Samuel_Tow

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In the early days of the game, (which you apparently weren't around for), Scrappers couldn't even level as fast as Blasters, because they had no way to stop Runners. Blasters would be standing half a block away, getting kills without moving, and Scrappers would be scrambling around like roaches on a hotplate trying desperately to get in a Killing Blow on a mob that was sprinting across Galaxy City at right around Mach Ten.

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Actually, I've been with the game since a month after release. I joined some time before I1. I never saw this problem with runners. Ever. First of all, unlike now, I don't recall enemies running away almost at all. One per spawn may take off if I were street hunting, but inside missions? Never used to happen on its own, or at the very least so rarely that I have no memory of it. And as far as "means to stop runners," killing them always worked for me. If you're referring to the inability to hit runners in the back, yes, that was annoying. Running just slightly ahead of them, however, allowed me to hit them just fine.

I don't know what the deal was with Blasters. Maybe they were all Hoversniping or something, but I played a Blaster up to 34 before I2, subsequently abandoning him for a full two years after the Smoke Grenade bug got fixed. He's 50 now, after the Defiance changes. I never, not ever, felt like that Blasted did a lot of damage. As a matter of fact, I had to drop my recharge enhancements so that I could pump more damage still into my attacks just so I wouldn't be sucking wind against anything above a minion. The only way, practically, that I could play this guy was to abuse the ridiculous to-hit debuff Smoke Grenade provided.

I haven't been playing Blasters in the time between I2 and I9. I didn't think I liked the AT, and the abovementioned Blaster was the only thing that convinced me to even try. And even then, I couldn't play the, AT ALL past level 40 until the Defiance changes. Were those I10 or I11? Just the same. I have since gotten my only other 50 hero - a Blaster, to sit idly next to my 50 Scrapper.

Far be it from to claim I should know better because I have "a 50." But if my experience going up was any indication, my Scrapper was a smooth ride all the way to 50, and with the possible exception of the crap that were the numerous AV missions back in I2 and I3 that PI contacts, which my Blaster missed, it was easy mode all the way. Even the Soldiers of Rularuu were doable against Super Reflexes, which people vehemently insist cannot be possible. My Blaster, on the other hand, was a trudge through hell, and even the easy patches were an exercise in walking on eggshells. One false move and if I'm not dead right there, I'm already losing fast. I remember an old adage:

When a Scrapper bumps into a boss, the Scrapper goes: "I wonder what's shooting at me. Oh, look, a boss. Guess I'll have to fight longer." When a Blaster bumps into a Boss, the Blaster goes: "Oh my God! What just hit me? Oh, crap! It's a boss! Gotta' act fast!" From everything I've seen, that is precisely how the situation is. On my Scrappers, I can fall asleep on my keyboard and I still won't suffer much. On my Blasters, one slip and I'm in trouble. Just yesterday, for instance, I Alt-Tabbed to check something in City of Data and logged back in to a few Green Ink Men pounding on my Regen Scrapper. I was away for quite a while, so lord knows how long they'd been pounding, but they weren't making any progress. At the push of a few buttons, they went down like a comet.

I honestly don't know where the idea that Blasters are so much better than Scrappers comes from, when for the longest time they actually did LESS damage, even overall. I guess maybe if you spend 1-50 rolling with big, organised teams that can cover for your weakness, then a Blaster will do better, but I've never seen Blasters as a support AT, and as such never believed they should be relegated to being good only on teams. Because outside of teams, my Scrappers move faster, get hurt less and level up more than any Blaster I've ever had, including such using Energy Manipulation.

That's just been my experience.

Would you, per chance, be referring to "City of Blasters?" Yeah, I remember that time I somehow never got made fun of for playing a Scrapper back then, but there was never a shortage of people telling me I was stupid for picking Super Reflexes and those letting me know that Katana was just an inferior version of Broadsword.

Last time I checked, though, Blasters were at the rock bottom of performance, which is why they needed the Defiance changes. What happened to make them kings of the world that I missed? Surely it cannot have been the Defiance changes just by themselves. They weren't making my Blasters any more survivable than my Scrappers last time I checked.

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For the first, I have to wonder what you’re smoking. Scrappers have, historically, been gods in this game. They had the living hell nerfed out of them, in fact (although they’re still just about the most powerful AT’s in the game). No game nerfs “useless” things.

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You mean that AT that doesn't do half the damage of a Blaster, has heavily resisted damage types, has been nerfed well past the level of usefulness in team situations (Seriously, my Blaster scraps better than my Scrappers and has the best damage mitigation in killing the enemies before they kill me) where everyone will do what you do, except, y'know, better.

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"Doesn't do half the damage of a Blaster?" Scappers have the single highest damage modifier in this game, short of Nova form Kheldians, and the second best form of personal protection available to any hero AT. I'm confused and bewildered as to how exactly they've "nerfed past the level of uslessness," to say the least. And I own both Scrappers and Blaster, so you'd think I could compare.

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So yeah, it's great that a handful of people think that CoH is the "bestest, most goodest, uber-perfect game in creation", but at the end of the day, you're hurting the game. You're hurting it the same way the Star Wars fanboys hurt the three Prequels: by convincing the people in charge that the majority of the fanbase are "wrong", and that everything is completely peachy-keen.

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And there we go again, talking about this mythical creature, the "fanboy." In all my travels through the Internet, never once have I seen concrete, solid evidence of this animal. Oh, I've seen tall tales, speaking of how fearsome the fanboy was, how it gobbled 15 rational, reasonable people in a single bite. I've seen the witness reports, describing the hideous beast which was there, but was thankfully banned so long ago that no-one even remembers a straight line of text it posted. I've even seen the many witch hunts where innocent creatures were chased through the forums by a mob sporting torches and pitchforks, and eventually cornered and dunked until it confessed it was a fanboy, but by that point it was so beaten and bruised you couldn't tell what it was anymore.

What I have NOT seen, however, is a real live fanboy. I'd like to see one, one of these days, to look into its eye and to understand why it sparks such fascination. But all I have is tall tales and exaggerated reports, substantiated with anecdotal evidence and heavy use of clever rethoric. If these animals are so rampant that they are practically overrunning every franchise ever made, then why have I never seen one?

Frankly, the only thing I've seen is fairly innocent animals branded the words "fanboy" in hot, smouldering iron to their backsides for having the audacity to speak actually like a product, rather than supporting the heedless barbarians who seek to destroy all created things. Such barbarians themselves are decidedly rare, but every time they so much as make a step into this world of free men, they always make sure to throw the blame for their misdeeds at these mythical fanboys, for surely one has to be a mythical beast indeed to dare liking a product. "The fanboys will flame me" as their battle cry, they charge at a product, perform their pillaging raids, then retreat back into the shadows to await another opportunity.

Frankly, I'd have expected this country of CoH Forums to have grown past such old wives tales as trolls and fanboys and suchforth. I would have thought that arguments could be examined for their merit, rather than the members of the discussion who made them discredited by wide, sweeping accusations. That if people happen to like something, then perhaps they actually like it because they like it, rather than because they feel compelled to, and that if people dislike something, then perhaps they dislike it because they dislike it, rather than because the devil himself rose up to manifest the object of their dislike.

Can we please drop the fanboys thing? It's getting really old now.

Well, I guess Jack was full of hot air when he insisted CoH was still going strong because LOOK! Cryptic is hiring. Ah, well. A Sam always forgives. But he never forgets.

Just the same, it's amazing how much cool stuff 15 people have been able to come up with. What perplexes me is what others have mentioned, as well - the content the Surviving 15 came up with was superior in every way to the all the content that came before. The last few Issues, even if I may not agree with all that was added, were easily the best thing that's happened to the game, by far. Well, after the addition of CoV, but that's a little more than "an Issue"

My hat's off to you, guys, for being able to do so much pretty much each on his or her own. Amazing work out there. While your team was being downsized, all I kept thinking was how this game was only getting better and better. Sure had me fooled!

I'd also like to address specific thanks to BaBs for taking SO much time out of his life to post on the forums and keep us all informed and involved. I'd also like to thank him for being so cool as to accept AND respond to PMs, and do so with surprising speed. Hell, I had one PM answered within something like 15 minutes of sending it. Plus, it takes a REAL man to be called BaBs and still keep going strong

And, of course, I have to thank Castle, as well, for braving the frustration of being the fall guy for every whine on the board and proudly wearing the bullseye with dignity and stoicism while still keeping us well informed of not just the bottom line, but also why it was decided on.

Yeah, doom or no doom, I think we may well have the best development team ever

Thanks

Figured I'd pour all I had on copying costumes now that a lot of people will probably want to do just that. Hopefully, one of these days the developers will give us an official means, but until then, we scrounge up what we can

Made one recently:

A guide to copying costumes the hard way

I'm not certain how relevant that is, however, so someone may want to give it a look first. I like it, at least

We've all had moments like these - you have an old character sitting idly by and receiving no attention because you're just bored of him (we'll say "him"). Then one sunny day you get a good idea for how to make that character work, but you need to create a whole new character for it. And here you meet a stumbling block - how do you actually do that? There's no option to do that in-game, after all. So what now?

Well, I'm going to let you in on my way. It's very cumbersome, I'll admit, and probably more complicated than is necessary, but this method ensures that you copy ALL parameters of your character with as close to surgical accuracy as possibility allows. I'm aware there are easier methods, such as loading a character's costume into the tailor, or playing a character for a while and so forth, but try as I might, I never got those to work reliably. Even when I did, they didn't always carry everything over, changing colours, slider values, sometimes even costume details for no apparent reason. So I got down to it, and devised a method which is completely full-proof and very accurate. It's also, however, somewhat fat.

Since it would be a little... Dry, if I were to just sit down and talk about how to do it, I've decided to actually show you. We're going to recreate an obscure character I had lying around the servers. Meet Lemon Aid, a level 1 Science Defender. He's not a great looker, I will admit, but as we go about this, you'll grow to know his scaily features and petite physique. In this scenario, you are the proud owner of Lemon, and you just got an excellent new idea for him. You now want to remake the character, but keep the costume EXACTLY as it is now. So how do we do that? Well, there are three steps, which I will described based on order of difficulty.

Step 1: Write down the costume (easy)

Pick your preferred method for writing things down and prepare to write. This could be a plain text document in Note Pad, a big, elaborate Word document, or the time-honoured pen-on-paper method. After that, start writing down the costume options, their textures, their patterns and the colours they use. While you can make up your own set of rules on how to write things down, I have come up with my own that ensures everything is written down clearly and unambiguously.

Here is how I've written down Lemon's costume. If you want to use my technique, then follow these simple rules:

Optional
Start with a name. Even if you title the file you're saving with your character's name, it's always handy to have it at the top just for clarity. Proceed with skin colour, describing the colour in round brackets. Then, break it down into sections. Start with a section name, then let each line represent a single category. Arrange it like this: Costume Item/Texture/Pattern: (Primary Colour)|(Secondary Colour). For items that don't exist, use [N/A] in brackets to avoid confusion with the slash separator. Record colours as a pair of numbers, with the first number denoting the line and the second number denoting the colour in that line, as viewed from the colours panel. This makes finding a colour fast and easy, as it describes colours by colour first, shade second.
End Optional

Once you have everything else written down, recreating your costume pieces, textures and colours is as easy as following your list exactly as you wrote it down. This is a very simple, undemanding process, but it can get somewhat laborious, especially if you choose to use electronic means, as you'll be Alt-Tabbing a LOT.

Step 2: Record your sliders (intermediate)

Now that we can recreate the costume, the next step is to record your character's body and face slider positions. Unfortunately, the game doesn't give us any duplicable information on exactly where a particular slider is, so there's nothing to actually write down. Even if you were to take a screenshot of your sliders, there's still no direct way to reproduce that screenshot into the actual game. So this takes a little bit of ingenuity. It starts with taking a screenshot of your entire character editing screen with the sliders tab open.

On taking screenshots from the editor
Now, before I move on, it has been my experience that not everyone knows how to grab screenshots from the costume editor, as the game refuses to generate any screenshots from the editor when you try to make it. To obtain one, you need to do the following: Hit your Print Screen key. That will save an exact image of the picture of your screen in clipboard. Now, open pretty much any image-editing or viewing programme you may have installed (if you don't have any such, MS Paint will do just fine), then paste the picture in it. I can't speak for all interfaces, but this is generally done through Edit/Paste. Once that's done, save it.
End note

Now, you have a screenshot of your character's sliders that looks something like this. Unfortunately, that screenshot doesn't contain any information that you can reproduce by hand, so it's going to take a little bit of creativity to actually use it, and a bit of software, at that. Obtain an image-viewing programme that can display pictures in full screen. Personally, I use IrfanView, as it's free, light, reliable and incredibly easy to use. You are free to pick your own programme, just as long as it can display images in full screen.

OK, provided you didn't alter the picture you took of your sliders in any way, it should match the resolution you are running your game in precisely. That's what we want. Start your game, go into your character editor and open the sliders tab. Now, Alt-Tab out of the game, open your sliders picture and set it to full screen. Now Alt-Tab between the game and the full-screen picture a few times. You'll notice that all elements of the picture as displayed match the corresponding elements from the game's menu, but the sliders on the pic and the slider in the menu are different.

Now this is the clever bit - look at the picture and move the sliders relatively close to where they look like they should be. Now Alt-Tab back to the picture and note how they change. You'll see you didn't get them quite right, and that they need to move a little to the left, or a little to the right. Adjust them, then check again. Repeat this as many times as necessary. Now, note that because the sliders are sensitive to the pixel, this may be a little bit tricky if your mouse hand isn't very steady. However, this also means that this method is precise to the pixel, provided you have the patience to see it through. Failing that, it's as precise as your patience allows.

A good tip when doing that is to go one slider at a time. It takes more time and causes more Alt-Tabbing, but it has much better accuracy and is, in the end, less irritating to do. Remember: your eyes are not exact to the pixel, so you cannot hope to remember the locations of the sliders. You need to try and retry until you match them. This isn't done by remembering them, but by comparing them, and the fewer the sliders you need to compare at a time, the easier it is and the less strain it puts on your nerves.

OK, so now you are able to recreate your costume exactly and replicate your sliders with perfect accuracy. Are we done yet? Well, no. You see, there's still one more slider to which we have so far never even had access to - the height slider. It's easy enough to check on a character you're making, but once you've made the character, you can't actually check height, so you don't know. What do you do, then? Well, we move on to:

Step 3: Discover your height (hard)

Discovering your exact height is IMPOSSIBLE, not unless a kind GM somehow pulls the records and tells you. And even then, what are they going to tell you? "Your height is something like 2/5 of the way up." Yeah, that helps! No, we need a more accurate method of recording height. Here's what you need to do:

Start making a brand new character. Archetype, Origin, Powersets and all that are irrelevant. All we care about is the costume. What you want, however, is to create an exact copy of the character you're trying to remake. HOW exact, in this case, is really up to you. The more exact, the better this will work, but even roughly the same is still accurate. Just NEVER forget to match the Leg slider. That one matters a LOT.

OK, now that you're done, go back to the Height slider. Boost that baby right up to the top, as high as it will go. We want a max-height character. Remember - the Height slider doesn't actually control height, it controls size. A character with greater height isn't just taller, he's actually upscaled in every respect. So a max-height version of the character you're trying to copy over should have the same proportions, but everything about them will be bigger. Now, enter that character into the game. Give it some corny name, anything that will get past the name check. You don't want to play that character. In fact, you can delete it as soon as the comparison is done. Slap that character in Outbreak or Breakout or whatever and log out back to the menu.

You should now have two similar characters - one big and one smaller. I've ended up with a Small Lemon and a Big Lemon. Look at them very closely, because the key to your height is right in front of your eyes. In this game, there's nothing to actually compare your character with in-game, because things vary too much. The ONLY thing that will give you an accurate assessment is a max-height copy of the same character. This gives you a constant, never-changing benchmark. This is what you compare against. Now HOW you compare is entirely up to you, though I'd advise against drawing on your screen.

I've done it many different ways, myself, from putting my finger on the screen where the head of one character is and switching (leaves a nice greasy spot), to stretching a sheet of paper at head level and comparing. For this example, I've put together a comparison picture. The white line here represents Small Lemon's head level, and if we trace it to the left, we can see just how tall Small Lemon is in comparison to Big Lemon. There are several areas on Big Lemon you can measure from, such as the belly or the left hand's lower arm, but I would suggest going for a place where the line intersects a detail on Big Lemon you can remember and recreate in Green. In this case, if you look at where the line intersects with Big Lemon's right arm, you'll note that that's slap-bang over the inside of his right elbow. That's what we'll use.

Additional notes
You may be tempted to measure against the background. After all, there is this nice, even building back there almost begging to be used as a ruler. But backgrounds change between all the character creation screens, so that measurement would be meaningless. Avoid falling for that unless you have specifically replaced all of your backgrounds to be the same one.

It is advisable that you never rotate your characters throughout this entire process. Accurate measurements can only be taken when comparing characters with the same orientation. You CANNOT match a character's orientation back to the default once it's been moved. Back out far enough for the orientation and reset before proceeding.
End notes

So you have a relatively accurate measurement of how high your character should be. How do we transfer that into the game? We move on to the final step. Go into the character editor and make your character again. Make it as perfectly exact as you can, as that's going to be what you end up with in-game. Don't bother with any sliders on the Green Outline screen, just make the character in the costume editor.

When you're done, you will have gotten everything perfect, except the height. Now, back up to the Green Outline screen to finish this. Bump your character's height up to max and look at him. Now, remember the measurement we took before? Note the point up to where your character reaches against a max-height one, then drop the height down until the top of the character's head reaches that point. Again, you can measure however you please, but I put together this comparison pic. Remember what we found out? The top of Small Lemon's head reaches up to the inside of Bit Lemon's right elbow. That means that the height of Big Lemon's right shoulder is the height where the top Final Lemon's head should be like. In my pic, this is represented by the white line. The height at which Final Lemon matches the white line is the height given at the bottom of the picture. That's the height I used on the original character, and the height I'm going to want to use when recreating him.

I should not that this final step, in addition to being really hard and annoying, is also not perfectly accurate. It relies a LOT on getting your orientation right, catching the models at the same state of breathing (I prefer full breath in) and locating the "line" you want to match, itself. Barring any help from the development team, however, that's as close as we're ever going to get, and it's certainly a heck of a lot more precise than winging it from bad memory or trying to measure up against other people and obstacles. Plus, as laborious as it is to pull off, it still beats remaking 5 times over and still getting it wrong.

Final words

That's it. You're done. You have a copy of your character that's as close to the original as you're likely going to get. It took a long time to do, and it took even longer to write, so most of you that made it this far are probably wondering "Dude! Who cares?" Why, indeed, would it be so important to remake a character that one would have to go through THAT? Well, I have several reasons, see if one works for you:

1. It's a one-time process. You do it once, your character is transferred and you don't need to do it again.

2. It's precise. A lot more precise than any amount of winging it. To some people (myself included), their characters are perfect just the way they made them. Remaking them and risking getting them "wrong" is a very unpleasant prospect, enough to turn them off the character completely, or make them reroll and try again.

3. It's "right." Sometimes when we remake old stuff, we can't shake the feeling that we got something wrong. Even when everything is accurate, it still feels like we did something wrong and the character is somehow off, simply because it would have been so easy to make a mistake. This method alleviates that. It's precise and accurate. It doesn't LET you make any meaningful mistakes. The character is always "right."

That's all I have for now. With the new Powerset Proliferation feature, with the prospect of new Powersets in the future and with the general evolution of the game, I know there will be a lot of people who will want to reroll for one reason or another. If I've helped at least one of them, then this guide has done its job.

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Excellent story, Sam.

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Thanks a bunch

My mind is already abuzz with possible ways I can perpetuate it, though for now I NEED to leave it alone. At least for a while.

But then on the other hand, I'm really happy about this. I seriously believed I'd lost my inspiration even just a week ago. I know my little story isn't to everyone's taste, and I know it's rife with errors and mistakes of every calibre, and that I most likely don't have the first clue about creative writing ('cause I don't ), but the fact that I have ideas I can put together into something I like, that makes me happy.

Still need to proof-read it a few times, probably top to bottom, no less, but this chapter is done. And, frankly, that's more than I can say for most other stories I've started

Journal Entry #33507547
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 24
Subject: Last Words
Body:
It’s 4 AM now, and we’re entering Cheryl’s holding cell in 10 to 15 minutes. The Section 4 assault is still an hour away. I’m making this entry now, because I am afraid I may not survive this meeting. For anyone who finds this, my name is Miles Steinberg. I worked as project leader of Paranormal Psychology for [sensitive information censored] for 27 years. I’ve dealt with many paranormally inclined and psychotic patients, and all of them were painted as monsters. My current project, #1214, Cheryl Pierce, was brought to me as just another monster. But she isn’t a monster. She is a hurt, scared little girl just trying to wake up from her pain. The real monsters are up there – the men who paid to have her kidnapped, locked in a cell and stuffed with all manner of drugs. They are the real monsters, and now they’re coming for us. Coming for her.
We’ve prepared as well as we could. We’ve had our little naps, steeled our minds and went through the procedure. It was decided that only three would go into Cheryl’s cell – myself, the administrator and TC. It wasn’t a hard choice. Of those few who survive, none are in good enough mental health to do this, and even if they were, everyone is scared witless just thinking about that little girl. Just the same. She spoke to me. I need to be the one to go speak with her. The brain scramblers around the holding cell are still active, but we’ll need to shut them down when we enter. TC assures me she can protect us from the inevitable psychic attack that will occur, at least for a while. That’s all we need, just a little time. If I can get in touch with Cheryl, if I could just talk to her... I don’t know what that will achieve, but I know I have to.
I need to leave now. They’re ready to go.

Journal Entry #33507548
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 24
Subject: Indescribable
Body:
We survived. I spoke with Cheryl, and the experience was both exhilarating and mortifying at the same time. We shut down the brain scramblers, and we were expecting we come under a massive psychic attack, but TC didn’t sense anything. As we walked into the room, both the administrator and TC began hearing that same whisper, booming into their ears, but being completely unintelligible. I heard it too, but it wasn’t just a girl’s whisper I heard. There was something else in it, something in the background. It sounded like a deep, booming voice was mumbling something unintelligible. A voice uniquely intertwined with Cheryl’s whisper, perhaps even part of that same whisper. I... I need to retell this as it happened. I can’t afford to try and make sense of it now. Not now, after everything that has happened. I can’t think clearly.
When I saw Cheryl in person for the first time, my heart sank. I’d seen her once before, when they first brought her in, and she looked like a somewhat skinny, but otherwise completely normal little girl. But now... Now she looked like a ghoul. Her skin was pale, her hair had grown long and dishevelled, hanging in rags over her face, her gown had creased and stained. What have we done to this little girl? What have I done... All these years, all these subjects, I never once looked at them as human beings. I did tests on them, hurt them, tortured them, and never at all thought about what I was doing to them. No... I was the real monster here all along.
Cheryl’s eyes first greeted me, just the same as I remember them – dark, brooding and incredibly piercing. She knew me. Even though she’d never seen me before, she knew who I was. She knew why I’d come. She just sat there, not saying anything, and yet saying so very much. This little girl has indescribable presence. Being in the same room as her literally stunned us. We’d prepared for this, rehearsed so many times, and yet when we came into her presence, everything just went away. She spoke to us first. Spoke to me. Oh, her voice... That voice... It was... Terrifying. She spoke in a very low whisper, but it howled in my head like wind coming from all directions at once, and at the same time from deep within my own mind. It was that same whisper, as if a thousand voices spoke over each other. But I understood.
I’ve attached the transcript of our conversation to the end of this file. I’ve filled in all the blanks by hand. None of the audio tapes caught anything Cheryl said, all they have is this same, unintelligible whisper and just the things we said. But I know what she said. I could never forget. Her voice is imprinted into my mind, such that I will always hear it now, no matter what happens. Cheryl has reached out and touched my mind. Touched my heart. I want to save this girl from her darkness, but I fear there is nothing I can do.
The section 4 assault didn’t materialise. I don’t know why. The lift shaft is still sealed and the radio chatter from top-side has gone completely silent. I have a suspicion why, but I can’t talk about it now. I’m tired. I need to sleep. Cheryl’s gone. She left us. Only the three of us. I think she finally woke up. But now it’s time for us to sleep.

Journal Entry #33507549
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 24
Subject: Cheryl Conversation Transcript With Notes
Body:
Cheryl – I know you. You can hear me.
Steinberg – Yes, Cheryl, I can hear you. Can no-one else hear you?
Cheryl – They don’t want to hear me. They’re afraid.
Administrator – Can you understand what she’s saying?
Steinberg – Yeah, seems only I can hear her.
Steinberg – Cheryl, what is it you want to tell us?
Cheryl – I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I had to.
Steinberg – But why did you have to hurt us?
Cheryl – I didn’t want to, but he said I had to.
Steinberg – Who said that?
Cheryl – The man from the darkness.
Steinberg – Who is that man? Can you tell us his name?
Cheryl – No. *note: her voice’s pitch lowered significantly when she said that
Steinberg – OK, Cheryl, I’m sorry.
TC – Miles, you said something to piss her off, ‘cause we’re in trouble now! *note: hostile psychic activity increased at this point.
Steinberg – We need more time, can you hold on?
TC – I can try, but don’t take your sweet time with this!
Steinberg – Cheryl, Can you tell me where this man came from?
Cheryl – From the darkness. He said he came for me.
Steinberg – From the darkness, you mean like when the lights go out?
Cheryl – No, not that kind of darkness. From the other darkness.
Steinberg – What other darkness? I don’t understand.
Cheryl – The darkness that’s always here. Can’t you see it?
Steinberg – Cheryl, I don’t think I can see that darkness. Can you describe it for me?
Cheryl – It’s dark, and there are people in it. It’s everywhere I look.
Steinberg – People? Can you talk to them?
Cheryl – They all want to come to me into the light, but I don’t like them.
Steinberg – And this man from the darkness, he came to you?
Cheryl – I called him. He said I had to. But I don’t like him anymore.
Steinberg – Why is that, Cheryl?
Cheryl – He makes me play scary games. I don’t like his games. People get hurt. I don’t want people to get hurt. He made me play his game with mom and dad. I didn’t like it, but he said I had to. I don’t like him. *note: at this point Cheryl became visibly upset.
Steinberg – That’s OK, Cheryl. That’s OK.
Administrator – Stein, you’re making her upset again. What are you talking about?
Steinberg – Something came out of “the darkness” and made her do all this.
Administrator – What?
TC – Guys, I can’t keep this up all day. Do something!
Steinberg – Working on it! Cheryl, we’ll help make this man go away.
Cheryl – You can’t make Mr. B go away.
Steinberg – Why do you believe we can’t make Mr. B go away?
Cheryl – He can’t leave me. He wants to leave me, but he says I won’t let him.
Steinberg – Why won’t you let him, Cheryl?
Cheryl – It hurts when I try to. I want to let him leave me, but I can’t.
Steinberg – Cheryl, I promise we’ll make him go away.
Cheryl – Shhh...
TC – What the... She’s stopped attacking. *note: all psychic activity ceased at that point
Administrator – The whisper’s gone, too.
Steinberg – Cheryl, what happened?
Cheryl – Mr. B is here. He says I have to play a game with you now. I’m sorry.
TC – Guys, there’s something else in here, and I don’t like it one bit!
Steinberg – Cheryl, no! Please, you can’t play this game with us! We don’t want to play!
Cheryl – I’m sorry. I have to. *note: physical psychic activity begins to shake the room and swirl the air
Steinberg – No, you don’t! Cheryl, Mr. B is using you. Everything that’s happening here is your doing! Mr. B can’t do anything that you won’t let him do!
Cheryl – But...
TC – Miles, whatever you’re gonna’ do, do it now!
Steinberg – Cheryl, I’m sorry I hurt you.
Cheryl – I...
Steinberg – I’m sorry I kept you locked up in here, I’m sorry about all the terrible things I’ve said to you. I’m sorry I played this awful game with you.
Cheryl – I’m sorry, doctor. I can’t stop it...
TC – I can’t hold it!
Steinberg – Cheryl, no!
Cheryl – But I can save you... *note: at this point Cheryl’s voice returns back to a quiet whisper
Steinberg – Cheryl, why are you always whispering?
Cheryl – He talks through my voice. That’s how he hurts people. That’s how he makes things happen. I can’t make it stop. But I can save you.
TC – It’s gone! Whatever it was that was attacking us is gone!
Administrator – Stein, something’s happening to the girl!
Steinberg – May God help us now.
*note: the last thing we heard was a powerful, piercing scream, then Cheryl was gone.

Journal Entry #33507558
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 26
Subject: The Aftermath
Body:
What the hell? What day is it? The 26th? Did we sleep for two days straight? I woke up this morning from what felt like very deep dream. It took me half an hour just to remember where I was and what had happened. I found TC and the Administrator sound asleep in their quarters. Asleep in their beds, as if nothing had happened. Everyone else is dead. Even those who were still alive when we went to bed... What, two days ago? Even they are dead. I don’t know from what, I don’t care anymore. It’s just the three of us now, and we’re still sealed in. Why weren’t we invaded? What happened to the Code 9? When I went to bed yesterday... No, the day before yesterday... I didn’t care about anything. I just wanted to sleep. We all did. What happened to us in that cell? All I remember is that scream. The scream Cheryl let out just before she disappeared. That... That was easily the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life. It pierced my mind, flooded it with voices, made me see things. I know it wasn’t loud, because none of the microphones we still had operational caught it. But... That wasn’t Cheryl’s voice, at least I don’t think so. That... That thing... This Mr. B. That was his voice, I’m sure of it. I’ve been listening to Cheryl’s voice for... Months, I think, I don’t remember when this all started. I’ve been listening to her whispers, and I know them. I also know the growl that grates in the background, the voice that is not her own, but speaks through her, like presenter over the radio. That thing is what I was always afraid of, that stopped my heart, that killed all of my friends. But why didn’t it kill us? Why are the three of us still alive?
Cheryl is gone. I don’t know where she when, or what happened to her. As soon as she screamed, we ran out of her cell and the lock gate sealed behind us automatically. I’m not sure if we restarted the brain scrambler field or not, though I think I did. But she’s not in her cell now. I’ve checked the video, logs, and the cameras just filmed a minute of white noise, then when they returned, she was gone. I went into her holding cell earlier, and there are no signs of violence. She didn’t break out, that much is for sure. Even though she’s gone, however, I can still feel her. I can still hear her voice. I can still feel the good, kind little girl that I spoke with underneath all that power. I can still remember the girl that saved my life.
I don’t know what we’re going to do now. We’re sealed down here with barely any food and water left, we have no idea what’s going on on the surface... But at least we’re still alive. And you know what? After all this time, after everything that’s happened, I actually feel good right now. I’d forgotten what that felt, but I do. I think, in some small way, we helped Cheryl. We showed her that whatever it is that’s making her do these things isn’t all-powerful. That she can oppose it, that she can think and act for herself. I think we managed to wake her up from her living nightmare. Maybe, just maybe, she can do the rest on her own.
As for me, I’m done writing these reports. The company can kiss my [censored]. You want to know what happened here? Come find out, yourselves. I’m done leaving records for you.

Journal Entry #33507574
Author: Colonel Jack Morrison, Clean Up and Containment, Section 4
Date: April 29
Subject: Final report on project Baltazar
Body:
Project has been deemed a complete failure. All objectives have failed, and the situation has elevated to Code 11. Containment operations are currently underway, and are scheduled to complete by May 1st, provided Management can delay US rescue efforts until then.

Preliminary findings suggest that a massive psychic event occurred some time around the morning of April the 24th, coinciding almost exactly with the time we lost contact our outpost at the Daedalus research facility, as well as with the reports of riots in the town of Edmunton. What little eyewitness reports we have of the event describe a powerful, piecing scream emanating from belowground, followed by outbreaks of mass psychosis. Preliminary research has linked that to entries in the operation journal of the facility’s project leader. We are reasonably certain subject #1214 initiated a massive psychic attack that penetrated the facility’s outer shell filtered through to the city above, causing the psychosis and the riots.

The death rate in Edmunotn following the Code 10 is 100%, and destruction rate is around 85-95%. Trace evidence is low, in the 5-10% area. The air-burst tactical nukes have failed to create noticeable craters, and we’ve already fabricated a false ground zero. There are no survivors of the incident, but several recordings did leak out to unknown locations, and we are in the process of tracking those down and disposing of them. No official media coverage occurred or survives. As of right now, the situation is around 95% contained.

The search of the Daedalus facility yielded very little. All on-base personnel has been accounted for and confirmed dead, with the exception of project lead Miles Steinberg and facility administrator Amanda Marshal. There is also no signs of the traitor Tamika Cooper. The security leak that allowed this traitor to infiltrate the Daedalus facility, however, has been dealt with. Trevor Cooper is currently being interrogated, but it appears he played no part in the security leak. According to him, his sister stole his ID and passed herself off as him. We need to investigate why a woman with the first name of Trevor did not raise anyone’s suspicion, or how someone managed to authorise an insertion into a Code 9 situation. Worse still, we are not clear as to exactly what Miss Cooper’s goals were, but we’re looking into her records in hopes to find out.

We have, however, discovered an old light rail tunnel behind the wall of one of the facility’s warehouses. It appears the Daedalus facility was once part of the now defunct underground light rail system that was disbanded back in 1982. It doesn’t show up on any of the facility’s blueprints, but engineers are confident that particular warehouse was once an operational light rail station. I’m filing a request to have all current facilities inspected for links to undocumented light rail tunnels. It appears this tunnel was the rout of escape for the three missing persons. We are currently searching the tunnels, but 1980 maps show the tunnels heading into the now-disuses Gemini facility under Riverlake. Given the timeframe of the events, it is likely the targets have already left the facility, and so become impossible to track.

Subject #1214 is also missing from the facility. At this time we have no way of determining where the subject went or how it escaped. One of the few surviving video recordings suggests the subject disappeared out of its cell. IT believe it teleported away. Given that the subjects true powers were never accurately documented, currently this seems to be the most likely outcome. Unfortunately, we have no means to locate #1214 at this time. However, our examination of the facility’s superstructure reveal an interesting event. It appears the bedrock beneath the facility has been forced up, crushing 7 of the sub floors and killing everyone inside. This proves that #1214 had both telepathic and telekinetic powers as the original reports suggested.

Currently, operation is a total failure. No meaningful way of controlling the subject’s power was discovered, and the subject itself was lost, along with the entire Daedalus facility and the whole of the city of Edmunton above it. No research into the nature of the entity Baltazar appears to have been conducted at all, though Dr. Steinberg appears to have discovered its existence and made contact with it at some point. Unfortunately, both Dr. Steinberg and Administrator Marshal are missing, with no way to determine just how much knowledge they escaped with. The traitor that infiltrated the facility is also missing, presenting not only a glaring security risk, but also leaves us with no clue as to who she was working for or what her real objective was. We’ve also lost two platoons of soldiers, an entire facility’s staff and created a global ecological catastrophe and massive media sensation in the process.

I believe this tops even the Landark disaster of ‘79 in terms of size of failure. I’m submitting a request for a general overhaul and review of our operational procedures, security measures and general rules of conduct for field bases across the globe. This disaster may well be the one that buries us all.

[ QUOTE ]
spooky, can't wait for the next installment

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks

I've been working hard on the final instalment of the journal, and I'm not sure how well it came out, but I think at least it gives it some closure. I'm really not very happy with my writing these last few days. My drive and inspiration seem to be receding a bit, and you can probably tell from the quality of the story. I still think there are some good bits, but I'm glad that part is over. I might add more to this, as the story itself is far from over, but I can't promise that it will be done immediately. I haven't even decided what format the rest is going to take, how much I'll want to tie it into the loose ends from this part and... Generally what's going to happen. I have a somewhat vague idea, but nothing good enough for a story yet.

Just the same, I hope the read has been worth it

Here's the final section of this arc:

Journal Entry #33507524
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 19
Subject: The Death Knell
Body:
We are screwed. Our only hope of survival was HQ’s elite, and now he’ll be delayed another day. All I know is it has something to do with yesterday’s disaster, but frankly, I don’t give a crap. He’s not here, and we’re dying one by one. At this rate, I don’t know if we’ll even last until tomorrow. Frankly, I’m not sure anything can save us now.
None of us got any sleep tonight, but is that really unexpected? We lived through the worst nightmare imaginable yesterday, and it never went away. Even now, almost 20 hours later, I still see that... That shadow every time I so much as close my eyes. It’s spectral damage, it has to be. I know it has to be, but... I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve been trained to resist spectral terrors and mental suggestion. I’ve been dealt with hundreds of paranormals, been exposed to thousands of mental attacks and illusions. I should be able to deal with this, it’s what I do. And yet, I nearly lost my mind yesterday. None of my training, none of my experience, none of my knowledge, nothing could protect me. Why? Why did this happen to me? It shouldn’t have? This... This was no mere spectral terror, no mere illusion. This felt real. Oh so terribly real. My fear wasn’t a suggestion, it felt real. I wasn’t being forced to be afraid, no. I was shown an image. An image that terrified me to the core. That shadow was evil. I don’t know what it was, and I honestly don’t want to know, but whatever it was, it’s not of our world. It... It exuded indescribable malice, untold power and... And something else I can’t even describe. It’s as if a primordial part of my mind recognised this presence, and knew full well to be very afraid. I still get cold shivers just thinking about it. This shadow, this presence... I don’t think it’s human at all.
I’m not going to get any of my questions answered, however. I don’t think we’ll be doing any more research from now on. We’re just fighting for our lives. I don’t know what’s keeping the generator down on level 12 still running, but we know it’s not the engineers. All the radio signals we’re getting from down there consist of just that same maddening whisper. We’ve welded the lift shafts to the lower levels shut and erected shields around them. Whatever got released down there, we don’t want it up here in PP. The administrator has taken active charge of the facility now. She’s wasted no time in organising a defensive position. We rigged up half a dozen old brain scrambler emitters we had on cold storage and arranged them so they cover the entirety of our command centre. It’s given us all splitting headaches, but at least it made the whisper go away. I think we’re safe here, and I’d gladly trade that madness for any headache I’m offered. A search party with a mobile brain scrambler scoured the facility for the missing people, but of the 5 they found, only 1 was alive, and even he died on rout back to ICU. We don’t have confirmation of all missing personnel, but looking for them is just too hazardous. We’ve had to count all 9 as mortalities.
With engineering gone, we cannot count on the main generator downstairs, and since the backup generators didn’t fire last time, we can’t count on them, either. We’ve began ripping engines and generators off our own equipment and jury-rigging them to power important devices, like the array of mental scramblers we’ve positioned around 1214’s holding cell. We won’t survive another massive psychic attack if the power goes down, that much is certain.

Journal Entry #33507529
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 20
Subject: What The Hell?
Body:
If I hadn’t lost my judgement a week ago, I’d have laughed so hard today. HQ’s elite finally arrived today. I led a team of 5 to greet him and what do I see? He is a she. A rather strikingly beautiful young woman, in fact. What the hell kind of parents call their daughter “Trevor?” And I thought we were going insane down here. But Trevor, or TC as she’s asked us to call her, can’t be older than 25. How the hell did she manage to get promoted to elite status. That takes decades of training and experience. Did she start with the company from childhood or something? I know there are rumours running around of eugenically-bred super-children, but could I be looking at one of them? Whatever the case, the administrator sure doesn’t seem to like TC. Their first meeting was almost comic. I know our administrator is a strong, proud woman with a cool head and clear drive, so to see her engage in the most ridiculous verbal catfight you can imagine was embarrassing. I really want to resign that to the stress of the situation, but I suspect the administrator is actually a little jealous. Whatever. As long as those two can keep focussed, maybe we can get out of this mess.
TC had a lot of interesting things to tell me, however. We’re keeping the shielding on 1214’s cell pretty much blasting at full power at all times, and we were convinced that we’d managed to restrict her power, but apparently we’re still not as secure as we thought. TC can sense psychic activity everywhere, even in the areas shielded by brain scramblers. Come to think of it, if TC can sense things inside the brain scrambler field, then that means she can still channel her psychic energies, and if she can, then so can 1214. According to our resident psychic, however, the energies are pretty weak. Too weak to affect us if we stay within the protected zones. I’m not sure if I should be concerned or relived about that, but I do know it’s put everyone here on edge. Whatever little safety we thought we’d made for ourselves turns out to be less secure than we thought. Now there’s a running trend.
She told me something else, though, something that seems to make a hell of a lot of sense now that I think about it. 1214 is psychic, that much we already knew, but according to TC, the way the subject uses these psychic powers is entirely very reminiscent of actual paranormal activity. I don’t have a lot of test results to go on, but I’ve reviewed what I had, and I believe she is right. The nature of the energy is psychic, but its pattern is an almost exact match to a textbook case of paranormal activity. I’m still not sure what the implications of that are, but I need to think about it. Realistically, though, why would a psychic emulate paranormal affinity? Why not just use her psychic powers directly? There’s something here that I’m not seeing, but what?

Journal Entry #33507529
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 20
Subject: Mounting Death Toll
Body:
We lost power again today. To everything. The main generator is dead and buried, along with everything below level 9. Something happened, I don’t know what, but the lower levels collapsed. It doesn’t make sense. Each level is supported by 10 massive steel girders. You’d need masses of high explosives to even just dent the things. I can’t believe they just gave way. And if 1214 is largely isolated in her cell, then... What the hell is going on?
Today’s blackout took out everything, even our own emergency generators. The only thing that kept us safe was TC’s intervention. She sensed the blackout coming and prepared... Hell if I know what she prepared, she said she’d protect us, then she took this goofy pose and squinted really hard. Whatever she did, though, I’m thankful to her for doing it. As soon as the power went down, I saw a vision of 1214 again. Like before, she was walking towards me, illuminated by white flashes, but this time she cast no shadow. Her eyes were still mortifying, but I’ve learned to resist that monster’s gaze now. She came up to me and spoke. She moved her mouth, but no words came out, just a low, indistinguishable whisper. She took my hand, pulled me down to a kneel and looked me dead in the eye. She said something to me, said it in a whisper. And I think I understood it. I don’t know any more, I could be delusional, but I could swear she whispered “I’m sorry.” No sooner had she said that, the lights came back on. Just as if the little girl holding my hand were a shadow, herself, she disappeared with the light. I hadn’t collapsed this time. Instead, I woke up in a kneel with the administrator standing over me. Why does this motif of shadows keep repeating in these visions? Is 1214 trying to tell me something? I felt... I felt as though I’m not afraid of her, but rather of her shadow. Afraid of the darkness she brings with her every time we meet, but not of the little girl, herself. I don’t understand any of it.
Unfortunately, we’ve lost TC. She’s still alive, but is comatose and in critical condition. She took the brunt of that massive psychic attack, and she saved us all. I... I really don’t think anyone’s ever done something like this for me. I’ve been in this company for over 30 years now, and everything HQ has done has convinced me that I was expendable. But this young woman, she took one for me. I know she was probably following orders, but still... Even the administrator seems to appreciate it. She couldn’t stand TC at first, but now she’s spending most of her time by TC’s bedside. I really need to get some sleep, because I don’t get anything anymore.

Journal Entry #33507533
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 21
Subject: A Breather
Body:
After yesterday’s incident, we expected things to go to hell in a handbasket, but they seem to have calmed down. 1214’s power seems to have receded back into her holding cell and our generators are holding firm. We’re still not sure how she was able to reach out of her holding cell and affect the main generator, but we found out how she shut down ours – because I’m an idiot. While we were aligning the brain scramblers in the control room, I put one of the mobile generators next to the scrambler it was powering, which put it just a little out of the brain scrambler field. 1214 was able to affect it without having to interact with our protective field. Once that went down, that gave her full reach over us. It turns out that it’s my fault TC got hurt and I... I don’t think I can go on. I can’t think straight any more. My head is killing me, I can still hear 1214’s whisper in my ears and now I caused this... This disaster. The administrator tried to convince me it wasn’t my fault, and that it was an honest accident, but I know better. I’m the project leader here, I’m the one who’s supposed to be immune to psychosis and the one who’s responsible for all base personnel. Instead, I put everyone in danger because I wasn’t thinking straight.
I don’t know what to do. I need to rest. I haven’t slept in 72 hours, and I can no longer tell if the visions I’m seeing are the result of psychic illusions, or if I’m just finally losing my mind. I keep thinking about that shadow. I keep seeing it. I can’t tell the difference anymore. I... I feel like it has some kind of significance. Like all these visions do. Is 1214 trying to tell me something, or is she trying to kill me? What am I really afraid of here? I don’t know. I just... I just don’t know. None of it makes sense. Nothing makes sense any more. I don’t even know why I’m here. I was supposed to be on vacation with my son. I had a month leave coming next... Oh, I don’t even know what date it is. I shouldn’t be here. I was supposed to be out. I haven’t seen my son for... How long has it been? A year? I’ve never been there for him since his mother died. She was always taking such good care of him, always had time for him. I love him so very much, but will he even remember me now? What the hell am I doing down here? If I live through this, I’m leaving this company for good. This... This madness... I can’t do this anymore.

Journal Entry #33507539
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 22
Subject: Out Of Options
Body:
We’ve officially run out of options. I spoke with the administrator this morning, and I now know we’re sunk. She managed to get a call out past Section 4 jammers and reached an old friend of hers over at HQ. They’ve elevated the situation to Code 9 – terminate project, eliminate all exposed personnel, destroy all evidence. They’re going to kill us all, and they’ll probably try to kill 1214, as well. I must admit, it’ll be funny to see them try that. Maybe when they break in, we’ll just shut down our generators and let her show them what we’re dealing with here. Clearly, Section 4 won’t be stupid enough to come unprepared, but I know how those fools at HQ think, and I’ve seen 1214’s power. It doesn’t matter what they do, they will never be prepared for her. But they’ll try, which buys us some time. The administrator says two days. I guess there’s only one thing left to do now.
TC woke up today, as well, which was marvellous news. It seems she was attacked with spectral terrors so powerful they shut down her brain activity, but this young lady fought her way through them. I’m impressed. We’ll certainly need her help if we want to get out of this alive. I told her about the Code 9 order, and I expected her to panic, but she remained largely unmoved. I don’t think she was surprised at all. I think she was expecting it. Did they warn her she’d be killed in the end? Why would they send her in, then? Or maybe she just foresaw what was going to happen? But then why would she even come here if she knew she was going to die? Or maybe she knows she can survive? I asked her about it, but she didn’t give me an answer. Frankly, I’m too tired to insist.
Beyond that, the situation is strangely quiet. Even 1214’s whisper seems to have receded. We’ve seen no massive psychic attacks recently, either. Of course, this doesn’t make me any more confident, it just makes me jittery with anticipation of the next one. But I... Sense that something has changed. I can’t get my last encounter with 1214 out of my head. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I wasn’t afraid of her, not in the same way as I was pretty much every time before. I know she wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to tell me something, but what? And what is the deal with that shadow and the darkness motif? Do those visions mean something? I think they do, but what? I can’t think straight anymore. I need sleep. I’m going to try to get some sleep tonight, and I don’t care if I get eaten by spectres. We’re all going to die, anyway, and I sure as hell can’t help anyone when I can barely speak a sentence. We have two more days to live. Might as well get some sleep.

Journal Entry #33507545
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 23
Subject: Vision
Body:
I think I understand now. I managed to fall asleep last night, and I had a dream. A very vivid dream. 1214... Cheryl... Was walking through a corridor with a single white luminescent light above. A long, ugly shadow trailed behind her. As she approached a light, her shadow stretched far behind her. I looked into her eyes, and I saw something I hadn’t before. I saw a little girl trying to reach out to me. I wasn’t afraid of her eyes, even though I could sense they saw right through me. Instead, they made me calm, because I could tell they saw my will to help. I was relieved about that. But as she reached the light, her shadow grew shorter, and finally gathered around her feet. Then her eyes changed. They grew darker, more menacing. More aggressive. They saw right through me. They saw my weaknesses, they saw my fears. They handed my life to her on a silver platter. And as she walked past the light, her shadow stretched forward, towards me. This ugly, frightening shadow of a man stretched and stretch in my direction, and with every second I grew more and more afraid. I had no idea what it was, but it was scaring me to death. The shadow finally reached me, and cast its darkness over me. It enveloped me, invaded me with a foreign consciousness. A malicious, evil being touched my mind, and it chilled me to the bone. In the darkness, I saw a face, and I heard a voice. The face looked human, but I knew it was not. The voice sounded human, but it was something else. This... This shadow. That is what I have always been afraid of. That evil, that malice, that... That thing. It lives inside the girl, it hides in her shadow. But... What is it?
I awoke to the administrator shaking me. She said I was screaming at the top of my lungs in my sleep. Was I? I know I tried to scream when I saw the shadow, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t in the vision, at least. Was it real, this strange dream? Or was it just that – a strange dream that my battered mind conjured up to make me feel like I understood? I spoke with TC about it, and she couldn’t detect any psychic energy residue on me. Whatever happened to me tonight, Cheryl didn’t do it. Or maybe not directly. Ever since she spoke to me that time, this recurring memory has stayed with me. Perhaps she left something inside my mind? A message? I believe so. I don’t understand it at all. I have no idea what I saw, but I do know one thing – this little girl is not a monster, not in the way I had always thought. She is living in this waking nightmare just the same way we all are, suffering and screaming, contorting in pain and fear. But we can’t see her pain, and we can’t hear her screams. She is living her own nightmare, where she cannot move to run, and where her screams only come out as whispers. We can’t keep using her as a guinea pig. We need to save her. I need to talk with her in person. It’s the only way.
I put that proposal forward with the administrator, and she laughed in my face. Yes, even as recently as yesterday, I would have agreed with her completely and denounced the idea as ludicrous, but today... I don’t think Cheryl wants to hurt us. I don’t think she ever did. She is living in darkness, and we need to save her. If we allow Section 4’s commandos to raid the complex and kill us, they’d just provoke her into more violence, and pull her even deeper into darkness. I... I don’t want her to suffer any more. I have been living her pain for so very long now. I want to see it end. TC seems to agree with me, strangely. At first she thought I was nuts, but I suspect she tried to contact Cheryl and felt pretty much the same as me. The administrator seems to have heeded her word pretty much without question. What is the deal with those two?
So it’s decided, then. Our sources tell us that Section 4 have put their invasion plan at 08:00 hours tomorrow. That leaves us around 4 hours to make contact with Sheryl. I have no idea what I’m trying to achieve by doing so, but may God help me when I face her in person.

Thanks a bunch

New chapters are generally not proof-read pretty much at all. It is indeed feverish writing. I hate taking breaks, because once I lose my train of thought and my feel for what the setting is supposed to exude, it's gone. Even something as simple as having to go a couple of pages up and copy-paste the name Landark because I just can't seem to remember it can be disruptive

I generally try to proof-read the previous chapter before I start making the new one, partly to have at least some kind of quality control, and partly because it sets me in the mood. This last one will probably be proof-read some time tomorrow before I start making the next one. I promise

*edit* Come to think of it, I wouldn't be opposed to having spelling and grammar errors pointed out to me. If any spelling errors made it through, then Word's spell-check let them through, so I'm not likely to find them on a skim. I will be proof-reading this stuff, of course, and I don't want this to come off as a demand. More I'm saying that if something bugs you about how I wrote something, don't worry about letting me know. Unlike most people on these forums, I actually like having my spelling errors pointed out to me

*editedit*
Adding the new chapter today. It came out shorter than I expected it to in terms of days, but I think there's enough in there for it to have a meaning.

Journal Entry #33507489
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 11
Subject: Wait And See
Body:
I’m keeping the pressure up on the administrator, insisting on enlisting outside assistance, but she’s holding firm that the lockdown will not be compromised. Honestly, at this point I’m no longer sure if HQ is putting pressure on her, or if she’s just using them as an excuse. I was certain that the brass would have learned to listen to me after Wilso’s preventable death, and yet here we are in the same situation. I’m telling them in the plainest words I have, that if we do not receive outside assistance soon, more people will die. And they give me that nonsense about security measures in return? Could these people be any more simple? How many more of us need to die before they learn to bloody listen to me! And the administrator is just making it worse by acting like some disinterested third party and refusing to work with me. Well, whatever happens in on her head, then.
We’re having no success in our research on 1214, either, but is anyone really surprised? We exhausted all of our methods two weeks ago, yet HQ still refuse to provide assistance. I suppose they believe that just because Cindy, the mental-activity spectral grid engine operator, pulled a miracle out of her hat, that we should suddenly be able to reinvent the wheel and imagine a new way to measure what may or may not even be there. We need outside assistance. We need more scanning equipment. For instance, I’d like to run a bio field density analysis to verify a suspicion I have, but we are simply not equipped with a scanner that can do that. I told the administrator about it, and she gave me an excuse. God damn it!
I don’t know what’s going on top-side, but today has been a complete bust. We’ve done all we can about 1214, and now we’re reduced to tossing around stupid ideas like looking for patterns in the way the girl tilts her head. I don’t believe this!

Journal Entry #33507495
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 12
Subject: Unforeseen Consequences
Body:
We had several minor security breaches last night, but the mental-activity spectral grid showed no imbalances. And yet, these breaches bear all the hallmarks of paranormal events. Or do they? Several members of personnel reported feeling a presence in their quarters. Even after searching them, they could still not escape the feeling, and so ended up getting very little sleep. Eddie, the janitor also suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be sedated. Even I have been feeling strange, developing a short temper and losing my patience. Just this morning I had a bitter argument with the administrator. I’m no longer certain that she’s refusing to cooperate with us of her own will. She was genuinely frightened of something, though I don’t know of what.
I don’t understand this. Is 1214 responsible for this? Her brain activity has been holding steady, nothing has showed up on the mental-activity spectral grid balance charts and... I’m beginning to think these last events aren’t paranormal at all. We’ve been sealed inside this concrete coffin for almost a week now, cut off from the outside world, from our families and loved ones. I would be a fool if I couldn’t see how this is affecting the mental health of the personnel. They are reaching the limit of their endurance, and they’re starting to become increasingly neurotic and stressed out. The fact that we’re trapped here together with what could potentially be a malevolent monster that can play tricks on your mind certainly isn’t helping. I’m beginning to worry about the state of mind of everybody in this facility. We’re not too far away from turning from scientists into lab rats, ourselves. Already some of my colleagues are losing their focus and their ability to affect scientific work.
Something needs to happen, and it needs to happen soon, or I fear things may get really, really bad.

Journal Entry #33507498
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 13
Subject: Inexplicable
Body:
I fell under her power today. At least I think I did. I’ve been out of ideas for so long now. I looked through records, looked through all scan results, went over theories and conjecture and finally ended up in Observation, just looking at 1214 as she sat in her holding cell. Her physical state has deteriorated greatly since we brought her here. She’s lost some weight and her skin has gone pale. However, her presence has not wavered at all. Even when she’s just sitting there doing nothing, I can still feel her power. I’m scared of her, I really am. Every day I look at her observation videos and hope and pray that she hasn’t move and that she hasn’t shown any signs of activity. Such a little creature, yet she instils such fear in those around her. As I was looking at her and thinking, however, she did move. Ever so slightly she turned her face and looked straight into the lens of the camera... Straight into my eyes. Oh, I had forgotten what her cursed little eyes looked like and the kind of terror they instilled into my heart. I knew she was looking at me, even though I was 50 feet away behind a solid concrete wall. She knew I was watching her, and at that moment... I knew she was watching me. Had been watching me. These eyes, they... They see me. They see through me. The moment she looks at me, I can feel she knows everything I’m thinking, everything I feel... Everything I am.
She saw me through the camera. I know she could see me through the walls of her cell. See me wherever I went. I... I think she could see us all. Everyone. She’s sitting there in her cell, watching us day in and day out. And people can feel that. It makes them nervous. It makes them suspicious. It makes them unable to sleep at night. Even I can feel that there’s someone there, watching me, always just out the corner of my eye, always behind my back, but always there no matter where I go and what I do.
1214 scared me to death today, and I am not exaggerating. This wretched little girl is evil, I just know it. But even if we can’t measure her power, I know that she is indescribably strong. I just know it. She’s sitting there in her cell, biding her time. But if she really wanted to, she could... I don’t even want to think about it. We need help, and we need it fast. The facility personnel are losing their minds, I’m running out of ideas and it’s obvious that 1214 won’t be content to sit in her cell forever. I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow I will get results or I will shut down this project. This is going too far.

Journal Entry #33507502
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 14
Subject: The Bastards
Body:
Now I know why we’ve been sealed in here for coming on two weeks now and why we’ve been refused assistance so stoutly. HQ have reviewed my findings and deemed our project to be a code 8 hazard. They’re just following standard protocol. Seal off the area, contain all subjects exposed and await further orders. It appears all of us here at Paranormal Psychiatry have become expendable. The administrator told me all this today. She’d known for over a week now, which would explain her change in attitude. I understand now why she was so scared and so distant. We’ve been condemned to die down here, and if the subject doesn’t kill us, Section 4 commandos probably will. She was the only one with sufficient authority to know about this, and was under strict orders to keep it from us, but I guess even her loyalties have their limits.
This is just great! We’re condemned down here. Maybe I should just open 1214’s cell and go slap her on the face. See if she’ll punch a hole to the centre of the Earth. I bet those [censored] over at HQ will just love that to bits. But no... We’re still Code 8, and have been so for a while now. They’re still observing, which means there’s still hope for a resolution, or at least results of some sort. No, we still have a chance. If they won’t let us out, then maybe we can get them to let help in. I just need to convince the administrator to negotiate for it. If we’re still alive down here, then they’re expecting results. So let’s give them some results. If 1214 really was paranormal all along, then there will be imprinted messages on all audio and video observations made of her since she arrived. Forget IT, we’ll rescan them here. She must have also imprinted on other surveillance equipment throughout the base and created paranormal noise all across the complex. We’ll need to review those, as well. I’m not going to go down like a chump!

Journal Entry #33507507
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 15
Subject: Whisper
Body:
Finally, a real breakthrough! While reviewing audio tapes taken from 1214’s holding cell, Cindy managed to isolate what sounds like a low whisper. It will take a lot more work before we can tell what it’s actually saying, but we have our first tangible confirmation that 1214 really does have a paranormal affinity. I guess at this point HQ are already convinced of this, having locked us down with a Code 8, but these results may get them interested enough to send help down here. I’ve submitted the raw whisper recording to the administrator, and she has forwarded it to HQ. I certainly hope that makes things happen.
This finding would normally have had everyone in the base excited with the prospect of paranormal activity, but instead it just made is look over our shoulder all the time. This whisper... It’s eerily similar to the constant noise we’ve been hearing in our minds ever since 1214 awoke. I realise paranormal noise is an on-the-job hazard and an unavoidable side effect, but could this be actual speech we’re hearing? Could she actually be talking to us? Telling us things? Making us do things? We thought ourselves secure, protected behind thick walls and powerful shields, but were we really? There is something very strange about this little girl. She’s not an ordinary paranormal, that much I’m pretty sure about.

Journal Entry #33507512
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 16
Subject: A Losing Game
Body:
Things are approaching a critical stage here. The mental health level of my colleagues is taking a dive, and even I’m starting to lose my grip on reality. We’ve had no progress with the paranormal noise whatsoever – it’s still unintelligible. However, people are starting to see and hear things. At this point I can’t tell if it’s paranormal or psychological. I’ve dispensed a few packs of prescription drugs and anti-depressants to the staff, and this seems to have put a lid on the situation somewhat, but I can see that things are getting out of hand. We’ve been trapped in this dark pit for longer than I can remember, and this constant, incessant whispering is starting to drive us all mad. At first I could put it out of my mind, but it never ends and it never lets up. I don’t understand what it’s saying, but... Maybe I do. My mind cannot interpret it into words that I can write down, but I feel like... Like I somehow know what it means. Like it can make me do things, make me feel things. It makes me nervous to think that, but it’s a possibility I need to accept. I’ve been under the influence of a paranormal before, and I know just how strong their grip can be. How persuasive their words are. It takes a strong mind to resist that. Though mine isn’t as strong as it used to be, I can tough it out. I’ve had extensive training in resisting suggestion. I worry about my colleagues, however. They’re not soldiers, they’re scientists. They have so very little protection against it.
At least we confirmed that 1214’s power is leaking out through the seals on her holding cell. It’s infected the entire complex. Every audio-recording machine in just about every location has picked up on 1214’s paranormal noise, and we began discovering shapes and symbols in the noise most of our cameras were experiencing. It’s clear that we’ve all been exposed to it pretty much since the day 1214 was first delivered to us. That would explain the anxiety, the visions, the feelings and even the stress we have all been going through. The influence isn’t strong, but it’s very pervasive. It has been building up for almost a month now, and frankly, I don’t know how much longer we can take it.

Journal Entry #33507514
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 17
Subject: Frightening Breakthrough
Body:
We know what it is! Finally, after all this time, we figured it out. Jason rigged an old broad-band brain scanner to perform area sweeps, and discovered brain activity was occurring right there in the middle of the room, without a brain in sight! The device has a very limited range – 10 feet or thereabout – but we wheeled it all over the facility, and it measured brain activity absolutely everywhere. There is only one explanation for this, and it’s something I’d never even considered at all. 1214 isn’t paranormal, at least not entirely so. What she is, is psychic. This would explain so very much. Just about everything we had attributed to paranormal activity could just as easily be explained with psychic activity, instead. And unlike paranormal activity, we can actually measure 1214’s psychic activity.
So far, all we have is partial data from a machine that can barely be called reliable, but already things make a lot more sense. We were never measuring for psychic activity at all, so there was nothing to detect. However, like paranormal activity, psychic effects operate on a quantum level, which is why they left a disturbance on our mental-activity spectral grid. Additionally, the shielding we have on 1214’s holding cell is very effective at resisting most types of paranormal activity, but offers only moderate resistance to projected brain waves, and so it only hampers, but does not prevent psychic activity from slipping through.
Finally, we have real results. I wasted no time in reporting them to the administrator, and she was very relieved to hear it. She is a strong woman, stronger than me by a lot, but even she seems to be losing this battle of late. Her drive and determination seem to have disappeared, and though she wills herself on, I can tell she is hurting. But the new results seem to have lifted her spirits some. She forwarded them over to HQ, and we got great news – they are sending help. The order comes down straight from Management that an exception in the Code 8 should be made and an operative is being sent in soon. Trevor Cooper, an elite paranormal psychic, apparently. I didn’t even know something like that existed, but if he’s an elite, then I believe it. It makes me wonder, in fact, if 1214 may not be something like that, herself. I’ll need to think about that, though the prospect is intriguing.
I should mention that it’s interesting HQ would send in an elite when they previously refused to send any help at all. Yes, I realise that in the most basic sense, they are more likely to send an operative who can take care of himself in a Code 8 situation, but I know from experience that HQ aren’t terribly concerned with the lives of their operatives. As a matter of fact, why would they send an elite into a Code 8, when there’s a good chance they’ll lose him? Elites cost millions if not billions to train and outfit, and yet they’re risking one so haphazardly? Does someone at Management know something we don’t? I’m beginning to consider that prospect very seriously.

Journal Entry #33507519
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 18
Subject: Disaster
Body:
Our joy at reinforcements didn’t last long. At 6AM today, the main generator on level 12 shut down and we lost power to the entire complex. None of the 6 back-up generators activated. We remained with no power for around 13 minutes, and I have to say, these were the worst 13 minutes of my life. As the power went down, the shielding on 1214’s holding cell went down with it, and then all hell broke loose. A waking nightmare in the dark is the only way I can describe it. I, personally, saw 1214 walking in the dark towards me, illuminated by flashes of pure white light, like someone was taking flash pictures of her. She looked just as I remember her from the observation videos – underweight and dishevelled, with eyes that pierced me like pikes. She was looking straight into me, straight through me, like I was made of glass. I could feel her eyes predicting my every move, my every thought, and writing a terrible future for me. Her unintelligible whisper boomed in my head like a hurricane wind. She was telling me so much, saying so much, and while I didn’t understand a thing, I understood everything. The horror of what she told me made my heart stop beating and my body freeze in a spot. I wanted to run, I wanted to scream... But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. And when she came up to me, something happened. A flash of white light occurred, and hung on for about a second. It made 1214... Cheryl... It made her cast the most horrifying shadow I have ever seen. It was clearly not her shadow, but that of a man, tall and slender. The shadow of a man whose presence made my blood run cold without even knowing what I was looking at.
That’s the last thing I remember. After that, I woke up in ICU, hooked up to all manner of medical machines. The administrator was sitting on a chair next to me. She seemed so happy I was alive. I have to say I was flattered by her concern. It turns out I suffered a massive heart attack during the black out. As a matter of fact, the only thing that had saved my life was chance. I happened to be in the administrator’s office at the time of the blackout, discussing the elite’s arrival. Our administrator has extensive medical training, apparently, so when the power went back up, she resuscitated me. Apparently, her medical training isn’t her only skill, as she survived a massive psychic attack with barely a side effect, whereas I, the one who’s supposed to be trained to endure that sort of thing, lost my heartbeat.
And I wasn’t the only casualty. So far we’ve counted 17 mortalities and 9 people are still unaccounted for. The mortalities have a great variety of causes, though most are self-inflicted, and all of them utterly terrifying. We also lost contact with everyone from Engineering all the way up to level 5. I don’t know anything about the lower levels, but all of levels 5 and 6 have lost all of their lights, and at this point it’s impossible to get anyone to descend into the darkness and look for survivors. Even I’m too scared to go down there.
All I want right now is to abandon this subject and get my colleagues out of here, but we’re sealed in. All we can do for now set up more shielding around 1214’s holding cell, fire up the emergency generators and hope we survive the night. HQ’s elite arrives tomorrow, and I pray to all the gods that he can do something to save us. Because at this rate, we’ll all be dead soon at the hands of that wretched little girl. I cannot believe I actually considered going into a room with that monster.

[ QUOTE ]
I assumed PP was an abreviation for Paranormal Psychology, the department he works at.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, that was an abbreviation. I originally intended to have it abbreviated after the initial mention, but I didn't like the abbreviation, so I changed my mind. Apparently that one mention evaded my retrofit

That said, I have another chapter ready. I really wish this didn't take so long to write, and that I didn't have to restrict myself to a single chapter a day. This has always hampered my writing - I want to see the story more than I want to write about it, but I can only see the story by writing about it

[ QUOTE ]
had thought at first that the doctor would degenerate to raving madman before the end, wallowing in failure, unable to see that the subject was the who had caused his instability, but by keeping it going as it is, there is some fascinating possibilities here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Truth be told, that was in the cards at one point, and may still materialise depending on how things go. However, I'm giving Miles the a LOT of credit here, as he really is a leading authority in his field and well justified to be as arrogant as he is. Among all of his colleagues, he is the one with an eye on the situation and a constant drive to keep things under control, which is what makes his diary so very relevant to... Everything. I'm still not certain how far his expertise will carry him, however, and if he won't suddenly end up falling victim to phenomenon even he cannot predict.

I'm interested to find out, myself

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure if it would break the style you have going here, but are we going to see sections of interview transcripts and other misc. record keeping aside from the journal?

[/ QUOTE ]

Most definitely. The story I intend to tell isn't confined just to the events described by the paranormal psychology journal, as that is restricted, more or less, to a single event, whereas I aim to build a story that spans a greater range of time frames. I do hope I can keep most of it systemic and documentary, however, as that fits the original style, which in turn fits the primary idea behind the story in many ways.

Please understand that I'm not trying to be intentionally cryptic. I honestly don't have much of it figured out at all. All I have is a few vague plot points interspersed throughout a period of time, and even those are likely to change when I get around to them if the story wants to be told a different way. For instance, I'd originally intended for extensive open dialogue to occur between the science team and Cheryl, but I don't think that'll pan out, given the gravity of things.

Funny thing, though, is since I started writing this story, I don't feel like playing the actual game that spawned it

Journal Entry #33507461
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 4
Subject: Success of Sorts
Body:
The night’s commitment paid off. We managed to bring 1214 out of her catatonic state and are currently keeping her sedated and sealed off in her holding cell. Everything went perfectly, no security breaches occurred and no complications hampered the operation. Yet I cannot help but be dreadfully disappointed with the results just the same. It was my firm belief that if we just brought her brain activity up to a measurable level, we’d detect at least something. An ectoplasmic spike, a bio-field fluctuation, inexplicable quantum noise. Something, anything, that would hint at paranormal activity. For the umpteenth time, we came up with absolutely bupkis. I’m getting tired coming up with new words to say “nothing,” but that is the exact sum total of the discoveries we’ve had on this project – a perfect nothing. We brought 1214 almost conscious, and no paranormal activity displayed itself. Short of waking her up, there’s nothing more we can do at the moment, and I’m confident even that won’t make a difference.
Why? Why are there no signs of paranormal activity? I know the subject is paranormally-inclined, all the evidence we have points to that as unequivocally as I’ve ever seen it, and yet we still can’t detect a thing. I don’t understand it, but we need to keep trying.
The administrator is breathing down my neck. No doubt HQ is breathing down hers. We enacted one of the largest-scale operations in the organisation’s recent history, and if we don’t get something to show for it, we’re in deep, deep trouble. Even if I weren’t convinced 1214 is paranormally inclined, I no longer have a choice but to keep trying to prove she is. I’ve negotiated with the administrator and managed to buy some time for additional research. She says a week, but I know it’ll only last a couple of days. We need to come up with evidence of paranormal activity immediately. At this point it doesn’t matter what that activity is, just so long as it’s paranormal. I have the team working night shifts. I know it’s a security risk, but right now we’re facing the bigger risk of being shut down.

Journal Entry #33507467
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 5
Subject: The Unforeseen
Body:
I got lost on my way to my quarters last night. I don’t know how it happened, I must have taken a wrong turn and ended up in a section of the base that I wasn’t familiar with. The strange thing, though, is that I’m familiar with the all sections of the complex that I’m permitted to visit, so either I managed to slip past a guarded checkpoint somehow, or something strange is going on here. I have no memory of the evening up until I was sitting in Interrogations, answering questions I didn’t even comprehend. I spoke with colleagues today, and several people described similar symptoms. Aloofness of mind, loss of sense of orientation, zoning out and strange pervasive thoughts, nightmares... All of those could be explained with certain paranormal effects.
I had hoped that this would convince HQ to loosen up the deadline, but the administrator believes I’m exaggerating anecdotal reports. She can’t report that back to HQ, she says, and I know she should! I realise those blockheads would probably still fail to comprehend its significance – they hire experts on paranormal psychology and then end up drawing conclusions for themselves anyway. Why even bother have us? Then again, perhaps that’s why they’re looking to shut us down? No doubt some arrogant egghead read a few fiction novels and now believes he knows all there is to know about the paranormal. This is getting ludicrous!
Just the same, we repeated our entire range of paranormal scans and still came up with nil. I don’t understand this. Others may not believe it, but this is what I do for a living – the experiences we’re going through are clearly paranormal. So why can’t we detect the paranormal energies that are causing them? I’ve already scanned for toxins, radiation, hypnotic suggestion... Even microchips in the brain. The base and all personnel are clear, as one would expect from a high-security facility. We need to run more tests.

Journal Entry #33507471
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 6
Subject: Security Breach
Body:
I saw her today... At least, I think I did. I was walking to the cryo lab when I saw 1214 right in front of me, in the middle of the hallway, just standing there, looking at me. Oh, those eyes... They’re not human, that’s the only way I can describe them. They don’t look out of the ordinary, but her gaze is tangibly cold and malevolent. I rushed off to sound an alarm, I took my eyes off her for no more than a second and when I looked back she was gone. There are no side exits in Corridor D, and it’s a long, straight stretch of reinforced concrete tube. There’s nowhere she could have hidden. I rushed over to 1214’s holding cell and ripped the technician on duty a new one, but it turned out I was shouting for nothing. He showed me the holding cell, and there was 1214 still prone on the bench just like yesterday. The technician was positive she couldn’t have left her cell at all. We reviewed the observation videos, and they showed her lying there without moving since as far back as the tape had video. We reviewed the hatch access log, and it hadn’t been opened in 12 hours. So how did 1214 get out? Or did she get out at all? Am I seeing things now?
I reported my encounter to the administrator, and I was shocked to hear she’d experienced the same, though hers had been even more frightening. She had been washing up in the morning when she felt a presence. She looked up and saw 1214’s reflection in her bathroom mirror, standing right beside her, but when she turned around, the bathroom was empty. She checked the mirror again and 1214’s reflection was still there. Finally she ran over to the hotline and called security. When they arrived, the image was gone and there was no trace of anyone else in the administrator’s quarters but the administrator, herself. When she gave me the time of the event, I realised it had happened almost simultaneously with my encounter with 1214 in Corridor D. I interviewed all division personnel afterwards, and while none reported sightings of the subject, many had different scary tales to share, from sudden inexplicable cold shivers to an overpowering feeling of being watched. Michael’s computer had also acted up, displaying static and a very, very loud tone out the speakers. He managed to grab an audio and video recording of the event, which I’ve already sent over to IT for analysis.
The administrator was forced to report the event to HQ, even though our instruments still fail to detect any paranormal activity. What is going on here?

Journal Entry #33507474
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 7
Subject: Mounting Problems
Body:
This is ludicrous! HQ replied back to our reports, stating that we were all under the influence of mass hysteria and that we are seeing things due to fatigue and self suggestion. Who do these idiots think they’re talking to? I’m qualified psychiatrist and a qualified paranormal psychiatrist. I’m the one who should be making these assessments, not some fat, overpaid CO who couldn’t tell BDD from near-sightedness. This is preposterous, and not a little insulting! Looks like they need more proof. I guess someone will have to die before they take notice.
The administrator’s “week” is also up. As of today, our deadline is here and we are to provide results by the end of the day, or the project will be cancelled. I have to say, she seemed really pissed off, herself, having to land this on us like that, but I know she’s under a lot of pressure. It’s especially hard when the idiots over at HQ don’t listen to the assessments of their own scientists.
Well, I still have a few aces up my sleeve. The audio and video tapes from Michael’s incident should be back from IT later today, and I’ve already begun a reverse-trace of all data we gathered from yesterday. If most of the division’s personnel experienced what I am convinced was a paranormal event at roughly the same time, there is a very high chance that high levels of paranormal energies occurred at and around that time. Hopefully high enough to detect with concentrated scans. Unfortunately, these scans cost inordinate amounts of money to perform, so if they don’t yield a result, I’m in trouble. I went over the administrator’s head with this, so I’m really putting all my eggs in the same basket. I really hope this works.

Journal Entry #33507479
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 8
Subject: A Mortality
Body:
We had a mortality today. Engineer Eric Wilso received a massive electrical shock from his work console, enough to incinerate his arms to the bone all the way up to his elbows and boil his skin. There’s no way HQ will pass that off as an on-the-job incident. That jolt passed through no less than three breakers which should have tripped at a tenth of that amperage, yet aren’t even singed. It came out of an outlet that’s not actually connected to a power source strong enough to produce this kind of voltage, as well. This is as close are we can get to lightning out of a blue sky. I’ve had our engineers back-trace the entire rout all the way to the generator down on level 12, and there’s just no physical way that this could have happened.
Well, I guess HQ got what they wanted – a man is dead under paranormal circumstances. I’ve spoken to the administrator, and she has says HQ have authorised the project to continue on high funding for the foreseeable future. So now they’re taking interest, eh? If they had at least a lick of sense, they would have listened to me a week ago, and this tragedy wouldn’t have happened. But, no! They had to go around pretending to be paranormal psychiatrists and playing expert. The bloody fools are lucky something worse didn’t happen. None of them realises just how much power a paranormally-inclined subject possesses. You’d think the Landark incident would have taught them to treat paranormals with more respect, but I guess they need to have another one of their bases erupt out of the ground and explode in low orbit. Because that’s good for keeping your research secret, oh yes!
Dealing with the mortality ate up most of today, so even though the tapes and scan results came back, I just don’t have the time to go through them right now. I still haven’t told the administrator about my unscheduled, very expensive tests, but there’s no sense in telling her before I have results to show for it, anyway. Of course, now that we’re back to high funding, it’s probably not going to be a big problem, but it’s still easier to ask for forgiveness if you can prove you were right all along.

Journal Entry #33507482
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 9
Subject: Major Security Breach
Body:
With all that happened yesterday, it seems no-one managed to pay sufficient attention to 1214’s brain activity diagrams. She woke up today, scaring the living daylight out of the technician on duty. 1214 is still perfectly passive and refusing to respond to stimuli, but she is now fully awake and aware. I can... Sense her now. This bad. This is very bad. This is among the worst kind of security breach that can happen. We attempted to sedate her with gas, but she didn’t respond to it at all. She disconnected her heart monitor, so we can’t tell if she’s actually breathing. We certainly cannot tell if her chest is moving. So far, though, we should be reasonably safe. 1214’s holding cell is sealed and shielded, so whatever paranormal affinity she may have should remain mostly inside. But even at her passive state right now, looking at her awake is deeply concerning.
On a more scientific note, I reviewed her biometrics recorded over the course of yesterday and discovered some very curious facts. Her brain activity had been holding relatively steady for most of the day, spiking so very slightly only when the mortality occurred. But over the course of the night, all her stats elevated exponentially almost in a matter of hours. The indications of the increase are present as early as mid-day yesterday, so if someone had actually been watching, this potential danger would have been discovered and acted upon. I have to wonder if perhaps 1214 purposely caused the accident to distract us from monitoring her. Could she be plotting this?
I reviewed all the data from the day before yesterday, as well. The tapes were disappointing. IT were unable to find any patterns in the tone from Michael’s computer, and while they did find shapes in the video static, they weren’t able to ascribe any meaning to them. Could that have been a bust? The deep scans of the “mass hysteria” incident, however, as well as of yesterday’s mortality, were a lot more fruitful. We finally have data we can work with. It’s not much, but there is a distinct and obvious fluctuation within the mental-activity spectral grid balance. We’re not entirely sure what this means, or exactly how it’s related to 1214, but we do know that it is present every time she generates paranormal events. Why we cannot measure the events themselves, we are still not completely certain, but at least now we have something to work with.

Journal Entry #33507486
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 10
Subject: Progress At Last
Body:
Yesterday’s emergency seems to have been handled. Although the subject is awake and aware, our external shielding is holding, and since we sealed her holding cell, all the paranormal events that have plagued the base these last few days seem to have stopped completely. There is still a trace of paranormal noise whispering in people’s minds, but this is normal when dealing with true paranormals. Finally, we have proof that 1214 is paranormally-inclined, both in recorded incidents and solid data. We are still, however, unable to determine why it is that we cannot detect all but what is essentially the quantum bough wave of 1214’s paranormal energy. We’ve developed reliable ways to track and record her activity through mental-activity spectral grid imbalances, but this is at best a circumstantial means of recording paranormal activity, similar to filming the waves in a lake, but not being able to see or hear the swimmer making them. And I still don’t know why, which is really starting to concern me. If there’s something here that we don’t understand, it’s possible we may have a security breach we’re not even aware of.
I tried to sell my findings to the administrator, but she’s just throwing HQ’s “need more tests” slogan in my face. I know she’s in a very precarious position and under a lot of stress, but I’d have expected at least a little more cooperation from her. I need outside resources to solve this, but HQ has deemed this a global security risk, and they are perpetuating the lockdown of the complex indefinitely. I’ll need to convince the administrator to secure a safe channel for me to acquire help under the radar, because currently, we’re left with very little we can actually do.
To be honest, at this point, the only thing we can try is to interact with 1214, and that is very, very dangerous. Simply provoking a reaction from her can become a problem if she turns out to be level 10 or above. Our static shields just aren’t powerful enough to cover for something like that, and without an actual paranormal operative on-site, we really do not want to provoke her. It is also possible that contact will allow her paranormal activity to slip through the shields. Even indirect contact by electronic means can be a potential loophole. And in the end, if my experience is any indication, none of that will actually have an effect at all. From where I stand, and in the absence of any outside assistance, I fear that our only recourse would be direct contact with 1214. It’s by far the most hazardous approach, but the presence of real intelligence is the only thing we have that stands a chance of eliciting a predictable response. However, I am determined to exhaust all my other options before I even consider contacting 1214. The massive disaster that Mathew Landark caused when Dr. Brian attempted to contact him in person is a stark lesson that no paranormal psychiatrist should ever forget.

[ QUOTE ]
Frankly, Sam, I'm glad to see you writing again. You've got some wonderful things cooking in that cranium of yours.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks I'm really happy to be writing again, myself. I was worried I'd lost my language, but the truth turns out to be much simpler - I was sadly out of inspiration for a very long time. I tried pretty much everything I could think of: movies, stories, games. In the end it was something as simple as... Well, let's not spoil the surprise. Suffice it to say what everyone is so eagerly complaining about gave my inspiration a massive kick-start

[ QUOTE ]
Having said that, this is a crazy piece of literature. I can't wait to see Part 2.

[/ QUOTE ]

I managed to genuinely and literally scare myself writing that last night. Granted, as a writer it's a lot more effective on me, since the idea's already in my head without having to be conveyed. But feeling uneasy when I bend over to drink some water, almost expecting I'll see an image in the mirror when I stand up was not fun in a very real way. Self-suggestion is a powerful tool, it seems But hey, whatever gets me in the mood, right? Speaking of part two, I have that ready and waiting. I was in luck that I managed to get it all out before my lack of sleep caught up to me and turned my brain into alphabet soup. Will probably have more still tomorrow.

Frankly, I'm actually interested in how this story ends, myself. I'm making it us as I go completely on the spot, and any and all attempts to plan ahead meet with general failure.

Double-posting the next chapter now:

I sincerely hope this catches the eye of at least someone besides me. I'm looking for comments and criticism (yes, really) of any kind here, so I'd be very grateful for any feedback you guys can give me on anything related to the above. I'd also be interested if anyone cares to see the rest of it when it's finished

For those that wonder, yes, that's 6 and a bit Word pages long, formatting included.

Journal Entry #33507414
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: March 23
Subject: Header
Body:
I am creating a journal entry stub for the research of a new subject, currently pending a subject ID. I will be using this stub to outline my studies of the subject and make personal notes. As with all Para research, this is available to HQ though means of the NRAD data sharing and monitoring subsystem.
On a more personal note, from everything I’ve heard about our new subject, things seem very promising. Alleged telekinesis and pyrokinesis have been observed, as well as a mental profile more fitting the expected framework than we’ve ever seen before. My expectations are very high.

Journal Entry #33507417
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: March 24
Subject: Delays
Body:
Great! The most promising subject we’ve had to date, and Utility are delaying transport. I was promised a subject today, and yet here I am, with expensive equipment at the ready, just… Waiting. Do these people think running Bypass Ectoscanners in prime condition is cheap? These machines cost the company $50 000 a day to keep running, and I just know Paranormal Psychiatry will get slapped with the bill for their incompetence.
At least we received some more information on the subject, so we won’t be sitting on our hands so completely. Subject name is Cheryl Pierce, daughter of McDonald and Jane Pierce, currently orphaned after the brutal murder of her parents. We’ll begin examining her family tree for signs of paranormally-inclined ancestors immediately, as well as pull the subject’s medical background out of city hall records. Hopefully we’ll end up with at least something to show for a day wasted.

Journal Entry #33507422
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: March 25
Subject: Further Delays
Body:
What are these people doing? This is completely unprofessional. If I had known I would spend two days, and from the looks of it even more, just waiting for a subject I was forwarded with extreme priority, I would simply not have bothered calibrating the Cerebral Scanners. At this rate, they will lose focus by the time the subject arrives and we’ll have to recalibrate them anyway. And now I’m hearing talk of incidents and even mortality cases during transport? This is completely unprofessional! I’ll see if I can dig up a report from somewhere. Authority limitations or no authority limitations, this is my job on the line, and I do not intend to lose it over the incompetence of the people over at Utility.
My records queries came back, at least. I wish I could be happy about that, but the results are dreadfully disappointing. None of the subject’s ancestors, as far as local records go, have even the slightest paranormal inclination. I would have expected to find at least bits of ancient paranormal heritage or spectral affinity, but we’ve come up with absolutely zilch. The girl’s medical records were equally as disappointing, listing no abnormal medical conditions. In fact, the subject appears to be in perfect health, save for a recently-diagnosed behaviour disorder. This could lead somewhere if we’re lucky, but right now it’s looking like a major waste of time. Chances are the girl is simply schizophrenic, and the chowderheads over at Recon mistook that for paranormal affinity. Bloody witch hunts!

Journal Entry #33507428
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: March 26
Subject: Arrival
Body:
Finally! We have a subject logged in and catalogued. She has been given #1214 and settled into her holding cell. Subject appears stable, if somewhat unresponsive. Our equipment is primed and ready, but HQ have decided it’s already too late in the day to start experiments, so we’ll have to pick up tomorrow. I can’t say I disagree. None of the staff want to work late nights, especially on a possibly paranormally-active subject. Fatigue weakens the mind, making personnel more vulnerable to suggestion, and that is a security protocol breach. We will use the time to affect containment and enact observation on 1214 and see if we can discover something obvious.
It should be noted, as well, that while Utility did deliver two days behind schedule, they barely made today at all, citing still more complications. I would normally hand-wave those away as incompetence, but for a move that slipped entirely under the radar of any possible threats, it has been far too dogged by problems for this to be random occurrence. To be honest, I really want to think we have a saboteur, because I fear and dread the alternative. I spoke with some of the transport personnel as they were dropping 1214 off, and I have to say I found their mental state disturbing. PP are forbidden to interact with other departments in uncontrolled circumstances, but I had to assist them in transporting the subject, and the people I saw were a right mess. Their captain displayed symptoms of full-blown paranoid schizophrenia, shivering and sweating uncontrollably, as well as mumbling almost incoherently. Another man I spoke with directly appeared aloof, almost apathetic and with seemingly no peripheral vision. He walked with a gaze affixed forward and spoke in a slow, even voice. I fear that they may have been exposed to paranormal activity they were unaware of, and that would mean a very, very serious security breach. I’ll have the night shift run extensive scans, though I can’t report my observations to HQ. I’m not supposed to interact with Utility personnel at all.

Journal Entry #33507431
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: March 27
Subject: Initial Observations
Body:
Our observations of 1214 have been largely disappointing. I reviewed the night’s tapes this morning, and found the subject had spent most of the night completely immobile. Personnel checked on her this morning, and found her to be catatonic. This is not looking good. From 1214’s position, however, it wasn’t cleared if she said anything during the night. If she really is catatonic, that would be irrelevant, but it isn’t rare for the paranormally-inclined to talk to themselves. I listened to the tapes and found nothing but silence and static, but I’ve sent them over to IT for processing just the same. It’s possible something got imprinted on them.
We’ve also run extensive ectoscans, MRI scans and para-mentality screenings. We came up with absolutely nothing. If this subject is paranormally-inclined, we’re not seeing any signs of it. It’s entirely possible that 1214 really is, but she’s just acting passive, however I’m starting to doubt that. I reviewed Captain Jake Rockwell’s personnel file today, and found out that he was indeed suffering from mild schizophrenia. My observations from yesterday were likely the result of the stress he’s received on the mission. None of the symptoms of his colleagues were such that couldn’t be otherwise explained, as well, leading me to believe I was seeing what I wanted to see – paranormal activity in a case that looked otherwise completely pointless. I will refrain from any further unprofessional conjecture and stick to the science that got me this job in the first place.

Journal Entry #33507435
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: March 28
Subject: A Dead End
Body:
This is hopeless. We repeated all of our tests and still came up with nothing. Yesterday’s tapes came back from IT and, as I feared, it turns out that they were completely empty after all. 1214 had not been talking to herself, and no other entities had been caught on them. Disappointing, and not a little concerning. Paranormal Psychiatry has been under heavy scrutiny from HQ recently, and even though they aren’t saying anything, I know they’re looking to downsize personnel, probably even shut down the division. I can’t say I blame them – we’ve had no success for the past three months, yet we’ve affected expense of upwards of 100 million dollars. We need a breakthrough, or we’re sunk.
Since none of our tests are showing anything at all, I’ve gone on an act of desperation and requested full details of 1214 in search for anything that may hint at a possible paranormal affinity. Personal records, school grades, doctor’s notes, birthday pictures, anything that can help. I’ve also requested the complete report of the incidents which occurred during the transport of 1214. That raised a few eyebrows when I presented it to the administrator, but she knows as well as I do that if we come up empty-handed on this one, the division’s in trouble. She pulled some strings and authorised the request, but it’ll take a few days to process. I also had to come clean about my interaction with Utility personnel. I was surprised that I did not receive a penalty for it. Seems the brass think I was right to pursue all angles of investigation. Maybe someone out there knows more than I do?

Journal Entry #33507440
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: March 29
Subject: A Stalemate
Body:
1214 is still catatonic, not responding to any stimuli and not moving any of her skeletal muscles. Her condition has deteriorated since we brought her to the facility, in fact. Vital signs are holding well stable, but her brain activity is decreasing rapidly. I’m afraid she may lose brain function at any time, and then woe betide all of us if we lose our subject. We’ve scanned and rescanned her brain numerous times, drawn fluids and tested physical reactions, and we can’t understand why her brain activity is receding. Her brain is physically healthy, and her body’s vascular and nervous systems, as well as all major organs are operating well. I’ve scoured my medical books and come up with only partial matches. Disappointingly, all the explanations I can come up with are psychological or neurological. No paranormal affinity that we can detect.
I’ve also received 1214’s files, and those proved to be even more disappointing. Firstly, her alleged recently-diagnosed behaviour disorder is in fact a suspected case of psychopathy and anti-social behaviour. This had been going on and worsening for most of 1214’s life, but the family appears to have been consulting a psychiatrist who was a personal friend, so none of that went into the girl’s official record. What I got with the original files was, in fact, a psychiatric examination 1214 had received in her school after a particularly violent episode got school authorities concerned. Seems this perfect little girl wasn’t so very perfect. Looking through the original psychiatrist’s notes, I can see clear signs of psychopathy, which coincide very well with the schizophrenia I’ve diagnosed in examining the subject. This is starting to sound more and more like a messed up little girl than a poltergeist possession, I have to say. And that’s not good.

Journal Entry #33507442
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: March 30
Subject: Final Thoughts
Body:
I’ve finished reviewing 1214’s file. From all the evidence, it appears that the subject was born with an unknown congenital defect of the brain, which developed slowly at first. She was born and spent her first few years as a normal child, but soon began developing increasingly disturbing behaviour. Pretty much all her photos after her fourth birthday are very much alike. 1214 is sitting or standing quietly, looking down. Towards the age of 6, she became extremely introverted and unresponsive to other people, which is when her family first took her to a child psychiatrist. She would refuse to interact with people, and then become incredibly violent when her parents tried to make her respond. I’m looking at a picture of her during one of her rage episodes, and I have to say the look in her eyes is actually a little scary. Eventually, 1214 developed schizophrenic symptoms, talking to herself, hearing voices, seeing things that weren’t there. Her outbursts increased in intensity, as well. When in a rage shock, her body would be flooded with adrenaline, giving her physical strength seemingly-impossible for a girl of her size. I can see how they would mistake that for possession.
Looking at her records, I’m finding a brief anomaly. Several months ago, right around her 12th birthday, 1214’s mental state underwent a rapid transformation. Her violent outbursts decreased, and then disappeared, as if overnight. Her apathetic state lessened, though she was still a reclusive child. This made her parents confident enough to send her to school. She went there for a month without any trouble, until the incident that saw her in school counselling. I’d very much like to know what happened to provoke that outburst, but there’s no record of it. All we know is that the incident then recurred several times until 1214 was taken off school and back home. Around two weeks later, the murder of her parents occurred, and she was placed into a state orphanage, pending the investigation of the case. It seems many of the children and staff members there experienced strange encounters with 1214 that made them feel uncomfortable and often genuinely afraid, from where HQ picked up on the idea that this may be a case of possession.
We extracted 1214 from the orphanage she was assigned to exactly a week ago, and she’s been nothing but a disappointment since. She has no paranormal affinity, all of her unusual behaviour can be explained through psychological disorders, and the supposed paranormal incidents that occurred during transport appear to have been greatly exaggerated. I’m still waiting for the after-action report, but if that doesn’t contain anything interesting, I’m afraid this case is done.

Journal Entry #33507447
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: March 31
Subject: Borrowed Time
Body:
The report from the transport of 1214 arrived today. The administrator must have pulled some heavy connections, as there’s barely anything censored on it. I guess she values her job as much as I do mine. The report, though, is... Interesting. Before I thought the events during transport were exaggerated, but after reading the report, I realise they’ve actually been heavily downplayed. The “complications” during transport are almost staggering, and include one confirmed mortality, something which I didn’t believe before. Beyond that, there have been several incidents of severe bodily harm and not one, but five separate instances of events that have been given no explanation whatsoever. The single mortality was that of John Jerry, the team’s forward agent and inside man. He was found dead of a massive heart attack in one of the children’s group bedrooms. The lack of surveillance and witnesses left that death explained as natural causes. The team’s mechanic, Terrance Pra, lost his arm from below his elbow in an attempt to fix the transport van’s engine. The engine cut out inexplicably and would not even turn over. When Pra reached under the hood to see what was going on, the engine fired up on its own and his hand got caught on the cam belt, the cover of which was inexplicably nowhere to be found. The rest of the team scrambled to shut down the engine, but even after removing the key, it kept on running. They had to disconnect the battery, choke the engine’s air intake and drain it of oil before it eventually seized itself up, having mangled Pra’s arm beyond saving. Another inexplicable event was what happened to team member Papa Barran. He had been acting strange since the beginning of the mission, but 40 miles before city limits, he suddenly got up, opened the van’s door and jumped off onto the freeway, right in the path of an 18-wheeler. He survived, but the truck crushed both his legs completely. Finally, Jake Rockwell, the team’s captain who I already knew had been suffering from light schizophrenia, began experiencing increasingly powerful symptoms. I’d noticed a dark stain on his sleeve when I met him, but what I didn’t know was that he had actually carved hieroglyphs into his skin. The pictures of the cuts he had made all over his body are shocking, to say the least.
Before reading this report, I was positive 1214 had no paranormal affinity, and that we were wasting our time. But now, I’m not so sure. Jake Rockwell’s team are elite in their field, so for so many of them to suddenly develop sever psychiatric disorders and for so much to go wrong with their equipment is incredibly suspicious. I’m positive this isn’t a saboteur, either, as most of the problems came from the team member’s loss of touch with reality. It is very possible that they came under the attack of an enemy psychic of some sort, but to what end? They still delivered the subject, and were on several occasions so vulnerable that if it were an enemy psychic, he would have struck. There’s hope yet that 1214 is paranormally-inclined!

Journal Entry #33507450
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 1
Subject: Curious Possibilities
Body:
I spent a good deal of the day today redoing tests on 1214. Her condition remains unchanged for the most part. She is completely catatonic, her brain activity is almost zero and her paranormal affinity... Is undetectable, if it’s even there. I’ve gone as far as to probe for deep-brain spectral residue and take large skin samples for ectoplasm exposure analysis, and even those came back negative. Everything I’m seeing with the subject, all the tests I’m running, all the science I have, is telling me that I’m wasting my time. Yet the more I look into the circumstances surrounding her, the more convinced I am that there has to be something there.
Today at noon I received the final piece of information on 1214, which has all of the forensic research in relation to the parents’ murder. Police appear to have exhausted all of their leads and all of their ideas and still come up with not even a hit at a suspect. However, when I look at it, I see something odd. The parents were found burned and dismembered in their own bedroom, yet there was no sign of charring on anything other than their bodies, nor any sign of blood or violence. No forced entry was discovered, and the Pierces were an ordinary couple with no enemies that anyone knew of. The murder had all the hallmarks of a serial killing, yet no similar murders were been discovered either before or since, and police seem to have given this a very thorough look. Whoever or whatever, I dare say, killed those people, it did so without leaving a single trace of it ever being there to begin with, or any trace that it even exists. After 27 years of investigating paranormal phenomena, I have to say that this looks like a textbook case of a spectral killing. And if I have any luck, whatever spectral force killed those people should have come from subject 1214. I’m not sure if there’s really anything to this, but it should keep the penny pinchers out of Paranormal Psychiatry a little longer.

Journal Entry #33507455
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 2
Subject: Dubious Progress
Body:
We’ve had absolutely no progress today. After yesterday’s finding, I was certain that if we just scanned again and scanned for longer, we’d find... Something. All the circumstantial evidence points to some kind of paranormal force operating within or around 1214, yet we cannot detect even an inkling of it. I refuse believe that all of this is just a massive series of ridiculously unlikely coincidences. That is simply not scientific. There has to be an answer to all of this, something to explain why I’m seeing evidence of paranormal activity relating to 1214, but no actual paranormal activity that I can measure. As it stands now, there is only one possibility that I can fathom, and that’s a rare example of latent effect – 1214 is keeping her paranormal affinity passive and locked within her bio field where we cannot detect it. It’s extremely unlikely for a paranormally-inclined subject to be able to completely hide their affinity from equipment for... What has it been? Coming on two weeks now. It’s part of their mind and part of their psyche. However, in this case our subject is catatonic, which is an instance we’ve never worked with before. It’s unlikely, but it is possible 1214’s catatonic state is keeping her energy levels so passive that they are undetectable. The only recourse, logic would dictate, is to force her out of her catatonic state and hope we can return enough brain activity to the subject that we will detect something.
I spoke about this with the administrator, and she is understandably concerned, and very much so. While I can’t say I don’t understand her concern – using anti-depressants on a possible paranormal is hazardous in the extreme – I don’t believe we have much of a choice in this instance. I spoke with HQ this morning, and they’re asking for results. They want them yesterday. I understand the risk, but with a subject in such a deep catatonic state and one that is so unresponsive, I believe we have a lot of leeway. If we wake 1214 up gradually and look for brain activity and ectoplasmic radiation, we should be able to keep things under control. I need to convince the administrator that this has to be done. We have a unique opportunity here, I finally believe that. We need to take certain risks to capitalize on it.

Journal Entry #33507457
Author: Dr. Miles Steinberg, Paranormal Psychiatry
Date: April 3
Subject: A last resort
Body:
I spoke with the administrator again this morning, and she was a lot more willing to listen to me this time. I guess that call from HQ that Mark detected really lit a fire under her. She overrode about half a dozen security protocols, pulled a few favours and got the facility sealed off and under heavy guard. When that woman commits to something, she really commits to it. I’m really glad to have her as my boss. Without her stout leadership and able management, this division would have been disbanded way back when the Landark disaster happened.
We’ve been authorised to bring 1214 out of her catatonic state, but we were absolutely forbidden to wake her up. We have the necessary drugs ready to go, but are currently preparing the required measuring equipment. We’re hoping we’ll have a large margin for error, but I want those scanners accurate to the dot. We can’t take needless chances. The shielded chamber is being prepared and on-base military personnel have been put on high alert. Once we’re ready and the last few exits have been sealed off, we’ll begin the procedures. It’s generally bad practice to work night shifts when dealing with paranormals, but when you call down a code 7 on an entire facility, you can’t really ask HQ if they could wait while you have your beauty sleep. I’ve tried to explain how dangerous fatigue is in our line of work, but the bureaucrats would have none of it. Let’s just hope their rush doesn’t cost us our lives.
We have 6 hours remaining before the go-ahead. Time to see if all the work we put into this wretched little girl was worth it.

Cute story. Tales like that always put a smile on my face Which is good, since I'm about to read Positron's explanation about why I'll never do another TF in this game...

Snarkiness aside, I've always found games and TV to be a strong educational tool, despite all the vitriol they receive from Victorian parents looking for a scapegoat. It doesn't matter how dedicated to studying you are (or aren't), things that grab your interest and require you to acquire and develop a specific set of skills and knowledge will always yield better results in the end. That's why most people, both young and old, are full of self-professed "worthless" information, like obscure movie quotes from 20 years ago, the names of places no-one else knows and so forth. It's because those are the things that made an impression on us, and we remembered them for years ahead, whereas things we are REQUIRED to know (such as who has right of way when), we keep forgetting.

Video games that required you to read is what taught me to read and comprehend English as a foreign language. This game taught me to speak and write it. I consider that a great boon. I've no doubt that a game as captivating as this will serve as a good education tool. Stats and numbers notwithstanding, this is the kind of game all children dream about, and the kind of game we grew up wishing we could play - a game where we can play the coolest super heroes we could imagine

I consider it bad form to offer costume items like this for money, but at least it's better than the leaf crown and sandals. In general, I don't like exclusive items like these, but I do think the boys have picked as good a pack of costumes as any to sell - not generic enough for people not interesting in weddings to really want them (well, almost), yet still good enough that those who do buy them can get a lit of mileage out of it.

I see this as GvE game pack MKII. What did it really give me when I bought it? Two costume sets and a couple of unremarkable powers. Yeah, I use the powers, but I wouldn't have paid a nickel for 'em. Might end up buying that one, as well. The tuxedos look good. I have being an apathetic person in nature working in my favour, as I probably won't bother to do anything now and if I do anything at all, it'll be when I get around to it.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You asked why a villain would care. We answered you.
If you don't want questions answered, don't ask them.
Yes, that includes rhetorical questions.

[/ QUOTE ]
It takes a certain type of literal minded drone to answer a clearly rhetorical question with a straight face and then complain about being responded to.

[/ QUOTE ]

Answering a rhetorical question is no more absurd than challenging a statement. In reality, that's all a rhetorical question is - a statement in the form of a question. You made a statement, then dismissed the responses given to you on a base of nothing other than that they do not apply. I'm afraid I'm having a difficult time accepting that.

You suggest a villain wouldn't care about Khur'rekt's continual presence in Grandville even though the faction he represents is now openly attaching. I don't see that, and offered you reason why a villain should care. But tell me, then: if RP arguments do not apply, why even bring up the question about a villain caring? How is this anything BUT an RP argument?

If your assertion is that a player of CoV shouldn't care about an inconsistency in the plotline, then I'm afraid I cannot agree. The plotline is an integral part of the game, and like any other, we don't want it to be broken. If we accept that people shouldn't care about this particular inconsistency, then by the same logic we can accept they shouldn't care about any bit of story the game has to offer, because "why would we?" I don't think that's what the developers have in mind for the game, though.

So, for a change, I'd like to hear a reason for validity of what you're saying, rather than a statement of fact. And before you take the trouble to post it, yes, it is very good that I'm not a supreme authority and people don't have to listen to me about what they care about. I'm asking for reason, not submission.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
He's still sitting there in Grandville sticking out like a sore thumb and passing out missions to villains who come asking while his kind and bombing the city.

[/ QUOTE ]
and a villain should care about that why exactly?

[/ QUOTE ]

Curiosity? Insurance? Awareness? It seems irrelevant whether one is good or evil from where I'm standing. You see an ambassador being welcomed into a city that's being bombed by the very people he represents. It's unusual, so it seems only natural that everyone who has to deal with him should care.

It's sort of like going to speak with Lord Recluse one day and he asks you how you want your name spelled on your gravestone. Kind of makes sense to ask why he needs to know that, no?

[ QUOTE ]
Have different text for Villains. Have some other contacts scattered about that let us work against Vanguard and with the Rikti, or just in our own interests. Have some hero specific contacts as well. (Alternate ways in for either side would help too... but that's just cosmetic. I mean, sabotaging a Vanguard plan than hopping home through their own portal... ballsy, but not very practical.)

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It flew over my head before, but I finally realised what the Vanguard situation reminds me of - Project: Destiny. Basically, you enter a zone and immediately it assume that you're working for (for, not with) the overarching organisation in it - in this instance Vanguard. All conceptual freedom as to what you actually fight for goes out the window as you become just another "suit" for Vanguard.

I don't mean that we should work FOR the Rikti. Their invasions supposed to be a global threat. However, sabotaging Vanguard's efforts, profiting off their mistakes, selling their secrets and stealing their stuff feels like what villains should be doing. Yes, somehow they need to help stop the Rikti, but they can do that without help from Vanguard. Maybe work a Restructurist splinter cell that will see its influence diminish if Hro renews the actual war? Remember what Requiem's letter said pre-Council? "I helped you stop Ubelmann, because if the Axis powers had won the war, then my 5th Column would never have become as great as it is and I'd still be someone's lap dog. Better that my ideological masters lose if I keep my power." It would make sense that a Restructurist Rikti leader (maybe even U'kon), would act like he's helping Hro resume his war, but would also be conspiring to ultimately foil his efforts. Is it better to be master of an expeditionary force, or the pawn in a galactic empire?

There's also the matter of how villains would then get Vanguard gear. Well, originally I couldn't think of a way, but then I remembered a game that handled this perfectly - Gothic 2. There, you had three choices - becoming a Fire Mage, joining the Paladins or joining the Mercenaries. If you join the Paladins, you get powerful armour issued, a sword made for you, which you then imbue with the tears of Ilmater (I believe). If you join the Fire Mages, you get taught magic and eventually drink the tears, giving you more power. If you join the mercenaries, then their blacksmith teaches you how to forge enchanted weapons. The net result is the same, but you gain your eventual power in three conceptually separate ways.

So why not do the same for the War Zone? Suppose this Rikti splinter cell gets dibs on whatever is stolen from Vanguard stockpiles with every attack the Rikti make? Then you can potentially get Vanguard stuff (armour and powers) from them. It would both let you move around more freely as you look more like a Vanguard soldier, and also give you more power. So why shouldn't the Rikti just give you Rikti tech? Well, they have to remain covert, right? If Hro notices that equipment is missing, and then his soldiers report seeing villains running around with brand new Rikti tech, then wouldn't that put the conspirators in a bind? By giving out Vanguard stuff, they keep their secret and, even better, the villains they send out can't be connected to them, because they're using Vanguard gear and should look like they work for Vanguard.

That would also keep Khur'rekt in the game and making sense. He'd still be lobbying for the restructurists on the up and up, but could secretly be working for the conspirators. That way it makes sense that Recluse and the humans would deal with him one day and fight his supposed masters the next. We've already seen that the Rikti are factionalised. Heroes make friends with the Traditionalist who fight against the overall Rikti threat, so shouldn't it make sense for villains to make friends with the Restructurists splinter cell that conspires against the overall Rikti threat?