Not one to make idle promises, once is enough for Ramses.

Your old double has been known to have an unsettling effect on certain people.

Superstitious at heart, you can almost see the shivers run down his spine as you stray into weird metaphysical territory.

Who is Hershel Wilk? What is techno-fascism? Is squirt piss?

Crackling, soft warm smoke equal parts sweet and musky fills your mouth.

A perfectly even burn line recedes throughout the joint, a milimetre with every puff.

Your cares dissolve.

He's right... the vegetables are probably setting up home in your brain grooves right now.

It does feel like something else is controlling your body.

THE PARTY HAS BEEN COMPROMISED. OUST THE VEGETAL DISSIDENT.

As you prepare to get back into it, you notice the name on one of the marked discs -- one you didn't see before.

Smoke unfurls from his nostrils, like an ancient dragon.

Seething. Truly disgusted.

Women trained to elicit joy, to be polite and obliging, to please. It genuinely does nothing for him.

The words from the disc that PSEUDOPOD was playing flash in your mind: 'Ultra Violeta - You But From a Dream'.

It's much more expensive than a mere toy.

You recall the prisoner's voice, crackling into your ear.

His eyes acquire a ceramic-like quality. Brightly dead, impenetrable.

Beyond the walls of the dingy bar, the city breathes.

The image forces its way back to you -- the man's unblinking, obsessive stare, while on the bed Ramses convulsed uncontrollably.

The image forces its way back to you -- Reno's unblinking, obsessive stare, while on the bed Ramses convulsed.

By the sound of it, it's more expensive than a mere toy.

He includes himself like one coming to terms with the things done during a blackout, or a bout of amnesia.

Massive? That's the second time you've heard about a majestic woman with a gigantic form. You must find out more.

You ran right into that one.

You are reminded of a ripe cherry tomato, about to burst between thumb and forefinger.

Infused with transcendant meaning, somewhere between a symbol and the thing it represents, the junior negotiator's conception of the gap escapes definition.

She's concerned, but she knows his limits.

Voice somehow constricted, as though some heavy object really were pressing down on her chest.

A pseudo-language stretching back centuries, cobbled together from imperial slang and colonial patois. You first learned of its existence after joining the Opera.

A FETISHISTIC RESIDUE OF OUR ENEMIES' PAST, BACK WHEN THEY OWNED LAND -- AND PEOPLE.

A possible rendezvous. Actionable intelligence.

A poorly conceived, underbaked hodgepodge of old and modern Developed World languages -- mostly from Mircea and Ile-de-Söze.

That is EMTERR cant, no question.

Dancing on insanity, his understanding of reality and roleplay had merged entirely.

'Tomorrow night'. A battle arena.

Concrete and plastic. Droplets on dark air. Voices raised under moulding canopy.

The negotiator said he had a 'request', and suggested tomorrow night.

Something twitches inside your memory. You have heard of this, but its name slips by you.

Crack the negotiator's dialect.

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A tremor in his voice. Like a kid addressing his crush.

Common figurative speech for an astral door. EMTERR love to use them as drop-off points between operants.

The outline of a small alcove with seated patrons shimmers in your mind.

You recall the faint clinking of glasses, just a few metres away.

'Why twist the knife?', his gaze seems to say.

Mind reading level: Tutorial.

Like the master sword-makers of Tsun's Arc, he is a relic of times long past, an initiate in some forgotten craft now performed in seconds by machines.

A joint would be quicker. No tobacco.

Alright, that's got to be the last step.

As he puts it away, you see the look he gives his masterpiece, as though wondering why it is not good enough for you.

If there was any sarcasm in that phrase, it flew way over his head and directly into the Noscorrentes sea.

One takes longer as it includes tobacco. This is a bad time to forget which.

You've heard him talk, you know his arrogant, fast-talking manners -- he's faking the stutter as part of the roleplay.

The editing job alone is probably a week's work.

There he is. He's back.

Nodding mechanically, eyes glazed over and gently smiling, it's hard to tell how much he's even understanding.

Not the slightest sign of surprise. Supreme, unfeigned spiritual indifference.

He's gone. Audience, lost.

It's hopeless. You brought this on yourself.

We got places to be. Anywhere free from nonsense tech jibberish.

Only a monster would say 'no' to free, top-grade telecom nerdery full of hyper-specific details.

Like millions of capillaries feeding a single, bloated vein.

If this was anyone else you'd feel patronised. But that's not Ram's style -- he's genuinely trying to help.

Wow, he's talking to you like you were a total idiot. Maybe you are a total idiot?

Picture a hundred guitars connected to a single amp, strumming all at once.

His brow furrows, as though struggling not to let the idea through.

A sudden, bizarre flare of hope.

Even you have memorised the names of their cartoon wolves.

You feel the weight of your fancy toy sword, suddenly.

Symbols, repeated over and over -- a quiet process of attrition.

Mass conditioning. It never fails.

Rustam Fatihler, the Conqueror, sought centuries ago to unite the myriad warring tribes of the peninsula under a single banner, hence, the Dream of Rustam.

Malignant growths, forever squirming against each other.

A slow death by erosion.

And after all this time, the Protectorate of Rustam amounts to two meagre towns, devoid of resources, kept propped up by foreign funds. That, you know.

Four centuries ago, approximately.

You know the kind: vaguely colonial, full of misinformation and the promise of erotic adventures with cannibals in far off jungles.

Glad that the time he spent on the whistle wasn't wasted after all.

Slick crimson river of parted sinew and cartilage. With the utmost care, two strips of membranous tissue are ripped from the surrounding meat and tensed over a wood tuning peg.

The material must know fear.

AAAARRGH! KILL ME! KILL MEEEEE!

Like the screams of babies, the sound bypasses all logic and goes directly for the panic response.

Confirmed: fear is in the glands.

Deep inside, somewhere in the bloody recesses of your genetics, something primal and long-dormant stirs.

The words are just the modern brain attempting to decipher a voice from the ancient, pre-human parts of itself.

Tune in to the sound of death. (Have Ramses play the Death Whistle again.)

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Death. Madness. Decay.

Nothing can stop it. A chemical panic holds your entire body hostage.

You catch a glimpse of a deformed hairless face, bone-white skin, flaring simian nostrils.

Fear is yours. You are both terrified and terrifier.

You barely flinch at the violent torrent of sound that washes over you. It makes you feel...

A burst of cold and fetid sweat as your body poisons itself with stress chemicals.

Neither the friend you left behind years ago, nor the quivering wreck you found in his houseboat.

None of his weight has been regained, but his movements are firm and his presence light.

Awaiting his assignment, as promised, in the old haunt.

He still doesn't quite believe it.

A spectre in loose fabric, feeling out the contours of his own body -- just in case.

The slightest vibration, ordinary human unsteadiness.

The baseline rhythm of the electrical signals in his body has steadied, a regular pulse instead of that jittering telegraph blip.

Slowly populating itself with your crew members, around you the Fogged Mirror begins to take on the appearance it had five years ago, before your network collapsed.

Empty of the other members of your old crew, the Fogged Mirror feels barren, infinitely distant from what it was five years ago, before your network collapsed.

His silhouette flickers in the houseboat's dim lights. For a moment, all you see is a man untouched by the weight of your actions.

A faint bleep on a sonar gone quiet for too long.

A small promise, remade and unkept a thousand times over. 'Tomorrow', he'd tell himself, until the word meant nothing.

A woman, scarf framing her face in muted colours, places a basket of lavash and stuffed grapes by the houseboat door. Her husband, a silent sentinel, nods for her to step back. A thin bridge, beckoning Ramses back.

Hints of a new life looming -- unless you occlude it.

You break them, over and over, and still they stick by you.

If you care about him, the best thing you can do is step out of his way and let him rejoin life. Regardless of what he wants.

NO. THE PLAN IS THE DEATH OF OUR ENEMY. AT ANY COST.

It's a talisman, not a functional object. It's imbued with whatever Ramses feels towards you.

He's not taking a no.

'It is a good thing yesterday was not the end of history after all.'

Clay teeth. No eyes.

That's him. Mind's fucked, face worse, but that's our boy.

Timestamp: five years, three months since last contact.

His lopsided smile is the same, though perhaps cut with a streak of bitterness that might be new.

His fingers twitch in jittery bursts. Postictal tremors -- the aftershock of a seizure.

Six-hundred and fifty sol.

Exploitation money. Reserved for those willing to undergo serious bodily harm for what they do.

Right after his name slipped from KINDRED's bloodied lips.

One by one, your crew was picked off while you were whisked away to safety.

THE FLAILING LIMBS OF THE BODY POLITIC SUFFER WHILE THE HEAD BURIES ITSELF IN THE SAND.

RADIAN is an audio engineer. That scene you walked in on looked nothing like his line of work.

The getup. The fashion. The aesthetics of Luzian mass culture unmistakable even when they're undercover.

The faces. 'Strange cousins' to Portofiran in more ways than one.

The Weeping Eye's interrogator class.

That's how it always goes: some loose ends that can't be tied off.

Conclusion: You are speaking to a phantom.

'You people'.

Textbook practice. Once you find an enemy network, you torch it and ensure nothing remains.

The seizure you saw may have been self-induced, but others are not.

You flash back to the memory of planting that cricket with Ramses, how it had trembled in his hand for a moment...

A small silence as you rearrange your understandings of each other.

He doesn't try to hide the disappointment on his face.

RADIAN: no mention of epilepsy found. Medical conditions: left blank.

It was too much to hope that you were here without an agenda, but he had hoped.

He doesn't know Dr. Gonzalo E.S. Gonza.

Dr. Hugo did seem cagey, not the type to hand out drugs without going through a robust checklist.

WHO ELSE BUT THE DEMON FACE OF MARKET FORCES AND ECONOMIC FETISHISM.

Perhaps, but behind it all there is something else, far simpler -- the power to pay someone to have a medical emergency for your viewing pleasure.

The mouth muscles contorting into every shape they know, producing random morphemes that latch onto words from every language floating around the brain.

He stalls momentarily as his brain computes the information.

THERE IS NO BETTER DOMINATRIX THAN THE STATE. WE WILL SATISFY ALL URGES, IRREVOCABLY.

His eyes are dark, tired, but still sharp.

Prognosis: almost identical to the one Dr. Gonza gave you. Either they are onto something or these men have the same kind of brain parasite.

He's weaker than he looks. Even these little exertions leave him drained.

A valuable piece lays on its side, unused, next to the board. Put him back into play.

A good deal of Ramses' equipment always consisted of improvised devices cobbled up from the cannibalised remains of consumer electronics.

'Crickets' as in bugs. Ramses' signature wiretap devices.

When all is said and done, the weed plug is Ramses' last point of contact with the world of humans.

His body completes the sentence with another one of its periodic shivers.

Unexpected venom. Directed inwards.

He dismisses it with that special bitterness reserved for smothering dreams that hurt.

Easy. Plug them into a phone or terminal box, and they'll listen in. From there, Ramses can record calls, or reroute them.

He needs to feel useful somehow. Especially as you're trying to help him out.

Sure. Attach bug to phone line and then it will do a bleep-bloop-blorg to the circuit thing.

You can't abandon your old asset -- a friend -- in this kind of state. At least, not without finding out what happened to him.

The sound immediately sickens you to your core.

Haunting images of torture surround your mind. In seconds, imagined people deform into blistering, moaning creatures -- writhing in what's left of their insides.

You're in Ramses's houseboat, he's alive... nothing bad is happening...

Not dying. At least, not right here and now.

No wires, switches, or screws anywhere on that thing he's holding. Remarkably untechnological for a Ramses project.

Instruments do not sound like that. That was the scream of something alive.

Instrument in hand on his sickbed, he could easily be a dying melancholy poet strumming away on his lute.

You can see it properly now. Looks like a human skull frozen in mid-scream. Ritualistic symbols are inked all over.

Clay teeth. No eyes.

Unbelievable. He finds the sound comforting.

Your friend is dying. This is his death knell you're listening to.

Something tells you your head would fill with nasty images right now if your imagination was a little more vivid.

Each flash reproduces the world in monochrome, and the body on the bed spasms in time.

Muscles clenched in futile effort.

A syllable strains against his lips. He's trying to say something, but his jaw is locked shut.

It's Reno. The richest man in Portofiro here, in this dilapidated houseboat.

Last instants before pressure release. The thing building up inside is about to rupture its container in three, two...

Galaxies of desperation sucked into the pupil's widening void.

You are not ready for this.

Run. Run and don't look back.

HIS STATUS AND FINANCES MATTER NOT. NO ONE SHOULD BE SHUSHING YOU LIKE A DOG.

He's asking you to hold back.

Feels like a gesture that means something. Help? You cannot reliably tell.

Behind the apparent chaos lies all the trappings of a carefully executed ritual. This isn't the first time. Not for either of them.

One, two, dead. One, two, dead -- a precise interval. The lightbulb isn't flickering, it's pulsing.

A mirror of your guilt. Whatever is happening here, it is the result of how you abandoned him years ago.

All vestiges of humanity abandoned. One leg bent wrong.

A visage corkscrewed with distress.

Put a stop to this.

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Payment. The price of Ramses' nervous system.

From the floor, a noise -- low, almost human.

It is the future. Your old asset, aged one hundred years in the five that have elapsed.

Asset RADIAN. Comms specialist. Skillset: audio engineering, surveillance, forensics, applied maths, transmission security.

Ramses Tayed Al-Fatik Molloy. Plague metal worshipper. Pristine blunt roller. Rustamian refugee. Ultimate warlock of chill.

Or at least -- he was.

Still shuddering and a little incredulous, Ramses settles back into reality and examines you.

An audible crack in his spine as he arches backwards, crumpling.

A marionette with strings yanked, then suddenly severed.

Every signal hits you raw and simultaneous: reality blooms, light flashes, saliva strings.

Morbidly transfixed, you as much a slave to what you are watching as the unblinking spectator.

The command runs through paralysed limbs. The only response the body gives is nausea.

That's our boy. Are you seriously going to abandon him again?

An air of waiting in the room. The thing that is supposed to happen hasn't happened yet.

Either a medical emergency, or a spiritual one.

Entranced. A reptile in the throes of worship.

Resets