OVERLOAD

43

Simon followed the others towards the newly opened door. He noticed that Aria was leading the group. That was odd, he thought. He knew that she was the most timid of the group, even Levi could find his own inner strength if pushed enough, but Aria was different. She only seemed to deflate when pushed. She'd fold in on herself. Each of the others would fight back at one point or another.

And here she was leading the group toward the door. She even questioned him about how much he knew. It was almost fascinating. Finally! Something new was happening! He had to hold back a smile, it could be absolutely nothing. Things could be different, but that didn't automatically mean they would be better.

"—Simon!" Aria had yelled at him, he nearly walked into her because he was so deep into his thoughts. He looked up at her, a dazed look on his face, "Wh...what?" It had been so...unlike him of an answer. Unlike the him of the last fifty cycles. Aria had been looking at him, now with a bit of vigor. "Are you good with that?" She asked.

"Good with..."

"We're all going to play along with this stupid g-game," Levi said, putting a hand in one of his pockets. He did that often when he resigned to something so obviously a bad idea. Levi wasn't one for speaking his opinion often.

Simon nodded, "Yeah...I mean I guess..." he said it quick. He tried to round it out with his edge, but it wouldn't come. It was as if everything that had happened had taken precedence, he no longer felt angry. He almost felt angry that he didn't feel angry. I swear to god if this is setting me up for a bigger disappointment I'm going to be so fucking pissed. "Let's just get the hell out of here."

It wasn't anything. Don't let it get you hoping now. It could be something, don't give up hope.

Simon wasn't surprised that one of the doors had unlocked. He'd seen several unlock many times before, but the others played through their satisfaction that finally a way forward had finally opened. Lucky had always made it clear in their first meeting that there was a waiting period before the door would unlock, but rarely would anyone other than Sophie notice.

They walked through the door with a tepid hesitation and found that it was Sophie's door they had found behind the lock. The inside of her room was a bit different in that it almost looked like an exhibit from a museum. It had been a strange choice considering Sophie hadn't ever mentioned that museums were particularly important to her as far as he could tell. There were headphones set up at different stations that would talk about the exhibit on display—which seemed to be on alcoholism, again another part that didn't seem to fit Sophie.

Simon had listened to the audio journey the first time through the room, but nothing seemed to catch his attention. It was the normal kind of stuff he'd expect to hear if there was such an exhibit in existence out in the world. Dry, bland, and full of facts others would be more than willing to accept without double checking. There were also some suits of armor that didn't fit much else of the room, each lined one side of the doors almost as some sort of inanimate guards. Each had always carried a lance upright with both of their arms as if allowing each of them to pass. These...weren't the first things that grabbed Simon's attention when he stepped into the room separated in two halves by the dividing wall that ran almost the whole length of the room.

He saw a corpse that had been stabbed several times with one of the knight's lances. Dried blood caked the walls and floor around them. The others had seen it just as quickly as he had. They looked at one another in a shaded silence before turning at once to look at Sophie, confused. All at once there was a ringing sound that almost sounded like bells. It echoed through the walls. Nobody said anything.

The sound rang louder and each of them would swear they heard an almost angelic singing voice joining the bells in unison. All at once Simon felt a weird bubbling sensation under his skin. It was like someone opened his skin up and tossed a shaken up carbonated drink inside and let it fly. He looked around to see Aria looking at her own arms with a sense of disgust as well. Then Levi. Then Sophie. They were all feeling the bubbly feeling underneath the surface.

It was next that Simon couldn't walk. He couldn't move but to stand, and then his mind filled blue, then green, and then finally in a prismatic array of images and sounds. They were all paralyzed as a flash of images forced their way into the minds of each of the players. They could do nothing but reach for their heads as it overloaded into their brains until all at once they all screamed out in unison.

44

Sophie woke up on the one hundred and first cycle inside a room that looked like it had been an exhibit for some tacky museum. It had a high ceiling that extended upward, but it wasn't too wide, the whole room could be seen in halves from almost any point aside for the portions not blocked by the divider that ran almost the length through the room. The walls were a sickly beige that looked almost how Sophie had felt.

The last thing that she remembered was screaming out to Cain, there was something so...strong about that feeling, and then it came to her. She remembered sneaking into the SubCon facility and she also remembered Cain's...moment. She didn't know what else to call it, and suddenly it made her cry. She didn't move—she just remained on the ground looking up toward the ceiling. Her immediate location wasn't as important as the bullet train of feelings and memories shooting straight to her heart. Entire minutes passed as the scenes replayed themselves in her mind.

Finally when she had enough she took one brisk breath and nearly launched herself up quite literally by the bootstraps. She was on the northern side of the divider wall when she noticed one of the cassette tapes fixed to the wall with a pair of headphones. She turned around in confusion trying to place herself, but she'd never seen this place in her life. It must be some side room in SubCon, she thought. She couldn't see any exit from where she was standing. She turned back to the wall with the cassette player and saw the wall now had "LISTEN" written in red paint. Yes, red paint, let's go with that. She blinked twice to make sure what she was seeing was entirely correct and then looked back down toward the cassette player, reaching for the headphones and taking them in her hands. She slid them over her ears with a silent trepidation. Nothing made sense about what was going on. And you're just going to follow those directions? I'm ashamed of how little your resolve has become, her inner voice berated her. She didn't listen to the voice as she pressed play. A chilling voice met her ears with a message that had not appeared in any previous cycle.

"Sophia Houten Terrius, born of Michael James Terrius and Cassandra Lily Agathe. You have made an impressive effort in investigating the circumstances behind your mother's very mysterious death."

The sound startled Sophie and she threw off the headphones and backed up to the wall. She was like a small child with nowhere to turn. This was too much. She'd had enough of this...suddenly it all became real and the severity of the kinds of things she was dealing with became real.

...but her eyes never left the headphones dangling in front of her. There was no sound coming from them as soon as they left her ears. She walked slowly toward them and shifted them back onto her head.

"...Your fright is now confusing. You have shown no fear until now, why? Are you suddenly doubting your choices?"

"I'm...not afraid of you..." she said, then realizing that there was no input device. Even if someone was actually on the other line there would be no way she could reply. She was listening to a pre-recorded tape. Whoever brought her here...that tall shadow she saw before she passed out, must just be some pretentious prick who would predict she'd act apprehensively. But then again...how do they know who she is to that detail?

"You are a curious person. One of the most curious, in fact. Which makes you perfect for...well, I won't ruin the surprise. But I will do something for you—I'll tell you exactly how your mother died. You'll believe the words I tell you, right? Maybe not at first, but you read the book. You'll see it as I say it. You've seen images before."

"What the fuck are you..." she stopped herself, looking around, headphones still in her ears. Are you watching me?

"Many days ago our text was stolen by one of the people we employ at Arctic Systems. You are correct in the theory that we have taken measures to ensure it gets returned. However, your mother passed long before our text was taken, so we claim no responsibility. I understand this answer isn't what you want, so let me lay down the day that your mother passed in as blunt detail as I can offer."

Why...why is this so easy? Sophie thought that this was extremely suspect that everything was so...so convenient here, she was shaking her head unconsciously as the words spilled into her ears.

"You were but a toddler then, so your memories of that day are faded at most. Your father was a heavy drinker. He would spend hours after his shift drowning himself in alcohol. He averaged more time there than at home with you and your mother. She would have to drive him home each night since she didn't trust him on the streets. The day your mother died was the day that your father decided he was done with drinking for the tenth time. He left earlier than normal and got into a wreck with your mother who had been on her way to come pick him up."

As the voice on the other end of the line spoke she saw every word play through her mind like a memory that was cleaned of any obscurity. They weren't her memories, but she saw them as clear as could be. A tear formed at her eye and her mouth dropped open.

"She died instantly. Your father escaped the blame because of my generosity. I keep very close tabs on the people I come in contact with, employee or partner. I also took the pleasure of clearing his guilt and erased his mind of the memory—alongside yours, of course, what little there was to erase. How could you live on with the knowledge that your father's poor decisions killed your mother? You couldn't."

"Who are you?!" Sophie screamed out, the scenes repeated on themselves double over like two movies being played on the same projector in her mind. "Who are you?!"

"We've met plenty of times before. Every time you remember the thoughts in your mind that cause you to believe that the Genros Foundation and Arctic Systems were behind your mother's death you were in contact with me. You didn't know it until you started to read the book. That's when your eyes were opened. That's when you really began to think, to experience, to feed me. I said you were very interesting, and I meant it. Your thoughts and your theories and discoveries have been...so exciting. I wish you the very best, I have left you a present just on the other side of the divider. You know what you will do, and so do I."

The sound stopped on the other line. Sophie didn't know how to react. She stood still as a heavy sensation whipped around the back of her head. It was like a brick was suddenly tied around her neck and dragging her down underneath the surface. She stepped out past the divider and saw her father lying unconscious against the wall. She'd completely missed him. He was alive she could tell by his chest rising up and down. In a matter of moments he shifted from her father who she loved and who had protected her from the evil menace that was this evil company to the man who had been sitting at the bar a little too long and a little too much.

She then looked back on how everything had started and then put it forward that her father really hadn't been a nice man. She'd excused a lot of things in the time before she was living on her own, and for once that concept sounded like the strangest in the world to her. She was old enough to be on her own, sure, but it was far from the safest thing. Wouldn't a father do anything to protect his own daughter? Surely that wouldn't mean sending her to her own accord and hoping that she didn't just die. She was so obsessed with solving the mystery of her mother's death...the mystery that never existed.

Sure, it existed with Cain and Abel, she was sure of it, and the voice on the other line as much as confirmed it. Your theory was right. It just didn't exist for her, and what was that, some terrible coincidence? A lie? It had been a bit of both, but she couldn't differentiate the two because the person who had been the root, who had put her on this wild goose chase, who had taken her mother from her, and who for all intents and purposes abandoned her himself sat in front of her with a dull smile on his face. It was such a peaceful smile that it spoke out against everything else in her life. Nothing was peaceful anymore. Nothing was allowed to be peaceful. If things were peaceful then they were okay, solved, finished. Things were not, and they always felt like they never would be. Once more the scene of her father crashing played in her mind. Right after it Abel was screaming. Cain was howling a demonic sound as Godsong whirled to life. Her mother's head bounced back. Abel's legs were impaled. Flashes of blood streaked across her vision and before she knew it she was screaming herself. There was a heavy weight in her hands and as if it had meant to be there all along she rammed it forward with her arms.

She'd grabbed the lance from one of the knights guarding a door just opposite of her father's body and sent it through his chest, his eyes opened and bulged as it pierced his heart. He fell to his side and Sophie only looked as he did. The scenes didn't stop playing in her head, they only continued, faster, and faster, and faster, and f-

She grabbed for the hilt and ripped it out of her father's chest, blood gushed openly onto the floor. She screamed and brought the lance over her head and slammed it into his eyes through the side of his head. She screamed and placed one foot on his head to yank it back out, but that's when they stopped and she felt the bile rising to her throat. The reality of the situation hit her and she was shaking, shaking so coldly. She made a short sound as she let go of the lance, horrified at what she'd done. She couldn't speak, couldn't bring the words to the surface. The blood sprayed all over and she fell back onto her rear end, she crawled up against the wall looking as what used to be her father bled out. She couldn't look away, couldn't separate herself from the moment that lasted an infinite amount of time.

45

Aria held the knife in her hand. The body it had just entered slid to the floor of the bedroom as blood pooled around him. She was breathing heavily and felt the adrenaline coursing through her own body. The body that this man had tried to violate. She wasn't going to let that slip so easily. She'd been working this case for months now and she wasn't going to let it slip away just like that.

It was supposed to be a simple job. She'd followed Villiers' family for the past two years and had learned almost everything that there was to know about them. The important thing being that his father was a general manager for the Paris-branch of Arctic Systems. This didn't mean much to her, of course. They meant more to her contractor.

Aria was thirteen when she made her first contract killing. Her age and meek demeanor made it so very easy to lure her targets into a false sense of security. She was dragged into this world after her parents sold her to satiate a drug problem. She was passed around like a cursed hot potato. The criminal underworld had their way with her for the entirety of her life until she met her contractor, a man who worked from the shadows as a crime boss with no name. She only knew him by his scent, a slight floral hint that inspired her alias.

Her contractor gave her a target first in Woodruff Anson. She was to seduce his son, Villiers, and make contact in their home. The target had reportedly stolen a very important artifact from Arctic Systems, and she was to retrieve it and kill anyone who had made contact with it. She had no choice but to accept it, and she pulled it off with aplomb.

And there she stood in the bedroom of Woodruff Anson as he lay bleeding out and gasping a bubbly sound through his throat. She couldn't bear to hear his moaning anymore. She bent down and unzipped his pants, she had to yank to get them off of his waist. It might have been quite a trophy for him back in his days, but those days had been long over. She took the knife and cut off his penis, the blood flowing freely onto the carpet now. She tossed it aside and stood back up, moving to his nightstand. Just where the intel said it'd be. Her contractor was very knowledgeable. If she were raised to ask questions she may have wondered why they knew so much. Of course, she wasn't, so she didn't.

Inside the nightstand was the large tome that had the funny symbols across the front. She tucked it under her armpit and ducked out under the cover of night. Villiers would come home that night to his father's corpse and the police would be called. They wouldn't find Aria, as she was already out of town. She almost didn't read the book, but her curiosity grew to be the best of her as she waited for the next morning to pass so she could meet with her contractor—they preferred to meet at night. It was always at night.

The morning she hid out behind a gas station inside a dumpster—recently emptied. She had a few hours to herself before she would be found, and the lid on the dumpster had the perfect hole near the end that allowed a small ray of sunlight to peek through, it almost seemed perfect.

On that day in 1985 Aria was reading the very book that Abel had lost his legs over exactly a year later. Three years after this job Aria would have forgotten most of the details of her first run in with the book—her memory more filled with the vivid details of how Mr. Anson's crotch bled or how deep the knife entered his chest. That didn't matter when she was taken from her sleeping quarters in a southern french foster home. Her underground work was nearly behind her and she hadn't killed anybody in almost three months. She found an opportunity to escape and took it without a second glance. It didn't help much when she awoke restrained to the chair.

46

Aria's contractor was a very mysterious individual with no funding backing him and no love for the heads of Arctic Systems. After receiving the book from Aria he knew that he had to find some way to dispose of it where nobody would think to look. He was desperate. After all, they hired a hitman to kill his family. This was before The Eye was stolen, but Banner had been funneling information out to the black market. He'd become a liability and he had to be stopped.

Wayne Banner had been Cain and Abel's father's gateway to a job at Arctic Systems after college. He was head of the marine biology unit and spent countless hours of his college years working his way up. He started with the company just out of high school—he'd been recruited for his "specific talents and skill-sets". Things seemed to work out perfectly for Banner. This changed when they led the expedition out on Steinschild.

In 1981 Arctic Systems was contracted by the Genros Foundation for an investigation on some historic material, and so they sent out a small team from America paired with a small military presence as protection to the small village to 'investigate' in a way as best as they could. The natives that lived there were of a different sort altogether, Banner learned quick enough. They fled from their village as soon as the team from Arctic arrived, fearing they were there to massacre them and pillage their people. Wayne thought that if they remained that might have been true. He was the translator on board for the team and would be the one who would eventually translate The Eye of Timaeus. It was there that they found the original writings that Banner would compile into the modern tome.

After the book was completed Banner could tell that things had been different with how others from the company treated him. It was subtle at first, people would quiet as he walked by, but it grew exponentially when he found that someone had broken into his home after a spontaneous night out drinking. He found his family dead where they slept, throats slit and sheets stained with red.

One day, he didn't come back to work, back home to the place where the ghosts of his family remained, or even anywhere that anybody who knew him saw. He vanished from public view. The next few years was spent going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole that became the mystery surrounding Arctic Systems. His search led him deep into a world he didn't think could exist—a criminal undergrowth that always existed on the underside of society he floated on top of. None of it mattered except the ones responsible.

He met quite the few nasty people along the way—child molesters, drug pushers, drug cooks, even sex traffickers. It was important before diving into any of this he hide his identity—he knew of course anything could harm his family. Anybody he met from the underside of the world he did so where he could not be seen except through darkness. He traded for information, staying clear of the real nasty works.

He came across a child being touted as a killer of the highest pedigree. She was shipped all over the world ever since she was an infant and beaten down so much that when she spent some time in the Burroughs of Russia she learned how to fight and to kill by the age of nine. Bouncing back and forth she kept out of the sex market by the very skin of her teeth. It was then that reports of the book that he had translated had been stolen from Arctic Systems, and with this information an even greater idea formed in his head—he would get his hands on The Eye and nothing would stop him from destroying Arctic Systems for good. The world could use a poison less toxic than Arctic.

It was then that Contractor met Contracted, and The Eye had then traveled from Steinschild to the Germanic branch of Arctic Systems, then from Germany to France via Woodruff Anson, and here it would come to America. Once the book was in his possession, Wayne Banner believed that he had to act quickly. If he waited too long he would be found out and they wouldn't make the mistake of missing him again.

The morning after it arrived Aria had cut all ties with her contractor and went her separate way. She'd find herself ending up at a foster home on the south side.

Wayne had received a knock on the front door of an apartment nobody had ever knocked on before. He didn't have friends—any he had were left behind the day he left Arctic Systems. He didn't speak to family, and he only communicated with the landlord through penned letters. Coincidentally, he lived in the room just next to the very same one Sophie would be squirreled away in three years later in 1988.

He stood frozen as the knock came again. Once more. And a final time. There was a moment of silence as Wayne—now not as young as he used to be when he worried over people looking over his shoulder—took a step back in the small pitiful kitchen. He wondered always what he would have done if he were ever confronted in this kind of situation, and after all that he'd seen in the past few years he always thought he'd have stuck his ground and fought back until his very last breath. Instead, he only took a step back, waiting to see what would happen.

The door swung open and a figure with extremely long white hair strode into the room. They wore an all white coat that almost blinded him as snow would on a sunny winter morning. What scared him most of all and kept him from screaming out was the fact that the figure—Wayne couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman—had no pupils. Their eyes were blank and their face was as smooth as porcelain. They took a step into the home with hands behind their back and not saying a word.

Wayne was now against the back wall, holding the book between his arms and his chest. All of his breath left him, he could not speak back. The white figure took three steps forward—it was all they needed to reach just in front of his face. The figure looked down to the book and gave a small sort of smile, it looked as friendly as a rabid dog.

The figure looked into his eyes and then he began shaking—spasming violently. Images flew through his head at a speed he couldn't control. His mouth began to foam and he fell to the ground, seizing. The figure reached their arm down—it extended as if it were made of rubber, and the bony hand grasped the book in its clutches. With the book the figure spilled out of existence as if it were a dust cloud rustled by the wind. Wayne Banner died in his apartment of a heart palpitation that grew immensely in the span of fifteen minutes.