('In the Mood' remix by Funk Ferret and Goodgroove RMX)
Awaking
in a period seeming speakeasy, drinks before them.
A nightclub apparently built inside the usually closed chapel. If
those assorted with the mayor were considered decadent, these would go simply
beyond to cultish and ceremonial. Room to room of sacrifice to
devotion, every craving being satisfied.
Mixed
among them the familiar faces of everyone the player's killed, staring
frozen as they pass until the table in the back, Gabrielle seated with her back to the wall watching them.
Gabrielle - "Welcome back."
Killer - "What is this."
Gabrielle
- "It's too late. Hell has taken Midwich already and you're already damned to it. So where else could you go ?"
Killer - "Everyone we've ever killed ..."
Gabrielle - "Is here. They're waiting."
Learner - "And that's why ..."
Gabrielle - "Why you're here. They're waiting for you."
The Killer draws and fires, it passes her through with a glitch, the world
glazing over around her, a bullet hole in the beam to the side.
Gabrielle
- "It's not real you know, but the pay's still the same. You do remember dying, you'd just
rather not and true enough. I understand that."
Killer - "And you ?"
Gabrielle
- "I was never alive. I'm encoded to the system. What you
just saw was the game recreating reality to fills the
vacuum of any encoded removal, as it most recently was. In short, you missed."
Killer - "The Hell I did." He points and clicks misfired.
Learner
- Lowers the gun-hand ... "She's right. It's just a thing that can't
happen. Fate will rewrite it." To her, "At least here."
Gabrielle - To the Killer, "Meaning you remember
seeing what you mind needs to comprehend my continued existence."
To both - "We're abandoning
the project to let it collapse it in on itself, destroying the beasts
within it. And I do I truly hope not you too." To both, "But it's too late. The experiment is over."
Killer - "So where the Hell do we go now !?"
Learner giggles.
Gabrielle - "You could always just stop playing." Shots are delivered.
They look guiltily around at each other ... they take their shots.
Gabrielle
- "True I had better hopes for it, but this place was always designed
as a trap. So now it gets sprung. And you get the hell out of town on that shipment."
Learner bursts out laughing, "You two Have to Stop !"
Gabrielle - "Never. You in ?"
Killer - "And then what. 'Salvation' ?"
Gabrielle - "I'm sorry ... that's as far as I can see."
Killer - "Meaning ?"
Gabrielle
- "Meaning the experiment is over. I'm not the one to break you out of
Hell. My hypocrisy here can only go so far without ... "
Killer - "Without what." Thanks for the round and pays.
Learner - "Oh ... my ... God ... doesn't even know ... "
She looks away a sec, then back. Takes the glass and cheers with an acknowledging smile of sarcasm before the shot.
(if the right Abognazar page was found)
The Learner giggles.
Killer - "Now what."
Learner - "I knew Gabriel was a girl. No one
believed me. The names of female angels in the Abognazar woodcuts are
reversed to white lines on black because he was a fucking misogynist."
Gabrielle - Smiles appreciatively, "Indeed."