His eyes narrow ever so slightly as if to place your face.

Prey drive kicking in. He senses a threat.

A quick, apologetic smile.

He looks away from you while he decides which script to follow.

He hates him.

His lips ready themselves for a pretend smile.

Unclear whether he's trying to convince himself of this or you.

Media, distribution. Perhaps there's a sexy techno-angle to this!

Wrong crowd? He's talking about us!

All you had to do to make her your KINDRED was to separate her from her own.

Not since the crew dissolved and you left Portofiro.

Fear and relief, together.

A wound he is unable to sew shut.

Across town, a pair of eyes blink in the rhythm of an undying machine.

A long while, by the sound of it.

The sound of his own voice makes him wince.

He's wary.

His fingers twitch like he's fighting the urge to shuffle the papers on his desk.

Banks of living data. Silent, interlinked.

He bristles a touch at being lumped in with a school of notorious glue addicts.

Yes.

A sunbeam accidentally puncturing a low overcast sky.

A mantra repeated.

A tight, self conscious smile.

An astounding custom rig. One you must get your hands on.

Therapeutic.

Metaphysical.

Practical.

You have a strong suspicion you know who.

He'd give nearly anything for an excuse to do just that.

Because her interest was actually your interest.

Not a direct answer.

A conversation. Fogged Mirror. Two gin cocktails, her regular table.

A dream that tastes like ashes on his tongue just now.

Approval. Pride.

Immediately apparent in the copies she passed you. Annotated, pertinent sections marked with colour-coded flags.

In retrospect, her diligence gave you a false sense of her abilities.

You must understand that, he means, if you're going to understand what happens later.

For his work, he means.

Blank entries in the archive. Impossible to query or cross-reference. A form of willful oblivion.

Politeness, professionalism, the performance of empathy. These are the things he was taught would make a good man, or at least a correct man. In his moment of greatest extremis, they all deserted him.

You gain nothing by making this poor man repeat the words he's most regretted saying in his life.

On the contrary, you gain immense power over him.

Glowing embers of old grudges burn holes in his stomach lining.

That he could clear it all up. That things could go on, as though none of what happened had happened.

Your eye gravitates toward the framed credentials on the wall, the dusty anatomical torso, all of it.

He can't bring himself to use the word 'incarcerated' in the same sentence as his daughter.

They showed him evidence. Irrefutable, damning, and absolutely covered with Karolina's fingerprints.

As was always intended. She was a tool you used to keep your own hands clean.

Better for him that they remain that way. Dark, sticky, unexamined.

Her skin: pale. Eyes: tired. Muscles: atrophying.

A vision of Karolina's home life suddenly flashes before you. Her father -- doting, concerned, overbearing.

The doctor's heart is a snowglobe, a thin glass shell surrounding a moment of perfect pain. You feel it in your hands now.

If you mean to bring KINDRED with you, a clean break is best.

He looks around the houseboat. It feels incomprehensible to him now. How he came to be on it.

Abject disappointment. Her response is all he's been thinking about since he put himself at your mercy.

A weight appears to lift from his shoulders.

That's how she was and remains for him -- a mirror of his own qualities and flaws.

Two utterly banal words, but they're the first he's had of her in ages. He'll hold onto them like prayer beads, until all possible meaning has been rubbed off.

'Doing fine, without you,' is all he hears.

The mirror-world.

Give up.

Father-rage. Blood rising.

The doctor overtakes the father.

The Sunset is an upper, upper-class district north of Quisach.

A great fall, for someone of his professional stature.

The heavy floorboards are spotted with motor oil and bootprints.

If it's a fairy tale, it's one he's either grown very tired of or never wanted to hear in the first place.

The sort of serene, approachable expression that is considered key to 'good bedside manner'.

The Quisach backways are known more for fly-tipping and feral boars than for 'families'.

Five years ago, he was one of the top experimental somnologists in the Developed World.

Complicated subject matter.

His patients are overwhelmingly canine in nature these days.

Something stirs in you. Bad feel.

Distemper is not a human disease.

IF THE SO-CALLED DEVELOPED WORLD IS REALLY SO DEVELOPED, WHY DO ITS PEOPLE SUFFER FROM DIRTY DOG DISEASES?

He did not directly answer your question.

He briefly nurtured the hope that he'd simply misheard you. Now he must confront the reality that he's actually having a conversation with you.

INTERROGATE HIM ABOUT HIS FRAUDULENT PAPERS.

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His mask of placid indifference has begun to slip. Beneath, something warm, red, wet.

Something about... sleeping dogs?

DOG-KILLER.

You know it well -- the sensation of being formally fucked.

Voice so hushed as to be indecipherable.

His fingers flex against the desktop, phantom palpations.

There's nothing wrong with your eyes.

He would rather talk about anything else.

Your flippant misunderstanding has hit a nerve. It's not the first time he's been dismissed this way.

Kneeling on a stranger's rug, small body wrapped in a towel.

The injection only takes seconds.

THIS BACKWARDS SOCIETY ALLOWS THE WORKER TO CONTROL NEITHER THEIR MEANS OF PRODUCTION NOR THEIR OWN DESTRUCTION.

He'd simply prefer it weren't him.

They had to make sure it didn't smell too sour, so the test animals would eat it willingly.

Human usage is much easier to design for. A neat little pill, in a special pocket.

He's pleading this case more to himself than to you.

Not much else.

There's no telling what Gonza's behavioural baseline is.

Gonza seemed pretty serious. But the speech also felt rehearsed.

He's had to fix his former colleague's mess more than once.

Under the air of affected dismissal, the accusation cuts.

Psychic defenses engaged!

His eyes, very carefully, do not flick towards the ladder.

A whole room of this tiny houseboat is dedicated to a person who never visits.

A shrine that only he maintains.

Because this place feels hollow enough as is.

He used to lift her in the air and make her fly like a cosmonaut. Used to say goodnight with a kiss on the nose.

Not that you needed his permission anyway.

It wouldn't be terribly hard to fetch it yourself later tonight. A little breaking-and-entering practice, for old time's sake...

We could leave it here -- the man is clearly using it to fill a sad, sad hole. Just have to figure out what to tell Gonza...

Any legitimate medical usage that thing may have is a secondary purpose.

Not strong enough.

'Plaything'? The immortal image of the 'thing' on the bed upstairs comes back to haunt you.

Not a million miles off. Unfortunately, despite it being part of your job, you are not granted immunity from trespass laws.

Only a fool would expect Gonza to be normal about anything...

Rising temperature, needless fidgeting -- this really bothered him.

Amid your catastrophic failure five years ago, a small success -- someone took you for a model.

Convince him to part with Dr. Gonza's medical dummy.

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The muffled cracking of knuckles rattles through the sound of waves caressing the boat.

Getting up only to mourn another ritual.

A subtle shift in his position... he's mould curious. Continue.

Do not reveal the location of a fellow operant's safehouse.

Far off Portofiro's beaten tourist path.

Hooked. This guy's a mould man through and through.

Gäng final form.

He sympathizes with any organism that can survive under bleakly hostile conditions.

A century earlier and it could've ruled the world.

Something in him stirs. Some germ of the real doctor behind the porcelain mask.

Humming in subdermal tones. Crackles in the ear canal. Jag of noise. Soothing whisper.

Changes in resistance converted into analog control signals, interpreted by a Kontoor 35 synthesizer. Fleshy fungal sample, talking.

He was the one holding the clipboard.

Not in the official literature? Interesting. Take notes.

Doctor Gäng is in.

SICK LEAVE IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT EXTENDED TO ALL WORKERS. HOWEVER, ALL REQUESTS MUST BE SUBMITTED IN WRITING AT LEAST TWO MONTHS IN ADVANCE FOR APPROVAL.

PSEUDOPOD will not be exposed, nor will you.

Ethics, how tedious.

As he pronounces the name 'Gonza', a hair-tingling scream echoes along the canal.

Followed by the sound of an electric saw, unhinged laughter, and a torrent of blood from the side gutters.

Probably unconnected.

Suspicion.

Paired with self-loathing.

That's the second time he's brought up drugs.

Gäng won't admit anyone with a shit tolerance. Legends don't pass out, they rally and press on.

He's never felt such freedom.

A nod declaiming any and all liabilities for whatever befalls you there.

THEOCRACY OF THE CLIPBOARD! DON'T BE ROUSTED BY THE FOR-PROFIT CHARLATAN. YOU ARE HERE TO SUPPORT A COMRADE.

No ambulances, no hospitals, no cops.

Wondering how long it's been since you took your medication.

Without his meds, the outside world might as well be one big giant seizure-inducing machine. You're not getting Ramses all the way over here without at least one dose to level him out.

You've neatly slotted yourself into the 'drug-seeking behaviour' category in his eyes.

For his ego.

His disgrace is political. Gonza's is visceral.

The same medical board that fucked them both. The well of his hatred runs deep.

A mantra repeated.

His voice is so flat it brings the ceiling down a little, making your shoulders slump.

You can see the resemblance now. Karolina has his eyes.

Doctor. Clinic. Houseboat. This is KINDRED's father -- Dr. Hugo Abe.

Behind him, shelves heaving with medical textbooks.

The recirculated air smells like antiseptic and wet dog hair.

That little jump he gave when you walked in the door -- you're the first visitor he's had in a while.

It's always hard to let one of the gäng go, especially when it's an effigy of an absent child.

It's always hard to let one of the gäng go.

You shook him up. He needs a little time to recover. Try again later.

His eyes narrow ever so slightly as if to place your face.

Conditions

Resets