#RIP Rorschach: He Fucked Around and Found Out

[thegoddamnedwatchmen]

Guys when they tell their friendly neighborhood godlike entity to DO IT! and he actually Does It

(text post source)

[justasimplesinner]

OMGGGG MAY I ASK FOR RELATIONSHIP HEADCANONS FOR WALTER KOVACS?/RORSCHACH???????????

omfgg YES YES YOU CAN

whenever i see rorschach my heart just goes

Walter Kovacs relationship hcs:

okay, first, let me just say that you're stepping into some serious shit if you want to pursue a relationship with walter out of all people

it takes a lot of patience. and i mean A FUCKING LOT. you have to be patient when first meeting him, you have to be patient when pursuing him, you have to be patient once you enter a relationship with him

you need to know how fucking special you are to him if he's ready for something like this with you

he's going to have doubts and a lot of boundaries and it's up to you to slowly introduce him to the idea of loving and being loved

there's not a lot of affection nor any words of affirmation, especially at first. he's very closed off and repressed, and the times when he even initiates anything are really scarce

he's Rorschach, what other people call mask is his face, what other people call face is his mask, but with you - with you he's Walter. with you his mask is his real face, because with you he doesn't have to pretend, he doesn't have to think, he doesn't have to worry about evil because you're good

don't expect him coming to you when injured because he almost never will - that's what he has Dan for. you're not a part of his life as Rorschach, you're a part of his life as Walter and he desperately wants to keep you away from all the filth the city's underbelly has to offer

don't ask him about what he does at night, don't pry into it - it's not that he doesn't trust you, he just wants to protect you. he wants to know that you're here to be his anchor to reality, he wants to know that you're here when he feels like he's losing himself and needs a reminder that there's life outside of crime, he wants to have this assurance that your beauty won't be tainted by the horrors of the world

he leads a double life, one of those is ridding the world of criminals, the other is you. you're his whole life outside of being a vigilante

god i'm getting deep with those, let me offer something a little lighter, more domestic: first off, he tries to take care of himself better. for you. he uses your shower, tries to always be clean whenever you're around, dirt washed off, teeth brushed and all that. thanks to you, he doesn't look (or smell) like a homeless person anymore

date nights are few and far in between, but there are times where he will take you to dinner. he wants to do something for you in return for all that you give him and he saw a lot of couples going on dates like those - it's his only reference, he has no idea what to do in a relationship but he's trying his best

he's not very talkative, and the trauma from when he found out about that little girl and what happened to her in his early years as Rorschach stunted him a little, so sometimes it looks like he's illiterate or severly damaged because he doesn't express himself as eloquently as he used to, but he's a great listener. he loves listening to you ranting on things, be it about how rude that lady in the bus was to you or your political beliefs

he's very reluctant, even disgusted at first whenever you touch him, but after some time he realises that you're not some dirty, perverted whore like his mother was, your touch doesn't bring filth and defilement - your touch is good. it's the good kind. you bring love and peace and comfort and you don't want anything from him, you don't expect anything. you touch him because you love him and you want to show it and it really opens his eyes

after that, he's more prone to cuddling, just... holding each other close. if it was anybody else touching him, he'd be disgusted, he'd rip off both their fucking arms and beat them with them, but when your body is close to his, he feels whole.

one the rare nights where he doesn't leave, before you go to sleep he always whispers 'i love you'. more often than not, it's barely hearable, but it's still there. he won't hold you at night, he won't cuddle with you, but he'll sleep with his back just barely touching yours, just to remind himself that you're still there, to remind you that he hasn't left

and whenever he has to leave for the night, whenever he has to put his other face on again, he'll always kiss your forhead as a goodbye

gOD FUCK that’s a lot, sorry for that lmao

i just love this mans so much i couldn’t help myself

[snorlaxlovesme]

SoMa Week 2019

Day 6: Hands

You know that hectic panic you get in when your mom is gonna be home in 20 minutes and you just remembered she had left a list of chores for you to do before she got back? This fic is like that. Except it's Soul with his arm stuck in the dishwasher.

This is a very serious SoMa Week fic.

“Alexa, record my last will and testament.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know that one.”

Soul looks at the clock. Maka should be home any minute now, he thinks hopelessly, mostly because he had that exact thought 3 hours ago and he was wrong then, so who really knows when she’s going to be back? His neck is absolutely burning from being in this position, and his left arm has taken on a new feeling that’s hovering somewhere between the realm of “stabbing pain” and “complete paralysis.” He’s been sitting on the floor of their kitchen for so long that he’s starting to find shapes in the weird stains on their tile like some kind of fucked up Rorschach test. The one shaped like his mother’s disappointment in him might be blood from Maka’s cut from their last mission. He’s also discovered they have ants.

This all started out with good intentions. Kind of. Okay, no, it started off with Maka leaving him 300 passive aggressive sticky notes (she was the fucking queen of those) saying that if he didn’t start cleaning up their apartment she was going to dump him in the street like the lazy weapon he was and someone else could cook and clean after him. Which is not the Top Ten Most Romantic Ways for the love of your life to tell you to do chores, if you ask Soul. So yeah, maybe he waited until the day before Maka came back from her trip to see her mom to finally start cleaning. And yeah, sure, maybe he was getting kind of aggressive about how he was putting the dishes in the dishwasher. So what?

He’d never admit to Maka that he doesn’t know anything about their new dishwasher, but now he really doesn’t have a choice. When he was maniacally stacking dirty dishes before Maka’s plane landed, he managed to drop one of Maka’s metal chopsticks in between the racks and into the bottom of the dishwasher. He had considered just leaving it down there and hoping for the best, but with the literal signs all over his kitchen calling him LAZY WEAPON, he decided to do the right thing and retrieve it instead of leaving it down there to potentially destroy their new appliance.

Big mistake.

His arm is stuck and it fucking hurts.

He didn’t know the space in between the bottom rack and the water-propeller-thingy was so small, okay? His hand went in just fine! But once he got in up to his shoulder he knew he was fucked. He had the chopstick in hand, but his arm was bent in a position that left no room for wiggling out. And force did not seem like the best option when they just sunk $600 into this stupid fucking appliance. If Soul broke it, he’d never hear the end of it, for sure.

So Soul’s only option? Waiting for Maka to come save him. Pathetic.

He didn’t even have his phone on him when he trapped himself, so he’s been sitting on the kitchen floor for the past three hours (has it been hours? Days? Time has no meaning anymore) wondering if this is how he’s going to die. It’s hard to think of a more undignified way to go at the moment, but he’s sure it could be worse, right? At least his hand isn’t in the toilet.

A tickling on his ankle has him flinching aggressively. An ant has attempted to crawl up his pantleg. Soul pinches it between his fingers on his right hand and flicks it across the kitchen, only to belatedly realize it would have been better to just kill it. Now it has time to come back and tell all its ant friends that the kitchen is open for business and essentially unguarded. What can one boy do when 20% of his body is wedged inside of an over-priced dishwasher?

He tries again to morph his arm into a weapon, like maybe trying it now might be more successful than the 8 other times he’s attempted this solution. But Soul’s arm is bent at an angle that would absolutely destroy the dishwasher if he morphed it into a blade. Maka’s favorite “I closed my book to be here” mug is directly above his hand on the top rack and would for sure be shattered if he transformed. That would even worse than destroying the dishwasher, probably. His arm returns to miserable skin and bone.

“Alexa, play ‘The Funeral’ by Band of Horses’.”

“Here’s a sample of ‘The Funeral’ by Band of Horses. To play the full version, please purchase Amazon Unlimited Music by—”

“Alexa, stop.”

Soul’s pretty sure he’s dying.

The floor-stain shaped like the pain in his left arm has a gathering of ants around it. Maybe it’s spilled soda? Or maybe they’re all congregating to discuss how they plan on eating Soul’s body after he inevitably perishes? He tries to save himself and tamp on them with his foot, but shifting his body just sends shooting pain up his arm. He stills and grits his teeth. He’ll just have to wait for Death to take him.

Minutes later, hours later, years later, he hears the clicking of the lock to their front door, and Maka walks in with two large duffel bags in hand and her cell phone wedged between her shoulder and ear.

“Yeah, Mama, I made it home safely, I’m just gonna—Soul?”

He looks up at her with sad, sad eyes.

Maka gingerly sets down her bags. “Mama, I’m gonna have to call you back. Okay. Yeah. Bye.”

“Help,” he whines pathetically. No traces of coolness to be found in a situation like this.

She kneels next to where he lays, slouched on the tile. “What happened here?”

“I found out why I never do chores.”

She makes a face at him. “If you did chores more often, maybe you’d hurt yourself less. Practice makes perfect, you know.” She looks at his stuck arm with a morbid kind of wonder. “Wow, you’re really stuck in there. How long have you been sitting like this?”

“You were supposed to be here hours ago” is Soul’s only response, because fuck if he knows how long it’s been.

She runs her fingers through his messy hair. “Sorry, sorry, my layover got delayed and things got all hectic. I guess this explains why you weren’t answering your phone, too. Does it hurt?”

“Fuck yes. Can you get me out? Please?”

She gives him a little kiss on the cheek. “Yeah, let’s see here.” She moves him over a tad so she can see better (“sorry, sorry!” she shrieks as he groans) and discovers that not only is he mega-stuck, but there doesn’t seem to be a sensible way to bend his arm to free him.

“Okay then, we’ll just do this,” she says, and in one Superman-like motion she’s grabbing the bottom rack of dishes and straight-up ripping it off the track so Soul can pull his arm free. He about cries in relief, then from pain when finally puts his arm into a position that lets the blood flow back into it. His shoulder is so fucking stiff.

Maka sets the mangled rack onto their kitchen floor, apparently not giving a damn when the dishes still inside it clank together in a dangerously-close-to-shattering cacophony. She sits down beside him, digs her fingers into the crook of his neck, and starts massaging.

“I can’t believe you broke the dishwasher to get me out,” Soul says, rolling his eyes back a little because her hands feel so fucking good on his sore neck and shoulder.

“Well, I wasn’t just going to leave you stuck in there,” Maka says. “Plus, it’s under warrantee, so we can just get the people from the department store to come back and fix it in a few days.”

“WHAT?” Soul roars so loud that Maka jumps a little bit. “Are you saying that I just 127 Hours-ed myself for NOTHING because I could have just BROKEN IT TO BEGIN WITH??”

“Hey, don’t yell at me, Soul, just because you don’t listen when the people who install our appliances tell us about what we’re paying for!”

“I was stuck there for hours because I thought you’d be mad if I broke it!��

“When on earth did I imply during our five-year partnership that I liked a dishwasher more than I liked you in one piece?”

When she puts it like that, he does sound a little stupid. Or maybe she sounds a little sweet. Or maybe being trapped inside a dishwasher for half a day is just distorting his view of reality. He needs to get up off the floor, like now.

He stands up, popping his spine in like nine different places and offers her his hand to help her up too. When he reaches down, the metal chopstick that has been trapped in his raccoon-like grip finally slips between his fingers.

It falls on the floor and bounces before rolling away, and Maka scoots to go retrieve it.

“Is this what you were trying to grab when you got stuck?” she asks. “These don’t even go in the dishwasher, Soul. You handwash them.”

Soul swears his vision whites out for a moment. He can’t even dignify that statement with a response because he’ll probably live to regret whatever comes out of his mouth next. Besides, all’s well that ends well, right? He got the chopstick, he didn’t technically break the dishwasher, and his meister is home and happy. So it was all worth it in the end, right?

Maka finally slaps her hand on the runaway chopstick, shouting a dorky little “a-ha!” Her hand lands near a floor-spot that looks like a wonky heart.

Soul sighs. He’d probably do it again, for her, if it came down to it.  He squats down beside her and plants a kiss on her unsuspecting cheek.

“Missed you while you were gone,” he tells her, because it’s worth saying.

She smiles warmly at him and leans in to give him a proper kiss. She doesn’t make it all the way there, because suddenly she’s jumping a foot in the air with a yelp, coming close to headbutting him in the nose. Maka looks down at where her hand rests on the floor, where a small black insect is skittering across her knuckle. Soul watches in horror as her eyes zero in on 10 of its closest friends a few feet away on the floor.

There’s the briefest moment of silence as she ponders what she’s looking at. The calm before the storm. Then:

“Are those ANTS?”

She whips around to face him, but Soul’s already gone. He can still hear her shouting from down the hall. “Soul, I told you to MOP while I was gone!!”

His shoulder twinges painfully as he slams the door shut to his room. He thinks he’ll just live with the sticky notes for this one.

[jaegertango]

Origins: Memento Mori

((UNDEAD METAL BAND WITH @elksy AND @amilaine LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOO))

((EDITED: ADDED IN @adries PART, MIMI IS HERE LADS))

How did the heaviest, most metal band to sunder the world like Deathwing come to existence? Few know, but whispers call about its legend. The furthest go back to the dark halls of Acherus, where souls are corrupted into Death Knights - or discovered to have a destiny even greater than mere violence.

Not much is known about Fenix Deathguard's previous life, and he claims that he was never truly “alive” until he was reborn in Acherus. One thing is for certain though: his resurrection always seems to be the starting point of the greatest Metal endeavor to flood Azoerth. It is said that when the ritual to corrupt his soul into a Death Knight of the Scourge was complete, a thousand wails screamed out from him. They shrieked and writhed and roared throughout Acherus, too inhuman to be alive, and too melodic to be a banshee. All that is certain is that the sheer noise, like the most infernal guitar solo to ever grace Azeroth, even attracted Highlord Mograine's own attention. As the Death Knights approached their newest recruit, they found a towering man with a mane of black hair and gaunt white skin. Both of his forearms had been transformed into a dead black, but his left hand was constantly fidgeting with life as if aching to press around one's throat – or fret on a guitar neck. Veins of darkness ran up to his shoulders and towards his black heart, where it seemed the whispers of maddening music tempted all to listen closer. Azeroth's most metal guitarist had been brought forth – and now he needed his axe.

But not just any axe would do. No, he needed something suited for his pure strength and neck-breaking speed. Taking the remnants of his old axe (a broken and defeated guitar), he wrapped it in layer upon layer of Saronite. When it was heavy enough for him, he then found the largest Frost Giant in all of the Storm Peaks, and he ripped out its heartstrings so that he could use it as the strings for his weapon. Securing the end with the horn of a Frostwyrm, all that was left was to bathe the guitar in a sea of blackened blood. So he brought it forth to slaughter the most corrupt creatures to ever vomit their way unto existence – the Faceless. He brought the giants down, washing it entirely with their foul life fluids and strumming their songs into the steel. The bodies piled high, enough to bring the vicious whispers of Yogg-Saron into Fenix's mind, and it was only then, with a single powerful note, that the Death Knight was victorious. His guitar, Affliction Forever, could wail the fastest solos, thunder the heaviest notes, and raise the very dead in armies to hear his world-ending songs. His legacy, however, was only just begun. The world needed more metal, and he needed to find those strong enough to help him deliver it unto every inch of Azeroth.

He wasn't sure where to search, but before he could consider, a vision unlike any other haunted him. Images shifted and whirled like razor water around him, not real enough for him to shove away, but real enough to shred their marks into his flesh. They screeched endlessly at him, more sound than actual sight. Such hallucinations would have driven any other mad, and he could see the many mangled and captivated victims swaying even in death to those calls, but Fenix found himself enraptured by such a curse. Moving to the West, the images got more violent, but so did the Death Knight. He wailed the most thunderous of riffs back, like a wolf returning a howl. The Plaguelands writhed under the tremendous force of his solo, and Tirisfal buckled by the returning siren call of Death. It was only when the very landscape was furling and smashing upon itself like one huge mosh pit that Fenix found himself face-to-face with a woman easily his equal: Cecilia Felweather. She had the same goal he did, to spread the glory and power of Metal across all of Azeroth, and only now did her banshee cries bring her a guitarist worthy of her voice. The two made a pact immediately: Undeath had only given them the immortal chance they needed to fulfill their goal. Together, they would create the heaviest, blackest and  most metal band in all of Azeroth, and together they would turn the world Metal. For they were Memento Mori: Remember You Will Die.

But they were not enough. They needed more brute force, one more to stand at their side like the bulwark of metal they were. Deathguard played one bellowing note to call out, and he felt the earth quake in response. Cecilia screamed out her own commanding cry, and the ground shuddered its vicious reply. There was another out there, and they needed to find them. But they knew, their third was not somewhere in Azeroth, but even deeper than six feet below. Together, Memento Mori blasted a solo, echoed by a chorus whose vocals ripped the sky into a bloody crimson. Reality could not keep stable by the sheer force of their playing, and the ground gave up first. The two fell, deeper than the crust, deeper than Hell – Deepholm was their destination. And within the bowels of the Earthen realm, chaos was playing at its fullest. A single corpse, buried far deeper than any other, could not be contained even by the World Pillar. With only two sticks and every stone as his drums, he sundered and rocked every inch of the world, making volcanos erupt with every bass kick and the earth quake under his violent barrage. Even the Pillar itself was little more than a snare for him to assault and call out to his metal brother and sister that Riley Rorschach was here, and he was pissed. Lava flowed like an ocean, and great columns of fire exploded from every quaking crater he crashed into the earth. Memento Mori's drummer had given his call, and he reminded all of Azeroth of his perpetual hangover – as well as the fiery, quaking revenge he was about to wreak upon the world for it.

But as they returned to Azeroth, the land uprooted and twisted by their arrival, all three of them simultaneously turned to the South. They all heard it together, a symphonic shriek that rattled their bones and bit at their skin like knives -  their Fourth was calling. So the three journeyed to Pandaria, some say on a storm of darkness and flame, others by a monstrosity of metal. The devilish wail only grew louder and more violent, warning them of the power of the source. When they journeyed into Kun'lai, and the music had wracked the sky into a sea of black and pink, they found not a Pandaren region, but corruption unlike any other. Tides of Sha energy, writhing like water, splashed across the mountains, swirling in one great hurricane in the center. The outline of a great nightmare roared and signaled the herald of doomsday – the Sha of Metal. The bellow and screech of a guitar blared above all else, and it was matched only by the piercing shriek of Deathguard's own solo. Only then, the two of them played together, a harmony of destruction that tamed the corruption into a true force, one of pure Metal. Kun'lai was ripped apart and renewed simultaneously, tearing the region into pieces and fixing them back into a better place immediately. When the storm of black finally subsided, a single woman stood in the eye of the hurricane, an axe twice her size strapped to her. There, Memento Mori found Miette Obsidian, and silently judged them worthy of her cause. With her mighty double-bladed axe on the some power as Affliction Forever, she was the perfect second guitarist. The Three were now Four.

Yet, even as they stood, the most dangerous and Metal undead to ever be brought forth into existence, they all knew there was more. Memento Mori's call was infinite, and they knew more would return the call. Only then, could they begin their Black Crusade, their Metalocalypse.

[gendercraft]

Outlast: Revisited [Chapter Six: Waylon]

Read on ao3

Synopsis: I’m rewriting Outlast where the first game and Whistleblower are combined, Miles and Waylon are more connected, and also they kiss

Trigger warnings: Sexual assault plus everything already in the game; eye gore; the gore actually gets kinda intense here; let me know if i missed anything

    The furnace roared to life. Waylon scrambled backwards, as far away from the flame as possible, but it was futile. It caught his pants, chasing his leg.  

    “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He pressed his back against the brick wall. 

    Orange climbing up his pant sleeve, he thrashed his leg out, over and over again. The heat burned through. The pain wracked up his leg, rippling and angry. He screamed and knocked his head against the wall. 

    Something rattled. He gasped and turned around—the wall was crumbling. He could break that. He could. 

    Holding back a moan of pain, he turned onto all fours and rammed his shoulder into the wall. It jostled, but not by much. Again, again, come on, don’t let me fucking die here. The pain was climbing. If he didn’t get out of here soon, he wouldn’t even be able to walk. 

    He launched himself at the wall again, again, again, then finally—CRASH! He oofed as he smacked to the concrete, landing atop the loose bricks. 

    “No! NO! You were MINE!” 

    Gasping for breath, Waylon staggered to his feet. There was no telling how quickly the Cook could find his way to Waylon—he had to leave.

    He hobbled through a door and found himself in a makeshift chapel. A glowing red exit sign hung above a door. His heart stopped. He raced forward, ignoring the burning pain in his leg, and turned the handle—locked. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. He pulled and yanked but nothing. 

            Looking around for any way of escape, he brought his burnt leg off the ground to relieve the pressure. His breathing was slowly steadying. 

    In the back of the chapel, he found a transcription from an employee of Mount Massive, Dr. Bruce Newhouse. 

     Father Clarke— 

        Far be it from me to lie to a man of God, so let me at least say that I will do my personal best to improve the safety of your working conditions...if you feel threatened by anybody in particular, simply let us know and we can either increase chemical restraints, or administer a lobotomy or similar calming procedure. 

     Waylon grimaced and flinched. 

     Not all of our poor unfortunates have families to call upon, and so the burden, (and calling,) is yours. We are all of us relying on your faith and hard work. 

     DBNR

    Dr. Newhouse, MD

    May 20th, 1961 

     Surely they weren’t still administering lobotomies. And ‘poor unfortunates…’ it was so distant, so condescending. These weren’t ‘poor unfortunates.’ They were people, people that Murkoff decided to torture. 

    Everywhere else was a dead end, and there was a creeping feeling in his gut that the Cook was getting closer, so Waylon headed back to the furnace. There was a ladder to the top of the ovens, which opened up to a huge chimney full of half-put-together scaffolding and skinny ledges. It went up pretty high. He doubted the Cook would follow him, if he even knew that’s where he went. 

    On the ladder, he dragged his useless leg behind him, relying on upper body strength to get himself to flop atop the ovens. His arms burned, laying like jelly next to him. A scream rained down. 

    Waylon leapt to his feet, gritting his teeth and holding back a hiss. THWAP! Waylon covered his face as the Variant smacked to the brick and cracked their head open. Hesitating, Waylon stared. Blood seeped through the cracks, viscous and crimson. 

    Glancing down at his leg, he sighed. Don’t fail me. 

    He scaled the chimney slowly and carefully. As he inched across a ledge, his vision blurred as Morphogenic rorschach images swam and splattered. He groaned… and his foot slipped. 

    Gasping, his entire body jolted to the ground—then he caught himself, planting his foot firmly on the ledge. 

    “Motherfucker,” he snapped under his breath. He grit his teeth. “Come on, come on… just fucking do it.” 

    He made it halfway up the chimney, where a vent opened into one of the upper floors. Crawling inside and hopping down, he brought up his night vision and looked around carefully. He explored the Administrative section of the hospital block, all dark and empty. 

    Across a boarded up door and through the glass, a group of people ran past. 

    “There!” One of them cried. “I told you it would be open. I told you.” 

    Were they… escaping? Waylon would pry those boards off with his bare hands. 

    “Keep moving, Graham, we’re almost out!” 

    Waylon picked up the pace, limping towards the door and grabbing hold of the board. He pulled, planting his bad leg against the wall, and yanked, yanked, pulled, pulled, pulled until his hands were raw and scraped. He dug at the screws until his nails cracked and his fingers bled. 

    Growling, he slammed his elbow into the glass, over and over until tears came to his eyes. It ached horribly, and the glass didn’t so much as crack. 

    “Fuck!” His voice cracked. Sobs rose in his throat, and he swallowed them back. Don’t you dare fucking cry. 

    If he had to cry—which he didn’t—he could do it while he was moving. He had to get home. He had to expose Murkoff. 

    The only way further was through a small library, so he pressed on, only to freeze as a buzzsaw sounded. 

    “Dinner bells!” The cook cackled as he rounded the corner. 

    Waylon gasped and ducked behind a shelf just as the man entered the room. Shit. Could he still run? He’d been able to block out the pain in his leg, but if he so much as moved wrong, it was overwhelming. Black spots appeared on his vision and he had to grit his teeth to keep himself from crying. It was the worst pain he’d ever experienced. 

    He’d have to be quiet, and quick. 

    The Cook buzzed his saw a few times as he entered the room. Waylon gripped onto the shelf to keep himself upright. In the quiet tension, he couldn’t ignore the pain anymore. It ripped through his skin, pulsing and wet. God, was it blistering? He couldn’t bear to look at it. 

    “I can smell you,” the Cook sung through closed lips. He chuckled. “I know you’re around here…”

    He blocked the light from the hall as he passed the missing spaces in the bookshelf. Waylon held his breath. The pressure on his leg was becoming too much, too much, too fucking much. A few tears trickled down his face. 

    He couldn’t hold it anymore. 

    Falling against the shelf, books scattered onto the ground with a clatter. “Fuck,” he groaned. The Cook had already heard him, so fuck it. 

    The Cook whirled around with his saw in the air. Waylon shoved himself against the shelf as hard as he could and it tipped over. Letting out a choked yell, the Cook stumbled backwards, only for the shelf to take him to the ground. Waylon screamed as he scrambled over the shelf to the door, black spots coating his vision. He sprinted down the hall as the Cook struggled to get the bookshelf off. 

    He sprinted through the halls until he couldn’t anymore. Smacking to the ground, he dragged himself forward. The buzzsaw was getting closer. He gasped and choked for breath, pulling himself towards a barricade of filing cabinets and hospital beds, trying to squeeze through the gap. 

    “You are mine!” The Cook yelled. 

    He was gaining. Waylon’s leg was dead at this point, he was in too much pain to even feel it anymore. He got through the gap just as a slash came down on his leg. He pulled himself through and the Cook tried to squeeze through himself, only to get stuck with a growl. 

    “Get back here!” He screamed. 

    Waylon staggered to his feet and hobbled, practically hopping on one foot, down the hall. He struggled his way through and found himself in a bathroom. Collapsing to the tile, he pressed his back to a closed stall door and pulled the fabric from around his leg. He bit back a scream as the fabric dragged across the burns. It was blistering bad, and the Cook had opened one with his saw, the pus dripping and running down his red skin. The burns covered from his ankle to his knee. 

    “Come on, Waylon,” he whispered. “Keep going. Get out.” 

    It took all of his strength to get to his feet.

    “See me now,” someone growled, their voice raspy. “Just try!”

    Waylon straightened up. It came from right behind him. He hesitated, then took out his camera and swung open the stall door. A Variant stood, holding a doctor on their knees, slamming their head into the toilet over and over again. 

    “What do you see?” He snapped through the blubbering and gurgling. “Who am I? Idiot.” 

    Waylon stumbled over to the sinks and set the camera up to face him. The Variant was barely in frame. 

    “Lisa,” he said cautiously, glancing at the Variant through the viewfinder, “or whoever finds this, know that Murkoff is creating monsters. I’d never seen the patients after they’d gone through that German’s so-called therapy. The Engine. So much worse than I could have imagined. They may still be human, but something’s been ripped out of them. And too many… other things pushed back in.” He repressed a shudder. “They were not all murderers. They were sick, but they weren’t killers. Murkoff made them monsters.” He reached out to grab the camera, then hesitated. “Dr. Roset said the engine had ‘varying effects,’” he made air quotes, “the variant outcomes too erratic for any sort of prediction.” He huffed a laugh. “I took it as idle cafeteria small talk, Raul’s endless chatter.” He swallowed and pursed his lips. “I should have listened.” 

    With that admission, he picked up his camera and hobbled out of the bathrooms. 

He found himself back in the fucking labs again. He made his way to a decontamination chamber full of gas. A man pressed himself to the glass. 

    “Shut it off!” He begged. “Shut down the gas, please, I can’t…!” 

    He had to get through that airlock to make his way to the prison. He’d have to find the valve to shut off the gas. And quickly, if he wanted this man to live. Through the green, he couldn’t tell if he was a patient or doctor, but he couldn’t waste any time. 

    He found a sheet of paper on a desk and snatched it, but didn’t bother reading it yet. While exploring for the gas room, he came across a Variant smacking his head into the door until it bled on the wood. Waylon grabbed his shoulder. 

    “Hey, man, come on, stop,” he said firmly. He looked into the Variant’s eyes and tried not to flinch away. His voice came out a little weaker. “Just… Don’t do that to yourself, okay?” 

    He hesitantly took his hand back. The Variant stared. Then continued. 

    Waylon sighed. These people are broken. 

    The buzzsaw picked up again as he hobbled down the hall. He grit his teeth so hard something cracked. 

    They met eyes through the darkness. Waylon whipped around and hobbled down the hall. The footsteps raced after him. Slamming the door behind him, he pressed himself to the wall next to the door and panted. BAM! BAM! The door nearly came off its hinges. BAM! BAM! 

    BAM! 

    The Cook barged into the room a few steps in and Waylon ducked back into the hall. Before the Cook noticed where he was, he hurried into another room with two beds and an open vent. Could he get up there with his leg? He hopped onto the bed and leapt. Fuck, that fucking hurt. Groaning, he pulled himself up into the shaft, barely biting back a scream as his leg dragged against the metal. 

    He dragged himself through the shaft, only to fall through a grate and land hard on the floor. One of the two doors slammed against its lock. Waylon leapt to his feet and rushed to the other door, swinging it open into the bathroom and slipping through a crack in the wall. He explored the halls a bit, staying low to the ground and in the shadows, until he passed by double doors into a lab room. 

    There was a patient file on the counter. 

     MURKOFF PSYCHIATRIC SYSTEMS 

    PROJECT WALRIDER 

    Patient: Frank Antonio Manera 

    Page age: 36

    Gender: Male 

        THERAPY STATUS: 

    Minimal Morphogenic Engine activity, and only at extreme (stages 5 and 6) levels of hormone therapy. Dream states return repeatedly to images of isolation and betrayal. Zero lucid state. 

     INTERVIEW NOTES: 

    He was lethargic and largely non-responsive, exhibiting interest only in the hypnotherapy script pattern 9 (Wernicke), concerning drinking blood from the chest of sleeping men. He continues to refuse baths or the attention of a barber outside of general anaesthesia, stating, “if I cannot partake, I cannot share.” 

     Recommended forced nutrition for Manera if we cannot find something he likes to eat. 

     MURKOFF PSYCHIATRIC SYSTEMS PROJECT WALRIDER

    MOUNT MASSIVE CO 

     The Cook. Frank Manera. 

    He continued through the room, jumping as he found a bloodied security guard curled in the corner. “Get out of here. This is my place.” 

    Waylon stared. 

    “You’re going to get me killed! Fuck off!” 

    Waylon crumpled the file in his hands. He hoped Manera came through here. He continued on, in the wallway finding the signs for the gas room. Following the signs, he continued through the labs, blood and corpses spilled over the slabs of metal. 

    “There you are!” Manera cackled, growing closer from behind. 

    Waylon hobbled forward, his leg burning under the pressure. “Leave me alone, you fucking creep!” 

    He cornered himself against a closed, gas-filled decontamination chamber. Manera stalked the halls. 

    “I won’t be hungry for much longer.” Manera grinned. 

    Waylon looked around for any sign of exit. I have to get home to Lisa. He looked up. A wooden panel hung over the top of the decontamination chamber. 

    Manera lunged. Waylon barely got out of the way in time, lurching to the left, then stomped on Manera’s foot. As Manera howled and doubled over, Waylon nearly lost his balance, vision blacking out for just a second. He regained his footing and shoved Manera as hard as he could. Grabbing the edge of the wood, he hauled himself to the top of the chamber. 

    The gas room was on the other side. He turned the valve and the chamber cleared. He sighed. 

    Now that he had a moment, he pulled out the file from earlier. 

     EXCERPT FROM 1957 AND COMMENT ON IG REPORT “OPERATIONS OF TSD” 

  Influencing Human Behavior 

  The potential use of psychochemicals in political action operations is well recognized...Chemical Division includes it as an objective of its programs to be prepared to support or make such operations possible. Non-chemical methods of accomplishing political action operations are also included in the program. 

     Note: (J.Lawyer/April 15, 1958) Present the above MKULTRA excerpt to Technical Services Division for budgeting and authorization of continued research of Dr. Rudolf Wernicke...and project WALRIDER. Autopsy of recovered test subjects show chemical content of bodies (metallic tumours, evidence of sub-dermal combustion) that indicate heavy psychochemical dosage. 

     MKULTRA? Waylon pocketed the note with shaky hands. That’s why they were experimenting on the patients? As much as he worked on it, he had no idea what Project WALRIDER really was. 

    He placed his hand on the door. He just had to get back to the decontamination chamber, see if that guy was still alive, and get into the outside recreational area. Then he could get to the prison and use the radio.