Gonna be on watch for the other half.
You look at X's face.
Your gaze pierces through the censors, and pierces through the modifications. For a second- for a fleeting, infinitely small moment- you see his true face. His façade cracks, and for that brief instant, you see a man who is simply tired. A man who is alone.
So alone, in fact, that he sought companionship from something that most men would turn in revulsion against. Because he empathized with it.
To be forgotten, erased, removed from history… to live in a world where you simply never existed… and everyone moves on as if your presence never mattered at all. Everything functions perfectly without you.
What a terrifying possibility.
Right, for all the work in put in during LobCorp, his relationships were pretty lacking. The Agents were troops you direct, the clerks, well, exist, and the Sephirah came to an understanding and realization, they mostly just worked in the background. There wasn't any room for socialization or friendships or anything.
The most prevalent relationship they had was Angela, and, well...
[CENSORED] is on the other side of the room. It's in horse form, and its spawn are all sitting in its back. It's walking around in circles, and its children are making those awful noises while it runs from one wall to the other in a loop.
You know, if looking at it didn't make my brain try to implode this behavior would seem pretty cute.
No wait it spawns by messing with corpses nevermind.
"My mistake… My first mistake was to be far too hasty. One of my many mistakes, in truth. I moved through the days without thinking. I believed simply reaching the end would be enough. It was not. It was not until I reached that unsurpassable door that it occurred to me that I might have to complete Malkuth's missions."
How the hell did you not manage to complete Malkuth's missions.
I guess he just completed every day before Dusk Ordeals, so he was just
Speedrunning the facility. Clock in, collect energy, clock out.
"Abram… perhaps we will gain greater understanding if we read his book. But he gave up. He sank into grief and ceased to believe in our mission. He simply gave up after he managed to pass through my challenge."
"Adam was always a mystery to me. He did not speak a word to me as I presented him with his trial. But I am not sure. He did not even believe me to be worth his time."
Ignoring the Malkuth thing- you need to talk about that later- you will have to mention that Adam has WhiteNight, according to X.
"Indeed he does. He might be a danger later… now that I think of it. WhiteNight is an incredibly dangerous Abnormality, but Adam only ever spoke to X. Even when we met in the Library, in the night where our plan came into motion… he never said a single word to me."
Abram learning to care about others, but not how to endure the pain and suffering of countless failures. He believed that everything had gone to shit, that he was such a fuck-up for letting things to go to shit, that trying to help would just make things worse.
That the best thing to do was just to stay out of the way and not make things worse. And if that isn't enough he'll just disappear. Forever.
Adam I guess brought into the "I'm fixing humanity" spiel and got it into his head. Lost sight of who he was and why he was doing this and saw others as beneath him.
That part is not correct- not even technically correct. Obviously the Arbiter never did this to you. But you have seen F-Corp employees walk into rooms with targets, and leave with information they could not have possibly interrogated from these very same targets in that timeframe.
The Arbiter no doubt had the capacity to do that, with her enormous stock of Fairy. That thing consumes an absurd amount of energy. Not even F-Corp Agents use it as frivolously as the Arbiter did. Throwing Fairy keys around as projectiles… yeah, that's a surefire way to go bankrupt.
The idea that Binah could just casually rip info out from people's heads sure is reassuring. Thanks.
Also did not think about energy requirements for Fairy. I always thought it was rather cheap or self-maintaining?
Your Locust Workshop appendage linkers, your lung enhancements to allow greater ease of bre\aathing, the fact that they replaced your entire heart, your entire circulatory system, several chunks of your nervous system, your bones, your eyes, your auditory system, your tongue… the fact that your appendix is now a hidden stem cell bag, the list goes on. It was probably also noticed by the hospital, come to think of it.
Very practical set of augments. Wonder if they are in different places then their normal positions to throw off anyone aiming for vitals?
Also you replaced your tongue? Why??? What can an augmented tongue do? Taste the air like a snake?
"Memento?" she says.
"Oh, did I say that out loud?" you tell her, a little embarrassed. It's probably the fault of the headache. "Memento is an old friend of the same organization I am part of. Turbulence Office. Sorry for the comment."
"No, no, it was nothing. My Oripathy really did mess with my sleep cycle."
You notice something. When you said the name "Memento," her eyebrows rose for a second, but then they went back down again. When you said the word Turbulence Office, she grit her teeth. She probably recognizes the name… both of them.
Huh.
So Memento was at Rhine Labs? Where else did Silence show up?
You turn your head towards the noise. It's probably Wympe- no.
It's absolutely not Wympe, you think, seeing the black coat and the masked face of an entirely different Turbulence Office Fixer. Oh, and Nicole is there, too. She's smiling at you.
"WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU, YOU FUCKING-" screams Sleepy in a tone of voice that could awake the dead.
Ah, this is just like home.
What a family.
[X] Interlude: Pinus Sylvestris
[X] Interlude: Mansfield Break
I want to know all of these but I probably should choose the one that is about where we are going next.
The other has no practical reason. It just concerns a giant catman and thus I am obligated to choose it.
