A.Journal

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Challenging

A good poet listens more than they speak.

Medium

You're in -- as a poet. Don't let them believe you're anything else.

Trivial

Abandon all logic. You're about to enter the Poet's Domain.

Medium

Intercom looks expensive, the interference suggests a building-wide system. Nothing 'light' about this security.

Medium

The kind of places that need security intercoms: Gated communities. Government buildings. Prisons.

Easy

Very vague. Almost... secretive.

Medium

Seems you need a good reason to be here. Fortunately, you are trained in reverse reasoning.

Easy

This door opens for someone, that's why there's an intercom. You just need her to tell you who.

Medium

Of course. When an industry dies out, its buildings are repurposed into offices for that contemporary, utilitarian feel.

Challenging

They have. Many people have.

Medium

WHAT IS THIS, THE MAKING FRIENDS INTERCOM? IT IS IN YOUR WAY, BATTER ITS DEFENCES.

Easy

First blood: CASCADE.

Medium

Translucent and grotesque, like an electronic gecko molt. It will never be skin again.

Medium

Genuinely upset.

Medium

With a certain weariness, you discern.

Medium

Blaming us 'cos this bitch edged her peel game. Sick shit.

Easy

A melodic voice that makes you think of flowers blooming in timelapse.

Medium

Holiday phone girlfriend. Claim her.

Medium

Easy

Yet another device bearing the Renotel emblem. Only recently installed, too.

Easy

Tautening the outer defences.

Medium

Strip that plastic off. Now.

Easy

Only recently installed.

Easy

This isn't only way through. You can always go the long way, around the docks to the west.

Easy

Fuck 'around'. Go through!

Easy

A system compromised at the sub-atomic level.

Easy

We're going to need tools for this one.

Easy

In another life it would've been a serpent.

Medium

Only ghosts can pass freely between such crevices.

Easy

Unless you're planning to hop off the end of the pier and swim for it, you're stuck.

Medium

Your human situation.

Easy

Far left. A frame built for violence. Bulbous glistening skull shaved bare every morning.

Medium

They didn't really talk, but she gravitated toward his presence like an animal to an abandoned building.

Medium

Now they remind you of her.

Easy

You still have them, in fact. On your feet. Right now.

Medium

Leather jacket, moustache and military cut. A face that could fluctuate wildly between innocence and depravity depending on the setting.

Easy

Older than anyone else there by at least ten years. Small eyes in a smaller frame, looking out from her corner with cold intelligence.

Medium

Your double. Together you assembled the crew from the ground up, but he never crossed professional boundaries the way you did.

Medium

And yet so many do -- the eternal and the doomed.

Easy

But he isn't just a cop. He's a carabinero -- one of the investigative branch's best.

Easy

You still have them, in fact.

Medium

Then why does everything hurt?

Trivial

And per the standards of stagecraft, should never have occurred in the first instance.

Trivial

It wasn't actually your birthday, you just said it was.

Formidable

Right. The young watcher.

Medium

You can feel the tension going out of her shoulders, her diaphragm slackening as she straightens in her chair.

Easy

Tk-tk-tk. The sound of a pen marking three boxes in short succession.

Formidable

At the Greater Quisach Gymnasium, the bell rings three times: Recreation Period is over. The children file back into the building covered in peeling plaster. The grey play-yard is empty.

Medium

Ice crystals fractal in your veins.

Legendary

What she means is the real account will be buried in a centre-held file for 30 years. You will never so much as glimpse the outside of its folder.