.
When he found himself unsuccessful, I pretended to try myself. But didn't. Went to the bar and asked for the time instead. Said he didn't know anything. Why would I do that? Why would I lie like that?
The others found out what we needed, to an extent. Maybe some part of me knew that they would. That they didn't need me there. I hadn't done anything worth while. I barely remember these details presented here. Like I dreamed them. Like it was all some terrible trick.
There was a derivative of Sumerian graffiti-ed on a wall that Heike found. Said something along the lines of "This is the One".
Others found out that many people from Hillsbend, Illinois have been coming into town. Hillsbend is a ghost town after a chemical spill caused a massive evacuation. Heike panics about having to visit.
I'm very short in answers. I can't let them see that I'm weaker than I should be. Even when every little nerve in my brain is firing so rapidly that any scan would look like a fireworks finale on the Fourth of July. My Everything is telling me that I know what this is. But I don't know the word. Like hearing the music to a song I knew once, but none of the lyrics.
We go back to the building and I make Heike take a picture of the graffiti. I'm not entirely clear on why, but I knew it was important. Document it. Learn from it, or you're "Doomed to Repeat".
It's dark inside. It's cold. It's abandoned. It's a gaping, unlit vigil to monument this building once was. Some windows are boarded; the city deemed it condemned. Did they condemn it before, or after it came? I'll never know.
It's dark and it's cold and it's abandoned.
A door opens to reveal a toy train chiming it's way out the door. And I notice I had a gun in my hand this whole time. It doesn't show my hand shaking. The darkness is hiding my eyes scanning, darting on occasion in the shadows that drape over this place.
Others go in and look around.
And I pick up a toy train.
Others scan and hypothesize and piece it all together before dismissing it and carrying on.
And I pick up a toy train.
It's important.
Because it's the way it communicated through it. A simple, innocent thing. A unimportant gesture to garner such attention. I put it back on it's track with the other cars behind it. Five other cars. Six, like the six of us. I got so hyper-focused again.
The building had very little in it, and yet, this. It's probably not even important. . . it's so unimportant. And yet I found it worth the time to put back together. To make sure it went along the track a little correctly.
I didn't see the shadows curling.
I remember Lucas saying to leave.
I remember Heike telling me to move faster in German. Schnell! Schnell!
I remember Bobby moving his arm around me to usher me out first....
and seeing him be sucked back into the room by dark tendrils.
How the door slammed shut.
How it wouldn't open.
The knob wouldn't turn.
Before Louis could put his help in, I remember how hard I kicked it in.
How angry I got.
How pissed I was at feeling so scared.
How it melted into something different, something that felt like all the new things I'm feeling.
How instantly frightened I felt again once Bobby and all of us got outside.
How crippled.
Heike pours salt on the doorway. I know it won't work. I don't discourage her.
I walk with Lucas in silence to get the paintball gun from the car, so he can go and shoot the graffiti away with Heike. Take away the creatures influence. Take away it's mark. They leave.
They are gone minutes when I feel the street dying. There is no sound. No life. No warmth.
It's dark and it's cold and it's abandoned.
They are coming back up the street towards us when streetlights started going out in pairs, two by two, from East to West along the street.
How they are barely regrouped with us when flashlights no longer work.
How the lighter in Heike's hand jumps to a foot tall green flame.
How the building we just left looks down with sinister green eyes. A large tentacled figure in the center of one. The door an open, crimson maw.
How a fog rolled in.
How we ran.
How it caught me.
And it's dark.
And it's cold.
And I'm abandoned.
We woke up on the stairs of the building. "Doomed to Repeat".
We seemingly slept outside in the snow. And while I am drained of all my energy, I haven't slept so soundly in what seems like a lifetime. My body aches, and shivers, but my mind is more alive than ever. If only I could think of something to say. the few things I try seem trivial. They seem... unimportant. And that song plays again, and the lyrics are beyond my grasp.
We report to Massena. And remind Heike about the photograph. She's angry. Why weren't we saved? Why were left alone like that? Why wasn't Ultor there to swoop in and save us?
Oh Heike... you weren't saved because I couldn't save you this time.
I'm sorry.
I wish I could tell you I'm sorry.
All I have is the chance to try again with you. And maybe that is the greatest gift to come out from all of this. Something could of happened and I...
I love you Heike. And you out-shined me in everything this time. You found all the clues. And knew where to go. You weren't afraid. And even if you were, you didn't let it paralyze you. When did you grow up so much?
I'm sorry.
- Yvonne "_________" Schmitt
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