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78 checks

The freckles and splatter patterns of blood droplets are indistinguishable from one another on the face of a tram driver pinned under rubble. The steel beams that have crushed her legs are the only thing keeping her blood inside her body. Even an inch of motion, and the arteries gush...

In a dark basement in Novessa, a female controller in her mid-thirties stifles an inexplicable urge to push a palm into her face.

Spring's thin edge, a promise yet to be delivered on. Trembles of blossom on the tree branches lining People's Square. A woman in a blue cardigan pauses at a wooden stall stacked with old books.

A broad-set man surveys his cards through double-lensed spectacles, whispering to himself as he draws. Agents of the Weeping Eye sit heads bowed around him, waiting for the word of god.

In the storefront of a one-hour photo shop, a middle-aged woman watches as the fax machine ingests a sheet of paper, then thoughtfully regurgitates it. A moment later a second paper comes out, warm from the machine's laser stylus. She compares the two pages with deep suspicion.

Twenty stories below the surface of Novessa, the double-time click-clack of practical heels down a long hallway. On the desk of a high ranking Opera official, an amber light blinks.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

A barracks full of small boys, huddled together on a cold floor. An older man reads aloud from a worn and dogeared book. His words echo off the low, tin ceiling.

Below your feet, the prisoner slips in and out of a terrifying dream.

Of course, some possess this to a greater degree than others.

Not a weapon, a tool of psychic eviction, a means to disinhabit the soul.

Crackling tree squirrel impaled on a spit. Savoury smoke rising into the night. The Paleolithic huntress turns her gaze upwards.

Back in Foto 24, your would-be double gurgles his assent.

It started in sub-level three. Rose like a prayer through ducts and electrical chases. A slow, fungal liturgy.

Ribboned flesh, spots of white fat beneath the skin. A tuk-tuk horn blares outside.

Ring binders stacked on a glass-topped conference table, a chair at either end. She notices a tiny circle of paper on the carpet -- lost from a hole-puncher? A polite cough brings her attention back to her interviewer.

A breeze rolls through a plantation in Lágundi. Leaves hiss at its passing.

The board is set. The Manus Fati wriggles its fingers above the pieces.

You know the school well. You've already seen the courtyard, the old ginkyo, the barracks where the boys' minds are beaten until they're no longer their own.

A suburb of Almina al-Azraq. Green bushes, knee-high, stretch across a plateau. Boys with skirts woven into nets pluck small white flowers from between the leaves, pinching just beneath each bud.

Mud-soaked canine groin, leg lifted, as it pisses all over a bed of springy plants. You blink -- the piss hits your face, sours your taste, throwing you out from your pleasant dream among the budding white flowers.

In the distant beyond, a massive luminescent body turns in silence amid a sad black cosmos.

78 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 2 of 2