Pride. He wants you to know he saw you enter the shack, and he wants you to know what you saw was his work.

The corners of the mouth vibrate pathetically against the rags that stuff it, gagging the scream in its throat.

Pupils dilate. Vessels flush under a quickening heart rate.

The first genuine response you have elicited from him at all.

Formal term for one of various conditions that up until a few decades ago were known collectively as dying of old age.

The breath of obsolescence whispers its song. A lullaby of bodily decay.

Highly-trained. Blood under the fingernails. Unfamiliar with the cold of the freezer.

Breathe.

A genius of pain.

By 'ill'... does he mean 'sick'? As in, you and your Crew?

ALL THAT I HEAR LATELY, IS MY SUPERBLOC BABY.

Isn't it a treat to work with an actual professional? What fun.

You should let this very competent man lead the assignment from here on out.

This man is main quest complete, side quest curious.

An Ultra Violeta lyric, maybe. You can imagine her saying those words.

You catch the scent of expensive cologne -- yesterday's, most likely.

Region-locked sound encoding. You'd need a top-line Luzian InfraVision player to invoke it.

Unguarded by his headphone helm, his neck seems strangely vulnerable.

CONVEYOR BELT LIQUIDATION. ADMIRABLE EFFICIENCY.

They can hear your heart with ultrasound. Find it. Rip it out.

After all these years perhaps they've developed some notion of society, even religion. Open your mind to their theologies and they may accept you as their own.

This must be where Project OKEANOS was run -- a secretive EMTERR program, meant to breed dolphin-human hybrids.

Questions that some would attribute to life's meaning.

Careful. You are not alone.

Remain calm. Stay on target.

Remember -- you tower above all of this.

All risks you're willing to take. This is a matter of professional pride.

Trust the techno-fascists to have all the best stuff. What's so good about Novessa, anyway?

Don't listen to her. Fuck archives.

Our man needs to suck it up and learn to dissociate like us. Teach him, sis.

He blows as hard as he can against the world, but it blows back a thousand times harder.

The warmth in her voice dipped, only for a moment.

A name from legend. A mythical creature.

Yes, yes! Sniff her, taste her, need her smells.

A trace of concern. Lean into it.

A remarkable mirage. If your paths ever cross, this woman could prove useful.

YOU ARE BEING LULLED BY A SIREN.

In and out, in and out of the machine's insatiable whirling jaws...

CASCADE, hero of all mankind!

A fundamentally flawed, but potent machine.

On the hidden side of the sun, a polar radiation storm congeals.

Or maybe that's just your vision burning prismatic at its folding edges.

The artist has broken the boundaries of the panel to traverse time and space, the Hombre slithering through a chiarascuro dreamscape.

He wants to transcend suspicion and lies. And if everything's fucked anyway, what harm is there in trying?

A click, a woman in a rented apartment picks up a ringing phone. On the other side, a man with a deep voice utters words that will make her consider ending her life tonight.

Voiceless, limbs tied to a chair, both eyes pushed all the way in. Frantically, they trace the word 'help' on the roof of their mouth with what remains of their tongue.

The words sing above the quiet hum of the machines in the room. They ascend through the ceiling, past the clouds that line the world, entering a realm lit perenially by the shimmer of godbeams.

For most people, this would be a severe blow to their confidence. But not you -- a professional shit-taker.

There's more to it than that. Having a break wasn't her choice.

An obscure pleasure, one only accessible to sensitive minds.

Checks