Quoted By:
>Get crazy with it
>Casey: Enhanced Success
>Everard: Success
>Gil: Success
The good news is, with those guys gone, you have a bit of breathing room. Not that you don't want to follow Gil. Even if he's got a new job, he's still hanging out with a bunch of freaks, and you can't have that. But is there any immediate rush? You plop down atop the coffin, breathe deep, and feel about at your neck. Something about the chunky necklace is really bothering you.
Or is it the necklace? Underneath, buried in the skin near your collarbone, is a strange hard shape. It's nearly impossible to see it from this angle. When you trace it with your finger, it feels like a skeleton key.
Fucking dreams. Whatever. It's weird, but unless you wake up sprouting real keys, it doesn't actually matter. But what's that? Lower down, you're sprouting something else. Something soft, warm, fleshy, <span class="mu-r">r</span>ed.
Yes, these are dream-things too. But you have been trying so hard, for months and months, and nothing has come of it— not in dreams, nowhere. That bastard WYRM's been ignoring you. If this is nothing, only a sign of things to come, imagine what's next up!
You're impatient. Plunging your hand past your tits, you dig it into the mass of growths on— in— that are your chest? They twine eagerly around your fingers, sending little shoots under your nails. They pulsate with your heart. You pulsate with your heart. You haven't blinked. You're remembering a different dream: one where you met the WYRM, and she sent growths into you, and you screamed and screamed and screamed.
There isn't much Claudia anymore. Just a mask. Without her, you're fruiting, you're sweating: <span class="mu-r">h</span>e betrayed you, you're thinking. The red stuff is biting into your wrist. Gil sold out you and your plans and sent Casey after you. He led Casey to you. He didn't care that you supposedly melted. He <span class="mu-r">b</span>etrayed you. He never cared about you. Casey found him and offered him more than you were worth and that was it. You've only known him for a couple weeks. Is that enough time to know somebody? You thought it was. You were wrong. You should <span class="mu-r">kill</span> him.
>[-1 SV: 3/???]
And you are thinking: no, that's not right. That doesn't make any sense. You made Pat give him a body, twice, and both times he could've walked away from you. Even when he wanted to stay with Us, he wanted you to visit. He's really smart: he must be running some kind of con. If that's not it, Management must've got to him. Or Casey. They stuck their evil fingers in his brain and unbound his loyalties and wiped his memory and stole your plan, and Gil <span class="mu-i">is</span> awfully susceptible to brainwashing, re: Us. Poor Gil! You'll have to rescue him again. At least you're good at it by now.
(1/3)
