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<<if $tattoo is 0 and $scar is 0 and $cyberware is 0>><<set $no_def to true>><</if>><style>#header {display:none;} #passages {scrollbar-width:none;font-family:var(--altfont);transition:0s;padding:0;border-top:none;} ::-webkit-scrollbar {width:0px;} .passage {text-align:center;transition:0s;} #passages a:before {content: none;} h1 {text-align:center;margin-top:25vh;color:var(--white);font-weight:lighter;font-size:4.5em;} </style><h1>00:GENESIS</h1> <<type 65ms start 1s>>>><span class = accent><<link "THE BEGINNING OF THE END." "00 gen def">><</link>></span><</type>> <<set $gamechapter to "00: GENESIS">>

Genesis was borrowed from the Latin word - also <i>genesis</i>. A term with origins in Ancient Greek, and derived from an even more ancient Proto-Indo-European word. Etymology was never your strong suit, though, was it? So, in case you've forgotten - <i>genesis</i> means beginning. The origin, start, or point at which something comes into being. The first book of the Bible, actually - a grandiose creation myth used to justify centuries of hate and depravity, the one with the whole <i>let there be light</i> thing and forbidden fruit and some minor apocalypses that make Revelations look like a summer vacation. You see - Genesis marks the beginning of the end. And it's only going to get worse from here. <<button [[CONTINUE|00 gen 01]]>><</button>>

<<if ndef $PassageNo>><<set $PassageNo = 1>><</if>><<switch $PassageNo>><<case 1>>Midnight. 00:00 on the clock. A long electronic tone signifies the end of the Standard Day. City protocol dictates all residential lights and appliances are switched off at this hour, conservation of power for all but those unfortunate souls working the Night Shift. Which means that you'll be navigating your tiny apartment by the light through the translucent windows - the reflected neon ghosts of the alleyways and advertisements and the occasional brilliant flashing of red-blue-red-blue as Emergency and Enforcement tear through the streets, all underlaid by the perpetual haze of headlights thirty floors below. An eternal rush hour, all brake-lights and the tiny people who swarm like ants on the capillary sidewalks, who don't even look up anymore. Midnight. 00:00 on the clock. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 2>>You should be asleep by now and yet - here you are. A chronic insomniac on the couch in yesterday's underwear. The now-former illumination of the TV now a depressingly dark, empty screen in which you can observe your equally blank reflection. You need to sleep - and in your bed, this time; the mess of blankets and singular limp pillow that together comprise the makeshift nest on the couch don't count as a bed. Not for tonight, at least. You groan as you strain to drag yourself from the couch, reminiscing on a time when your knees and back didn't ache as they do now. Your reflection manages to catch your eye once again as you trail your hand across the bank of windows across the back of your apartment. Nobody looks up anymore, but you've long contemplated the view from above, how the concrete would greet your body. They'd all look up for a moment, the comers and goers of the sidewalks. If only for a moment. It's raining again. It always seems to be raining - part of living here, you suppose. The constant hurricanes, the vast angry sea lashing out at a city that refuses to sink, not again. It's no place to live, unless you too live only out of spite. If the storms don't get you - the flooding will. And if the flooding doesn't get you - the people will. But it's always been at least a little beautiful from your perch in the clouds, you think, the way the world blurs below. It's always felt nice, the coolness of the glass against your forehead and cheek, soothing a fever you didn't know you had. Maybe you should sleep here. You could sleep right here, right now. Your eyes are heavy enough, your body and brain tired enough. You could just give up and slide like a droplet of rain right down the glass, melt into an exhausted puddle on the floor. Tempting, though dangerous. Such an act would surely draw the eye - and ire - of Surveillance and shortly after - a house call from Emergency. Again. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 3>>The thought of the red-helmeted and surgically masked EMTs breaking down your door and leaving a bill both for damages and treatment is enough to rouse you from the all-too-comfortable embrace of the floor. Enough to pull you upright, enough to send you staggering across the slick linoleum floor to the mess that is your kitchen, the tiny countertop and open, empty cabinets that hold no food, no dishes, no nothing. You seek out the ice-cold faux granite against your face and chest, a brief respite from the pounding of blood in your ears and temples, a dizzying thrum like the traffic below. And again left wondering how you didn't notice you had gotten sick, how quickly your symptoms appeared, how quickly they escalated. Maybe it's - as the news calls it at least - the "Understreet Plague", maybe it's something connected to that water you had to wade through to get to work last week when Flood Control couldn't keep up with the storms. Maybe it's something worse. Maybe you've taken too high of a radiation dose, maybe you've caught the screen sickness, maybe you're suffering from chemical exposure poisoning or - No. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 4>>No. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 5>>No. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 6>>You can't do this today. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 7>>You have work in six hours. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 8>>Missing work is a non-option - you don't have any leave for another month. And you certainly wouldn't want Enforcement called on you; you've no desire to endure a dark truancy mark on your record and the corresponding hit to your Credit. You can barely afford living here as is. You need to get over yourself - the odds of Emergency even helping are next to none, their clinics are overrun and understaffed, they'd just laugh in your face and dismiss you to attend to some other citizen bleeding out on their clinic floor. To put it lightly, you're fucked. You're fucked, any way you look at it. If your head didn't feel like you'd spent the night directly in front of the stereo at some seedy Understreet club, you might have cried. In your delirium, you are again a scared little kid catastrophizing over a headache, terrified of telling $pro_their parents $pro_they got sick - not the University-educated White Collar worker you know yourself to be, someone who has survived and persisted and is now bent double over $pro_their kitchen counter in $pro_their underwear like $pro_they had too much to drink or partaken in some other back-alley vice. Too tired, to fucked up to move, too fucked up to cry - and so you just lay there, face squished against counter as you murmur prayers for deliverance, empty promises to a god you don't believe in that if he should relieve the splitting of your skull and the staggering of the world from moment to moment, unpleasant sensation to unpleasant sensation, you'll find some piety in your bones, you'll repent, you'll change your ways. No divine intervention comes; you are instead overwhelmed with a spiraling, sinking feeling, the stupid little hypochondriac voice in your head crying murder, poison, plague. You collapse off the kitchen countertop. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 9>>Some indeterminate amount of time has passed, enough to where the peeling plastic tiles stick to your sweat-drenched skin and leave angrily sore lines. You prop yourself up and feel your stomach lurch, your meager dinner threatening a reappearance. The thought of having been poisoned returns, you retch and find nothing but bile dribbles past your lips. The thought of dying returns, of this being some elaborate scheme to take your apartment or job or - You should sleep. You should just go to sleep and forget about all of this and wake tomorrow and pretend as though nothing happened tonight. You could do that. You should do that. And as you make to stand, as best as your rubbery legs will allow, you realize you cannot. Fine. You'll crawl then, crawl like some lowly creature, some half-squashed insect slowly meandering towards your bedroom. By the time you reach the door, your knees ache and wrists complain, you're all but certain you've left a sweaty trail where your uncooperative legs dragged, and - you do not care. You made it. You made it and as you claw your way up the door frame, raise yourself to some dignified height, enough to fumble with the opening of the door. The bedroom - your bedroom - is the sanctuary you hoped it would be; dark and still and inviting, the lashing of the rain forgotten in the suffocating quiet. You limp your way through the minefield of your work clothes and the other, dirtier laundry, the clothes you wear once a week when you brave venturing into those damned Understreets at the behest of coworkers who barely know your name, insist it will be fun, insist you'll forget about the rigors of the week. And inevitably, you succumb to the lure of the neon and plunge deep into the heart of the city, chasing that brief euphoric rush knowing full damn well you'll be left only with a handful of hazy memories you will surely regret come sobriety and clarity. Clarity unlike the haze that swallows you whole, slipping from your mind with a thundering of blood in your ears and the sudden vertigo of falling; your foot does not meet the ground, the stillness of the air has been shattered by you. Falling, the world blurry and distant, the dim-growing-dimmer lights outside your window conspiring to make a dizzying spiral of color as you fall through your floor, through the building, through the concrete and seas, through the world. All you can hope is that someone saw. All you can hope is that you will at least fall on your bed. <<button [[CONTINUE|00 gen 02]]>><<set $PassageNo = 1>><</button>><</switch>>

<<if ndef $PassageNo>><<set $PassageNo = 1>><</if>><<switch $PassageNo>><<case 1>>You wake again. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 2>>Slip back under. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 3>>Wake again. Wish immediately that you hadn't. The world is loud and somehow too close, pressing in at the edges of your dulled senses, your ears ring and your vision blurs nauseatingly as you turn your throbbing head, side to aching side. You must have hit your head, you think between open-mouthed breaths that rasp and rattle. You must have hit your head on something. The corner of the bed is slick under your fingers. Blood. You must have hit your head. <<if $trait_primary is "selfdestructive" or $trait_primary is "bloodthirsty">>You laugh until you cough, touch your bloody fingers to your lips, to your cheek, to your tongue.<<elseif $trait_primary is not "selfdestructive" or $trait_primary is not "bloodthirsty">> An exploratory touch on your aching brow confirms your suspicions, a concerningly large gash just above your eyebrow that stings with the probing of your fingers.<</if>> The deluge shows no signs of stopping, falling in droplets that bead on your cheek as crimson tears or the raindrops on the glass outside, your panting is underlaid by a constant metronome beat, the patter of drops against the floor. <<if $trait_primary is "selfdestructive" or $trait_primary is "bloodthirsty">>To your delight,<<elseif $trait_primary is not "selfdestructive" or $trait_primary is not "bloodthirsty">>To your horror,<</if>> your hands leave a dark stain on everything you touch. Everything - face, clothes, body, bed, floor, everything. It looks black in the distant light, foreboding and ominous, a brilliant red when the light that seeps in from under the door touches it. There shouldn't be light. There shouldn't be, it would be impossible, it would be illogical, it would be a condemnation of everything you know, every system the City has in place. Unless this is morning, and you're late for your shift. But it's midnight. 00:00 remains on the blinking clock. Not a minute has passed. You wait. Not a minute passes. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 4>>You look down upon your stained hands, at where your blood has begun to pool shallow in your cupped palms in some strange imitation of the flooded streets before it slips through your fingers like the seconds that don't seem to pass. Red like the numbers on the slow-blinking clock. Red, sticky hands. Red drenched face, red light that infiltrates from under your door, red the only color left in the world, a slow strobe in sync with the pounding of your heart. Red, red, red, red, all is red and something is wrong. Something is horribly wrong. You must have hit your head on something. There shouldn't be light, it can't be morning, it can't be. You must have hit your head, and if you hit your head you need to get up and clean yourself up and call Emergency, you need to get up, you need to get up, you need to get up, you need to get up and you cannot. You can't. Your legs are unwilling, you cannot drag yourself upright to stand and instead you crawl towards the door and slam your balled fists into the floor and curse everything that could have possibly led you here until you grow short of breath and rest your aching forehead against the ground again. <<if $trait_primary is "crybaby">>You lay there and sob, blubbering nonsense to the floor you stain with your blood and tears. You're fucked, you're <i>completely fucked</i> and there's nothing that you can do but cry.<<elseif $trait_primary is not "crybaby">> You want to cry, but find no tears fall, just brim hotly at the corners of your vision, blur the red-stained mess into something nearly hallucinatory, something dreamlike, something nightmarish.<</if>> You need to get up. You need to get up. You <i>need</i> to get up, before it's too late. <<button [[CONTINUE|00 gen 03]]>><<set $PassageNo = 1>><</button>><</switch>>

This time, when you try to rise, you find your footing. Take two staggering steps to lean against your door, your door which does not open as you thumb the control panel, over and over and over again. Alarms sound in your head; this shouldn't be possible, the apartment complex promised as much - despite the widespread blackouts over much of the City, everything would still be functional, barring the Grid itself collapsing. And if the Grid had collapsed - an apocalypse of Revelational proportions - surely it would be dark and the world outside alight with fury, not a slow-strobing red and utter silence. The only things that move are you, and the digital display of the clock, inexplicably the same pounding pulse as the blood rushing in your ears. Not a minute has passed. Not one. Not a <i>single fucking minute</i> has passed. Midnight. 00:00 on the blinking clock. It mocks you, leers at you, dares you to do something, anything. <<nobr>><div class = choices><ol> <li><div class = choice-item> [[Break the fucking thing.|00 gen 04][$choice to 1]] </div></li> <<if $trait_primary is not "maladjusted">><li><div class = choice-item> [[Open the door.|00 gen 04][$choice to 2]] </div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is "maladjusted">><li><div class = choice-item><span class = grayout> Open the door. </span></div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is "crybaby">><li><div class = choice-item> [[Cry some more.|00 gen 04][$choice to 3]] </div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is not "crybaby">><li><div class = choice-item><span class = grayout> Cry. </span></div></li><</if>> </ol></div><</nobr>>

<<if ndef $PassageNo>><<set $PassageNo = 1>><</if>><<switch $PassageNo>><<case 1>><<if $choice is 1>>You're seeing red. Not just in that the world is alight with it - you are consumed by a fury that burns hot in your veins, boils as it drips from your forehead. First the mysterious illness, then passing out, then the head wound, then the door that refuse to open - and now the broken clock. The broken fucking clock. If it wants to be broken, you can oblige it. You can most certainly oblige it. You snatch it off the floor, wrap your bloody hands around it, try to crush it between your slick palms and have its electronic guts spill out onto the floor and shut its blinking eye of a display forever, grunting and huffing with the effort - but it doesn't budge. And your rage tips from seeing red to seeing nothing at all. The clock hits the floor and skitters away and you chase after it. The plastic casing cracks, at last. You stomp on it, hurl curses at the clock and the floor and everything around you, the City and Grid and your apartment and - And then, it's all over. The stupid little alarm clock is strewn across your floor and your foot hurts and - despite your fury - the time still leers up at you. 00:00. Futile. Pointless. You kick the display under your bed. Out of sight, and yet not out of mind. You should do something productive. You should open the door now.<<elseif $choice is 2>>You're better than this. Getting angry over a stupid clock would be pathetic, a waste of your time and energy. You've fucked up enough - and if Emergency is getting involved, you'll already be in debt. It'd be best not to have to buy a new clock or pay for apartment repairs. You should open the door now.<<elseif $choice is 3>>Fuck this. Fuck all of this. You ball your fist weakly, strike the door with a limp-wristed, half-assed punch. This has probably been the worst day of your short life, sick and bleeding from a head wound and now trapped in your own room as the world outside seems to end. The red light laughs at you, the alarm clock laughs with it, hell, the city itself seems to leer from the empty windows outside your apartment, mocking you and your futility. And you start crying. There seems to be nothing else to do. Overwhelmed, deeply upset, lost - and the simple solution. Cry. Hot tears burn tracks down your face, blur the red-stained mess into something nearly hallucinatory, something dreamlike, something nightmarish. A singular thought, as sudden and momentous as a bolt of lightning - <i>you need to wake up</i> - leaves you reeling. Stops your tears almost instantaneously, leaves you hollow, leaves you haunted. You should open the door now. You should wake up now.<</if>> The insistence of the light has only grown - it presses at the edges of the door like the searchlights of sunrise in the branching canopy of the City, like the brilliance of vaporizing light at the bleeding edges of an eclipse, utterly blinding rays that soak everything in sight in vivid crimson. You dig your fingers into the gap between door and frame, pull with all your might, strain and drag against the hydraulic systems, every muscle in your tired body screaming in exertion. The line of light on your face grows hot; you shut your eyes and lean your shoulder through the gap, feeling as though you have been set aflame but needing to persist, to move through the doorway to the other side, whatever the other side may be. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 2>>There is nothing on the other side. Just red. Something dimensionless, something depthless, something boundless. You cast no shadow, raising your hand to examine your bloody fingers. You make no noise, barefoot on a floor that has no temperature. You make no noise, your frantic breaths becoming murmuration becoming senseless babbling becoming screaming, screaming until your voice grows raw. Just you and the door, the door that does not again yield to you; you reach again for the seams of this world, your fingernails sliding across the faux-wood cladding. <i>Please,</i> you beg of it, <i>please, let me out of here, let me go back, please, please, please.</i> Your cries are unheard. Your begging is unheard. You claw into the door, your fingertips beginning to tear, the linoleum peeling up beneath your nails. <i>Let me out,</i> you half-think, half-scream. <i>Let me out, please,</i> you pray, sliding your back down the door, facing the empty red void, slumping until your head rests on arms crossed over your knees. All is red. All is silent, you have long since given up on sound; neither your voice - which continues to work, streaming incoherent thought, speaking in tongues foreign to your deafened ears - nor the pattering of blood on the ground - a brief strike and splatter before fading entirely out of existence, leaving nothing but the memory of it falling - penetrates the hum that grows in your bones. Hands over ears, you lurch forwards as the reverberations reflect off the inside of their skull, magnifying and magnifying until it feels as though your skull will crack and out will seep the hum and perhaps that would be a mercy, perhaps this would free you from this hell. It ceases with a single, hollow click. With the hissing opening of a door. With a long, maroon shadow at the the far end of the pseudo-room. With the shifting of the shade into something dark and hazy. With recognition. You scramble backwards, back against the door, reaching for the handle that does not yield, for the gap in the doorjamb you cannot jam your fingers into, you scream again, beg again, bash your fists against the door as it ambles across the room, slow, knowing it has all the time it needs. All the time it could ever need. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 3>>It reaches out a hand; shadow yields to clarity, to the resolution of detail, <<if $cyberware is 1>>an upturned palm of slick gray bio-plastic with geometric false veins of chrome, fingertips a black, slightly rough rubber. Missing the index finger, palm half-curled around where the digit should be, tendons taut cord through the plastid layer. <<elseif $cyberware is not 3>>an upturned palm that trembles with tendons taut cord beneath the skin, a hand that lacks and thus searches nervously for a digit. Finds only the absence thereof. Index finger reduced to a flicker of bare bone nestled in the softer remnants of skin, all slicked with blood as black as midnight.<</if>> It reaches for you, you who presses your body against the door until it feels as though you and it may become one and yet cannot escape its blind groping, the wounded hand bumping the linoleum, dragging the remnants of its knuckles across the surface as you flinch, try to duck away and And the rubbery-dead fingers brush your cheek and suddenly both of its hands are around your throat and squeezing, squeezing tighter and tighter as it leans close, <<if $cyberware is 3>>dead eyes illuminated, made horribly alive by an artificial amber glow <<elseif $cyberware is not 3>> dead eyes, sclera stained the same crimson as the room<</if>> fixated upon you, you who cannot look away, you who holds your breath or is strangled or some strange combination of both as it opens its mouth, teeth broken, lips bloody and <i>howls</i>. <<if $trait_primary is "bloodthirsty" or $trait_primary is "maladjusted">>It serves only to incense you - you in your fury refuse to submit or die and instead claw at the shade, determined to draw blood, to take another finger if you must. It, too does not yield, your swipes and slashes catch and rip the fabric of a damp <<if $style is not 2>>Uniform shirt <<elseif $style is 2>>Uniform blouse<</if>> and it seems not to notice, even as your fingernails leave furrows in its forearms, even as you sink your teeth deep into the flesh of its hand - it makes no indication that you have now hit bone and shake your head like a dog, snarling. It stares at you, mouth still agape, as you spit a chunk of <<if $cyberware is 1>>flesh and bio-plastic<<elseif $cyberware is not 1>>flesh<</if>>, drooling, hungering for more. You look into those dead eyes and see your madness reflected. It backs away, back to where it came from. You stalk after it, prey before the predator, prey become predator. You do not consider until you are already through the doorway, a stark black rectangle in the red abyss, that it led you here. Leash no longer wrapped tight around your neck, the chain broken - and you, the slavering, starved attack dog - still perfectly obedient.<<elseif $trait_primary is not "bloodthirsty" and $trait_primary is not "maladjusted">>You stifle a scream of your own, squeezing your eyes shut against the digital roar that sends static down your spine. Almost as soon as it had begun - it ends. A return to eerie silence, the burning presence of the shade abated, gone as if it never existed, leaving just the memory of hands around your throat, just a breathlessness that does not fade, even as seconds tick into minutes and you sit on the floor and <<if $trait_primary is "crybaby">>wipe tears from your cheeks.<<elseif $trait_primary is not "crybaby">>bite back tears.<</if>> You have to leave this place. You should open the door now. And at the far end of the room, a stark black rectangle, a gaping maw, a promise and threat both - an open doorway - looms.<</if>> <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 4>>There is no turning back now. But you wish, <i>god</i> you wish you could just go back to that abyss, where everything was so utterly wrong and illogical and yet had rules, had the feeling of being wrong; you could stand amidst the red and know the color upon your skin was a falsehood, a beautiful and terrible lie. You wish you'd done a better job of knocking yourself out. You wish you'd slept on the goddamn couch again. You wish - for the briefest of seconds before your stomach lurches with apprehension - that you had leapt from the window. There is no turning back now. You have awoken to a nightmare. Your apartment is completely and utterly trashed. Destroyed as though a hurricane has swept through your home and left only a pervasive dim red light. The bank of windows are shattered; rain falls in your apartment, pools and shimmers, breathes with the wind that lashes at anything loose, a ghostly howl that could be mistaken for the <i>thing</i> from the abyss, for a person, for you. The few doors left on your cabinets rattle, the few doors on the few cabinets that remain; most lie on the floor, mix with the catastrophe of your kitchen - caved in stovetop and oven glass strewn in a glittering halo, refrigerator just barely open and dim, humming a death rattle. Intermixed - days or maybe weeks worth of food and garbage, an almost living thing that grows, spreads roots and feelers to cover the counter and floor, playing host to the things detritus attracts. Everywhere you look, your apartment - your <i>home</i> - has fallen into this strange state of disarray, covered in a thin layer of dirt and grime and something else. Something your don't want to think about, something you are forced to think about, something that overpowers the stench of rot with that of iron, heavy enough, thick enough, strong enough to taste. It tastes like metal. It tastes like blood. <<button [[CONTINUE|00 gen 05]]>><<set $PassageNo = 1>><</button>><</switch>>

Your apartment is a crime scene. Explains the lingering heaviness of metal and smoke in the air, despite the rain and wind. Explains the flipped couch with chairs stacked behind, a makeshift fortress or barricade. Perforated with bullet holes. Your apartment, your poor apartment, your poor, poor apartment is a crime scene lit in the red afterglow of Emergency and Enforcement. You've long since grown sick of the color; it has burnt its way into your retinas, you close your eyes and it is all you see. You open your eyes and are returned to the nightmare that was once your home. Ducking under lines of string demarcating entry and exit points, the flight paths of bullets that did not find their marks, weave your way through the blue chalk outlines of fallen officers, following the flight paths of bullets with a distinctly lethal ending. Stumbling by the enumerated evidence placards that you bump with your bare feet, slowly piecing together the gruesome scene you were unaware was directed in your apartment. A story to be told in the sprawl of furniture and the buzzing of flies, the rogue bullet casings you send twinkling across the floor, catching the glow on their rims and rolling away until their inertia dies - caught by the edges of a not-yet-dry pool of blood or halted by a discarded rifle magazine or any of the other debris that has come to call your apartment home in your absence. Or, one of the things in the white outlines. One of the corpses. <<nobr>><div class = choices><ol> <<if $trait_primary is not "timid">><li><div class = choice-item> [[The corpse of the man.|00 gen 06 delta]] </div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is not "timid">><li><div class = choice-item> [[The corpse of the woman.|00 gen 06 alpha]] </div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is not "timid">><li><div class = choice-item> [[The unidentifiable corpse.|00 gen 06 epsilon]] </div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is "timid">><li><div class = choice-item><span class = grayout> The corpse of the man.</span></div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is "timid">><li><div class = choice-item><span class = grayout> The corpse of the woman.</span></div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is "timid">><li><div class = choice-item><span class = grayout> The unidentifiable corpse.</span></div></li><</if>> <li><div class = choice-item> [[You can't look|00 gen 06 coward]] </div></li> </ol></div><</nobr>>

The man looks almost peaceful. Almost. Tall and broad and somehow noble, even slumped - no - <i>sprayed </i>against the wall. A violent resolution to life, smeared and splattered in the bullet-riddled drywall. But a resolution nonetheless; he has found peace, slipped forwards and rested his arms in his lap to contain what falls out of his torn, half-buttoned white shirt. His corpse is dressed in formal clothes, a velvet-fronted tuxedo beginning to crust over, completely saturated with gore, shredded by the impact of bullets and god-only-knows what else, his clothes bearing long slashes. Perhaps futile attempts to preserve or at the very least extend his life; his bowtie and belt are wrapped in a makeshift tourniquet around his thigh. Desperation, confusion, a barely-imaginable terror, a sick sense of humor; the corpse wears just one dress shoes and socks patterned with smiley faces - and holds his putrefying guts in his cupped hands. Perhaps strangely, the man wears a mask, its weight bowing his head to rest on his chest. A wolf's visage with an exaggerated snarl, stylized to sharp facets and beautifully, horribly gilt. The afterglow bends and dances around the edges, leaving the wolf with a terrible gleam in its eye, as if it were both still alive - and watching you. <<nobr>><div class = choices><ol> <<if not hasVisited('00 gen 06 alpha')>><li><div class = choice-item> [[The corpse of the woman.|00 gen 06 alpha]] </div></li><</if>> <<if not hasVisited('00 gen 06 epsilon')>><li><div class = choice-item> [[The unidentifiable corpse.|00 gen 06 epsilon]] </div></li><</if>> <li><div class = choice-item> [[You're done looking|00 gen 06 done]] </div></li> </ol></div><</nobr>>

The woman lies on her side, gazing at her fallen comrades. Like she's waiting, gathering her strength to get up, to continue the fight. The blood pooled beneath her betrays her; she will not rise, try as she might. You wonder if she was first or last to succumb, whether the placement of her allies in her line of sight was coincidence or deliberate - one final rallying cry, one final plea for help. Or if she was targeted, eliminated with cold swiftness as her comrades gathered around her, a last ditch effort at protection or ineffectual resuscitation. Her wounds are far beyond the realm of survivable; half-hidden and damning all the same. Blossoming stains spread across the white silk of her half-open shirt, saturated to the point of pitch-blackness. Her hand rests by her collar, fingers curled towards the mangled mess that was once her throat. The mask the woman wears is similarly marred by some errant or aimed bullet's trajectory - and still remarkably intact. You cannot see her face, nor do you want to. The glimpses of ruptured skull through the hollow eye socket - a forcible asymmetry to the otherwise stoic expression of the lioness the mask represents - is enough. Enough for you to look upon the facets of the mask, stained spectacularly with viscera and gunpowder, and feel a strange kind of pity. The empty eye weeps a single, bloody tear - for herself or her comrades or oblivion - or you. <<nobr>><div class = choices><ol> <<if not hasVisited('00 gen 06 delta')>><li><div class = choice-item> [[The corpse of the man.|00 gen 06 delta]] </div></li><</if>> <<if not hasVisited('00 gen 06 epsilon')>><li><div class = choice-item> [[The unidentifiable corpse.|00 gen 06 epsilon]] </div></li><</if>> <li><div class = choice-item> [[You're done looking|00 gen 06 done]] </div></li> </ol></div><</nobr>>

It took approaching the corpse to recognize it as such. They lie face down, half-shrouded in the shadows of the hall. Face down and unceremoniously posed in an almost startling contrast to the others, whose deaths seemed more final stand and less execution; the wolf-masked and lion-masked look outwards to the carnage of the room and each other, and this poor empty corpse lies in a pool of their blood with shots fired into their back. Creeping wounds stain their limbs and torso - the killing blow far more drastic and immediate; the back of their head hollowed out, stoved in, empty. Completely empty. You can't look for long. You don't want to, trying to focus on something else, something like the fact that they wear a tuxedo rendered sleeveless in a last-ditch effort to save an arm that lies disjointed, cyberware fingers just barely extending past the edge of the pool. Reaching for their comrades who lie so far from their lifeless hand in a gesture of equally empty circumstance or perhaps a dying wish. A golden mask lies beside the mess that used to be the person's head. The visage of a hawk rendered in severe angles whose hooked beak betrays the depth of the pool. The mask's top half is absent, lost either in the mess of the skull or joining the other debris on the floor, the bottom half lingering like the body, like a vengeful ghost. The blank eye reflects the hollowness in your gut, the hollowness of the corpse on your floor. <<nobr>><div class = choices><ol> <<if not hasVisited('00 gen 06 delta')>><li><div class = choice-item> [[The corpse of the man.|00 gen 06 delta]] </div></li><</if>> <<if not hasVisited('00 gen 06 alpha')>><li><div class = choice-item> [[The corpse of the woman.|00 gen 06 alpha]] </div></li><</if>> <li><div class = choice-item> [[You're done looking|00 gen 06 done]] </div></li> </ol></div><</nobr>>

You can't look. You know too much already - there are chalk outlines on the floor. In those chalk outlines are corpses. There are corpses on the floor. There are corpses on <i>your</i> floor. There are dead people in your apartment and their corpses have been left to bleed into the linoleum and rot. The stench of death is heavy on your tongue. You think you're going to be sick. <<button [[CONTINUE|00 gen 07]]>><</button>>

You've seen enough. The morbidity of your curiosity has played out and left you with an hollowness in your gut. The same one that comes with seeing tragedy play out, day after day after day. Like walking past the burnt out husk of a car careened into the sidewalks, the flow of pedestrians relentless despite the implication of horror that rests in their midst, yet unclaimed by Street Operations. Or stumbling by a street fight in one of the punctured passages that form the skeletal Understreets, the aftermath bloody and abandoned by Emergency, or seeing the bloated corpses of flood victims borne on the tides and knowing they will be removed and categorized and processed before the next day, or passing the memorials for the fallen - towering metal statues for war heroes and the glorious dead and drooping plastic wreathes of fake flowers for the common Citizen, lost and forgotten to all but to those who placed the marker. Afforded your aberrant curiosity by luck or maybe something else, some circumstance of your birth or a tribute to your hard work - you can look down at the streets, at the bodies, at the fight to just survive, to make it another day - and find yourself oddly detached, unmarred by war or weather, the hardship you faced accidental or inconsequential, not malicious, not heartless apathy. The wound you wear is self-inflicted, almost fitting, almost ironic. The only blood on your hands is your own, for now. A shiver runs down your spine. You've seen enough. <<button [[CONTINUE|00 gen 07]]>><</button>>

You've seen enough. You've seen more than enough, edging away from the bodies, the apartment dim and blue, a relief at last from the red glow. A strange loneliness sweeps you; you are the only living thing in your home that does not scuttle in the detritus or worm your way through slowly rotting flesh. You are the only living thing to witness the true scope of the carnage, longing to be witness no more, to forget the imprint of corpses and vermin, hoping that if you squeeze your eyes tight enough, if you think hard enough, if try to force yourself to forget enough - that when you open them then this will have all been a nightmare. Not truth. Not prophecy. You open your eyes. And, in a hateful resurgence - a red incandescence seeps out from under your bathroom door, leaving the world a slowly encroached upon violet as the blue dimness is invaded, overrun by it as it pools like blood, drips from every edge of the shattered window and each shimmering metal casing, softens on the silhouettes of the crumpled corpses, grows to consume you once more. And you stand before your bathroom door, navigated there unconsciously as if it were some necessary thing or - worse still - compulsion, your fingers resting on the door handle that burns under your fingers, both frigid and boiling and either way something you cannot release. Your heart pounds, rises in a feverish tempo, the crescendo of the drums and bass like some illegal Understreet party; your veins run with the same horrible excitement of approaching sirens. <<nobr>><div class = choices><ol> <li><div class = choice-item><<linkreplace "Run.">>[[Open the door.|00 gen 08]]<</linkreplace>></div></li> <li><div class = choice-item><<linkreplace "Get out of here.">>[[Open the door.|00 gen 08]]<</linkreplace>></div></li> <li><div class = choice-item><<linkreplace "Leave this place.">>[[Open the door.|00 gen 08]]<</linkreplace>></div></li> <li><div class = choice-item><<linkreplace "Leave, while you still can.">>[[Open the door.|00 gen 08]]<</linkreplace>></div></li> <li><div class = choice-item>[[Open the door.|00 gen 08]]</div></li> </ol></div><</nobr>>

You are not left in some blood-red abyss this time. The door opens and that which is on the other side is - in fact - your bathroom. Still. And quiet, so very quiet. Like your bedroom in the fleeting moments before your first fall but lacking the ease, the comfort, the promise of rest and reset. Instead - claustrophobic and humid, putrid walls coated thoroughly in an unidentifiable ooze, reeking of acrid metal and burnt sulfur and something so horribly, cloyingly sweet, roadkill, carrion, decay. Flies hum in and out of earshot, land briefly on your arms and shoulders, buzz by your face. A step forward, into the rotting maw, treading on something that squelches beneath your bare foot. You gag. A second step forwards, and you resist every urge to look down, though your feet stick to the floor and you retch at the sensation. Somehow with every dawning detail - it gets worse. A grim, fractured reflection glares at you from the mirror, each spiraling spiderweb crack filled with filth, the shattered glass encrusted with something rusty in color, something that colors the reflection - not your reflection - an unfamiliar one, one with <<if $cyberware is 3>>glowing cyberware eyes<<elseif $cyberware is not 3>>haunted eyes<</if>> shot wide with adrenaline and insanity, one that continues to stare as your tear your gaze away, find somewhere else to survey. Some new horror to reveal, discolored towels wadded in a corner, decaying toiletries strewn across the floor, the medicine cabinet torn partially from the wall; its contents become more shrapnel, little pills that roll across the tile floor like the bullet casings. A quick glance into the cracked sink that drools a web of viscous liquid reveals a basin full of the same, something off-color with a vitreous film and edges that crust and peel, an odor that makes you reel and gag again as you desperately try to find something, anything else that won't affront your eyes or nose, something that won't make you wish you'd just stayed knocked out. <<button [[CONTINUE|00 gen 09]]>><</button>>

You're awake, though. You're awake and aware - and this is <i>real</i>. The shower curtain stained a deep maroon-brown with clear handprints and other, messier places where the curtain was grabbed with bloody hand and pulled away, leaving long, wavering streaks and runs in the vinyl where fingernails clawed against an assailant - is <i>real</i>. Whatever is laying in your bathtub is <i>real</i>. The shallow tub has been filled with ice pellets, melting slowly in the humid room. Your thoughts lurch to the rumors, to the gristly news stories with their uncensored images of bodies hollowed out, hacked apart, splayed onto the ice in some facsimile of a butcher's storefront by amateur, illicit surgeons desperate for money. Not desperate enough to take a life - the corpses are forgotten victims - flood or industrial accident or unclaimed bodies stolen from morgues - but desperate enough to take scalpel or hacksaw to said corpse, to carve it up for all the precious bits inside: hearts and liver and kidneys and corneas and ovaries. And then surgeon turns scavenger and pries up cyberware and medical devices, scrapes out bone marrow, collects blood, pulls teeth, detaches tendon and ligament, peels back the skin itself - takes anything that could sell, nothing too sacred for harvest. Pinkish ice turns to slush in your cupped palm. The deeper you dig, the more saturated the red. Like the red light-compulsion that had you open the door to begin with, like the nightmare that surrounds you now - the insatiable urge to look, to see, to know what lies beneath the ice. <<nobr>><div class = choices><ol> <<if $trait_primary is not "timid">><li><div class = choice-item> [[Dig deeper.|00 gen 10][$choice to 1]] </div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is not "inquisitive">><li><div class = choice-item> [[Don't.|00 gen 10][$choice to 2]] </div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is "timid">><li><div class = choice-item> Dig deeper. </div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is "inquisitive">><li><div class = choice-item> Don't. </div></li><</if>> </ol></div><</nobr>>

<<if ndef $PassageNo>><<set $PassageNo = 1>><</if>><<switch $PassageNo>><<case 1>><<if $choice is 1>>Another handful of ice, crimson, watery, reeking of rank metal and death. Another handful, the water that drips through your fingers viscous, snotty. Something lurks just beyond your fingertips, a dark shadow under the ice. You kneel, sinking your hands into the frigid bath, almost eager to have your curiosity sated, your hypothesis proven. Your knuckles scrape against a thicker sheet of ice, your teeth set on edge by the drag of your fingernails against the surface. You probe further and further, grow careless, grow restless, grow hungry. The surface begins to give and you give with it, suddenly elbow-deep in frigid water, face to what was once a face, eyeless, toothless, scalped and mutilated. Your stomach lurches, your mouth filled with bile as you pitch away, vomiting on to the ice. Panting, you rise from the melting nightmare, your hands dripping ice water. Vomit again onto the floor as you back away, stumbling, lightheaded. You're falling again, your last thoughts of the tub filled with ice and blood and yet another corpse. Yet another fucking corpse.<<elseif $choice is 2>>You stare in abject horror at the handful of slush that drips through your fingers, viscous, snotty, rank with the scent of iron and death. There's something under the ice. Whatever is under the ice is <i>real</i>. You don't want to know what's under the ice. Standing up straight, you back away from the melting nightmare in the ice, stumbling, lightheaded. You're falling again, your last thoughts confirming your worst suspicions about what lies hidden away in your bathtub.<</if>> <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 2>>Waking is worse than falling; a common and unpleasant theme dictated by the continuously worsening conditions in which you wake. You're still in the bathroom. And you have become one with the filth, laying with your cheek pressed to the moist tile. The stench has crawled under your skin, crept past your lips and onto your tongue, sweet, fetid rot and something strangely and unnervingly earthy, ash or charcoal. You peel yourself from the tile, feel layers of grime and filth slough off as you reach for the edge of the chipped sink, hauling yourself upright. Hanging your head over the slowly draining basin, foul drool falling from your slack mouth, you feel a wave of utter revulsion. You are unclean and unwell and there is something different and so horribly wrong - with the apartment, with the bathroom, with <i>you</i> - that even the thought of purging the contents of your stomach wouldn't be enough, even scrubbing your skin raw wouldn't be enough; there is not a single way in which you could ever feel clean again. Something moves in the mirror. You stare into your haggard reflection, smile with stained teeth. Strange, that you should find recognition here, here of all places. Strange, that you should feel oddly as though you aren't alone anymore. A hand, dark as the shadow-thing in the abyss, creeps slowly over your shoulder in the reflection. And your fist meets the mirror, once, twice, three times, dislodges it from the wall as you swing again, put your fist through the drywall and find yourself suddenly tempered, retracting a hand that hangs at a strange angle from your wrist, filled with gory slivers of glass. You stare. You stare. It doesn't hurt. Not yet. Your poor hand dangles at an unnatural offset, wrist buckled and bruising, knuckles and fingers glittering with shards of mirror. You stare. It hurts. A lot. A small, pathetic noise - a whimper of pain - escapes you as you clutch the broken limb to your chest, cradle your hand carefully and retreat from where the mirror used to be. Something changed. Something's different. <<button [[CONTINUE|passage()]]>><<set $PassageNo = $PassageNo + 1>><</button>><<case 3>>Still. And quiet, so very quiet. Like your bedroom in the fleeting moments before your first fall but lacking the ease, the comfort, the promise of rest and reset. Instead - claustrophobic and humid, putrid walls coated thoroughly in an unidentifiable ooze, reeking of acrid metal and burnt sulfur and something so horribly, cloyingly sweet, roadkill, carrion, decay. Flies hum in and out of earshot, land briefly on your arms and shoulders, buzz by your face and whisper sweet nothings in your ears, a whisper that rises and rolls likes the tides of traffic, streams of incoherent thought speaking in tongues foreign to you, a murmur that reflects and reverberates, grows in frequency and intensity. Words begin to surface, find their ways through the gaps in the deluge; your brow aches again and you dare not touch your filthy hands to your face as a trickle of blood meanders down the side of your nose and cheek - it feels as though your skull will split and out will rise this monologue, the backing chorus of your scream and the whisper, the murmur, distinct and unfamiliar voices telling you to turn around, telling you to look. <i>Look at us,</i> they say. <i>We won't hurt you,</i> they promise. <i>Turn around. Look at us. Look at us.</i> What choice do you have? You turn. You look. Four broken chairs are arranged in front of the bathtub filled with ice. Three are occupied. <<button [[CONTINUE|00 gen 11]]>><<set $PassageNo = 1>><</button>><</switch>>

"Come. Sit. Join us." The council seated in the chairs summons you. You stand trial, unknowingly accused, defendant and prosecutor alike - before a court masked in the gilt visages of animals. A lioness in an open white silk shirt with crudely cuffed sleeves reclines further, draping her arm over the back of her seat, knees spread wide and silver cyberware glinting at the base of her sternum. She gestures to the empty seat. "Go on. Take a seat," she says, her voice a low rumble, stern, authoritative. "Don't - don't listen to her." A man's panicked voice, from the other side of the empty chair. The grinning wolf looks upon you with madness in his snarling eyes, a direct contradiction of the collected, civilized posture he maintains in his seat, the lines of his well-tailored suit starched crisp and sharp. His words are as blunt as the brass knuckles he wears on his bruised hands. "Don't listen to her unless you want to get yourself killed." "And just what make you think you can trust them - either of them?" A third voice, this one electronically modulated, a strangely hollow quality to their words. The person in the hawk mask sits furthest from the empty chair, sharp eyed and harsh, adjusting themself to sprawl in obvious mockery of the lioness, their open suit jacket revealing a pistol jammed into their waistband. They cock their head to the side. "Trusting us is a death sentence. You're not afraid of dying, are you?" The lioness stares directly at you, her eyes narrow, her words no longer order but threat, cutting through the senseless bickering of the other two, their cryptic, paranoid questions fading again into the underlying murmur. "Come. Take your seat. Join us." <<nobr>><div class = choices><ol> <li><div class = choice-item> [[Accept. Join them.|00 gen 12 accept]] </div></li> <li><div class = choice-item> [[Deny. Refuse them.|00 gen 12 deny]] </div></li> <<if $trait_primary is not "truebeliever">><li><div class = choice-item> [[Question. You need to know more.|00 gen 12 question]] </div></li><</if>> <<if $trait_primary is "truebeliever">><li><div class = choice-item><span class = grayout> Question. You need to know more.</span></div></li><</if>> </ol></div><</nobr>>

Following orders is easy. Following orders is simple. Following orders is right. This order is simple: <i>take your seat</i>. You can do that. Following orders is easy. Simple. Right. What you're supposed to do. Wake, dress, wear the Uniform, do not waver in your presentation. Go to work, go to your cubicle, go to your computer. Follow the little text on your screen that guides you through the day, click the buttons that say <i>CONTINUE</i>, make your inane little enumerated choices that mean nothing, nothing at all come the end of the day; the narrative advances and drags you with it by your collar, cares not for the strangulation nor your pleas to be let go. Follow orders, this is all you are good for, it's easier this way - to take your breaks to the minute, to the second. Go home at the sound of the tone, revel in the sudden lack of order by filling your time with chaos, the silence between your ears with something else - the hum of another screen or raising glasses toasted to oblivion or the pounding of music in your skull or the euphoric numbness of synthetic narcotics or the night coming to a climax wearily with a lover between your thighs. Things that don't matter in the morning because like a boomerang it all comes back to that simple, simple concept. Just follow orders. Just follow orders. Take the seat that is proffered to you. You can do that. The lioness nods her approval solemnly, her head suddenly jerking to the side as the room flickers. Red, the same horrible crimson abyss, your shadow a monolith cast upon the council. And then the room is as it was. All the chairs are full now. The hawk sits mostly headless and perfectly, horribly still, hands spread as if in prayer, a profane offering of lumps of pinkish-gray brain matter, their halved mask slumping slowly from the remnants of their skull. The wolf hunches forwards, professional demeanor abandoned, his crisp suit devastated by the snake-like mess that erupts from his abdomen and slithers off his lap to coil on the floor. And the proud lioness turns her head slowly back in acknowledgement of you as you stagger forwards, determined to make right, determined to follow orders. Her orders hold weight no longer; she is as much a corpse as her fellows, fingers pressed to the wound in her neck, white-knuckled under the sheen of blood that spills from the wound, water through floodgates. Something garbled, something strangled, no words, no real words issue from under the ruined mask. No further orders. "Take your seat." A voice like a swarm of insects, like a blown-out speaker, like the chorus of whispers. Someone or something sits in the fourth chair, rises slowly, leans on the back of it. Beckons. And you - willing or not - advance. Try not to stare at the shade who leers in turn with glowing <<if $cyberware is 3>>amber eyes<<elseif $cyberware is not 3>>eyes<</if>>, taps nine blood-stained fingers on the back of your chair, waits. Waits. "Following orders will take you far," the voices caution. "But not all orders are worth following." And the world shatters like the mirror, a thousand shards of bloody glass.

You can't help but think the wolf was right. You can't trust the lioness nor her orders - the certainty of the hawk made sure of that. And you don't want this to be a death sentence; for as much as you have contemplated or even begged for death, you're terrified of it. You're scared to die. Everyone is though, that's a normal thing, that's a natural thing. Not a soul would look death in the eyes and claim to be unafraid, right? <i>Right?</i> You've made up your mind, and though fear still races through your veins, you set your jaw and square your shoulders to face the council. You clear your throat as the room flickers. Red, the same horrible crimson abyss, your shadow a monolith cast upon the council. And then the room is as it was. All the chairs are full now. The hawk sits mostly headless and perfectly, horribly still, hands spread as if in prayer, a profane offering of lumps of pinkish-gray brain matter, their halved mask slumping slowly from the remnants of their skull. The lioness wraps her hands around her savaged throat as if it will keep her head on her shoulders, staring at you coldly through the gaping holes in her mask. And the wolf grins at you once again; you have heeded his warnings and avoided his fate, his crisp suit devastated by the snake-like mess that erupts from his abdomen and slithers off his lap to coil on the floor. He smiles at death, takes pride in staring at the reaper and not blinking once. About dying slowly, about dying with as much dignity as there is to be found, clutching at your own intestines. "Take your seat." A voice like a swarm of insects, like a blown-out speaker, like the chorus of whispers. Someone or something sits in the fourth chair, rises slowly, leans on the back of it. Beckons. And you - willing or not - advance. Try not to stare at the shade who leers in turn with glowing <<if $cyberware is 3>>amber eyes<<elseif $cyberware is not 3>>eyes<</if>>, taps nine blood-stained fingers on the back of your chair, waits. Waits. "You may think yourself above fate, above destiny, above programming," the voices caution. "But do you think yourself above death itself?" And the world shatters like the mirror, a thousand shards of bloody glass.

You are not blind or stupid - you know every job interview ends with a section where you get to ask questions and this is now your turn. Your questions for the council are few, are simple. Are as follows: <i>What happened in your apartment? What happened in your bathroom? Why is there a corpse on ice in your bathtub? Who is the corpse on ice in the bathtub? Who are they - and how are they here when their mutilated corpses lie outside your bathroom door? Why masks? Why you? Why you, specifically?</i> You open your mouth, clear your throat - and the room flickers. Red, the same horrible crimson abyss, your shadow a monolith cast upon the council. And then the room is as it was. All the chairs are full now. The wolf hunches forwards, professional demeanor abandoned, his crisp suit devastated by the snake-like mess that erupts from his abdomen and slithers off his lap to coil on the floor. The lioness wraps her hands around her savaged throat as if it will keep her head on her shoulders, staring at you coldly through the gaping holes in her mask. And the hawk, who wears but half their mask and spreads their hands as if in prayer to support an offering of lumps of pinkish-gray brain matter, fixes their eerie half-visage on you, the top of their head completely gone and yet you know where their stare lingers, that they look upon you with pity, lamenting that you questioned the strange machinations of this strange realm, that you asked a single fucking question. "Take your seat." A voice like a swarm of insects, like a blown-out speaker, like the chorus of whispers. Someone or something sits in the fourth chair, rises slowly, leans on the back of it. Beckons. And you - willing or not - advance. Try not to stare at the shade who leers in turn with glowing <<if $cyberware is 3>>amber eyes<<elseif $cyberware is not 3>>eyes<</if>>, taps nine blood-stained fingers on the back of your chair, waits. Waits. "Curious, are we?" The voices caution. "There will come answers. And you won't like any of them, I'm afraid." And the world shatters like the mirror, a thousand shards of bloody glass.

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<<link '<div class="menu-item"><b>00</b> go back</div>'>><<run Engine.backward()>><</link>> <<link '<div class="menu-item"><b>01</b> profile</div>' 'profile'>><</link>> <<link '<div class="menu-item"><b>02</b> saves</div>'>><<script>>UI.saves()<</script>><</link>> <<link '<div class="menu-item"><b>03</b> settings</div>'>><<script>>UI.settings()<</script>><</link>>

CLOSEDLOOP | $gamechapter | LOOP $loopcount

<<set $gamechapter to " ">> <<set $loopcount to 0>> <<set $trait_primary to " ">> <<set $trait_secondary to " ">> <<set $style to 0>> <<set $tattoo to 0>> <<set $cyberware to 0>> <<set $scar to 0>> <<set $no_def to false>> <<set $firstname to " ">> <<set $lastname to " ">> <<set $gender to " ">> <<set $pro_they to "they">> <<set $pro_them to "them">> <<set $pro_their to "their">> <<set $pro_theirs to "theirs">> <<set $pro_themself to "themself">> <<set $choice to 0>> <<set $loop01 to 0>> <<set $loop02 to 0>> <<set $loop03 to 0>> <<set $loop04 to 0>> <<set $loop05 to 0>> <<set $loop06 to 0>> <<set $loop07 to 0>> <<set $a_rel to 0>> <<set $d_rel to 0>> <<set $e_rel to 0>> <<set $end01 to 0>> <<set $end02 to 0>> <<set $end03 to 0>> <<set $end04 to 0>> <<set $end05 to 0>> <<set $end06 to 0>> <<set $end07 to 0>> <<set $int1end to 0>> <<set $int2end to 0>> <<set $int3end to 0>>

<b>CLOSEDLOOP is rated strictly 18+ and contains content warnings for the following:</b> <ul><li>Depictions of graphic violence, including torture</li> <li>Depictions of blood, injuries (including self-inflicted injuries), and gore</li> <li>Death, including suicide</li> <li>Depictions of psychosis and other altered mental states</li> <li>Unreality</li> <li>Use of recreational drugs, alcohol, and tobacco</li> <li>Optional sexual content</li></ul><<nobr>><div class = choices><ol> <li><div class = choice-item> [[Continue to game.|trait1]] </div></li> <li><div class = choice-item> [[Return to menu.|CLOSEDLOOP_start]] </div></li> </ol></div><</nobr>>

Under Construction.

<<widget "name">><<print $name.toUpperFirst()>><</widget>> <<widget "They">><<print $pro_they.toUpperFirst()>><</widget>> <<widget "Them">><<print $pro_them.toUpperFirst()>><</widget>> <<widget "Theirs">><<print $pro_theirs.toUpperFirst()>><</widget>>

CLOSEDLOOP