capeandcowl | twenty. text. backdated to monday.

In the 1940s, rumor has it that a prisoner on the island of Alcatraz was killed by a ghost. 

Back in those days (unlike these days), they had isolation chambers called hole cells where the prisoners were kept in near darkness for weeks on end. "Bang bang bang," one prisoner cried and pounded. "Someone's trying to murder me in here." But the guards thought he was hallucinating, as those being tortured with solitude tended to, and so they did nothing. When the prisoner stopped screaming, they were quite content until they opened the cell and found that he was dead. He had markings on his neck. Strangulation. No one else was in the cell.

Ghost stories have a sort of charm, don't they? Whether or not you believe them, I mean. I don't generally because we didn't have imports back then and because the living can be fucking horrible enough. I'm certain one of the guards killed him and thought they had a clever way of covering it up. Which they did.

I wonder what the prisoner's crime was. But I don't even have a name.

I know I would take death as a legacy if nothing else.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Fine. Whatever. To put it more selfishly, I have a stake with Thomas, too.

You're not going to interfere with my plans, concerning him. Your own investment is understandable, of course, and our goals can surely operate independently.

[Pause.]

Have you heard anything from Osborn?

No.

[Beat.]

And I won't. He wouldn't play such an obvious move.

Surely, he'll have a press release. Something. Maybe half in code over the Network.

He's a narcissist, Katurian. The worst thing you can do to a narcissist is humiliate him -- Osborn won't want attention drawn to the fact. He'll do everything to escape it, and allow PR to handle the details.

He'd wait until he had a leg up. So to speak.

Are you afraid of him, doing just that?

I think when we hear from him again, he will have something, yes. Like you said, he's a narcissist.

He won't give up either.

Mm. "We" hear from him again. We, we, we.

[He makes a nose, like a tsk.]

I-- don't have any problems going separate ways.

Did you like it?

Yes.

Do you want more of it?

[A struggle.]

M-- Maybe.

Even if I'm your boss?

You're not a bad boss. [Pause.] Most of the time. I have plans to create my own differences in this world, and I will.

But you're not a bad boss.

Most of the time.

That's the wrong answer, isn't it.

Yes, it is.

[A long stretch of silence. He works his jaw.]

All right, then.

You don't know what to say, do you?

I've silenced the writer.

I-- already said, I know what I'm going to do on my own. I'm prepared now. And if the future is right, then our paths will cross again. There will be a time when we're on good terms.

[Beat. He snorts, feeling the absence of falsehood, disdained.]

And if that situation comes, who's to say it will be ideal?

Who knows what it will be? I evidently fucked up the present when I came back. We'll have choices and we'll make choices, however we see fit in those moments. I don't believe in fate.

voice, private;

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