Rate my room

Hey all,
As the title says, I'm new to this game (going on day 4 now), but not this type of game. So I don't have any gameplay questions or any "how do I get good" questions. I'm mainly curious on a few particular things:
1) What exactly does Rating effect, and how the heck do I Rate up? It is next to impossible to find a room. If I do find one, people usually duck out right before the match is about to start, or I end up on a team that really isn't so much a "team" but more a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off.
2) In Custom matches, I see a ton of Japanese ones pop up that are on the arctic map in Mix Up. I've been in a few of them, and 99% of the time, one team will remain completely motionless while the other team absolutely annihilates them. Am I missing something here? Is there a reason or tactic behind this?
3) Clans. Does clanning up help at all? I know there are clan missions that can be done, but is there a bonus to anything else by clanning up? I tried going into one clan, until I figured out that none of the members had been on for almost a month, so I left it. If anyone has any suggestions on a clan to join that'll help out a newbie, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Other than those three big ones, I think I can kind of eventually figure everything else out by myself, like the intricacies of combat or which MS I prefer to use. If anyone is looking for me in game, my IGN is the same as this (Heiryu).
EDIT: Oh, and the Rival thing! How exactly does that work? It seems kinda broken to me at the moment, as I'm always getting paired with people that are WAY above my current skill level. I need to win against a Rival three times in order to rank up, and it's been difficult.
Anyways, I appreciate any and all help, and I'm looking forward to being a part of the community!

I'm a new grad in the ICU and administered my first double-concentrated Levo last night. The patient was running the original dose of Levo at 28mcg/min, when switching to the double concentrate, the nurse in the room with me explained that we would program that new rate to half of the original rate (14mcg/min). However, within 10 minutes we were up to 28mcg/min of double concentrate to maintain MAP >65. Pt remained on that rate throughout the night. Confused with how that maths out.. . not sure why I can't wrap my little newbie night shift brain around this concept, but it seems to me that if 28mcg/min was working with the single concentrate, that 14mcg/min would work with the double concentrate. Help me understand!

Hi all,
As you can tell by my post history, I've been dealing with some health anxiety along with getting emotional when talking about what I experienced.
Recently, I've been experiencing some poking dull pain on my didn't side which has gone to my right shoulder and that side of my neck. I went to the Urgent Care and during the visit, my blood pressure was high because I became immediately more anxious when I was into the room. Then, shortly after a lengthy talk to the Dr. about what I was feeling, he asked if I didn't mind sharing what caused the PTSD. Right then and there... I froze and became speechless. I then cried for like a split 5 seconds then was able to explain. Lo and behold after him actually listening to my 10 minute yap session about what I've been dealing with, he pushed it all onto my PTSD and said I was having complications because of it (which could be true).
The next day, I had a regular Doctor visit with a PCP who essentially laughed at that Urgent Care Doctor and without doing tests, purely basing on my symptoms, she said diverticulitis or gallbladder complications so she prescribed me with Augmentin for 5 days and referred me for a CT scan.
During all of this, I've been stressing myself out because I've been obsessing over my high blood pressure spikes and heart rate. My blood pressure spikes to what's considered elevated and pre-hypertension stage 1 my pulse is consistently between 80-100bpm regardless if I'm laying down or not (unless I'm asleep). My Doctor said my blood pressure is fine and my heart rate is too as long as it's not consistently at like 110bpm. I'm constantly feeling like everything is wrong with me.
What do you all recommend for stress? Has anyone tried Nootropics or anything? I just want my regular feeling of good energy back to where I can go about my day without thinking I'll get right side pain or nauseous.

Hey guys! My housemate and I met on spare room and he ended up moving in three months ago. We took out a joint tenancy which included both of our names and was fixed for six months at which point it would either switch to a rolling contract or either of us could leave and the contact would end. We still have three months left of the contact, however yesterday he text me stating that he was moving out this week and wont be paying any more bills including council tax, gas and electricity, water and internet leaving me £170 short each month for the next three months. I had already paid the bills for the month going forward at that point and he gave me absolutely no notice whatsoever that he would be moving out. He's gone back home until tomorrow but we have been texting about the issue and he is point blank refusing to pay for any of the bills going forward, including this month, and has now said he wont engage with me any further and that I should sort it out with the letting agents. Obviously this isn't the letting agents problem however I did speak to them to ask for advice and they were nice enough to give me some advice saying he is 100% liable for his half of the bills, especially the council tax until the end of the tenancy. I understand his point around he will not be using utilities such as gas and electric, however there are standing charges associated with these utilities just to keep them running that would be applied even if no one was in the house for the next three months that would still need paying. They are also calculated over the year so you pay the same amount over summer as you do in winter to cover the higher amount of usage in the winter. This would mean I would carry on paying for his winter energy use over the summer. He also agreed to pay a set rate for water and internet whilst living here as well and is keeping his key so would still have access to the property and use of the utilities if he wanted to.
I live in England.
My question is can I take him to small claims court over this and if so what are my chances of winning and do I have a leg to stand on? I'm aware that it can be a lengthy process but I'm willing to follow it through
Also can I deliver the Letter Before Claim by hand to him or does it have to be through post?
Any other advice anyone can offer me you be very much appreciated

I've recently started a venture for a life-long friend who is an independent insurance broker. He's fairly successful, has cleared 400k+ a year for several years, however he has a ton of room for optimizations and improvements. He works out of excel, never re-engages his leads, doesn't use a CRM or any sort of automation, and doesn't really control his own lead flow. He does have a few partners he works with, one of which is responsible for lead generation. This lead generator's work is pretty sub-par and isn't following a lot of the golden rules on high quality lead generation. The site is meh, the social media is meh (AI generated testimonials that look like AI, ew), the 3rd party integrations are non-existent, and overall the quality is lacking.
This role is where I wanted to step in to help. I've been a software engineer for ~20 years, I'm currently employed as a senior engineer by one of, if not THE, largest tech companies in the world. I've been here for about a year, but prior to this I spent 12 years working at a lead management / sales workflow company. I literally wrote software that was meant to help my friend...increase productivity, give analytics, etc but on a much larger scale, and our app was a full-integration shop...if you wanted it, we would build it and charge you for it, but if it was an integration that had a way for us to up-charge on we would (Twilio charges N cents per SMS, we'd charge N+5)
Where my role with my friend comes in to play is trying to get him into generating and working his own leads, but he can't do it. He's not technical, he doesn't know where to start, but he CAN and WILL close leads. He's a born closer. His commission rates are currently shared with his partnership, but mainly in it specifically for the lead generation. He currently has a 40/40/20 split with the 3 of them, the 20%-er is the role I'm trying to replace for him.
So what have I done? I've went onto fiverr and commissioned a landing page for life insurance leads (I'm an engineer, not a designer, I know my flaws). I've created a hubspot CRM for him. I've integrated the landing page into hubspot. I've created a Twilio account for very minor Phone and SMS features. I've created an Azure account to host it all. I've created a google ads account, setup a basic campaign, setup conversion tracking, and just waiting for approval on the campaign. I plan on doing more such as configuring nurture campaigns for his leads (he doesn't do this at all, leads just die) to re-engage his leads, track external lead sources for ROI, setup company-like SMS conversational pieces so he can text/phone/email from his 'company numbers'. I've created this custom app in .NET and Angular for his specific needs, but he doesn't even know what he needs, so I've built it around what I think he needs and what just makes sense for a baseline app.
In the past he's also hired people as his down-line, he as a guy under him now... so the plan is to make this configuration work for them also, essentially building out a platform for a 'team of agents'.
I'm not really sure how to market my skills for this. I've built this app to be reusable for multiple people within reason, I can definitely iterate on it quickly to accommodate multiple companies or other things and features that people might need, and I KNOW that other people can benefit from this sort of 'control lead generation yourself' process.
The main draw for me was to get N% of his commissions, per what the other person already did, I'm just not sure how to build this thing further to be usable for others and/or re-sellable. What I learned in my ~12 years of CRM building is that we have to nickle and dime everyone for features because we have to pay for those features ourselves (twilio, sendgrid, integrations, etc). I don't want to build the next hubspot, I want to build something that pulls all the pieces together and lets someone self-host their accounts accordingly. I want to be Mr. Integration Builder, I write custom code, I cater youmy projects/apps/integrations to YOU, and I somehow get paid in the process to do what I already love doing.

First / Previous / Next
Riven grimaced as another torpedo exploded far too close to the tiny vessel, she was aiding what was left of the Alandran crew through the retreat from the Oort Cloud. Three chaff torpedoes left, after that, they would be defenseless. “Shields down to twenty five percent Captain. I don’t think we’re going to make it to the planetary defenses.”
Captain Jan’Inar gritted her teeth and tapped on the arm controls of her command chair, “Engineering, tell me we have the ripple drive back up?” There was no response from her request.
“Captain, the chief engineer is dead, and the ship is so riddled with holes and fires I doubt communications are reaching engineering.” Riven said with a sigh. Then was forced to launch two chaff missiles towards the four enemy missiles that were bearing down on the Rivendell with monstrous acceleration.
The torpedoes attempted to corkscrew around their interceptor, but their dim AI’s were no match for Riven, who detonated the bomb pumped masers through the defractors with millimeter precision over three kilometers away, reducing them to slag. “We have one chaff torpedo left Captain, no ripple drive, half the crew is out of the fight.”
She watched as Captain Jan’Inar looked down through the floor monitors, the hulk of the Isengard was three hundred kilometers in the Z axis. “Riven, get us to the Isengard, use whatever maneuvering is necessary.”
Riven shrugged internally, she didn’t see how getting to the wreck would help, they were still ahead of the last two Trinar scout vessels, but hiding amongst the wreckage wouldn’t help. “Aye Captain, making for the wreck.”
A giant explosion appeared in one of the starboard monitors, one of the ones that wasn’t flickering off and on that is. “What the hell was that?” Jan’Inar asked Riven.
It took her a mil to process the incoming data, half her external sensors were either gone or malfunctioning. “That was the Trinar cruiser’s reactor exploding from nearly five light minutes away, the Missive managed to take her out, but she’s heavily damaged.”
Looking in the forward view screen the wreckage that was once Isengard was coming up fast, “Captain, we will arrive at the wreckage in twelve seconds, what do you want to do?”
The Captain sat back in her chair and answered, “Take us under the wreckage and put it between us our pursuers. Force them to go around the wreckage, and when they do, use the last chaff torpedo to hit one of the four fusion reactors of the Isengard.”
Riven smiled, that was Alex level deviousness. Also, quite a problem, three ships on different vectors, one near stationary wreck, and then the torpedo itself, which isn’t designed for precision, more like a shotgun blast. She cranked her frame-rate to maximum and her ship VR faded to just raw windows. Even at her maximum processing speed the calculations took agonizing milliseconds.
“Firing chaff torpedo three now!” The heavily damaged ship shuddered a bit as the last torpedo roared from its launch tube. It took nearly three seconds to reach the wreckage and detonate, an eternity to Riven. She watched as the bomb pumped masers sliced through the containment bottle, releasing the hellish energy and pressure at the heart of a star.
The explosion turned the wreckage into atoms, then lanced out in a sphere engulfing both Trinar ships in white hot plasma, obliterating them in the maelstrom. Then the shockwave from the explosion lashed out into space in every direction at the speed of light. The Rivendell was struck from behind, the ship staggered, her torch drives melted, and the lights went out.
_________________________________
Kara ended the simulation, both Alandran ships returned to normal operating duty. She opened up a channel to both Captains, letting Izzy and Riven broadcast her report to the crews. “First the good news, the enemy fleet was destroyed and the Missive and Rivendell survived to fight another day. Now the bad news, the Isengard was lost with all hands, which could have been avoided if you both stuck together and allowed your point defenses to overlap. All this means we’re going to be running another simulation tomorrow.”
She could hear both crews groan at the announcement before she continued, “I will be providing Riven and Izzy with the battlefield data, I expect you all to spend the next few hours going over where you could do better.”
Then Alex’s face appeared on all monitors in both ships, “We beat them this time, but I won’t be satisfied until we beat them every time. Go over the after action reports, come up with some new ideas, and get some rest before we tackle this again tomorrow. Also, I want to congratulate the crew of the Rivendell for lateral thinking.” Then the monitors all reverted back to their normal duty.
Alex looked over to Kara, “They’re getting better.”
Kara nibbled at a chip, “They’re not getting better fast enough. We know what we’re dealing with when it comes to the Howron ships, but the Trinar as you’ve taken to calling them are still a complete mystery. They may be even more dangerous than we’ve extrapolated them to be.”
Alex rubbed the back of his neck, “And they may be far weaker than we think, look, we can only do the best we can. We can’t really fault the Isengard crew, they’re even greener than the Rivendell.”
Kara nodded walking around the buffet table, “I’m really worried Alex, we have three ships at the moment, two of them with new crews and new AI’s. The forth will be online in a week, and I need to start focusing on producing and training a new AI.”
Alex held her lightly around the waist, “Getting the forth ship and it’s AI up is more important than these simulations, I’ll deal with them, you do what you do best?”
“Play Mother to everyone?” She asked?
Alex grinned down to her, “Well someone has to be the adult around here, and it ain’t gonna be me.”
She looked up to him, “They listen to you more than you know.”
“Poor kids.” He said as he leaned down to kiss her.
Kara spun away from his embrace and went back to the holo-tank, “Speaking of adults, it looks like we finally received an error free scan of Kel’Taraan’s mind.”
Alex came up beside her to look into the holo, it showed the docking area where the ships repair crew would normally be housed during refits. In the common area sat the Stasis pods with Kel’Taraan and Mon’Kelron, the former of which had received the medical nanobots that would repair her internal damage while she stayed in stasis, they were nearly done repairing the damage.
He turned to Kara, “Have we finished constructing the matrix yet?”
Kara shook her head, “Four failed attempts, today will be attempt number five, I’ve slowed down the print head on the auto factory to it’s lowest rate, in a few hours it will be done, then I have to put it through pass/fail checks and cross my fingers.”
Alex sighed, “Yeah, they told me about the hardest thing for an auto factory to make was the print heads for another auto factory, something biological, or a replicant matrix. Makes sense that we’d have difficulty now, as we build in space, not a sterile lab environment.”
Kara swiped at the holo, showing a video of the construction process of the matrix. “If this one doesn’t work I may have to build a lab around an auto factory and provide the gravity and sterile environment, these things take forever to construct.”
Alex studied the table for a snack, “Oh, you think we may have more matrix’s to build in the future?”
Kara looked over to Alex a little exasperated, “Once the genie is out of the bottle, I expect we may find we need to make quite a few of these.”
He rubbed his chin in thought, “We’ve asked Kel’Taraan to keep the knowledge of replication secret, I’m pretty sure she’ll do so.”
She looked back at him shaking her head, “You know as well as I do that something like this won’t stay secret forever.”
Alex nodded and sighed as he looked down, “Yeah, you’re right. Something will slip, intentionally or unintentionally. Best plan for it in the future.”
“And that brings up the next question, what do we do with Mon’Kelron?” Kara asked.
Alex looked at Kara a bit confused, “We let the medical nannites finish working on her and we keep her on ice until we can drop her back off on the planet.”
Kara shook her head, “No, that will stir up even more suspension in the Alandrans, who already think we are mysterious. She needs to be let out for observation or something before we put her back into stasis.”
“Well, you’re busy getting the new AI up and running and getting the matrix built, I’m busy with the simulations, Riven and Izzy are running ships and working with crews, that leaves Monty. Where is she anyways?”
“Personal project, she’s been working on a particle accelerator model that will be easier to build around the first planet, using material from the first planet.” Kara answered.
Alex frowned, “How would that work? We need an accelerator large enough to circle the star to make the exotic materials we need.”
Kara grinned, knowingly, “Remember that this universe is more energetic than our original universe? Monty figures that she can get by with one that encircles the first planet at twenty thousand kilometers and with about fifty loops around the accelerator we can get the necessary velocities to create the required materials.”
“Okay, so a smaller accelerator, we figured what, a century out to get one built around the star, how long will this take?” He asked.
Kara shrugged, “We had to make an estimated guess, but since the supply line would be vastly shortened by harvesting the planet with mining drones we figure two to three years before it would be operational, assuming we move one quarter of all mining drones to the first planet.”
Alex nodded, “Much more feasible. However, you haven’t mentioned probable yield.”
Kara sighed, “Yeah, less than a tenth what a proper accelerator would produce, but if we use most of the production for manufacturing nannites and substitute other materials for armor or hull we could still build some of the heavy cruisers you have the prints for.”
Alex looked down to the table and found some boneless buffalo wings, snatching the small bowl and cradling it he commented. “Well, three and a half years to build the first heavy cruiser isn’t too bad. Granted we have to build a full sized shipyard in that time frame as well. We aren’t going to churn one out in the scaled down models you two came up with.”
Kara nodded, “Already on the production schedule as well.”
Taking a big bite out of the buffalo wing, Alex sent Monty a message. “Would you be so kind as to join us at the buffet table?”
Monty faded in beside Kara, “What’s up with the big guy using all formal messaging?” She asked.
Alex swallowed, “What? I can be elegant and shit too you know.”
Monty rolled her eyes, “There’s the Alex I know. I’m assuming you need me to do something boring?”
Kara answered before Alex could make another quip. “We need you to baby sit Mon’Kelron for a bit. She needs to think that she is inside the ship so she doesn’t think anything strange is going on, particularly with Kel’Taraan.”
Monty tapped her chin, “Um, the hanger bay where they are being stored is separate from the rest of the ship. Only our two androids are located there in pods, how do I explain that she can’t go beyond that point?”
Alex spoke up while Kara was trying to come up with an answer, “Simple, you tell her she is in quarantine on board our vessel, let her know you have been decontaminated but it’s a long process and I’m too busy to go through it right now.”
Monty nodded, than smiled, “Can I wear a cute nurses outfit?”
Alex shook his head, “Fine, just sell her on the story and keep her occupied while she is under ‘observation’, then get her back into the stasis pod.”
Monty did a salute that was fairly close to an insult and faded out.
________________________________
Kel’Taraan awoke suddenly, there was no slowly drifting into consciousness, it was as if she had been startled awake. Looking around she saw only darkness, where was she? Was she dead? Were the humans unsuccessful in turning her into a replicant? Then she saw light, just two glowing blue eyes at first, then the silhouette of a petite woman brown hair down to her shoulders.
Then the rest of her faded into view, she wore a uniform similar to what all Humans wore, more practical than formal. Then she spoke, “Hello Kel’Taraan, I am Kara, it is nice to finally meet you.”
“It is nice to finally meet the legendary Kara. This must mean the process worked, what will happen to my old body?” She asked
Kara brought up what looked like a cylindrical hologram and was touching icons, the world around her faded in to what appeared to be a comfortable house. “It was destroyed before you were activated, otherwise you would not be the closest continuer, but a mere copy of yourself.”
Kel’Taraan was a little taken aback, “Closest continuer? Why destroy my old body?” She wasn’t sure why she should care if her old body was gone, but for some reason she did.
Kara finished fiddling with her hologram and it faded away, now they were sitting in a quite nice cottage, complete with a fireplace and bookshelves full of leather bound books. “Short answer, the No-Hiding theorem states that like matter or energy, information can neither be created nor destroyed, simply moved or transmuted. The information that made up ‘you’ cannot exist at the same time that your replicant was activated or you would be two different people with the same memories.”
Kel’Taraan nodded, “So to ensure it would really be ‘me’ who awoke, the original vessel had to be destroyed to ensure only one copy of the information was available?”
Kara nodded, “Correct, although it is much more complex than that, and still under some debate, that is the reigning theory of closest continuer.”
“So what do I do now?” Kel’Taraan asked.
Kara smiled, “Now we start training you on how to be a replicant. I have given you a private virtual reality environment, it should be close to the little cottage in the picture frames in your room.”
Kel’Taraan looked around and found that it was very similar. This was the cottage that she and her Emmet had looked at purchasing so long ago. She reached down and rubbed the ornate leather chair she was standing behind. It was only at this moment did she notice she was not hunched over, her back did not hurt, and she needed no cane.
Looking down at her hands they were without wrinkle or age spot, the skin was soft and taunt. She looked around and found a mirror by the front door, and in it she barely recognized the face, it was her, nearly four centuries ago.
“How?” She asked as she turned back around to Kara.
Kara summoned some keldaran hot tea and two small cups on the coffee table before sitting in the other leather bound chair by the fireplace. “Our spy devices in the palace found pictures of you when you were young, we extrapolated a three dimensional form for you to inhabit here.”
Kel’Taraan nodded as she walked back to the empty leather armchair, she noticed her hair was blonde once more, no longer silver. Sitting down she looked at the beverage choice, “Fair warning, that stuff tastes like battery acid, I have no idea how the Empress drinks it, could I try your coffee once more? It has been so long!”
Kara grinned, and waved away the Alandran style crockery and replaced it with a coffee pot and two coffee mugs, along with cream and sugar. Pouring a cup for Kel’Taraan and offering cream and sugar, which she accepted and raised it to her face to inhaled the aroma. “This brings back memories.” She stated, tearing up a bit.
After taking a sip of the Human brew she sat it back down on the coffee table. “I suppose since I am in the company of Humans once more you find our naming schemes a bit aggravating?”
Kara shrugged, “It doesn’t bother me, although Alex wishes he could shorten your names from time to time.”
Kel’Taraan nodded, “The first Human crew called me Kelly, I think I would like to go by that again.”
“Kelly it is then, I’m sure Alex will be pleased.” Kara stated while taking her own sip from her coffee.
They both sat there for a moment, just enjoying the silence and the beverage, before Kara spoke up. “I want you to get comfortable here in your cottage, if you want I can help you change your VR environment at any time. You probably don’t realize it yet but you and I are operating at millisecond resolution at the moment.”
Waving her hand a small menu appeared before Kelly, showing her how the frame-jacking system worked. Kara continued, “I’ve given you access to this menu, and more will follow in the next day, which can be as short or as long as you choose.”
Kelly thought for a moment, “So at our default frame-rate, a single millisecond lasts..” (11.57 days) A slider appeared above the frame-jack menu.
Kara nodded, “We all experience time differently than biological creatures, we can experience lifetimes in days, or we can stretch a single day into milliseconds.”
Kelly nodded, “Seems like I have a lot to learn.”
Kara put down her coffee cup, “That you do, and for that reason you have this library, inside these volumes are the culmination of Human knowledge and culture.”
Surprised, she raised an eyebrow, “Doesn’t seem like a lot of books compared to the Imperial library on Alandra.”
Pulling the first tome off the top shelf she handed it to Kelly, “Open this.”
Taking the amazingly immaculate leather bound tome she opened it and her mind was awash in chaos. Words, symbols, numbers, letters, ideas, constructs, abstractions and so much more flooded her very essence. Then it was gone, replaced only by a floating bar above the now closed book. It stated, “IMPRINTING INFORMATION 2%”.
Looking up at a Kara she whispered, “What just happened?”
Kara sat back down and crossed her long legs, “You just downloaded the contents of that tome, several yottabytes of data, now your matrix has to make sense of it, hence the imprinting information bar. I will leave you now to consume the contents of this library, after that you should have the basics of everything you need to know about Humans and our technology.”
And with that Kara faded out of Kelly’s VR space. She looked down at her book, 6% complete, this was going to take a while… or was it? She smiled and reached for her frame-jack slider.
_____________________________
My Patreon, or if you really like my work, my Ream

Gravediggers. Corpse Grinders. Skull Takers. Every unit that shared his profession had a name that was like that. As Corporal Brandy floated silently, his body suspended in a dense salt water based solution alongside eleven of his peers, he once again thought how he liked the name of his unit the best. Ghouls. His arms were stretched out, as were his legs, secured to four corners of the hull leaving him splayed open. His wrists were tethered, his ankles were tethered, all to keep him from drifting. The water was cold, felt even through the suit even though it didn’t touch him. It was only appropriate they called vessels like the one he was in Coffins. It was long, with seven feet between floor and ceiling when one could stand in it.
The patch of his unit was a zombified corpse, walking towards the one viewing it, with their arm outstretched, a large 17 behind the shambling figure. It was laser etched on the left shoulder guard of his SVS51 body suit, the symbol of the Terran Front of laser etched on the right. Right now, Brandy knew he was flying through the void, heading towards the wreck of a Vral Light Cruiser, his unit’s speciality. A countdown on the upper left corner of his vision was reaching the single digits. No one talked, not even the squad leader. Not even command. Brandy liked it like that. He had been selected for special operations early on in his life, as most operators were. Sure, you could volunteer to join if you joined the Fleet and decided to test yourself, but most humans were already training for something like this by the age of thirteen. Jesup, one of his squadmates, he was a joiner, one that had volunteered when he was signing up. Brandy though? Brandy was a lifer.
Lifers like him were singled out in school and made aware of their tentative selection. Lifers were trained harder, tested harder. No one really minded Jesup not going through what they had been through, but it did mark him out. Hence the term, but lifers and joiners all got the same specialized training. Five seconds left. Brandy knew his job well, knew the layout of the ship well. Four seconds. Brandy clenched his fists. He felt the liquid shift, knowing their craft had hit the hull. Suddenly he was free of his constraints, floating free in the dense salt water. There was a bright light from the front of the craft, the plasma torches already burning into the Vral light cruiser hull. Three seconds. The dense salt water solution suddenly was sucked into the floor, drawing him down. He tapped his heels together, hearing an automated voice call out ‘Maglocks Engaged’, just before his feet touched the deck. He was already yanking the protective cover off of his rifle, slinging it back over his back. Two seconds. Those in the front of the line had their rifles up and ready. Brandy on the other hand, reached to his sides and drew out two long blades from sheathes locked to his thighs.
One.
He felt the compression in his chest as the breaching charge detonated, and the segmented doors of the Coffin opened. The first four Ghouls entered, no shots fired as they cleared the room. He heard a soft whisper saying, “Depressurized.” The entire deck was without atmosphere. Brandy looked to his left, and nodded once. Jesup nodded back. The pair in front of them sprinted out. Jessup and Brandy sprinted out immediately after them, Brandy drawing his blades. The interior of the Vral ship was a dismal place, and within just seconds Brandy knew what kept their grav plates powered was already down. The difference in design priorities from the Vral to the Terran Front could be seen even from the hallway they were running down. The Terran Front fleet was designed to maximize the space they had, to deliver the most punch possible for the weight class the ship in question could hit with. The chua had lent their practicality to that level of ship design. It was why the standard Terran corvette could fight completely out of it’s weight class. Brandy knew that the standard Terran corvette was more than a match for any variety of Vral destroyer, it was even said that a light cruiser would have to go blow for blow with one.
Most who heard that wouldn’t understand until they saw what Brandy was seeing now. Terran hallways were built narrow, the space an artery for personnel to move through in a very direct way. The ceilings would be laced with piping and joists, covered by protective layers of material just in case an impact threw the crew against the ceiling. Standing shoulder to shoulder, even battleship halls on Terran ships only allowed two large humans to stand shoulder to shoulder and extend their elbows halfway to touch the walls. This hallway was broad, four, no, five times the width. You would never see such a waste of space onboard a Terran fighting ship. The only exceptions to this were the larger logistics ships, the carriers, and the Antares herself. Terran ship tonnage was dedicated purely to what the ship in question was made to do. Vral ships, on the other hand, seemed to be built to not just fight space conflicts, but carry the troops for ground assault. The Vral sacrificed tonnage meant for fighting for transport. They did not have dedicated troop ships, or even dedicated logistics ships.
Brandy guessed it made sense when you never had to worry about someone being able to really hit back.
The map of the light cruiser was laid out in wireframe in the upper right of his HUD, a pulsing arrow pointing his way. As they reached the first door it was clear that whatever powered the lights also powered the doors in this section. He sheathed the blades and raised his rifle as Jessup pulled his breach bar. A moment later Jessup applied the handheld pneumatic and nodded once to Brandy, who gave an almost imperceptible nod back. Jesseup pressed an activation stud, and Brandy breathed out as the door began to open. A brief glimpse of chitin was all it took for Brandy to immediately put two shells through the door, the only audible evidence of the shots being two ticks from the recoil traveling along his armor plate. .
“Contact.” Brandy whispered even as the shells tore through the Vral floating behind the door. The Vral flew away from the impact as the door opened further, revealing more Vral, all floating, all already dead. “KIA Vral.” He whispered into the mic within his helmet. A small tone let him know his information was received. Brandy and Jessup moved into the hallway and saw why the Vral were all already dead. There was a gash in the hull almost three meters long and a meter wide. The deck had been exposed to the vacuum, and judging by the hole further down the hall which Brandy glanced through as they passed, a railgun round from a cruiser had lanced straight through the entire hull. Brandy slung his rifle and began the halting half run, half jog of moving quickly on magnetized boots. Brandy cleared an adjoining hallway before looking back to the door. The Vral dead were everywhere, floating in the vacuum, and Brandy kept having to shove the floating corpses aside as he moved. The dead didn’t stop him. They didn’t stop Jessup either.
Jessup was already setting the breacher, and Brandy’s rifle was unslung and readied. As this door opened a forcefield came to life in front of it, and a sliver of light began to show through. Brandy’s thumb flipped his rifle from semi-automatic to full. He didn’t need to speak, Jessup was already pulling his own rifle. As the door was suddenly shoved open by the pneumatic Brandy’s entire body snapped forward. The Vral that was standing by the door, who had even watched it open, made it clear that the Vral didn’t even know they had been boarded. Brandy’s rifle butt slammed into the head of the Vral, and sound returned as he moved fully through the forcefield meant to keep atmospheric integrity but not keep him out. Beyond it, Brandy saw at least twenty milling around. A damage control team. The Vral turned to the sound of one of their own skulls caving in, chitin cracking, just to see Brandy’s barrel come down. He was already moving left to give Jessup room to enter, as he squeezed the trigger. Chitin and ichor erupted, the Vral leapt at the sound, some freezing in place, some charging. Jessup came around the corner, raising his rifle, taking single shots at individual Vral who reached for weapons even as Brandy’s fully automatic spray swept the hall. Brandy was the scythe, Jessup was the surgeon.
Brandy’s ammo counter quickly was cycling down, but he hadn’t been simply praying and spraying. As his counter read zero the last of the Vral was spasming violently on the floor. He thumbed the magazine release, the hand on his grip already having reached for his right hip to draw up a fresh magazine even as the empty one slid out and began falling to the floor. “I’m close.” He said. He slammed the new magazine into the rifle, racked the slide, then slid it behind his back. He drew his blades, then began to sprint.
“I’m far.” Jessup began sprinting behind him.
The next set of doors opened automatically this time, but to a familiar scene, but the Vral were already aware of them due to Brandy having firmly announced their presence in the previous hall. Brandy never stopped his full sprint, carving through the Vral with the edges of his monomolecular blades. Every so often a shot rang out, taking one of the Vral down just out of Brandy’s reach or one that was pulling up a weapon. Brandy used the suit’s speed and strength enhancements to their fullest, barely slowing as he tore through the group, both blades cutting. Suddenly he heard the retort of full auto and spun to decapitate one of the remaining Vral to look as Jessup was emptying his magazine into an open door. Brandy let both blades drop, popping his hip to the side and curling his waist, letting the weight of his rifle carry it around his body into his hands. As the Vral tried to come into the hall they were cut down, caught in a fatal funnel of fire by their own hatchway.
“Reload.” Jessup said, tucking himself back against the wall. “Control, need sweepers. My location.” A tone was the only reply to Jessup’s words. Twelve men, organized into six teams. That was the boarding party. Each had a part to play, and as Jessup made the call for sweepers Brandy was already preparing to move. As Jessup slapped a fresh magazine into his rifle Brandy was still covering the door. The other doors in the hall remained closed. Jessup reached to a small bandolier of grenades and pulled one of the X-04 flashbangs, throwing it hard through the door against the opposing wall. A second later a dull pop sounded. Brandy and Jessup continued their run, but now both had slung their rifles. Both had blades out.
Following the skeleton map on his HUD, Brandy led the way through the next door to find the hallway empty. He didn’t mind that state of affairs at all. A dull klaxon began to sound throughout the crippled ship, and neither Brandy nor Jessup needed to be told twice that the Vral were now more than aware they had been boarded. Brandy turned down a corridor, instinctively lashing out and taking the head off a Vral had been moving towards him. “Breaching bridge.” He said into his microphone, hearing the tone of acknowledgement from Control as he saw the large bay doors that marked the command and control center of the Vral vessel they intended to take. He sheathed a blade as he came to a stop beside the bay door, out of range of the motion sensor that would open it automatically. Jessup was right behind him, freeing a hand of his own. They both reached up, yanking X-04 grenades off their pins banded to their armor. Brandy and Jessup looked at each other and nodded. As Brandy kicked out his foot to trigger the motion sensor, the door slid open. A torrent of laser fire erupted from the doorway, painting the floor and wall beyond. Brandy snapped his arm around, exposing only his hand as he threw the flashbang around the corner. Jessup’s own flashbang flew past Brandy towards the other side of the room. They both immediately pulled a second, even as the first detonated in the room beyond. Almost instantly the weapon’s fire stopped, and wails of chittering echoed into the hallway. They threw the second set of flashbangs into the door.
As the second pair of dull crunches sounded, Brandy and Jessup breached the bridge. The bridge was arrayed like a bowl, stations arranged orbiting a center divot in the deck where the captain would stand. None of the Vral in the room were standing. While flashbangs disoriented humans, essentially stunning them into stupfication, the same flashbangs had even more pronounced effects on the Vral. Most of them were simply laid out on the ground, completely insensate, and screaming incoherently in their chittering tones. Brandy and Jessup had entered having expected at least one of them to have donned protection, perhaps even a warsuit, but their boarding had caught the Vral completely by surprise. Jessup turned to the door, tapping the control panel and closing, then locking it. Brandy had already begun moving from station to station. Jessup joined him as they quickly and methodically dispatched the crew. Brandy turned and moved down into the captain’s pit, coming to the Vral that had commanded the ship.
“Attempting to access.” Jessup said, stepping to one of the panels even as Brandy reached the side of the Vral commander. Brandy watched dispassionately as the Vral’s body curled and spasmed on the ground. Without replying to Jessup, Brandy was already securing the commander. He flipped the commander over on it’s back, yanking it’s limbs together and zip tying them together.
“Control. Commander secured alive. Bridge secured.” Brandy said, and he glanced over to Jessup. Jessup looked over to him and grinned, his teeth showing through the dark tint of the armored glass of his helmet. A tone of acknowledgement came into his helmet. Brandy moved to the panels, just as Jessup was moving. “Anything yet?” He asked, letting his suit’s speakers carry his voice.
Jessup moved to another panel. “Nope. Wiped.” He said.
Brandy brought the panel to live and was already moving on, and cursed silently under his breath. Several times teams like his had breached the bridge of a Vral ship only to find what they were finding now, wiped computer cores, dead panels. Brandy continued to move panel to panel, as did Jessup, moving up the bowl. Brandy heard Jessup muttering as he went, his voice carrying because of the speakers in his suit. Brandy glanced up at the other man, then continued with his work.
“Doesn’t make any sense. We still know nothing about these bastards. Nothing.” Jessup said as he was working on the last panel on the row he was on. “Aside from the fact they melt their cores down really well.” Brandy smirked behind the tinted glass of his helmet as Jessup balled up a fist. Jessup moved up a row, then started work on another panel. “I’m beginning to think the only thing they exist for is to piss off the universe.”
Brandy couldn’t argue with that, and Jessup stopped his grumbling, continuing to check the panels.
“Control, Sweep Two is down. I repeat. Sweep Two is down.” Brandy stopped in his checks and looked up, the voice of Talb in his ear from possibly the same location he had called for sweepers to come in. He hadn’t heard a call for sweepers from anywhere else.
“That’s Vlad.” Jessup said, his voice flat, having paused himself to listen in.
“Confirm.” A woman’s voice hit Brandy’s ear, and Jessup began walking across the bowl towards him. Brandy settled his hands on the panel that he had paused midway through working. The woman’s voice keyed back into his ear, their Control, and Brandy listened intently. “Prep Sweep Two for extraction. Sweep Three and Four enroute.”
Jessup reached his side and put his hand on Brandy’s shoulder. The silence in his ears now was deafening, and he knew he should be continuing on, checking the rest of the stations, but he couldn’t move his feet right now. Brandy and Vlad were close, they had gone through basic together, they had gone through Advanced Infantry, as well as Weapons and Tactics, hell, all of their advanced training schools. When orders had come through, they had both been delighted to have twin assignments to the 17th Breacher Corps “Ghouls.” Vlad had met Brandy’s family, his mother, his father, even his ice queen of a sister who was serving as a Drone Cutter pilot. Vlad was his friend, the brother that he had never had, and now Vlad was down, somewhere on this hellhole of a ship, unable to even communicate that he was injured.
Jessup stood by him, saying nothing, and Brandy’s eyes were focused on something far in the distance, something he couldn’t even see right now. Suddenly, like his mind was pulling itself from mud, he forced himself to continue working. Jessup stayed by his side. There was nothing he could do for Vlad right now, nothing at all, and he had work in front of him that needed to be finished. Jessup went back to the stations he was working through. Brandy finished the sweep of the panels on his side. Nothing, as was usual.
He walked down the bowl shape of the Vral bridge, standing next to the Vral commander, who was now very much aware and awake, not struggling as it lay on the floor of the carnal house that was the bridge of it’s ship. He ignored it, placing his hands on the hilts of the twin swords at his sides. Jessup continued his work, a little slower than Brandy was, but then again Jessup was newer than Brandy himself was to this sort of thing. Brandy had already served for nearly eight years, and had done the tear down from the sixth Vral war, alongside Vlad. Brandy grunted and pulled up his arm, opening one of the armor plates to reveal the communications controls for his suit. He set up a private channel to Control.
“Control, BT One. Status of Sweep Two?” He asked, and he heard two clicks in response. He was being transferred to another operator. Brandy felt his entire body tensing up. He didn’t know if being transferred was a good or a bad sign.
“Bridge Team One, this is Secondary. Sweep Two is stable. Sweep One is prepping him for extraction. He took an indirect hit by a plasma round to his left shoulder. His suit took the majority but he’s going to be in the burn unit.”
Brandy breathed out, and then nodded once to himself. “Thank you Secondary.” He heard a tone in response, then he set himself back to team communications. Vlad was alive. That was good enough.
“The void will take you.” He heard the chittering sound translated, and he slowly looked towards the prone form of the commander. Brandy turned and walked over, and purposefully stepped over, the Vral. He then knelt down next to the figure. “You will not survive. We will bathe in your ashes.”
“When.” Brandy said, a dark bit of amusement in his tone. “Come on. When. Daylight’s wasting.”
“The void will take you.” The vral repeated, then went silent again as Brandy stood up and stepped over the commander once more. Jessup was coming down to meet with him in the center of the bowl.
“Good news, Vlad’s going to make it.” Brandy told him, “He’ll be in the burn unit for a bit, don’t know where he got hit, but the suit saved him.”
“Good. What’s the word from the local moral officer?” Jessup said, motioning to the vral, who was laying again in silence.
“Same as normal. We’re gonna die. Void’s gonna take us. Ashes. Dancing on my grave.” Brandy shrugged. “You know, what they normally say, that friendly little conversation.” Brandy could actually feel Jessup’s eyes rolling.
“Control, Bridge Team. Secured and detailed.” Jessup said, and they both heard the click of acknowledgement. “Another two hours maybe?” Jessup asked, and Brandy nodded. “Welp, two today, that makes six boardings for me, how many for you?”
“Fourty.” Brandy replied, and Jessup whistled low. “And that’s just these types. I was actually put on a team as a standby sweep for a battleship or two, but mostly light cruisers. No corvettes or destroyers though. They normally just send the heavies to take those. The cruisers though? Heavy cruisers? Carriers? I’ve done a few of those too, but mostly this.”
Jessup leaned against the back of one of the panels that he had checked. “What kind of team do they send to a carrier?” He asked, and Brandy laughed.
“Put it to you like this. They send units of chua war machines, and what’s called a kill team. They don’t even bother sweeping like we do with these ships, they just punch holes in every room and open them to vacuum, and the kill teams go in to make sure none of them got into a warsuit.” Brandy tapped his chest, “We barely do anything. They just turn the entire ship into swiss cheese then call us in to check panels. Kill teams are just different, but it’s an experience. You don’t get to really do much though. Go in, stay behind the kill team, and check elect…”
Brandy stopped talking and both of them listened as a tone sounded from Control, then they heard her speak. “All objectives secured. Stand by in location. Prepare for tow and extraction.”
The two of them reached out and grabbed hold of a panel, and Brandy looked over at Jessup. “Well, quicker than I thought.” Just as he was finishing that sentence the entire hull seemed to shake, and he felt a small surge of negative g force before his body adjusted. “A lot quicker.”
“What do you think they’ll get out of this?” Jessup asked as he let go of the panel.
“Oh hell.” Brandy said, motioning to the ship they were in. “Three destroyers easy. Maybe a corvette added in. Couple of fighters. Ever seen the reprocessors?” Jessup shrugged at the question and Brandy pointed at him. “When we get back, if you have some downtime, just ask to watch. It’s some impressive shit. I watched one of those crews break down a corvette in two hours.” Jessup raised his eyebrow and Brandy held up two fingers. “Two. No shit. Something like this is going to take them maybe a day, probably less than that. It’s absolute magic.”
“I was raised on the Los Angeles flats.” Jessup said, and it was Brandy’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You know, where they had one of the landfills. They said they used a reprocessor for that too.”
“Yeah, the chua know how to make the most out of everything. Did you know there used to be a floating island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean?” Brandy placed his hands on the hilts of his blades as Jessup shook his head no. “Yeah, when the chua got set up, first thing they did was clean up all of that. Tons of plastic, centuries of fuck ups, and they fixed it in barely a month. Earth was trashy, real trashy. Now we just reprocess everything.”
“I never looked into how that works.” Jessup said, then laughed when Brandy raised his fingers and wiggled them in the air. “PFM?”
“Yeap. Pure fuckin’ magic. At least that’s how it looks to me.” Brandy sighed, then he motioned to the panels. “We had the technology centuries ago but we just never refined it like the chua did. I asked how it worked and I felt like I was an ape. They felt the same way about our computers the way we feel about their reprocessors though, so I guess it evens out.”
“What do you mean?”
Brandy glanced over at him and smirked, then he motioned to his suit’s right chest pauldron, where his suit’s electronic suite for his HUD was kept. “This here has more processing power than the chua had on one of their battleships. They just didn’t focus on it like we did. The concept of a microprocessor blew their minds. We know how to store a hundred terabytes on a fingernail, they know how to break down a landfill into bars of material.” Jessup leaned back against the panel again and grunted. “Seriously, ask to watch what they do to this thing. They are going to slice it up, put the pieces into the reprocessors, and by tomorrow it’s going to be raw materials. No waste, it’s crazy.”
Brandy turned his head back to the vral laying on the floor, hearing it muttering to itself. He narrowed his eyes for a few moments, listening to the sound of the clicking, then he looked back to Jessup. “Wish that thing would just shut the hell up.” A moment later he said a bit louder, “We get it asshole. The void is coming, it’s going to take us. Ashes, death, suffering. We get it. Shut the hell up.” He pushed himself off the panel and walked to the edge of the bridge nearer to the door. “Non-stop with them.”
Jessup gestured to the commander with his head. “What are we doing with him.”
“Well, he’ll get to tell an interrogation team about the void, bet he’s got a hard on for that.” Brandy replied, then paused and glanced at the upper right of his HUD, seeing a few green dots moving in their direction. “Then they’ll just toss his ass out of an airlock. Ready to go?”
“Yeap.” Jessup pushed up from the panel he was leaning on and joined Brandy near the door and waited as they both watched the dots approaching the door. Brandy reached over and toggled the lock, and the door slid open. Four humans in construction harnesses with atmospheric suits rated for vacuum were just coming to a stop. Behind them Brandy could already see the two other members of the team coming to relieve them.
“Is that Vodka?” One of them said, a hard feminine voice coming from one of the suits. Brandy’s eyebrow perked up, and so did Jessup’s entire body. Both of them knew Janet Shippen’s voice. Janet was what Brandy’s mother would call a feral tomboy. Short, muscled, her brown hair cut in a pixie cut, who felt more at home covered in engine fluid than anything else. She was also what his father would call an absolute knockout. Jessup had met her three times and was in love. Brandy’s relationship with Janet was a private affair, but Jessup wouldn’t find out about it, no sense in breaking his heart after all. Not to mention that Brandy looked at Jessup as a friend.
“How the hell are ya Shipwreck.” Brandy said with a smirk, “I got you a nice one here. I even got you a local to keep you company, ask him about the void. He’ll tell you all you want to hear.” The two figures in the back, clad in all black with no identifying markers, looked to Brandy, who simply pointed towards the vral commander laying on the floor.
“By the way. Ran into Vlad before I came over here.” She said, coming closer to the two Ghouls. “They got him out of his suit before they sent us over. He’s got an ass of a burn on his shoulder, but he said he’s going to be a bitch about it so they’ll give you fuckers some down time.” Brandy smiled, knowing if Vlad was joking around he was more than ok. Janet motioned to the bridge, “Lot of nothing?” She asked, and both of the Ghouls nodded. “Figures. Fuckers.” All three of them watched for a moment as the two black clad humans knelt over the vral commander. “Alright, I’ve got to prep this bitch for breakdown, then I’m done for the day. Salvagers are just putting most of the wrecks in orbit.”
Jessup glanced to Brandy before speaking, “Think they want to move again soon?”
“Bet your ass.” Janet reached for her side and pulled out a data pad. “Way I see it we’re just topping off right now, waiting for some of the boats out there to get their shit together, then they are going to move us out. Speaking of moving out, bounce your asses, I’ve got shit to do so I can get off once we pull back into Antares.”
“Call us a cab?” Brandy asked, using the slang term for the shuttle that had delivered Janet’s team that would take his own back to Antares.
“Yeap. We made entrance right next to where you did.” Janet started moving into the bridge, towards a grouping of panels hard mounted to the wall. She stopped and glanced back at Brandy. “It’s been a hell of a day, almost eighteen hours. I’m going to get a stiff drink in my quarters.”
“You do that. I’m going to check on Vlad and get him settled in before I do anything else.” Brandy said, and she turned and went to the panel. Brandy was glad for the tint of his helmet’s visor or else his smirk would need explaining from Jessup who was none the wiser. Once he went through debrief and turned over his gear already knew what he was going to be doing. Straight to engineering deck C, where Janet would be waiting.
Kukat was miserable, or at least was acting like she was. Vicky was rigidly standing at attention, as was Jess, standing stock still beside Kukat’s bed. The loud exclamation that had brought them to their feet of, “What the chicken fried fuck?!” had come from the man standing in front of them. Vicky wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Jess was trying to keep herself from laughing. Kukat reached out a three fingered hand towards the man wearing a captain’s eagle on his flight jumper, a hand that had two small bow tie stickers on it.
“Torture. Help.” Kukat said, as weak as a newborn kitten, and Jess’s breath escaped her in a buzzing of her lips from someone desperately attempting to keep in her laughter. The small sheet containing bow ties, smiley face, stars, and other cartoonish stickers fell from her hand that was clenched firmly at her side. Kukat was wearing half of them. Captain Yang stared in an expression of one who is seeing something for the first time when they had believed they had seen it all. “Help.” Kukat said again, holding out her other arm which had a line of stars stuck to it all the way down to the back of her hand. Yang slowly brought his fingers up to squeeze the bridge of his nose, and then he turned on his heel and faced away from the trio. Vicky just wanted to die. The captain of the cruiser had visited them a few times in the past three days since they had been brought onboard by the Barrowmore. Kukat had been immediately rushed to start receiving medical care, Victoria Brandy and Jessica Anders had been by her side from the second they were allowed back, barring short periods where either woman needed to file their reports. The problem was, every time Captain Yang had come back to visit them, it was always at the most inopportune time. The first time he had walked in to Jess cuddling the small chua in a bed that was almost a meter too small for her. The second time Vicky had taped Jess’ hands and feet to her chair. The third time Jess had been singing a nursery rhyme to Kukat. Each time Yang had walked in, Vicky had felt like crawling in a hole, Jess had desperately tried not to laugh, and Kukat had acted like a prisoner of war. Vicky was getting the feeling the captain was enjoying these trips down to see her and her crew.
“Can someone explain to me why the three pilots that I’m supposed to award the Terran Star to are acting like toddlers in my medbay?” He said, then he turned back to face them. Vicky didn’t want to die anymore. Jess stopped laughing. Kukat’s hands fell to the heated blanket that covered her. All three of them were to awarded the highest honor in the Terran Fleet. Now it was the captain’s turn to laugh as he stepped forward and grabbed Vicky’s hand, which almost knocked her off balance as he began vigorously shaking it. “Congratulations.”
Vicky stared at him for a few long moments, trying to parse through the entire scenario in her head. None of them had paid much attention to news outside of the medbay, Vicky had barely even been back onboard the Thumper aside from downloading nav data to be included in her flight logs. “Captain…” She said, sounding to even her own ears a bit disjointed, “What did we find out there.”
“First off at ease.” Yang said, then he smirked as Jess began to self consciously pluck the stickers off of Kukat, her eyes on him, he turned his attention to her. “Your flight records and the reserve drone data is being sent back to Earth to be implemented into training.” His attention turned to all of them in turn. “You really don’t know do you?” All three shook their heads, and Vicky took a step back to stand side by side with her crew.
“We haven’t been paying much attention to what’s been coming in.” Vicky said, and she placed her hand on Kukat’s medical bed. Yang nodded, understanding. This crew was a very tight group, and he could see that even from the small amount of time he had been around them.
“You scouted out the entire Vral fleet, they were evacuating. I don’t think they expected us to move as fast as we did on them, so when we jumped into the system they were barely organized into battlelines.” Yang interlocked his fingers in front of his belt. “Because of what you got on those scans, we knew exactly what we were jumping into. We knew exactly what we would do the moment we landed and…” He paused for a moment, letting his words stand out. “... we eradicated their entire fleet.” Vicky looked to Jess. Jess’s mouth hung slightly open.
“I knew it was a fleet!” Jess said after a moment. When she had been asked by Vicky a few hours after they had gotten Kukat settled, Jess had insisted she had been trying to evade fire from point defense and laser batteries from at least twelve ships. What she didn’t know, and what would be reflected on the citation for the award she was yet to receive, was that she had been evading around thirty individual vessels weapons fire.
“Not a fleet.” Yang said, and Jess looked back to him. “It was ‘The’ fleet.” Jess looked at him in confusion for a few seconds, as did Vicky.
“Shit!” Kukat chirped, and all three humans looked down at the small, sticker covered chua. Kukat’s mouth hung open slightly. Jess looked up to Vicky, and both seemed to realize what was said at the same time. Jess’ hand shot to her mouth, covering it, her eyes wide as Vicky stepped back to lean against the wall.
Yang waited a few moments then stepped forward. “Well, I hope you three are ready.” He said as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Drone Cutters are supposed to cut and run the second they get in trouble. You three…” He motioned to them with a wave of his hand. “... you stuck around, and because you did, you handed us everything we needed to go after them.” Jess’ hand came down on Kukat’s small shoulder, and one of the smiley face stickers peeled off as Kukat wrapped her hand around Jess’ pointer finger. Vicky slowly pressed her back against the wall and started sliding down it. “Basically, to be blunt, now that this has broken, every news feed in the Terran Front wants pictures of you, details on your status…” He motioned to Kukut. “... and to be honest I’ve had to keep them from taking over the ship to get to you.”
Jess and Vicky exchanged a glance, and then looked back to Yang. Kukat had not looked away from him even for a moment. Yang shrugged his shoulders and turned to the display panel on the wall, and activated it. He tapped the panel for a few moments, then the sounds of cheering came through. On the display was a live news feed, and they could hear the reporter’s voice barely above the cacophony of the crowd around her.
“... action. The news of the destruction of the fleet has sparked widespread celebrations of joy. The foot of the enemy that we have all felt over us has been cut off. Thermopylae Station, for the first time in nearly a century, is standing down from Condition One to Condition Three.” The reporter was almost shouting, and Vicky breathed out, even as she heard a low tone from Kukat, and a sob coming from Jess. Yang had his back turned to them watching, and without saying another word he turned and walked out. “Once Condition Three was set at Thermopylae, the information began to pour in from the Zzisma system as well as the planet Zvitia located there. Fleet Marshal Simmons of the Antares battle fleet will be continuing to press into former Shesvie Accordance territory once consolidation is completed.” The reporter paused, the moment she had said Antares a chant had begun, and it was overwhelming. The thunder of uncountable human voices yelling, ‘We’re Still Here’ drowned her out entirely. The reporter eventually just held up her hands helplessly as the chant overwhelmed the microphone’s input threshold, turning the people’s chanting into a dull roar. The feed cut over to an image of man behind a news desk, the ticker at the bottom of the screen citing off ship names.
“Again if you’re just joining us the Vral have been soundly beaten in the Zzisma system. The enemy’s losses have been stated as total. Fleet Marshal Simmons, commander of the Antares battlegroup, will be holding a press conference at a later date to discuss the events of today, but has released a few names to us as well as their roles within the conflict.” Jess, Vicky’s, and Kukat’s individual service portraits slowly appeared on the screen while the reporter spoke.
“Holy shit.” Jess whispered. “That’s us.” Vicky stared at the screen, even as Kukat squeezed Jess’ finge
“Lieutenant Victoria Brandy, Drone Operator Second Class Jessica Anders, and Drone Operator Third Class Kukat were conducting a routine drone sweep of the Zzisma system when they sighted the Vral. The three managed to gain enough intelligence to warrant the immediate redeployment of the Antares battlegroup which had been in rescue and recovery efforts above the chua homeworld.” Vicky just stared at the man as he continued talking on the display. “From the feeds that we have managed to confirm, the crew of the scout ship stayed while exposed and under threat and under fire until such time as the information was confirmed transmitted. All three of the scout’s crew made it back safely, although Drone Operator Third Class Kukat was reported as needing medical attention, the reasons of which are unknown, but it is reported that she is in stable condition.” Their portraits fell away from the screen as another image came up, of a chua in a captain’s uniform came up, grayed out.
Vicky just stared at the screen, Jess breathed out a breath that she didn’t even know she had been holding. Kukat leaned back into her pillow.
“We famous.” Kukat chirped.
The news reporter was still speaking, something about a battleship that had engaged the Vral, some new story of heroism. The three of them sat in silence. Vicky wanted to look to Kukat and Jess, but both of them were quiet. Suddenly Vicky and Kukat flinched as Jess erupted out of her seat. “Yeah! That’s right! What do you think now Rick?” Jess said her ex-boyfriends name with vitriol. “Who’s not photogenic now huh? Galaxy wide baby!” She whooped and Kukat stared up at her in amazement as Vicky buried her head in her hands and laughed.
“You problem.” Kukat chirped low.
“I told you you suck at picking men Kukat!” Jess proclaimed. “You still suck Rick!”

Hi again everyone, I first want to start off by thanking you for all of your comments and especially to the ones who have similar siblings, knowing that I'm not alone really helped.
I'm going to try and answer the most commonly asked questions, so to start off with all of this happened over a year ago now, I thought I mentioned that in the post, that's my bad, and my grandfather has since sold his house and at the time took Mike's key away, Mike did have a drug problem during the time we rarely spoke, I'm pretty sure that is why he wanted to reconcile in the first place, I don't know if he is back on them and frankly don't care, he's not my problem anymore, now the most brought up question "the checks" The reason why I didn't press charges/report was because my family talked me out of it and I also didn't want to start drama in the family, if they want to live with a snake then who am I to stop them, now to answer if he could cash them or not, I have no clue I've never needed to use insurance for anything in my life this was my first time ever having to deal with that and it was all very confusing plus it wasn't my insurance it was the woman who hit me insurance, and I have never used checks before either, so both of these things being my first time using them I was just glad they worked, I had to sign a lot of things while I was in the hospital, and when I got out, half of the time I could barely read it because I didn't even understand the words they were using, I'm saying all of this because I don't know what he did with the checks maybe he found a way to cash them or maybe he realized he couldn't so he just threw them out instead, I have no clue and I don't think I ever will because the only person who knows is Mike and I don't plan on talking to him again and even if I did I'm pretty sure he would just lie, and to answer why I didn't report them "missing" well like I said at the beginning I didn't want to start drama and I don't feel like lying to the insurance company, I would rather not commit insurance fraud I had enough problems at the time.
(Now for the update) it's not really an update but more of "I'm adding more information" plus a small update, so I saw some comments asking about my parents and I figured I would just do a new post because do I have a lot of things to say about them, so as any good story goes we need to start from the beginning, and that starts with my Mother, she is no monster but she definitely did have her flaws, I can only speculate what she was thinking but I'll give it my best shot.
So going back to when I was young, the reason why she let Mike get away with so much, my best guess she thought he could do no wrong and just kept making excuses for him, my dad during that time well he's a different story, we lived in the same house but I rarely saw him, he would go to work come home help make dinner then go up to his room to eat and watch sports and workout, I don't know if he was going through something or if he was just content with life being like this, he eventually woke up but only after my mother divorced him, after that he changed, slowly but he was changing, he only had me every second weekend but I have a lot of good memories of those weekends, now back to my mom, during this time we would move out of the house sell it and if you read my original post you would know what happened during this time, but I'll go more into some of the details.
Not even a year after the divorce she started bringing this guy around, I later find out he was her boyfriend, she never even asked me if I was ready to meet someone she was dating even though I'm still trying to wrap my head around my parents getting a divorce, after I find out who he was she asked me to not tell my father because he was still trying to get back together with her and because she my mom telling me not to do something I listened, well I'm not sure if anyone guessed it but Mike makes a special appearance, I don't know how it came up but he ended up telling my dad that she was seeing somebody and that he only recently found out but that I knew before him (BS I knew before him), my dad came to my room (it was my weekend with him) and went on this long speech about how could I not tell him how could I do this to him and a few other things I would rather not say because after he left I just started crying, I was so upset with him for saying what he said, with my mom for putting me in this situation, and with Mike for being Mike, my dad ended my weekend early and brought me back to my mom's, they got into a fight outside I just went in to my room to the only thing that brought me happiness my PS3, video games were my only escape from the hell that is my life, I'm bringing up my 3 bullies from my original post, I'm not sure if they could sense it or if I just got unlucky, but they decided to go the extra mile this week, after the hell of the weekend and then the hell of a week I just went the through I couldn't do it anymore, the weekend came and went and Monday morning I just couldn't get out of bed I just lied there, and before I knew it my mom left for work and I missed my bus but I didn't care I actually felt relieved, so I stayed home and played video games and I waited for my mom to come home and scold me but when she got home she just asked how my day was, I told her it was fine and that was that, at that very moment it felt like there was a break in the storm and I could see the blue sky, so now thinking that I could just stay home and she wouldn't find out that is exactly what I did, but after a week my school called her asking where I was and why I haven't been in school, she came home that day and asked how my day was, me not knowing that she knows, I told her it was fine and then she started yelling about how the school called her about how embarrassing it was about why I did it even tho she knew I was being bullied because I went to her when it all started and she just told me it was a part of life, I told her why but she didn't believe me she thought I just wanted to stay home to play video games, so she took my PS3 and I begged her not to but she just went on about how CPS could take me away and I would go into the foster care because of what I did (I now know this was a load of BS because why would CPS take a child out of a home for ditching school) after hearing that I just thought about how much worse everything could get if I went into foster care, I begged her to not let them take me but she said it wasn't up to her anymore that we would just have to wait and see what happens, she sent me to my room and I just cried for hours I even tried praying hoping that all of this was a dream, everything got so dark my room started spinning and it felt like I was about to have a panic attack and I started to feel sick like I was going to throw up, so I went to the bathroom but nothing came out and the room just kept spinning it felt like the world was ending, (I want to give a warning now because I'm about to get very very dark) my eyes landed on a pair of scissors on the bathroom counter and everything stopped, it felt like the world just gave me the answer I was looking for, that I could make it all stop rate now, I had a feeling of clarity, like everything made sense, I picked up the scissors and just stared at them in my hand for what felt like forever, I got into the bathtub and started getting ready, I opened up the scissors closed my eyes and then a knock on the door, it was my mom asking how much longer I was going to be in there because she needed to use the bathroom, so I got out of the tub put down the scissors wiped away my tears washed my hands and went back to my room, I have only ever told two people how close I was to ending it all that night, my therapist and my best friend, after that night I stopped caring about everything I stopped talking unless someone asked me a question and I just existed, you'll be surprised how easy life gets when you truly stop caring about everything, I felt like a Hollow husk of who I used to be, summer came and I started feeling again because I could finally breathe, I no longer saw Mike, me and my dad were on good terms again, my mom eventually got over what I did and I got back my PS3 and could start escaping again, after summer I was scared about going back to school but I was ready, I got to class and waited to for them to walk through that door but that time never came, my best guess is they went to a different school, after that everything started getting better.
You guys know what happened from here, now I'll get into a little bit more detail about what is certainly happening, me and my dad are great he has disowned Mike, me and my mom are pretty good to but we still have a lot to talk about, now I need some advice, I want to tell my family about what I went through but I don't know how, my dad should be easier it's going to be hard but I think I could do it, my mom is the reason why I need advice, I don't even know how I'm going to start the conversation or even what I'm going to say, so please any advice will help and I'll do my best to answer any questions you guys have.
Well I that's my life story, sorry it's so long, I didn't plan on writing all of this but after I started typing I couldn't stop, I hope it didn't get too dark, and to end things on a happy note because I know how we all love a happy ending, life rate now for me is pretty great, I'm in animation school and working towards my dream job, I'm in my first serious adult relationship with my girlfriend who I love, I have a group of great friends in college and back in my home town, the only way life could get better is if I won the lottery.
TLDR I had a very shity childhood that made me want to end it all, but life couldn't get better now even if I wanted it to.

TLDR: https://pobb.in/WvrRzPfxySgj
First of. I league started this build originally as a Guardian going elemental crit using KB of clustering as my trigger skill. Which I hit 100 with just farming Abysses. It was decent until you start adding more quality to the build. Super tanky using Aegis.
Now, after tinkering with the idea of going Necro Unholy Might poison. Balormage beat me to the punch. Anyway, I was already wanting to do this as a bow build using HoAG to support Holy Relic via 2-5L in a 6L setup. That original setup worked for just clearing T16s.
Tried a few T17s and found the build to be extremely squishy compared to the Guardian rocking Aegis with much less investment.
Fast forward to level 98 on the Necro. DROPPED HoAG.
WHY BOW? Feels like it has a higher dps top end with relatively lower investment. Also, Flame dash + Blink arrow is kind of fun to move around with. Can do Flame dash + Momentum to have near HH movement speed.
Clearspeed is very good with a few caveats. May require you to move to a specific spot to retarget the Relics to an enemy nearest you. Like the Temporal Shield guys.
Rain of arrows of Saturation with celestial RoA looks cool. ^Extremely good trigger skill. Plays like a CoC build.
Finally, +1 +2 Bow gives easy access to high level gems without Replica Dragonfang. Opening up the amulet slot to Ashes. 52% is the IDEAL breakpoint to reach giving a Trigger rate of 5. Which is more than enough damage. To reach dot cap.

• HR cooldown breakpoints are 2%, 14%, 30%, 52% and 82%.

The way you POB the character is: 3 Holy Relics * Trigger rate = DPS over 1 second.
Offense:

• Leveling Scaling
• Awakened Added Chaos
• Poison
• Unholy Might
• Wither

Spectres:

• Pale Seraphim (Sometimes dies in T17)
• Spectral Leader + Warcaller (For T16 Clearspeed)

Do not recommend AG until you can solve it not dying in T17.
Defenses:

• Determination + Energised Armour setup
• Lightning Coil
• Elemental Ailment Immunity + 100% Poison Avoidance
• Taste of Hate + Progenesis (Not 100% uptime during bosses)
• 96% Spell Suppress with Lucky
• Glancing Blows. 75/74
• ***Drop Ashes, add enhance, for Amulet with defenses if you need more.

There is still room for improvement but after playing 2 Characters on Holy Relic. I'm done with the build.

• Better bow with +1 +2, Minion Damage, Attack Speed
• Adorned Setup
• Hit level 100 to add 3rd Cluster Jewel Setup for 2 more sockets. Then you can swap to mageblood or tides of time.
• 100% Suppression
• Would recommend Shield variant as it has higher Defense scaling for HC
• Duo Curse setup with Despair

Enjoy my homebrew and let me know if there's anything I'm missing. Or if you try out this build let me know if you like it.
Thank you, GGG for making the base game this league extremely fun. League mechanic aside.

My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
​

• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
​

• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
​

• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
​

• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
​

• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.

TLDR: https://pobb.in/WvrRzPfxySgj
First of. I league started this build originally as a Guardian going elemental crit using KB of clustering as my trigger skill. Which I hit 100 with just farming Abysses. It was decent until you start adding more quality to the build. Super tanky using Aegis.
Now, after tinkering with the idea of going Necro Unholy Might poison. Balormage beat me to the punch. Anyway, I was already wanting to do this as a bow build using HoAG to support Holy Relic via 2-5L in a 6L setup. That original setup worked for just clearing T16s.
Tried a few T17s and found the build to be extremely squishy compared to the Guardian rocking Aegis with much less investment.
Fast forward to level 98 on the Necro. DROPPED HoAG.
WHY BOW? Feels like it has a higher dps top end with relatively lower investment. Also, Flame dash + Blink arrow is kind of fun to move around with. Can do Flame dash + Momentum to have near HH movement speed.
Clearspeed is very good with a few caveats. May require you to move to a specific spot to retarget the Relics to an enemy nearest you. Like the Temporal Shield guys.
Rain of arrows of Saturation with celestial RoA looks cool. ^Extremely good trigger skill. Plays like a CoC build.
Finally, +1 +2 Bow gives easy access to high level gems without Replica Dragonfang. Opening up the amulet slot to Ashes. 52% is the IDEAL breakpoint to reach giving a Trigger rate of 5. Which is more than enough damage. To reach dot cap.

• HR cooldown breakpoints are 2%, 14%, 30%, 52% and 82%.

The way you POB the character is: 3 Holy Relics * Trigger rate = DPS over 1 second.
Offense:

• Leveling Scaling
• Awakened Added Chaos
• Poison
• Unholy Might
• Wither

Spectres:

• Pale Seraphim (Sometimes dies in T17)
• Spectral Leader + Warcaller (For T16 Clearspeed)

Do not recommend AG until you can solve it not dying in T17.
Defenses:

• Determination + Energised Armour setup
• Lightning Coil
• Elemental Ailment Immunity + 100% Poison Avoidance
• Taste of Hate + Progenesis (Not 100% uptime during bosses)
• 96% Spell Suppress with Lucky
• Glancing Blows. 75/74
• ***Drop Ashes, add enhance, for Amulet with defenses if you need more.

There is still room for improvement but after playing 2 Characters on Holy Relic. I'm done with the build.

• Better bow with +1 +2, Minion Damage, Attack Speed
• Adorned Setup
• Hit level 100 to add 3rd Cluster Jewel Setup for 2 more sockets. Then you can swap to mageblood or tides of time.
• 100% Suppression
• Would recommend Shield variant as it has higher Defense scaling for HC
• Duo Curse setup with Despair

Enjoy my homebrew and let me know if there's anything I'm missing. Or if you try out this build let me know if you like it.
Thank you, GGG for making the base game this league extremely fun. League mechanic aside.

According to my 8yo - I won't let him watch 12 rated movies despite the fact all his friends do
According to my 6yo - I made him do bedtime prayers in the dining room instead of the living room because I was in a virtual meeting
Both scenarios resulted in excessive tears. Rant over.

We live in a VHCOL area. We put in an offer on a condo 1.16. The HOA fees are 760. It’s older so I’m worried the fees will only increase and possible special assessments. We make really good money but it’s very expensive here. We are netting 16,660 monthly. Mortgage, insurance, taxes, HOA would cost 8588/month. We have 3 kids. Two are school age. The little one is in daycare. We can drop her down to 3 days per week at a cost of 1060/month. We have 1000 debt per month. The condo rooms are small and two kids would need to share a room.
Should we try to get this place, or wait for rates to go down? I feel like our window is quickly closing in being able to stay here. Our other option is to buy a house but the commute would be 1.5-2 hours because traffic is so terrible.
We are thinking of moving out of state as my husband is remote. I would need to find something if we do but I work in healthcare so it shouldn’t be too hard.

On April 13th I got a job offer to be a travel nanny. They offered me $1,200 a week. I accepted, I left on April 30th. I have been really enjoying this experience and opportunity. The parents brought up to me they would like for me to be their travel nanny for future travels.
My question is, how much should I charge weekly for the future?
Since this is my first time being a travel nanny for this long at a flat rate. I have done 1 to 2 weeks before at my hourly rate with my other nanny families in the past.
I have my own room at the Airbnbs, they buy my groceries, they pay for my meals when we go out to eat. They will let me have a car on my days off( Monday & Tuesday) if parents end up working I work half a day. Parents are in the Equestrian business.
A rundown on the kids routine- 3 year old female, 18 month old boy. The mom & I tag team pretty much. So I am not always doing the routine by myself.
They usually get up between 7:30-8am
Breakfast: 8:30-9:30am
snack around 10-10:30am depending on show schedule and activities
11-11:45am is lunch
12-2:30pm nap time
2:40-3:00 they get snack
3-4:45pm outside or do activities
4:45-5 is ice blocks/snacks and bath time
5:30 is dinner
6pm- Dad comes home & does bed time routine with kids
7:00pm is their bed time

I have been writing up detailed film reviews on most of the drafted WRs this offseason. You can find any of those posts in my post history. For some of the non-consensus ranks the film review will detail why.
WR
Tier 1
Marvin Harrison Jr. - ARZ

• I had Rome with MHJ most of the offseason but the extra little DC and the elite landing spot finally separates them.

Tier 2
Rome Odunze - CHI
Malik Nabers – NYG

• I like Rome's well-roundedness more than Nabers. He feels like a much safer pick plus his long-term position is more stable being attached to Caleb Williams.

Tier 3
Ladd McConkey – LAC
Xavier Worthy – KC

• Of the WRs drafted day 1-2, I had these guys as my WR 5 and 6. They are both very talented, got the DC to back that up and are in good landing spots.

Tier 4
Brian Thomas Jr - JAX
Adonai Mitchell - IND

• I was higher on AD from the film, but the DC is just a little too much to overlook. I like Mitchell more vs ADP, but probably could not select him with BTJ still on the board.

Tier 5
Ricky Pearsall - SF
Ja’Lynn Polk - NE
Xavier Legette – CAR

• This is where it starts to get tough. I can see this tier being ranked in any order. The DC was very similar. I had Polk ranked first from film, but as a floor play. His ceiling is not what Pearsall and Legette have. They all seem to be drifting into the mid 2nd in SF rookie drafts. That is right on the line for me in a class this deep to prioritize floor or ceiling. In the end, I trust San Fransisco more than NE and CAR. I trust the talent more from Polk over Legette.

Tier 6
R4 Troy Franklin - DEN
R4 Javon Baker – NE
R3 Jermain Burton - CIN
R3 Jalen McMillan - TB
R3 Roman Wilson - PIT
R2 Keon Coleman – BUF

• If that last tier wasn't close enough. You can jumble this tier in any order, and it feels fine. I did a study on DC vs dynasty WR fantasy success rate. That is also posted on my profile. The data is pretty clear that round 4 guys almost never hit. The only true recent hit was Amon-Ra but in a very deep WR class as well, so maybe the depth of this class makes an exception for a couple guys I like. There are also 3 elite level hits in the 5th. The data says put Franklin and Baker below this tier and below Corley, but I'm a film guy so I can't help myself. I love Franklin and Baker film.
  
• I had Burton, then McMillan, then Wilson in that order on film. Roman Wilson path to snaps early almost flips him and McMillan for me, but I am still just going to bet on the skill set I like more.
  
• I just cannot get myself to draft Keon. The industry has been artificially moving guys up we all fully expect to bust for years because of their DC and then they just bust. Sometimes when we all think the guy will bust, they just do. Keon is animal in the blocking game, just like Gabe Davis was. Gabe Davis won a game ball without catching a single pass. Just from his blocking. It's fair to assume that blocking was a big reason they drafted Keon over some of the other WRs available in that range who are much smaller. The DC could be artificially inflated based on non-fantasy traits.
  

Tier 7
R3 – Malachi Corley - NYJ

• I am not a fan of the film, but the DC shows NYJ have some plan, but it's also the NYJ so maybe not. I fully expect this guy to be a low touch gadget guy, but he's as good a dart as any at this point.

Pile of Potential Darts
R3 – Luke McCaffery - WAS
R4 – Devontez Walker – BAL, Jacob Cowing - SF
R5 – Anthony Gould - IND, Anias Smith - PHI, Thrash - CLE, Means - NO
R6 – Malik Washington - MIA, Johnny Wilson - PHI
R7 - Rice - LAC

• These are the darts I am willing to throw super late in rookie drafts. I expect nothing from any of them. My final film review had Johnny Wilson, Jacob Cowing, then Malik Washington ranked in that order in a tier with guys like Roman Wilson and Xavier Legette, but the DC simply isn't there. All these rooms are so crowded and round 6-7 WRs have had a 100% bust rate since 2010. I am probably pivoting to other positions at this point. Gould, Smith and Washington very well could be drafted as returners. Wilson getting 6th round draft capital makes him a lot more interesting as a position swap to TE. I thought he was good enough to get better DC as a WR, but the NFL said no. If he wants to extend his career it might be at TE.
  
• Gun to my head ranking on these guys would be:
  

Cowing, Walker, Wilson, Washington, Smith, Gould, Thrash, McCaffery, Means, Rice
OFF MY BOARD
R6 – Jackson - TEN, Casey Washington - ATL, Palmer - ARZ, Whittington - LAR, Flournoy - DAL
R7 - Vele - DEN, Tahj - MIA, Cornelius - LAC
At the end of the day, always draft wisely. Just because you like someone outside of consensus ADP, try to maximize value by drafting them around their actual ADP.

At my 40 week appointment my OB scheduled us for an induction on the morning of 41+4 just in case. She doesn’t like to let her patients go past 41+3 but they were already booked up for that day. I wanted to labor with as few interventions as possible so I really wanted Baby to come on her own before the induction. At 40 weeks I had mild period cramp feelings and I was 1 cm and 50 percent effaced (I was closed at 39 weeks so this was progress). We had an ultrasound and did a membrane sweep at 40 + 5 and I was 2 cm and 60 percent effaced then. The sweep was fast and painless. Only slightly uncomfortable for a second. After the sweep I had contractions that were so slow and gradual and low in intensity that I had a hard time telling when one was beginning and ending. They crept up slowly and went away slowly. The contractions stopped the next day and I got another sweep at 41 weeks. At the second sweep I was 3 cm and 60 percent effaced. The contractions came back after the second sweep but stayed slow and gradual and far apart.
On Saturday morning (41+2) we decided to do all our last minute if we don’t do it now it won’t get done kind of chores. I changed the sheets on our bed and vacuumed while my husband dug a garden bed. Then we both planted the watermelon, cucumber, and squash seedlings that we had started a few weeks before. Then we went on a long walk at our favorite park. All day I was having the slow wave “is that a contraction?” contractions. After our walk we came back and ate an easy dinner. At 8 pm I started feeling more clear contractions and they were happening 12-15 minutes apart. We started timing them and we went upstairs to our bedroom. We had one lamp on with a t-shirt over it to make the room as dark as possible. I had binaural beats playing on a speaker and I rotated between side lying, all fours, and standing with my hands against the bathroom counter. My husband did counter pressure on my hips through every contraction and that helped me a lot. Once contractions were 4-5 minutes apart we called the hospital and got ready to go. He loaded up the car between contractions and set up some pillows in the trunk so I could ride on all fours. We got to the hospital around 11:30 pm. When we got to the hospital I was surprised by all the paperwork we had to do. They handed us an iPad with a ton of documents about payment and insurance and other things that had to be initialed and signed. Since we’re married my husband was able to sign everything for me. It was still annoying though to be in the bright fluorescent lights with people asking for things from me. Once we got back into triage we were able to dim the lights but the paperwork continued. I had pre-registered online a few months prior but the nurse still had what felt like a million questions she had to ask me and enter into the computer. She was also extremely peppy and loud but very sweet. I was 5.5 cm when they checked me at triage. It was about 12:30 am by the time we got into an actual labor room. I did the loading dose of IV penicillin for GBS and although it didn’t burn like they said it would, it made my arm feel very cold and uncomfortable. We packed a lot of different snacks but my favorite one was the honey sticks. Later into the evening I started having a lot of painful back labor and we did several contractions in lunging positions and that helped shift the contractions from back to front. My bag of waters hadn’t broken still. I asked for a cervical check around 6 am and I was 7 cm and 80 percent effaced. The contractions kept coming and my husband was there doing counter pressure or holding a heat pack to my back or both at the same time for each one. We tried nitrous oxide for a while and my husband was looking at the monitor telling me when the next contraction was building so I could start inhaling the nitrous oxide at the very beginning. I didn’t feel like it did much for me so I stopped using the nitrous oxide after maybe 10 contractions. We did the second dose of the IV penicillin and then I declined any further doses after that. I spoke with my doctor about not wanting more than 2 doses and she was ok with that. I was starting to get really tired by this point. I was dozing off between contractions and then snapping back awake once the next one started. I vomited and we took that as a sign that I was in transition and hopefully close to pushing. I asked for another check at this point which was about 9:00 a.m. and I was at 8 cm. In my mind I had decided that if I wasn’t at 9.5 or 10 cm I wanted the epidural. Physically I couldn’t keep up any more. The contractions were hitting me back to back and my breathing was starting to get fast and ragged. Up to this point I was able to control my breathing and mirror my husband’s breathing if I got a little off track. I had to get a saline bag in my IV before they could place the epidural and that took about 30 minutes. I had a few contractions while they were placing the epidural and that was hard. Once I got the epidural the nurse and my husband got me into a side lying position with the peanut ball. I had dozed off for about 15 minutes when the nurse rushed in because Baby’s heart rate was dropping. They quickly rolled me over onto my other side and her heart rate came back up. I got another cervical check around 11 am and I was at 9.75 cm. Close but not ready to start pushing yet. My bag of waters was still intact and bulging out of me like a balloon. A little while later the doctor came by and broke my water bag and shortly after it was time to start pushing. We tried a lot of different positions: side lying with the peanut ball, seated, stirrups with knees in and ankles out, and a squat on the squat bar with a sheet to pull on (tug-of-war). I pushed for about 3 hours and the tug-of-war position was the most effective. The last two contractions I could really feel how close she was to being born. The doctor had applied oil and was doing an intense perineal massage while I was pushing for those last 2 contractions. At 2 pm she was born and the cord was short so they placed her onto my belly. My husband cut the cord and the placenta was delivered soon after. I had one second degree tear but otherwise I’m doing very well. Baby was born healthy and a good size (8 lb 11 oz). It has only been a few days since her birth but I feel very happy with the way it went. I’m thankful I could have the epidural for pushing and also glad that I got to actively labor for the majority.

Here are my pc specs: CPU AMD Ryzen 5 4500 - 6-Core 3.60GHz, 4.1GHz Turbo - 8MB L3 Cache Processor, Pro OC Compatible (No On-board Graphics) GPU GeForce® RTX 3060 12GB - Ray Tracing Technology, DX12®, VR Ready, HDMI, DP - 4 Monitor Support (Single Card) RAM 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4/3200MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX Memory
So my issue is exactly what the title says. I got this gaming pc recently and I’ve been very excited to play my pcvr games on it. I wanted to play ghosts of tabor on oculus rift store using airlink but I straight away ran into issues. I loaded into the game and immediately started messing with the graphics settings. I clicked auto detect and it set everything to epic so I figured it should be fine. Then I went along with the tutorial. But then I started to notice lagging or stuttering or frame drops or whatever. After the tutorial I fired up a raid and all I can say was it wasn’t pleasant.
As soon as I got into the game, I was shocked at how good the graphics looked with epic. I was hoping for a good experience and the visuals were great but during the game I experienced quite a lot of stutter and lag. Keep in mind that I’m new to pcvr so I didn’t know the issue. Anyway I stopped for a bit and turned off ASW to see if it would help. It starting stuttering more but apparently that’s normal when u turn it on in the middle of a game so I just turned it back on. I then did the process of turning the graphics lower every time and testing them with ASW on and off, until I got to the point where the graphics looked like total dogshit.
I took off my headset and was furious with the performance I was getting. I went on google for a bit and I found out about oculus tray tool which I downloaded. I made a profile for ghosts of Tabor with cpu priority to high. I also put the status of ovr server to high in the tray tool settings. I then started GoT and turned on the performance HUD and I immediately found out the problem. My headroom was so horrible it went underneath the charts. I was shocked at what I was seeing.
I immediately searched on the internet how to fix this but there were so many articles and websites that I didnt know what to try first. But what I did see was the recommendation to turn on the audio options in the device management tab in the link app on pc. I turned them both on and it brought my headroom up to the orange part when standing still but when I moved it was still horrible. At that point I just gave up for the day and figured I’d ask for help on Reddit which is what I’m doing now. Please I really need suggestions to help me. If the suggestions are to lower refresh rate and resolution I might as well play standalone because quest is equivalent to low graphics and I got GoT on pc for good graphics in mind. So please give some good suggestions. Thanks.
P.S I’m wired to my router that is WiFi 6 and one floor below me. I can’t move the router as I live with others and I can’t play where the router is as it’s in the living room. So moving the router is a no go.

Hi there, Just wondering if anyone has booked 2 rooms for the same night using the explorer rate internationally (japan & korea)? (My brother is the associate and not me and he will not be with me at the time). Am I allowed to book two room under my name or should I be booking one under my name and another under my moms name perhaps. We each will have our own explorer form if that's the case but i though it would be easier if I just book both under mines. Any advice would help. Thanks in advance!

Hi!
I've been carrying type 1 diabetes for over 16 years, and the first years weren't bad. But lately, after a couple of scary hypoglucemias (never lost consciousness though), I've developed a fear of hypos and insulin itself. This has made me feel safer at 180 than at 90.
Needless to say, I use a CGM with all possible alarms. But for the past couple of years, I've been dosing right after meals (unless I'm really high). This causes a spike after every meal even though my postprandial is fine later. I do it because I find it easier to anticipate a potential low if I see the graph dropping from 250 instead of from 120 (gives me more wiggle room).
So, if for some reason I haven't calculated correctly (or who knows what other factor is at play that day) and I see my levels starting to drop half an hour after dosing (with the peak effect of Apidra still on the horizon!!!) but I'm at 250, the anxiety is manageable; I eat something else and I'm good. But if I were at 120 and the graph showed a downward trend with the maximum insulin effect still to come, I FREAK OUT.
I've discussed this with a couple of different endos and we've tried to reason about insulin curves and carb absorption rates, but I can't manage this fear and find it really hard to dose before meals to avoid the spike.
Other than that, I think I understand everything related to carb counting, I track everything well (not always, of course), and I lead a disciplined life without depriving myself of anything, but the fear of lows conditions my life, no doubt about it. Despite everything, my last A1C was 6.8, which is far from ideal but not the disaster you might expect given how much lows affect me. (AND I HARDLY EVER HAVE LOWS, THAT'S THE IRONIC PART :D)
Does anyone have any advice? Any explanation about meal absorption that might help me overcome the fear? Anyone who can tell me that if I drink a coke, it doesn't matter how long it takes for the insulin to peak, the coke prevails :D (that's something my endos couldn't tell me :/).
Thanks a lot!

Let's get the obvious out of the way.
Being a PI sucks. It’s not what you think. It’s pretty much harassing women. Men hire PIs to go harass their wives and girlfriends and once in a blue moon you get asked to find a missing dog, or to harass a man instead. But that’s it, really. Sometimes I’m looking for hard evidence of infidelity, but a lot of the time my clients just want to rattle the soon-to-be-ex. To make them paranoid and jittery and less reliable in a courtroom, or less likely to pay attention to small print agreements that stiff them out of the holiday home. So that’s my job. I’m a pawn and it is almost always on behalf of the kind of men who think women reading a book in public are secretly looking for male attention.
I don’t have an office. I did for a short while. But things are tough, as I’m sure many of you know, and PI work isn’t exactly lucrative. I don’t know why I’m still doing this job, except to say I’m my own boss, and it’s not easy out there. I went into this with vastly different expectations. If anyone wants to hire someone who was convicted of insurance fraud while training to be a police officer, let me know. Otherwise I’m on my own, following people in cars and sleeping in dingy motels. So when this new job came along, a craigslist ad looking for a guy to stalk them, I just figured it was a fetish thing. I got a nephew who went to art school and makes big bucks painting cartoon characters doing fucked up stuff. He ain’t painting the Sistine Chapel, but he pays the bills and looks after his family. I figure if that work is good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.
So I met the woman who posted the ad and was surprised at how normal she looked. It was in a public place, a park with a nice bench. And even though it was starting to rain a little we didn’t let it bother either of us. We sat there, two tape recorders running, and hashed it out. She said she liked me. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have gotten out of her car. That was flattering coming from her. Good looking woman. Professional. I didn’t know at the time but I’d quickly figure out she was a forensic accountant.
Anyway, we got talking. She never gave me her motivation, but I would later come to understand her as an amateur narcissist. She was new at loving herself. She was smart, accomplished, and actually rather beautiful provided you didn’t spend a great deal of time agonising over things like symmetry or eyebrows, and instead paid attention to how a smile reaches the eyes, or how laughter sounds when it catches someone by surprise. But she grew up dirt poor and spent her teen years unable to visit the dentist, or access a gym, or even just eat home cooked food that wasn’t microwaved. Plump frame, blotchy skin, hair she kept short with a pair of scissors because her and her mother relied on the shampoo and soap they stole from the motel where they shared cleaning shifts. When she fumbled awkward questions at some of the better looking boys in her class, she rarely met with success. That’s not to say she was an outcast, either. She had a social life. It’s just poor kids have to grow up early. Prom’s a luxury. Eating isn’t. If you know, you know. Otherwise you might be surprised by just how fucking tough it can be for some kids in this country. Anyway, she got out of that hole, fought tooth and nail, got an education, a good job, and by the time she finished her victory lap and took stock of her life she was thirty-five years old and a thousand miles from the trailer she was raised in.
And she looked good. The woman in the mirror was a stranger that she wanted to get to know. I think hiring me was an act of self-love. I think if she could have, she would have sat in a car and watched herself get a cup of coffee, spying closely at the professional looking woman doing a little half-run half-skip to get out of the rain. The way she stood in line rocking back and forth on her heels to the music in her airpods thinking no one’d notice. She wanted to admire herself, but unable to time travel or clone herself, she instead resorted to hiring me as a kind of proxy.
I had my own boundaries, of course. They covered anything that was gonna get me in trouble. The gist of the contract, after a nice week spent meeting after work and talking, was that I was to follow her as often as I could and just… observe her. Photos. Videos. Secret recordings. Occasionally a little bit more. Nothing physical. For example, one time I inventoried her handbag after she left it in a taxi by accident. I’m not a photographer, but something about all those knick knacks laid out on a motel bed snapped with a black and white polaroid, it looked good. Like something you’d see in a fancy gallery. Avant garde my nephew would say. She loved it. Paid me a bonus for it and everything.
Anyway, this carried on like this for about six months. They were… interesting times. Tailing her across train stations, racing across open parking lots to install a tracker on her car, standing on a bridge and dropping an air tag in her bag as she walked past. It was a little bit like being a spy. She even paid for me to buy high end equipment. Crazy stuff. One camera, I could sit on my balcony and read the texts on her phone from a block away. Occasionally there were days where I couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up the required intensity. Stalking requires a lot of cardio. When that happened, when I didn’t feel like following her into a crowded place, or sprinting half-way around town following her car, I’d do research. I’d investigate who this woman had once been. I created fake Facebook profiles and tracked down old school friends, spoke to former teachers, lovers, all of that. The whole job was a matter of mapping her out, like she was a country, you know? And a country isn’t just hills and rivers and borders. Countries have history.
She was happy with my initiative. The text she sent me when I showed her the research folder was a glowing commendation. First one I’d had in a long time. It was nice, someone telling me good job. She had a real way of making me feel like a kid getting a gold star. I didn’t realise at the time, but I was putty in her hands. Head over heels, bless my stupid heart. Of course I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I’d had just enough time to grow over confident. I made the mistake of thinking that I wasn’t gonna find anything in her past that’d give me trouble sleeping.
Boy did I get that one fucking wrong.
Her mother. That’s where things took an odd turn. Now I knew from news reports the mother died in their trailer while her daughter was off staying at some boyfriend’s place for a few days. Natural causes, it read. I wanted to know a little more about what natural causes they were. Figured if there was a congenital thing, it seemed like maybe I ought to know. You’d think the way the trailer park owner reacted to me asking about it, I’d tried asking the Russian government for proof of a democratic election. Thin reedy little woman who gave me hell the moment I mentioned a name. What do you wanna know that for? Who’s asking? Who’s paying you? Why you wanna dig this shit up?
Oh she ripped me to pieces. I put it down to the natural sprinkling of crazies in the standard population and took a different tact. Started calling up the older folks in the park. Residents. Every single one of them put the phone down on me the second I mentioned her name.
Well, all of them except one.
Some people wanna talk and this old bastard was one of them. He had a lot to say about everything from the president to social media and I let him ramble on before starting to press my point. Told him at the start I was a historian looking into the local area, that made it so it wasn’t too suspicious when I began asking about this and that. Slowly making my way to the death of a fifty-three year old woman a couple trailers down from him some years ago.
Again, soon as I mentioned her name, there was a change in the air, even over the phone. For a second I thought this old guy was gonna hang up just like the others. Could hear him smacking his dry lips as he mulled it over.
“Francine didn’t deserve what happened to her,” he said after a while. “She wasn’t a good woman. Didn’t treat her daughter too good neither. But didn’t deserve what happened. Maybe if they’d found her earlier, some of those fellas in white coats could’ve got more evidence, put that little wretch of hers away. But from what I understand, weren’t much left of her at all.”
Then he hung up, leaving me with a whole lot of questions.
This frustrated me. I had, until now, had a fair bit of luck at this new profession of mine. They say be careful what you get good at. Sad truth was, I was getting good at stalking and this was my first real roadblock. I remembered the way I felt when she told me good job and it bothered me I couldn’t really say much about this critical part of her life. That and, well, maybe I still got a chip on my shoulder about being a failed policeman. If you give me a problem, I can sometimes drive myself crazy looking for a fix.
So I hopped in my car and drove to the trailer park, damn near on the other side of the country. Don’t know I was hoping to find. No way the trailer was still there, and it wasn’t. But what I found odd was the lot hadn’t been replaced. There was a hole in the ground, about the right size, and nothing else. Just an empty spot where the trailer had once stood. And the trailers on either side weren’t occupied either. I could tell by politely and legally looking through the windows. Most of them were cleared out, but a few weren’t. They still had plates and other knick knacks left hanging around, like the owners had left without bothering to pack.
“You shouldn’t hang around there, mister.”
The girl who appeared stood a good twenty feet away, shouting over the wind so as to be heard.
“Smell can make you awful sick.”
I wrinkled my nose, aware of the odour she was talking about. Had been since I approached the empty lot. A faint musty smell that made me think of an exotic pet shop.
“What do you mean?”
“Smell makes you sick,” she said like it was self-explanatory. “Woman who died there left behind an awful stench. Made the neighbours sick. And the neighbour’s neighbours, and so on for a couple trailers in a row. No one likes to live there now. Still can’t. Had a couple move in a year or two back and they got sick too. Daddy says it’s a bad one. Not even rats go near that hole.”
The smell wasn’t pretty, but this trailer park looked like the kinda place where hubcaps went missing regularly. Figured they would’ve been used to bad smells. What made this one so special?
I looked over at the girl.
“Where is your dad?”
Few minutes later and I was stood outside a trailer waiting pensively. The little girl had disappeared inside to fetch her father and since then I’d been sat listening to the quietest trailer park in the whole world. Crickets and silence. Traffic on a distant highway. Place was dying, that much was clear.
When the father finally did make an appearance, he said nothing for the first few minutes. Lit a cigarette, offered me one. I refused on account of having quit some time back.
After a while he spoke up.
“I’d invite you in but if you been hanging around that old lot, not sure I want you inside my home. No offence.”
“None taken,” I replied.
“Sally says you’re a historian.”
The man wasn’t terribly old. Mid-thirties, at a guess, but he looked me up and down like I was a teenager caught throwing eggs at his house.
“What’re you really?”
“PI,” I replied.
“Ha now that makes sense. Some relative looking for answers? Heard the Hendersons had a sister with money.”
“That’s exactly it,” I lied. “She didn’t buy the official story.”
“Nor should she,” he replied. “Henderson was fit as a fiddle day he moved in. Weren’t no justice in what happened to those who got sick. And poor Francine… They say she died of natural causes. Man even back then I knew it was shit and I was just a lil kid. The smell alone. Think it’s bad now but at the time, before they came in with a crane to lift the trailer up whole and move it to the dump. Shit it was something awful. There was talk of moving the whole park. Course no one gave enough of a shit about us to go ahead and actually do it.”
“What did she die of?”
“Don’t know. Only thing I am sure of is that that girl of Francine’s lied. Said her mother was live and well when she left before the weekend and they was all on good terms, but that was bullshit. We heard ‘em fighting for weeks before, for one. And of course the body, state that was in, ain’t no way it’d been rotting for just a few days.”
He offered me another cigarette. I refused. He lit it up instead. Second one in what felt like just a few minutes. Made me itchy just to see. I wanted to say something, anything to get a little bit more. But I’d told a big lie pretending to be there on someone else’s behalf, and didn’t want to catch myself out, so I just sat and listened to the quiet buzz of his little patio light.
After the second cigarette was done he reached into his back pocket and took out an old photo.
“I hope you find justice for Henderson and the rest of them,” he said. “Only real bit of proof I ever had something fishy went on.”
He handed me the picture. Wasn’t easy to see what I was looking at. Pile of old leaves, maybe. Mulch. I squinted at it for a few good seconds but couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“What…?”
“Took that the day they arrived to get rid of the trailer. Had to stand on my friend’s shoulders just to reach.”
“What is it?” I asked, my skin starting to crawl as I picked out details. Whatever I was looking at, it was slumped on a sofa with floral wallpaper in the background. It was about the size of a man, but riddled with holes and cavities the size of golf balls. In my whole life, I’d never seen something that looked like that.
“Why that’s Francine,” he said. “Or at least what was left of her.”
He let me keep the photo. At a guess, that was the only interesting thing that’d ever happened to that man and he’d been waiting to share it with someone. All I had to do was give him an excuse. He seemed to take some pleasure in passing it on. Certainly found my reaction to it amusing. I must’ve gone pale as I grappled with thoughts of what had happened to make a body go bad like that. Back in the hotel, under a good light, I checked that picture again and again. Something about it made me deeply uncomfortable. Knowing a woman was under all that… all those holes and crevices must’ve been made in her flesh. And what’d happened to her skin that’d turned it such a funny texture? Looked furry, like the kinda thing that grows on top of a long-forgotten cup of coffee.
A part of me considered asking my client about this, but I knew that wasn’t the way to go. First, she probably wouldn’t tell me good job if I had to ask. She hired me to do a certain thing and that didn’t involve politely requesting information right from the source. Second, well… I’d read the police reports, what was publicly available, anyway. And she’d made it clear she’d left on the friday and came home on the Monday and…
Well what if that guy was right? Did she really leave her mother alive and well? I mean, people kill. Not just psychos. People like you and me. We do it every day and sometimes we even pull it off. Only half of US murders get solved. That’s a fact. If anyone could be in the right half of that equation, it’d be her. She was smart as hell, my client. Even at seventeen she would’ve been a clever one. Clever enough that she might easily have been able to cover her tracks. Gone over to some boyfriend, twisted his arm into giving her an alibi. Sure, I could see that.
I just needed to figure out what the fuck was going on with that crime scene in the trailer. Thankfully I got some friends still on the force, one of which I even have a bit of leverage on. At first he couldn’t find much on the actual mother, but then I asked him to see if he could take the photo I had, show it around, and see if anyone had seen something like it before. That proved a lot more fruitful. Few days later he came back with a strange one, but straight away I saw the connection.
I’ll spare the details. Old man was found in a tub, all sorts of fucked up, in some old apartment building. It had since been condemned on account of the body which is fairly weird since bodies don’t usually cause that much fuss, but less weird when you realise that said body was in such a bad state it made three people sick and caused long-lasting structural damage. Whatever happened to this guy, it ate through the tub he’d been lying in and seeped into the floors and walls below. Turned plasterboard to shit and apparently even caused some trouble for the sturdier elements like steel and concrete. I don’t know how that works exactly, but that’s what the file said and going by the photos, I didn’t feel like anyone was lying.
As for the pictures? What can I say? Made my fucking skin crawl. No blurry little polaroid snapped by a kid. These were professional crime scene pictures that showed something in a bathtub that didn’t register as human until my eyes went looking for details. He looked like a hairy paper-wasp’s nest, only there were fingers and nipples and other little things that made it clear it had been built using a person as the framework. No face though. Just a head like a pile of used paper plates. Looking at those photos made me learn a new word just to describe how I felt. Trypophobia.
Wasn’t just the one guy either. Building was linked to the disappearance of the ground floor tenant. Some computer geek. I didn’t worry about him too much. But what did catch my eye was there was only one woman living in the whole place. Second floor apartment. The registered name was… somewhat familiar. Close enough to a certain someone’s that it raised the hairs on my neck. Police at the scene managed to get a photo of her and sure enough, there she was. My client going by a different name. Clearly something fishy was going on or else why the pseudonym? I figured it possible she’d maybe offed her own mother. Parents and spouses make the most common victims. But what connection was there to that second corpse, and what about the missing guy?
It was like a horror movie was following her around and she was just blissfully unaware. Condemned buildings and festering trailers made for a far cry from the professional accountant who enjoyed oat milk lattes and used sweetener instead of sugar to spare her teeth. But there was no denying she was the connection. There was photographic proof she’d lived in that building. If I wanted to get ahead of this, to really understand what was going on, I had to figure out what had happened to those bodies. I’d pretty much exhausted my favours with the police and truth was they didn’t know any more than I did. But it turned out the building was still standing. Condemned, but they hadn’t demolished it, partly because no one wanted to take responsibility, but I reckon it might have had something to do with the biohazard warnings slapped on every single window and door.
Good thing I’d brought a gas mask. I waited for sunset, geared up, and entered through the unlocked door. First thing that hit me as the door swung open was the smell. Similar to the trailer park but full pelt and hot as hell. Made me think of lizards and poorly kept terrariums. Strong enough to make my eyes water even through the mask. One thing was clear as I took a look around the hallway - the building was diseased. Not just rundown or decrepit like the usual urban decay. This was something else. Looked like the inside of a clogged pipe. You know how limescale fills it up? It was a bit like that. This oily rust coloured fluid had seeped down the walls and left them glistening and soft. Ropey stalactites of the stuff hung down from the ceiling like old party banners, and I edged around them afraid of what might happen if one touched me.
Best guess was that stuff was digesting the place. Anything soft or organic was going or gone. Old umbrella frames were left standing in one corner, the fabric burnt or dissolved away. The carpet was reduced to just a few patches no bigger than my hand. And a bunch of old cardboard boxes piled up under the stairs had turned squat and half-liquid, almost flowing down and around each other. The worst came when I took a look in the back room. More of a broom closet, I guess. Wouldn't have gone in but something caught my eye. A well-worn shoe that wasn’t covered in that oily shit. Sign of recent activity. That and the way the door was ajar just raised my suspicions, so I took a look.
Even now the timeline eludes me, but someone, a vagrant most likely given the way they were dressed, died a nasty death in there. Chemical burns come to mind. They were balled up in one corner, eyeless, looking up at me as I pushed the door open to take a closer look. Pink flesh threaded with red blood vessels, yellow bones poking through here and there. From the looks of things they’d been trying to work the door open. You could see a history of their escape attempts left by bleeding hands. Rust coloured finger streaks ran all along the door’s edges, special attention paid to the hinges. And he’d broken the only window and tried hauling himself up there only to realise it was barred from the other side. The jagged glass that still clung to the frame was covered in old blood. His palms must have looked like grated cheese. Eventually he’d given up and lain down in that shit and the thought of it made my chest feel heavy and tight. I’d only been in the building a few minutes and that shit was already eating through my shoes. I could hear the thick rubber soles sizzle and pop with each step. But that guy had been forced to sit down in an inch deep puddle of the stuff, likely because exhaustion had left him no choice but to tough it out. So how long had he tried staying up right?
Hours? Days? Weeks?
Him getting stuck in there had to be deliberate. I was sure of it. A feeling in my gut. Someone had locked the door behind him and left him to die slowly. God only knows why, but did that mean they were still hanging around and waiting for a chance to get to me? Looking around, I sure didn’t feel safe or alone. The shadows seemed too deep and the steady drip drip drip of that rancid oil oozing out of every surface was too monotonous. Someone or something lived in that filth and chances were they’d been responsible for that poor vagrant’s agonising death.
That meant getting out of that shithole was a priority, so I made for the stairs and started the climb. If there were any answers in that place, it’d be in the apartment where that old man died. The crime scene tape was still hanging off the door frame when I found it, and the TV and sofa, or what remained of them, stood in the same place as in the photos. Back in the day the old man had been a hoarder and I was surprised crime scene hadn’t cleared all his shit out. It was all still there, only what had once been a chest high maze of papers and magazines was now just a kind of hardened pulp, almost like magma dried mid-flow. Whole fucking place was covered in the stuff like a coral reef, growing up the walls and even patches of the ceiling. Looked a hell of a lot like a wasp’s nest, and it looked to be the source of that oily looking fluid. You could see it sweating out of every crease and fold in that strange hive. It was almost hypnotic to look at. Glistening amber beads oozing out of papery sheets that flowed like rock striata. There was a gentle, barely perceptible rhythm. Hypnotic.
I don’t know why but I reached out and ran the tip of my finger as gently as I could along the surface. It felt like the underside of a mushroom. All those papery gills. Gossamer thin. Soft and inviting. I wore no gloves and the brief moment of contact had deposited a single bead of that strange syrup on my fingertip. It caused a tingling sensation that was not entirely unpleasant. Even the blood that trickled down my knuckle felt warm and wet, like testing a hot bath with your hand. I liked it. I liked it and I wanted more.
I went to reach out and push my arm into the nest when a hand burst out of the nest and gripped my wrist. I was so surprised I didn’t even make a noise, but instead wordlessly fell back as the hand pushed me away from the nest. A very nearly skinless forearm followed and soon after a face emerged from the papery nest like a grime covered nightmare. Black eyes and a lipless mouth. It was a man that could have passed for a corpse, like a half-digested piece of meat. Terrified, I struggled to my feet and realised that this person had broken damn near every bone in my wrist with that single grip.
“Your meat smells raw,” he growled before heaving himself out of the nest in a disgusting parody of childbirth.
My sanity flickered and the next thing I knew I was on the ground floor with bleeding eyes and both hands frantically pulling at the door handle. My mind returned in pieces. I blinked red tears away but didn’t stop trying to open the door. I felt it, that urgent need to leave, like a suffocating man feels the need to breathe. But I’d fucked up bad. I’d sniffed out the closet and saw the trap laid there, but hadn’t seen the larger one set for me. There was only one way in and out of that building and I hadn’t jammed the door open! Now it was shut and nothing I did could get it open. With more time maybe I could’ve pried the jamb or even kicked it down, but my heart was racing and my vision blurring. I wanted out of that place. A hot primal need to get the hell out. The air was too hot. My mask too stifling. Sweat condensed on the inner plastic and made it damn near impossible to see. And the pain in my wrist was a throbbing explosion that made sensible thought impossible. I’d realised early on into my little foray that I was underprepared, but the scale of what that meant eluded me until I was there wrestling with thoughts of exposure and contagion and disease, fumbling at a greasy doorknob with a broken hand while suppressing thoughts of what might be crawling up my leg or back or neck. Panic threatened to consume me. The world and all the normality it represented was right fucking there. I could hear it. The distant hum of traffic. The amber glow of streetlights that lit up the biohazard posters. Not thirty minutes ago I’d been there. Safe and far away from this waking nightmare.
I was being reduced to a prey animal. Even in the moment I could sense it happening to me. Being made into something lesser, but it was like my actions were no longer my own. When I finally gave up on the front door, I turned around and saw the shadows way back at the hallway begin to shift as something descended the stairwell. There was no other way out. No door. No window. Just me, a long corridor, and a nightmare coming right at me.
Something inside me gave up. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m still not sure if it was that building and that strange fluid that seemed to warp my own thoughts, or maybe there’s just too much one person can go through. But I could practically hear the thin membrane of my sanity tear as I fell backwards into the door and slid down onto my ass, breathlessly awaiting my terrible fate. I almost contemplated turning off my light but by then it was too late. I could see him coming towards me. He was legless. Nothing from the waist down except blackened viscera trailing up the stairs behind him. He pulled himself towards hand over hand with hungry eyes. Before I knew it he was on top of me, one hand gripping my mouth with a salty palm, the other stroking my hair.
And then in an instant his demeanour changed. He pulled back with a terrified cry and scrambled away like I’d just stuck him with a blade.
“No no no no no,” he muttered. “No no you should have said you should have said I didn’t know I thought you were another one I didn’t know I thought you were here for me I didn’t know you were hers.”
He cowered away, pedalling on both hands backwards while keeping his eyes fixed on me.
“Tell her I did not know you were hers I could not smell until I was close very close if I hurt you I am sorry tell her I am sorry I did not mean to hurt you it is just I do not get to eat often and am always hungry.”
With a rapid gesture he threw the key for the door at me. It skittered across the floor and fell just short of my feet.
“Tell her I did not know.”
“W-w-w-what are you?” I stammered.
He looked at me curiously, stopping his retreat only briefly to gauge my expression.
“She likes to be seen but I looked without asking and I got what I deserve.”
“Who are you talking about?” I asked.
He very nearly laughed, but with such deformities it was mostly a drooling guffaw.
“You know!” he gasped. “Don’t be stupid. You’re in love with her. Just like me. But different. You got permission. I didn’t. But she was good. She left me an old nest to live in. And I have permission to eat anything I kill or trap myself. Hard now that people know to stay away but sometimes I get lucky.”
His eyes flicked to the closet with sickening hunger.
“What has this got to do with her?” I asked.
“What colour are her eyes?” he replied, almost manic with excitement. “Answer. Answer. Tell me. Tell me. What colour are her eyes?”
“G–”
I stopped. The word felt wrong in my mouth.
“Bl–
“Bro–”
“No no,” he chittered. “None of those.”
Seemingly excited but afraid, he raced forward momentarily and gripped my lapels with twisted glee.
“Compound,” he hissed with such forbidden pleasure. “Her eyes are compound. She’s jealous of us, you know?
“Jealous we get to love her.”
And then he disappeared into the darkness and something inside me gave way entirely and I passed out.
I don’t know much of what came after, exactly. I was found a few hours later in my car, idling at a traffic light. I’d made some effort at getting away on my own but didn’t get very far. No surprise here but I got sick as a dog going in that place. A deep chest infection. The kind that scares everyone at least once in their life. Only fair given how fucking stupid I was. But forgive me, I hadn’t anticipated nightmares beyond human comprehension. I challenge anybody to think that fucking far ahead. You think junkies. You think flies. Squatters. But that guy… that man slipping out of the nest and barrelling towards me on two hands. My mind going sizzle pop along with the soles on my boots. In real life, shit like that always sneaks up on you.
So I paid the price. Six months. Jesus. Six long months. I got every fever you can think of. Sepsis. Kidney failure. Liver failure. Month after month drowning in my own fluids, coughing up shit that made the nurses gag and leave. I asked the doctor what the long term effects will be and he winced before reading a list of things that didn’t leave much hope for a happy retirement. And if it was hard on my body, it was even worse on my mind. Those fever dreams… doctors say what I remember in that building, that was all just part of the sickness. Say I spent a good three days in a coma and strange dreams are the norm. Which I might accept if it weren’t the fucking skin graft still healing on my right hand. No one can explain that.
My client visited. Just the once. There are universally sad moments in life and one of them is realising someone you have a lot of affection for doesn’t have it back. They have some. Just not the same amount. It was always one way though, wasn’t it? I saw her every single day but if I was doing my job right, she only saw me once a month for our meetings. Our arrangement ended not long after, so I hope anyway. She left like it was nothing but me… ah Jesus it felt like someone excavated my heart right out. Even after what she told me why she was there, even after what I did, I could barely stand up straight I was so heartbroken. There were times after that I wished the sickness would just take me. Maybe that defeatism is why it got so bad. Who knows?
She came to me looking for a recommendation, of all things. She wasn’t cold. Far from it. But there was a sense of disappointment as she sat beside me and eyed me up.
“I liked the initiative,” she said after a while. “But the results leave me unimpressed.”
“What the fuck happened in that place?” I asked, and even though I could barely hear my own voice, she seemed like she heard every word. For a moment, the way she contemplated it, I thought I was gonna get a straight answer.
“You know my mother said men don’t see ugly women. They know they exist but they just poof them right outta their mind. Like a magic trick. She said we worked better being a little plain. Good enough to take home for a night. Any more and we’d start to leave problems everywhere we go. That guy was a problem. She was trying to warn me about the dangers of attention but silly me, I went and got addicted. I hoped with you there might be a degree of… separation. Infatuation on a contractual basis.”
She took a deep breath like she’d had a long hard day.
“I don’t know. Maybe Mom was right. It’s ridiculous, I suppose. The fly shouldn’t admire the spider. It either sees it and fears it, or doesn’t know what’s coming until it’s too late. I think Mom was telling me to go for the latter. It’s no fun being invisible though. You spent all that time looking at me. Following me. What did you see?”
I looked at her until my eyes watered and something throbbed in my skull.
“I don’t know,” I tried to lie.
“Be honest.”
She looked right at me and something in the air changed. I don’t know what. Hot. Jesus it was hot. Like looking at the sun. I remember the heart rate monitor going nuts and then… then I remember gossamer wings and serrated chitin. A tick on the inside of your cheek. A leech on your tongue. A horsehair worm that won’t leave the skin. And then an instant later my eyes refocused and there was just a normal woman in front of me.
“Someone I could have loved,” I answered, unable to stop the words spilling like vomit. “Someone who I thought deserved love.”
“See,” she said. “Who wouldn’t like your version better?”
I was crying again. Heart racing. World like butter, going soft at the edges. Whatever she did, it was like undergoing brain surgery in real time.
“I’d like a recommendation,” she said after another minute or two of silence. “I’d like to see myself. I look in the mirror and I don’t see what you do. I’d like an artist to paint me. A version of me, at least. It won’t be easy on them. All this time you’ve probably looked directly at me for no more than five, ten minutes in total. Just didn’t realise it. Always the back of my head or my hair obscuring just so. That won’t do. I want a portrait. I want to know what you see.”
“What will you do to them?”
“I won’t do anything. Not intentionally. But if you ask someone to paint the sun, expect them to go blind. Whoever paints me will be painting the sun in their living room. Going blind is the least of their problems. Now, fess up. You know someone. You mentioned them once in passing. A cousin, maybe. An artist in need of cash. I’m sure of it.”
“Why would I tell you anything?”
“Because you love me,” she said. “And because despite everything you will get better and you will come back to me. Year or two, I think. You are adamant I have no hold on you, and you will think that for a long time. And this period of freedom, you’ll enjoy it only by my good grace and mercy. You did a good job. Better than any before. I’ve read your notes and reports over and over and seen details of myself I didn’t even know were there. It’s a thing of beauty, what you did. And one day soon you’ll come back to me with some excuse for why you want the contract to continue.”
I tried to spit the word never but managed, at best, a weak shake of the head. Something that put a most peculiar smile on her face.
“It doesn’t work like that. It’d be like trying to brute force your way through Alzheimer’s. You’ll be back. Even now you’re mine. All mine. I’m just being gentle. And you’re going to give me the name and number of this artist because even though you know I could no more love you than a spider loves the fly, you are desperate to please me. Because when I broke the man in that apartment building. When I tore him in two and told him that he would live for as long as I desired, writhing without air for years and years, drowning in sickly fluids and trapped helplessly in a hive he is determined to maintain even though I wouldn't be caught dead going back there. He was grateful. And, with time, you’ll be grateful too.”
She put the pen in my hand. She smiled, mouthed the word good boy, and God help me…
I gave her my nephew’s number.
Edit: I've made some changes to the ending, if anyone finds themselves wondering why this changed after I already posted it.