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No images, no sound. Only static on a dead feed.

You can feel her digging into your mind, childlike, thumping buttons, pulling wires...

SILHOUETTE. That is the name they've given her.

She sits hunched over her desk, fingers crawling over lines of poetry -- the artistic overspill of strangers' souls. She reads, and finds herself repulsed.

In another life, you are both earnestly selling your cotton wares, far beyond the shadows of international intelligence.

Thousands of miles away, his mother flinches in her sleep.

Far above, the stars remain fixed in their sockets.

The ending of the End.

In a dim underground office in Novessa, a woman in her mid-thirties lifts the right side of her headset tucks a strand of loose hair behind her ear.

Snatches of the song's chorus echo down the tubes. You're closer to the source.

You can hear the faint echo of a song.

A gray, wrinkled hand holds a red pen, drawing circles and arrows around the capital cities of the Eastern Republics.

Birdsong, dread. Footsteps ascend a staircase.

Obsidian, reflective, a pool of blood spills out beneath a mound of broken concrete. The sound of a keyboard comes from somewhere within, stuck on a diminished C.

Upstairs, something screams.

A missile flies through the sky, screaming its arrival. They pick up their instruments one last time.

In a nearby office, a middle-aged woman lifts her glasses, focusing on a younger person sat behind a large desk. The woman's insides burn with a malice that is realised as rhyming couplets pieced together in her head.

A chorus of figures from your past shout the words at you in unison. All will be forgiven.

A voice rises from a room you know to be empty. Immaterial and absent power. Ten thousand celestial limbs.

Gleaming discs fall like a strange plague upon the city below. The sun blooms little rainbows between them. From the tram windows, children laugh.

Years of regulars move in and out of the bar's entrance. Among them, a pair that was recently halved, a lonely silhouette amid the rest.

Inside a dark desk drawer, contracts and architectural drawings for a sixteen-story luxury apartment building and retail complex await the day the Palace's ceiling finally caves in.

He even began to distrust those towards the end.

Drunks in a bar celebrate their team's victory. Across the street, a crowd in opposing colours wait, broken bottles in hand. Among them, a young woman, gritting her teeth harder with every cheer.

'Angel, keep him away, keep him away from me for good...'

The ancient huntress raises her hand to the troupe behind her, stop. She felt the soil move, bouncing with the force of a megaloballer's gait. A meat they dare not hunt.

Naturally, if this were the Paleolithic, and if you were the Paleolithic huntress, you would experience this sensation all the time.

Tune in to the building's frequency.

You hear catches of the song, words, a man's voice and a guitar.

For a moment you hear a few words of a song, but it's gone before you catch what they are.

The sickly-green horizon of the Noscorrentes Sea encircles the lonely radio vessel 360 degrees.

Strange things tend to happen around world-shifting events such as these. Synchronicities. Reverberance. Repetitions.

To the extent that our lives matter even one iota, it is only under the gaze of this cat. The moment it closes its eyes, we may as well cease to be.

The ghost-remnants of a consciousness long lost, impressed upon the only part that's left.

Not for the last time, you sense.

In a very real sense, he has already passed beyond your reach.

A little voice somewhere intones: 'No take-backs'.

Say a prayer to Polaris.

Whose cat is that?

That cat over there.

Debrief the Small Controller.

A man, white-knuckled, spits on the stone yet to be engulfed by the plants. 'Traitor', he says afterwards, curling his lip in contempt.

His nails are white with the force he uses to grip the rifle. His gaze is fixed on the dark line of grit beneath them. Brown or red? Dirt or blood?

His fellow patriots were killed in the street, or by sniper's bullets. A few of their bodies are still in the compound behind him.

The rebel hero lies on the ground, haloed in red, a smile on his face. He knows his sacrifice will not be in vain -- he was able to inspire people to follow him in life, and so too in death, his voice will carry.

A voice from the dirt. Bullets in stucco behind him. Ears ringing, throat tight with panic. He shifts in the muck, clutching his gun, and whispers a prayer to an unnamed star: Not here. Not like this.

The plumber fills his cup with ice and a little bit of water first thing in the morning. By the afternoon, sweating away in the hot, dark, half-flooded humidity, he sips at the lukewarm liquid.

You become aware of an infinitude of tiny movements. A total convergence on your surroundings -- all drawn to you, here, right now...

Somewhere down the line is a makeshift switchboard with six phones manned by six bored assets. One of those assets is listening in on this call.

373 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 4 of 8