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A sinuous rope scar wound around his arm and across his shoulderblade, he screams.

Somewhere beneath the Noscorrentes Sea, a bloated body turns to face the sky.

Somewhere within the warren-like streets of Lower Viudas, an old man pulls a pelota cap over his face and ducks into a neon-lit bookmakers.

At the bottom of a hidden jail, a trembling old man turns and looks at the blank space where a window should be.

You're the highest thing in Portofiro. She can see you from up there.

Photons propelled through silver halide gelatine, nothing but the momentary flash of a false star.

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 shifts uncomfortably in her seat.

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

Operants of the Psychic Wars!

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.

He doesn't move -- but you swear you feel the gentle weight of a hand upon yours.

Whatever happens has already happened.

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.

It dawns on you that you've delivered the punchline to a cosmic joke only he will understand.

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.

Nameless corpses, piled in flames. Faces turned toward each other.

You find yourself humming along with the building, involuntarily.

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

In sync with the snap of his fingers, halfway across the world a young man in the midst of his birthday celebrations is stricken to the ground with an aneurysm.

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

And he wore the same imperturbable smile as he forced his hand down Karolina's throat.

Wearing the same imperturbable smile.

In a dimly lit ground floor flat in Novessa, a boy no older than eight picks up a toy rocket. 'I'll be like daddy one day,' he tells his mother.

Somewhere, in whatever cosmic accounts are settled, there has been a mixup. Until such a time as it is cleared up, you appear to be off the hook.

Another time, another place. A different life overlapping for a moment.

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

No... you're coming home.

Gunshot echo. A cold splash. Together, infinitely resonating.

A hollowed out shape. The outline of a man.

A shape among darkness. Panting, running.

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.

A whisper beyond the doorframe. Ripples of frozen air, a shattered seal. Seven people stare through a window as an unseen hand taps at the glass.

A rapid montage of people entering and exiting this room over a series of months. All of them wear loose-fitting outfits in mismatched colours.

Petrol fires blackening the sky over razed jungles. Mountains levelled under the ant-labour of a thousand slaves that lived and died to produce a single, gleaming shard...

Blood hangs in ghostly shapes amid the dark waters of a ravine. Curious trout follow the trail and discover a body -- gore streams from a barbaric crater, where there was once an eye.

An officer of the Pious Order knocks twice on the door of an apartment in Mircea's ever-dwindling Arts District. The person inside does not answer, too busy throwing everything they own onto the fire in the hearth -- the smell of burning paper and plastic.

Some weeks ago, sweat gathered on his bald head under the strap of a forehead lantern. Broad hands delicately protected by latex gloves, he rummages through the back rooms of the abandoned Essilk No. 3, hoping for a bolt of stained fabric.

Beautiful young women with eyes weakened by candlelight tend to each short-lived grub as if it were a princeling.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Thousands of miles away, sad people in pressed suits wander the cold, hexagonal halls of Satellite Facility B, longing for a pop of colour.

A flicker of light, arranged by the cosmos, as if to wink at you.

344 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 6 of 7