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She's saying it on sodium thiopental, so that must mean it's true...

No way. You are not here. This is not happening.

Coming apart at the seams.

Dread, realising itself as vomit rising up the back of your throat.

The Opera set you up. They knew you'd fail; they sent you here to die.

Your cerebro-spinal fluid turns to liquid refrigerant.

End of the line, coming up fast! Soon you'll be drooling, just like PSEUDOPOD.

A jolt of fear snaps through you, writing itself across your face.

Six zones? Are you dying? You might be dying.

Wrong. It's all shame now. You are a shame-based lifeform.

How embarrassing! Caught peeping at a sleazy magazine full of what are probably under-age girls.

She hates you. She thinks you're a stupid cunt.

Who are you to say, either?

You said yourself these plushies are sinister... what shape has breached containment?

What shape has breached containment?

First assignment off the shelf and you're being stalked by a suspected operant killer. Kill yourself to get it over with.

A cold swell smashes into your ribcage.

Your skin crawls at the girlish sound, bubbling out of a woman who it doesn't at all seem to belong to.

Stop this now. Human beings were never meant to do this.

The mere sight of HOLOCENE's handwriting incurs a shiver of post-codebreaking trauma.

Or dumped in a mass grave...

Your attention span buckles and cracks under the strain.

You meet this latest existential ridicule with nothing but resignation.

If you all make it out of this it'll be a miracle.

Put a little extra sway into the shoulders when you walk, you won't look rapey if you keep it smooth.

Your right eye twitches.

This is how you imagine the insides of an eyeball would feel.

Evidence of you everywhere, like fingerprints in blood.

The real question is: Can you write poetry anywhere?

Your hand hesitates.

You're lined up to get zeroed out. Best get out of here fast.

It definitely had something to do with you.

It hurts because it's true.

The sound of your name on his tongue -- unnatural, upsetting.

Don't look now... but you can see through the metal floor. All the way down.

A lance of dread pierces your sternum at the thought of it.

Heart-in-throat, crumpled knees against cold linoleum. A deafening pulse inside the skull. Oblivion oozes through the doorframe.

You feel very cold all of a sudden.

You feel the receiver slipping from your sweaty palm.

The sadness in it seems meant for you, and you alone. Fragments of old faces begin to reassemble in your subconscious.

Your fault. Un-fixable. Fucked.

All systems go down. A brief but total outage.

Static skitters across your palms as a thought dawns: history is littered with failures.

Your guts twist in new knots.

You shouldn't have kept this photo. You should have left it where you found it, stained in your ally's blood, smashed upon the ground, sealed behind a locked door.

Playing the keyboard in front of her is one thing... singing quite another. No way.

Sing... in front of a mega-talented popstar? Back up, CASCADE, this is far beyond your training.

The sound makes you wince.

80 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual