The tabletop is splattered with the drying blood of your old friend.

The tabletop is splattered with the drying blood of your old friend.

The implements lie where you left them, remnants of your strange ritual.

The drill awaits your hand.

Inject the ozone up his nose.

You depress the syringe slowly over the course of ten seconds, watching the unconscious patient's nostrils twitch involuntarily as they are invaded.

Deep inside narrow and winding mucosal cavities, stretches of black mould wither and perish in the chemical mist.

How will I know if this is working?

As long as his brain doesn't run out of his nose, it's worked. To what degree it's worked... you won't know until he's conscious.

Now we wait.

A sluggish timelessness overtakes the silo basement as you wait, devoid of light changes or any other marker of time.

"Mm... CASCADE... Did you-?" Your former double mutters in a drug-heavy voice.

"I did. I got him, HOLOCENE."

"Got... the motherfucker..."

His relief is such that it's almost a shame to correct his illusions.

"But... You didn't..." He lifts a hand and runs it along his unbroken skull.

"No wound. I just injected ozone into your respiratory system."

"Ozone... You're trying to kill...." You can see his eyes glaze over as they calculate, against the receding drugs.

"Fungal colonies inside my head... I see..."

The disappointment he feels is unjustifiable even to himself, but you can read it in his eyes.

He wanted to meet his nemesis head on. He wanted it to have a face.

"How are you now?"

"I'll confess it's not the outcome I'd envisioned, CASCADE. I'll need a day or so..."

"M.I.H.O. thanks you for helping to root out the subversive elements in its ranks... be they controller or colony."

"See you in the Fogged Mirror when you're back on your feet."

"Fogged Mirror... we had fun there... once."

Holding his gaze on you, he retreats back into the sedative. Eventually his eyes flutter closed and his head falls limp against his shoulder.

"Consider yourself bona fide."

"What you called the Small Controller was a foreign organism -- specifically a mould."

"Mould... Interesting hypothesis..." His eyes glaze over as they calculate against the drugs.

"That's... different, but... it makes sense. Not one Controller... Many."

"I didn't do what you asked me. I did what you needed."

"What I needed?"

He struggles to wade through the sedatives still weighing him down.

"The drill appears... suspiciously blood free..."

He doesn't look like he's dying, at any rate.

Go over the procedure one last time.

The drill speaks for itself. This is the extraction phase.

You've taken the tools up one by one in the intended order -- now comes the final tool and the logical end.

The moment we've been waiting for our entire life, Herschen. Stoop to the occasion. Trepan him.

Really?

Of course. Drill in head. Sick.

Not so sure about that...

That's not the spirit. Get in the fucking zone.

Trepanation was the earliest form of treatment for brain tumours, relieving the buildup of pressure inside the skull.

So it could help him.

If done with surgical precision, yes.

So it could kill him.

Which may also help him, in a small way.

So it could wang him.

Fuck yes, I have.

Everyone has. Standard-issue primal desire.

He wants me to drill a hole in his skull and pull out something I haven't even seen?

Alternative wording

He wants me to drill a hole in his skull and pull out a tarsier?

Alternative wording

He wants me to drill a hole in his skull and pull out a tumour?

Alternative wording

He wants me to drill a hole in his skull and pull out an embryo?

Correct.

I'm going to kill him, aren't I?

Correct.

Life and death. Kill or cure. No middle ground.

I'm going to wang him, aren't I?

I don't know what I've done in my life to wind up at this point. (Go back.)

HOLOCENE stirs in his drug-sleep, dreaming of medieval surgical procedures.

Scan for a target zone.

There. The left hemisphere of his head, the parietal bone -- where the mass of dark hair meets the skin.

Extract the Small Controller.

You feel it as soon as drill tip meets boyish brow-- the frailty of human life, just a single-use bonescreen away from the open plain called death.

Lock in, break ground.

You twist the drill's wheel a full revolution -- a droplet of blood slips loose -- then the vibrations begin shaking their way up your forearm.

REVOLUTIONS UPON REVOLUTIONS!

Centuries-old paintings of patients, sans anesthesia, getting bloody chunks removed from head. The agony. The insanity.

Careful. That brittleness means you're about to crack the shell.

Carve a circle shape in the bone.

A tiny crescent moon of blood forms on your former double's forehead.

A curtain of skin falls to the side, and you see the coin-sized disk you have carved out.

Feel that. Life and death trembling beneath you, a single gram of pressure between them.

Prise it out with the drill tip.

The circle of bone comes away easier than you thought it would. The drill metal brushes something soft behind it.

A porthole opens into vein-crossed dimness.

Peer into HOLOCENE's head.

Brain matter quivers, slick with blood and cerebrospinal fluid. Ridges and folds beneath red tendrils, forming unknowable biological runes.

Somewhere within: A hard drive of perfect memory, each scene evenly catalogued and ready for playback.

Light shines for the first time on territories it has never before reached.

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

Nestled in the folds -- a glimmer of wet flesh a different colour from anything around it.

Hello, you bastard.

Your aim was true.

Reach in and pull it out.

For a moment, your fingers brush up against the flesh, and the ensuing chill reverberates in the deepest recesses of you.

Tarsier shaped! A little curled-up tarsier!

He was a tarsier!

A tarsier embryo, maybe... But yes, it could be argued.

Put the fleshy mass in the Entity Containment Vessel.

It sinks to the bottom of the crimson liquid and lies there, unmoving. You seal the lid tightly.

The important thing is that your double -- miraculously -- appears to have survived. His breath is light, but steady.

He'll... be alright?

A matter of perspective. But he'll recover from the sedative in a few hours.

(Lean in.) "Meet you in the Fogged Mirror when you're up and about."

There is no response... but a shadow dips across your former double's expression.

<<Thank you, CASCADE.>>

<<Good job, CASCADE. M.I.H.O. salutes you.>>

"Good job, HOLOCENE."

The sedative will wear off in a few hours. Hopefully when he comes round, you both find yourself on the same side.

Throw it down and crush it underfoot.

The lump offers little resistance as you splat it horizontal across the dust-laden floor.

At the edges of your ears, a tiny scream.

The Small Controller.

Unlike any controller you've seen before.

Is it some kind of recording or transmitting device?

Unlike any device you've seen before. This thing seems organic, through and through.

Strange-looking tumour.

Stranger-looking surgeon.

It's just a piece of flesh that got stuck there somehow. A childhood accident, or something...

You don't even believe yourself, do you?

No way.

A finger to finish the job...

The circle of bone comes away easier than you thought it would. Your bare skin brushes something soft behind it.

Best not to think about it. But also, definitely brain.

Maybe it's just a random nerve firing, but a smile flutters at the corner of your former double's mouth.

With all the grace of a disgruntled toddler, you blunder forth with your crank drill debut.

Blood spurts. Bone-vibrations rattle your arm as though driving on a rock-heavy road. Suddenly --

Something gives.

Your hand sinks down a full inch without resistance. The drill bit disappears from view.

A tiny, wet SKIRCH as it slides in.

"That's what you get, narc."

He cannot hear you, but seems to have received the message loud and clear.

He looks like PSEUDOPOD.

Slowly, with a kind of chemotheraputic drip, the knowledge of what you have just done sinks in.

Primal howling from the depths of your brain.

The body of your former double ragdolls in the cockpit chair. Blood runs from the hole in his head, brushing his eye on the way down, and drips in irregular patterns on the floor.

"Assets are tools. Tools break sometimes."

And sometimes you break the tools.

Operational silver lining: the body comes pre-disposed at the bottom of an abandoned silo.

You face HOLOCENE one last time -- or what you and the Small Controller have left of him.

"Well... Goodbye, HOLOCENE."

"... Hhhh... "

Nothing but a dead body's imitation of breath.

Words useless. Can't hear. Void.

By now you are an expert in speaking to the non-responsive and the absent.

If you want to eulogise him properly, use someone else's words.

"Turns out, crank drills, not my thing."

" ... "

"I know you know I did my best."

" ... "

The mirror-corpse cannot absolve you of anything.

"Hey, don't judge me!"

"I didn't really think I could help you. I just wanted to see how weird shit could get."

" ... "

"Turns out, pretty weird."

" ... "

The stillness of death is different from that of catatonia -- the conversation that results from it more unnerving.

You are actively courting schizophrenia at this point.

"You outdid yourself, HOLOCENE. Grand finale, no audience."

"You know... I'm the Small Controller''s new host."

" ... "

"I don't know what you were complaining about, it's not that bad."

" ... "

Hissing radio silence. The darkness between planets.

There is nothing more to be done here -- return to the light and know your actions may not be your own. The old host is dead. Long live the new host.

Though changed, you ascend the same.

"Probably going to take a drill to my head soon, too."

"Any advice?"

Read him a passage from his favourite novel.

'Blood Type: Hecatomb' falls open to a page somewhere past the middle. You hone in on the only paragraph break in sight:

Not exactly eulogistic material, but better than anything you can produce.

"I think you'll like this, HOLOCENE."

" ... "

You could not ask for a more receptive audience.

"During the early days he had watched, luxuriating..." (Start reading.)

" ... "

"... as his mind issued new projects, each in its own way no less ambitious than the citadel massacre, but abstract -- the scaffolding of internal cathedrals."

" ... "

"It was not that this -- and the other subtle pleasures of its like -- had dimmed in colour..."

" ... "

"... To the contrary, they had undergone, of their own accord, a refraction that rendered them unbearably sharp. And so he bled himself upon the world."

There is predictably no outward response from your former double as you finish reading.

There is, however, a response from within.

The boat has been set alight, the chants intoned, the cuts made on the body to attract the vultures. Some kind of ritual action performed to obtain closure from death.

Death sealed. Silent ghosts. For now.

You put the book away and set your former double to rest. There is nothing left to do here.

A sudden urge leaps within you -- you want to see the sky again.

"... The end." (Stop reading.)

" ... "

He gives no indication that he has the slightest clue that's not where the story ends. You're off the hook.

There is nothing more to be done here. Your former double is gone, and maybe happier for it.

Hopefully it isn't one of the kinky blood sex scenes.

"Alright, that's it. Goodbye HOLOCENE."

"Man... why'd you make me do this?"

"Feels wrong to leave without saying something..."

I've got nothing to say [Leave.]

That makes two of you.

Job status: bötched.

"It's just like last time... except now I've killed him with my own hands."

To a casual observer... it would seem that you've returned to Portofiro to finish the job.

No! I came here to help my old crew members, to redeem myself!

Those are two different motivations, and you are fulfilling neither of them.

You are a destructive force of nature. Channel it. Break open the world.

Preferably not at your friends. In fact, it might be best if you simply refrain from contact with people you don't intend to destroy.

No matter what I do, the result is the same.

You had many opportunities to back out of this one.

Maybe I should just kill them all and be done with it.

Seems to be heading in that general direction.

Maybe I should just wang them all and be done with it.

"It's just like last time... except now I've wanged him with my own hands."

The Small Controller made me do this. It must've pulled the drill inside!

Why would it want you to kill its host?

Unless this host had already outlived his usefulness... and what it wanted was a new host, a vehicle to take it to the surface.

I'm the new host?

There is still time to isolate yourself down here. Or turn the drill headward.

You will need a moment to process.

Possibly a lifetime.

Impossible, nothing has gotten inside me!

Droplets of blood and brains spangled across your cheeks would seem to indicate otherwise.

What choice do I have? I am already under its control.

Nary a fight put up before submitting to your new master's orders.

I have just done this. I have just done this.

I haven't just done this. It's all... Something is off. It's a lie.

"HOLOCENE?"

There is no response. Not now, not ever.

Is he... Did I...?

Yes, he is. Yes, you did.

No, no, no. That's a straight 're' if I ever saw one.

Consciousness does not extend 're-dos' to its participants. Unless you've swindled its secrets, of course.

What?

Stop. Immediately.

Too late.

"This one's for the Crew." (Zero out HOLOCENE.)

You line up the drill and aim point blank at brain.

"I'm sure someone else will take care of this..." [Leave.]

Your former double's finger twitches as you turn away, on the hand closest to you.

The implements lie where you left them, camouflaged in mundanity.