**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 17pt;">Pre-Game</span>**

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sunday</span>**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Cannot sleep tonight. The though still lights in my mind and twists my stomach to the point I think I'll throw up. Haven't eaten anything since breakfast for this reason, and am feeling light headed. No matter.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hrhjl came for its third session today. I diagnosed it with Atavism the moment I began speaking with it, and every conversation I have with it further confirms I was correct. It will take a lot of work to break through the canide urgings, but already progress has been made in several places. For one, it no longer feels the need to mark its house with urine to ward off rivals.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mrs. Thomas, the wife of the Dean of Psychiatry from the McGill Campus, also came in for a session today. She has come to me three times a week for the past four months, despite my telling her that she has no reason for it. I believe she is merely lonely, and wishes to talk to someone. Though how she can fathom paying my rates merely for an ear is beyond me, though I daresay that Dean Thomas does not mind, and she's spending her own inheritance and not his salary, and it means she does not bother him at home. As she was leaving, I once more told her that she did not require my services. She insisted that they were, in fact, needed, and payed at the front desk.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I found myself almost chopping of my penis this morning. The sight of it dangling, pale and flaccid, repulsed me, and almost drove me into a blinding rage. Only three more days until the swap is finished, and I won't have to look at it anymore. Only three more days.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">My latest attempt failed when I tried to instil it with a creative spark. It went crazy and tore out its eyes. It is now ashes and smoke, and I will begin looking again next week.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Io is beautiful tonight.</span>

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----
</span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sleep continues to slip between my fingers. Often I would take this time to go out and stroll the dark streets, but tonight is too melancholy a time to walk the shadows.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">My mind kept turning the word "day" over and over, and I was struck with how archaic the usage was. We still tick off the relative time with units of measure from a world we no longer inhabit. And yet... And yet it reaches from the past, fingers clutched to our skirts like a child afraid of being lost in a crowd, holding us to a measure that has no longer any meaning to us.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Thus it is with all of us. Yes, some have grown past our old world, and our old ways, but many still cling to them like a spar, terrified of the dark waters they could so easily swim in. They do not understand what needs to be done, and instead of using our past and history as a springboard, they dwell on it, and wish to live within it.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It is the same when they see me. They eyes scream "FREAK! FUTURA FREAK!", never knowing exactly why but only that society and history has deemed me as such, as so they go along with it. Never questioning, or attempting to go beyond it, or to build upon it, or to acknowledge that I, and my surviving siblings, are an important step foreword in the advancement of our entire race.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">If they approach the rest of progress as they approach mine, we shall remain here, stagnant beyond cosmetic changes. It is not time to look back with longing, but with wisdom borne of mistakes.</span>

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----
</span></span>
**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Game 2</span>**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I dislike shuttles, and space travel in general. There is something frightening about being in space, separated from the empty vastness by a thin sheet of metal, a microstrike away from hard vacuum and the most horrible death imaginable, distant from aid of any stripe.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Inside of a habitat you have more failsafes and security. If the outer hull is breached, any of the modules and rooms can be used as a saferoom, with its own atmosphere recycling, until help can arrive.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">But, mostly, it is the idea of being in cramped quarters with others, no place for privacy of self, which crawls my skin. Two days locked in a metal shell, having to listen to inanities, with nothing at the destination but an unknown and possibly deadly threat.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Best not to dwell overmuch.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There is something we are missing in this job; Mason, I feel, knows more than he, or his files, let on.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And there is something we are missing about the man who gave us the job.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This entire affair has me uneasy in too many aspects. Someone is playing us like pieces on a board, and when I find who it is we will have a deep, meaningful conversation.</span>

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----
</span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">My preparations are complete. Rasputin has set up my Out of Office notifications, and my clients have been contacted and notified of my week-long absence. I have made sure to scan and upload a copy of this journal to Rasputin’s memory, and checked my latest backup; it should be up to date as of this entry.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I cannot help but feel that many of the questions I have which remain unanswered would no longer exist had Tox not bungled her "interrogation" of Mason. To have the man within your grasp, able to extract any information you wish, and then play the cards so sloppily... Twice, now, on two different targets, the rest of the group cast subtlety to the wind and openly demanded information, and were amazed that it went poorly. Though Mr. Bey eventually gave us something, I am not convinced he was entirely truthful, being as how he was most assuredly on his guard from the opening of the conversation.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And now I find myself rocketing towards unknown danger with this selfsame ship of fools. It is almost enough to wish a bullet in my head.</span>

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----
</span></span>
**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Game 3</span>**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I am now certain there is more to this than we were told.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We are being used.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">That ship we encountered; gutted, emptied, only one corpse left floating in the wreck, the Ego removed as if it were a cancerous growth.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Our good professor was never heading to Earth space. Her goal, and target, was the same as ours. It is uncertain if the man who sent us on this snipe hunt knew, however. It may very well be he repeated what he was told, and we only found the true target due to our investigation. It is also possible that we were misled, and that finding this hab was part of the test we were put through.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">A test... If the goal truly was to find this missing professor, why put us through a test? Maybe the professor is dead, her stack removed or destroyed, and we were hired to follow up, discover who and why, and replace her. If that is the case, then... The game has become larger, and with higher stakes. This is a recruitment run, to assess our capabilities and skills and drive. Without knowing the purpose, it would behove me to keep some of my own capabilities and skills and drive under the radar for the time being. There is no use in advertising too openly, though I daresay our employer has suspicions. It is not, I venture to imagine, my skills in healing the mind that brought me into this debacle. The capabilities of the Lost have been known since the leak on the project itself. I have taken some care to hide the full scope of my abilities, but it would be simplicity to have another talent follow, and observe, and... Assess.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I have been lax in preparing myself against other talents. This must change, else I will find myself in delicate positions.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">As for the others, I must observe them. They most certainly have their own hidden capabilities, though Tiao has been more obvious than the others with her skillset.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Soon, we shall enter the endgame, and there I will find some of my answers. Were I the religious sort, I would ask God to have mercy on their souls. As I am not, I will be more than content to apply the proper pressure.</span>

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----
</span></span>
**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Session 4+5</span>**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I do not think Daniel trusts me very much at all. This would not be all that surprising, had I shown a history of being untrustworthy, manipulative, or otherwise underhanded. I cannot imagine what it is that snapped him towards that delusion that I was now one of them.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">He does not seem particularlily keep on amassing any knowledge of the Exsurgent threat we have encountered here, either. His kneejerk points directly to an innate need to merely destroy, without thought of preservation or learning. This will be problematic if our employer is who I think it is.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Tiao is in bad shape, but Tox is even worse. Donovan took some wounds himself, but seems to be coping very well. My own blood splattered the deck, here, and it brought back old memories of another station, and of another day of violence and darkness.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Vo and Ji are both taken care of, and I have the stacks. I do not think I will interrogate them in simulspace... I have enough to guess at their purpose, and do not wish to be exposed to their particular brand of madness any more. Religious fanatics disgust me in ways few others do. Everyone else would be most put out by their eating habits, and what they did to Yu, but this is inconsequential next to the mental, emotional and physical slavery imposed upon them by Mother and her cult. This obscene, brooding thing has stolen the best of them and locked it into a cage, only letting the leash out enough to strike at those she feels is a threat to her grand plan.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Her Grand Plan.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">She is brooding now, I expect, a gap in her mind where her spawn used to dwell, the cold talons of fear beginning to rake at her self-assured righteousness. What I would give to walk up to her, as her entire world burns, the ash and smoke of her broken dreams causing her to choke and gasp, and reach out to touch her mind. And to plant guilt, and fear, and shame, and...</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Oh... Tiao is finished. For the best, as I was near actual arousal at the thought of it.</span>

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----
</span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I wonder when Daniel will ask about what broke in my psyche.</span>

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</span></span>
**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Game 6 + 7</span>**
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hopefully mother is dead now. It would be disconcerting to have gone through all this trouble only to have failed at the only part of the mission in which we are graded.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ming is, as I thought, a member (and recruiter) for Firewall. I have already accepted and begun my work for them, though it is not in the best of circumstances. My morph is floating in a tank, repairing itself, and I feel uncomfortable. I had grown used to the feeling of flesh, and being without *my* flesh is affecting me more than I had imagined possible.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The lack of my implants is bothering me as much. Everything is too... Sharp, now. I have generally coped by liberal usage of the emotional dampers in the Futura, so much that I had forgotten how to actually keep a check on my mood. It almost ended with some very harsh words towards Ming recently. I need time to refocus myself.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">If time I can find.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Vo and Ji are being interrogated as I write this. I have done my own work on them, and sent the reports I have finished to Ming and Firewall. One hopes there will be something new and useful in them, as I cannot imagine they have many with my skillset already working for them.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The information that Vo and Ji will be infectious if resleeved is troubling. Exsurgent infection would appear to work within the Ego, and be re-awoken once a morph is sleeved. The why and how of it escapes me. I must look into it more.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I have to contact Donovan soon, preferably before the day is out... But with the new work I've taken on...</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">No. I will contact him. There is much to say.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">There has been no word on Tiao or Tox. I do not think they have died, but there is still no word.</span>

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</span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Partial success. Vo has been stripped of his psychosis, for the time being. It should be far more manageable at this time, and the interrogation should be smoother and less... Prone to babel.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I do not know how long Ming will set aside for this project, but I will assume that this week shall be the deciding factor.</span>

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</span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Why does Nine Lives want me dead? I must look into it once the week is done.</span>
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</span></span>
**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Session 8</span>**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">No one died on the expedition, though Tox has taken it upon her self to disappear. I believe Ming will be keeping an eye on her, for the time being. One cannot have too many unattached Ego's running around with knowledge of Exsurgents.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The group has decided, as a whole (except for Tox) to join with and work for Firewall. It did not take much convincing, as I am certain they were all teetering on the brink of acceptance before I pressed the issue. It is better to have everything in the open, and known, than it is to waffle and worry and fret.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Regardless, Ming has been informed of his new team of Sentinels. He shall not wait overlong to utilise it.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Now, Venus.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Venus.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Inner System.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">A place filled with corruption, crime, Hypercorps, and slavery more obscene than any in the previous history of mankind. There I must go, to find Nine Lives and understand their purpose with me. The others think the message is a warning to stay away, or to ignore a future (or past) client.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I do not think so.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I think they are saying "Hello Nico, we have found out. We know where you live, now, and we can reach out and touch you whenever we feel like. You cannot hide, you cannot defend. We can find you, and we can end you."</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I cannot think of any client, action or paper of mine that would inspire such a strong reaction from this organisation. It has the smell of something personal on their end, something with weight, and history. Such a relationship is, by definition, a two-sided coin, and yet my side remains in darkness.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Which leaves two possibilities;</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Either they are working from information gained through non-linear time,</span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">or</span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">My memories are falsified.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Both are troubling, one because it breaks many generally accepted rules of the known universe, and the other...</span>
The other implies that someone has been inside of my mind, and has played with it.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I have not detected irregularities up to this point, which makes it safe to say that the surgeon was a professional. It will take some time, and effort, to detect the seams, if they even can be detected, and slowly work my way inside.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">If the second possibility is the correct one, they have touched me where none are allowed. They have tampered with the very fabric of "I", with no consent on my part, and have butchered the self.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">If it is correct, I shall not stop until they have told me what they changed, when, and why. I will tear it from their naked, quivering minds and as they breathe their last they shall understand that one does not tamper with my mind.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ever.</span>

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----
</span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I was unable to speak with Donovan privately, as I did with Daniel. I wished to avoid the impersonal conversation through the Mesh, but it may be unavoidable.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Something struck me as hysterical last night, as I was drawing. My mind wandered, as it is wont to do, and I imagined the look on Ming’s face after I tell him exactly what we had done to the Nine Lives. It was not just a single expression, as in reality, but five expressions at once, as only happens in dreams. He was shocked, disgusted, excited, annoyed and afraid.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I wonder if he truly understands the box of monsters he has taken into his custody. I wonder if he knows the hell I can, and will, unleash upon those who deserve it. Does he believe I can be harnessed, controlled, into the avenues he, and only he, wishes? Or does he want me unfettered, free, able and willing to let the Pandorica open?</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Time will tell. He may not know a fraction of what he wishes us to believe. Firewall is not omniscient; it is impossible to see, know, and control all in a single station, much less a system. He is not foolish enough to play us like chess pieces... A Queen in chess is not self-deterministic. Even a Pawn, in this dangerous game, can make a choice that will destroy the board.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">No matter. What illusions he cling to shall fall in the fullness of time.</span>

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</span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I should have learned long ago that lovers encountered on the Mesh are not the best specimens. While skilled, and enthusiastic, this one lacked... Passion.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Passion... It was cold. I did not feel like a woman, a person, to share with, but a puzzle to solve, a precipice to be crossed, a new notch on a headboard. He did nothing for me. The wet mechanics of it all left me wanting.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">After tolerating him for long enough, I finally told him to stop, put his clothes back on, and leave. He took it as a personal insult, and began to try belittling me. I laughed in his face, which only angered him further. After a long, furious tirade about his vaunted skills and satisfied lovers, I shook my head and said "Or perhaps I do not feel like comforting your ego by faking".</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The shot told, and he stumbled out of the unit with hooded eyes.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The orgasm I gave myself in the aftermath was most satisfactory.</span>