"Monsters are fearsome and without fear. Horror is the realization that fear is true. Nightmares are dreams that forget safety. Fear is always a reaction to danger. Some danger is goes beyond ourselves, threatening instead what we believe in, or the society we serve. Monsters inevitably serve our belief in society. Monsters are heroes, born of nightmares becoming true."
I listened to Jack the Ripper, as he spoke from behind the mask of a man without morality. His morality was different, but he truly believed in his work. Among us monsters, he was a monster unlike anyone in the pack.
Bruna and Lieutenant Colonel Rose were interviewing him in his cell. For him, it was a cell. They had decided to lock him in, feeding him through the slot on the door. It occurred to me that he was the only human among us, and we kept him a prisoner.
"You were eavesdropping Atanarjuat?" Lieutenant Colonel Rose asked me.
"I wonder why he is kept locked up." I admitted.
"He is a murderer, an unrepentant killer." Lieutenant Colonel Rose said simply.
"Aren't all of us killers - to some degree?" I pointed out.
"Jack's proclivities are justifiable in his own mind." Lieutenant Colonel Rose gestured at the locked door.
"He wasn't justifying his actions, only telling you his thoughts." I pointed out. "If we judge him, what should we be judged by - the same metric?"
"It is very strange you would defend him. Do you know what he did?" Lieutenant Colonel Rose stared at me. Bruna did too, although she had a much more patient look in her eyes.
"He murdered some women and dissected them. He chose victims in White Chapel, supposedly because in his thoughts they were unimportant, expendable and a nuisance to the progress of a better society. To him, they were mindless creatures who lived to spread disease and immorality. You are not hearing his goals, the things he loved. He loved the progress of humanity, and he was willing to kill for it, to become a monster in the night. You seem to think he enjoyed it or that it was easy for him, but I don't think so." I explained my own thoughts. "Just because he doesn't regret it doesn't mean he feels nothing."
"That will be all. It is my decision to keep him a prisoner. If you don't like it, get consolation from Doctor Imbrium. Or in your case, allow Major Hazel to ask you if you've lost your mind." Lieutenant Colonel Rose silenced me and left me there with Bruna.
"Do you think I am wrong? You spoke with him at length. I only listened." I met her gaze. She shook her head slowly.
"Jack the Ripper is the creature they made him out to be. He gave in to his role as a monster. Somewhere along the way, he lost sight of whatever goals he had." Bruna told me.
"Adam made it seem like he did those things to continue Frankenstein's work. All we need him for is to locate the amber that was used to create Adam." I reminded her.
"You seem to think he should be part of our pack." Bruna slowly walked around me.
"It's not my thoughts I am listening to." I decided. "In my thoughts, I can think of no reason to trust him. It is something else, some part of me that is the wolf. It speaks to me, sometimes it tells me to kill someone, and I know those thoughts are not my own. I've never wanted to kill anyone before. But the wolf is part of me, and if I cannot distinguish between what it wants and what I want, I am lost. If what I want and what the wolf wants are the same thing, I am no longer myself." I faced her.
"You and I are very different." Bruna narrowed her eyes, studying me. "I am always both the wolf and the woman, at the same time. You are also the only man who makes me feel this way; like I should listen to you. I trust you, and I want to know your human thoughts and feelings, for I already know what the wolf wants. When you speak, I understand the difference. That is why I agree with you."
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"The lieutenant colonel doesn't agree with me." I gestured at the locked door.
"He does, but he must be human. No human would let Jack the Ripper go free. He is more dangerous than an ordinary murderer, for his mask of immorality is merely a mask. Beneath that, he represents something too horrible to acknowledge." Bruna objected.
"He literally wears a mask." I observed.
"Concealing his humanity." Bruna nodded. "My first thought - my instinct - was to welcome him to the pack. That is why the lieutenant colonel cannot trust him, he appeals to the wolf in us, and our humanity is getting in the way. It is too dangerous of an ideal for us. He is an ingredient that would poison us."
"I understand." I told her. I felt relieved that I wasn't losing my mind. My inner wolf had recognized Jack the Ripper as a fellow monster, and his acceptance of being a monster had appealed to my humanity - that struggled with the wolf.
Bruna and I were called to Lieutenant Colonel Rose's quarters the next day. Doctor Imbrium had found us and told us to report to him. We went and found him seated at his desk. I noted the blank walls and cold gray concrete. I remembered that he had spent two years longer than I had underground, and I wondered how it had affected him, to leave the walls empty.
"Major Hazel, Atanarjuat. This mission requires great discretion and care. I am sending only the two of you - and Jack the Ripper, to London. You will pose as tourists and locate and secure the amber where Jack the Ripper has hidden it. He had a secret laboratory, a field lab, but it was destroyed. Our best efforts have uncovered nothing. I am hoping he can locate the hiding place, just one loose brick among a million. We have a special collar he will be fitted with. I took your idea for this one." Lieutenant Colonel Rose showed us the special collar, where it sat on an antique street map of London, on his desk.
"It explodes?" I asked. He smiled oddly and nodded.
"I will be there too, along with Doctor Imbrium. We have a safe house ready for this mission. It should be simple."
On the flight there I wondered how simple it would be, or not, with Jack the Ripper wearing the featureless mask he had donned. I stared at him across the cargo plane. My inner wolf yawned and told me to enjoy sharing warmth with Bruna, who rested beside me on the flight. But I was a man who knew the wolf was a liar, and I never took my eyes off of Jack the Ripper.
London was an ancient city that had never known conquest by a foreign enemy. Its antiquity was like a presence. I had spent very little time in cities. We attracted stares, but people presumed the man with us wore a mask for a reason, and avoided looking at us. Jack the Ripper said nothing, but instead, he wandered up and down the streets and we followed him closely. If he tried to escape, his explosive collar could be triggered, but we kept a close eye on him anyway.
We were stopped by the City of London Police when they spotted us accompanying Jack the Ripper in his featureless mask. We had to show them our passports and talk to them about our tour. I took the opportunity to ask them about White Chapel.
"Lots of tourists like Jack the Ripper. I wish they would visit some of the more wholesome and treasured attractions." the police officer complained.
"It has changed a lot since I was here, last." Jack the Ripper told them. "I agree with you, it is unsettling that many people would visit, attracted to what he did. I too wish they would seek things that are better for their soul and that better represent the spirit and culture of the good people of London."
"Thanks for saying that, Mr. Skinner. I apologize for having to stop you, but you were concealing your identity behind that mask, and it is my job to be sure you aren't committing a crime."
We continued on our way and Jack the Ripper led us into a very old alleyway he had found. From there he opened up a sewer grate and we descended into a kind of hell for our senses. I wished I could stop smelling with such clarity, at least for our trip into the underworld.
The tunnels we went into were dark, but Jack the Ripper produced a flashlight from his pocket. I recognized it as one belonging to the police, and he had pickpocketed it during our conversation. The light was useful when we reached the oldest part of the tunnel, where we found collapsed rubble covering an old building. He shone the light back and forth before he was certain of where he wanted to go.
"The wall across from here is where I hid it." Jack the Ripper told us. "Hold the light, I'll have to crawl in there."
We waited for a long time, shining the light into the crawl space atop the rubble. When he returned he was dirty, his clothes had rips in them. In his hand, it glimmered like it held the rage of a thousand thunderstorms deep within it. "Joshua's Electrum, my gift to you, a little bit of amber."