Right. Alcohol is known to damage the brain, after all.

The real question -- how did he get them to serve him?

Transparent liquid, normal glass, ice cubes and crushed leaves. Appears to be something-tonic.

UNQUESTIONING, UNWAVERING ACCEPTANCE. EXACTLY WHAT THE PARTY DEMANDS.

Something about the look in his eyes tells you he'll be with you till they come to mop the blood up.

Utter impenetrability in the event of capture. No torturer is breaking through to this one.

He's a good luck charm. A rabbit's paw you wear around your neck.

The autopilot is immaculate, all things considered.

Opposable thumbs- check.

No complications whatsoever. If he'll work with the woman who lobotomised him, he'll work with anyone.

Like a well-scrubbed bathroom tile.

The paleolithic huntress exhales as she fondles the precious river stone, the primal superstition inside her calmed -- for the moment.

You are milking your lucky cow dry, take it easy on him. Once a day is more than enough.

The vacant smile hits you like a bag of bricks.

A mixture of guilt and the desire to lobotomise him even more comes over you.

He has been subjected to the 'Hershel Wilk Special'. The history of all your former assets, condensed into just a few days.

Still no pants on him, though.

Is it?

The nagging idea that you should just finish the job accosts you.

Just take him on the assignment with you. He'll catch a stray one, and the problem will solve itself.

An obnoxious little mirror, well-worth the seven years of bad luck incurred by breaking him.

You are. He did.

Your desire to stay out of the freezer and prove yourself in the eyes of the Opera has clearly been foregrounded in his mind. You can use this against him.

Based on the reports from Constanz and Melita, he certainly wasn't like this before.

YOUR AUTHORITY, DEAD IN THE WATER.

Translation: you're paying for it.

All at once he internalises the defeat in his posture, the shoulders sinking in time.

He's not just saying it. He has actually understood.

Congratulations. You have made your point, and in doing so, you have toppled one of his few psychic pillars.

Unfamiliarity without novelty. A hell of alienation.

No hint of accusation. He's convinced he is misremembering somehow.

You remember the feeling of inert PSEUDODPOD -- at once mundane and disturbing, like some piece of surrealist human furniture.

He swallows hard. You can practically see him pushing the emotions and thoughts down his throat.

Lucid, self-aware -- this really isn't the worst version of yourself, all things considered.

He strips you naked with his gaze, on his expression a desire that is not lust.

As though at a mirror that refused to respond to his movements.

Not the bald spot! The font of luck.

The information to process is simply too much. He has no choice but to roll with it.

Like an epic romance from mythology, your hatred of Eszti echoes through your incarnations, undying.

He's like a laboratory where you can see what you actually think, stripped of all niceties.

He half hopes he won't. It would solve all his problems, a simple bullet to the head...

All frames of reference have gone to shit. He's second-guessing his every conception of basic social norms.

A tiny reflected Hershel stares back at you, framed in hair.

Like a well-scrubbed bathroom tile.

The paleolithic huntress exhales as she fondles the precious river stone, the primal superstition inside her calmed -- for the moment.

It's never going to work like that. You have to believe.

EXERCISE YOUR AUTHORITY, AND HE WILL FOLD.

That vibration that you can feel through his skull -- the prelude to sobbing.

You're milking your lucky cow dry, take it easy on him. Once a day is more than enough.

ECONOMIC HUMILIATION. A BASE METHOD, BUT EFFECTIVE.

He even makes the same sound you make when you're thinking.

A tone so venomously sarcastic it's worse than no admission.

Sarcastic or not, you have bent him to your will. You can use him in theatre.

It's like asking a child with no experience of the world who they'll work with. He has no frame of reference.

New post-assignment achievement: Zero out PSEUDOPOD.

Every once in a while he accidentally wanders close to the edges of his limited experience in the world, and when he does a deep and primal fear enters his eyes.

Not nearly as confident his put-on persona as he pretends.

He shrinks even as he is suggesting.

Fucker of mothers.

Is that the problem? Do you have to fuck your imprint? Is that the only way to resolve the hatred between you?

He stays at the bar until they kick him out, and then wanders around town until they let him in again.

It's conceivable he's even convinced them to let him sleep here.

It's not obliviousness, at least not primarily-- there's something else holding him back..

Fear. One foot back in that place, and his fantasies about being the original will collapse on him.

A tiny reflected Hershel stares back at you, framed in hair.

Like a well-scrubbed bathroom tile.

The paleolithic huntress exhales as she fondles the precious river stone, the primal superstition inside her calmed -- for the moment.

Smile of feral victory.

It's like watching all the worst parts of yourself bound up in a male body -- and an ugly one, to boot.

The last time you spoke, there was a hint of desperation in how he insisted he was the original. Not anymore. Now he's had days to indoctrinate the idea into himself.

And still no pants on him.

He has made it clear he will betray you first chance he gets. A treacherousness so overt, it is somehow easier to deal with.

The vicinity displays a marked absence of 'new friends'.

When he runs up against the limits of his memory, the fantasy threatens collapse.

Like an epic romance from mythology, your hatred of Eszti echoes through your incarnations, undying.

He's like a laboratory where you can see what you actually think, stripped of all niceties.

Nothing short of an in-theatre liability and, what's worse, one that's auto-generating false lore in real time.

It's in the air. In the smell of your sweat, in the rhythm of your breathing.

Like a well-scrubbed bathroom tile.

The paleolithic huntress exhales as she fondles the precious river stone, the primal superstition inside her calmed -- for the moment.

It's never going to work like that. You have to believe.

This tradition is sacred to him.

Still no pants, though.

It's not just earnestness... what fills his voice is a kind of anti-irony. A wilful, forced belief.

And below, the abyss of doubt.

It's exactly the way those kids learn the lore from their wolf show -- fiction imbibed with a seriousness that outstrips anything in real life.

Nearly the entire sub-thirty population of the city, most of whom are hooked on Luzian fashion.

The importer persona is simply not deep enough to occupy his whole personality, so it multiplies by nature, trying to fill the empty space where a person should be.

You should have never left him unsupervised.

Instead of a vegetable, you've created a man in a perpetual psychotic break. And now he's robbing random pedestrians.

There's nothing you can't get this guy to do, as long as it's for socks. He's a menace.

And still, no pants.

He knows he's a loose end, and he knows what happens to loose ends.

Every time that door has opened over the past few days it has been another Opera assassin. He has been killed countless times over the past few days.

Hope. The possibility of death in hostile rather than friendly hands is presently a comfort.