Waking up had never been a pleasant experience for me. I’m sure it was possible. It was just unlikely as hell. Like winning the Lottery or getting struck by lightning. Today though, I had the misfortune of waking up in the worst way possible.

A deafening series of clangs rang against the bars of the cell and I jerked awake. My brain too slow to keep up with my body and stop myself from placing a hand down on the bench I was on.

The press of warm bodies stifled me as they crowded close. I looked into the other cell, rubbing the break in my nose. Damn Shields can’t even let a man enjoy a good bar fight.

“This is all a misunderstanding.” I said clearly. Keeping my face slack and relaxed. You had to look honest when you lied. “I just found that woman’s purse on the ground. It’s the honest truth sir. Would I lie to you?”

I ripped my hand off the bench like I’d been touching a burning stove top instead of stone. The force of my reaction putting me off balance enough to fall off the bench and onto the floor. I’d had the sense to keep my hands in tight to keep from triggering any more memories. But that also let me hit the floor without any way to cushion my fall. It was a short fall at least, hurting my pride more than my body. But the cackling laughter I heard outside the cell made it sting just a bit more.

I was coming back tom my senses after the deluge of memories rammed into my head. Were they getting clearer now? They had felt more, physical almost. Harder to distinguish between them and my own. I looked up at the three guards outside my cell. Blinking away my tiredness, I tried to speak up but instead of a coherent sentence it came out slurred and ran all together. “Heyhowyadoin…” I said blearily. I moved to sit up on the floor.

Despite the memory overload I’d gotten yesterday I was feeling a bit better today. My grogginess was more a product of my lack of coffee than residual mental trauma. Even with the two extra memories shocking me awake. I looked down to my hand not seeing any change in it but feeling the locked flow of mana that was still stuck around Psychometry. The constant awareness of my Psycho-Strained condition like a steady ringing in the back of my head.

“Oi! Get up you sot!” One of the guards said his voice joined by more banging on the bars with his baton. “We’re taking you Head Quarters.”

“Alright, alright. I’m getting up.” I said. Getting to my feet a bit easier than it would have been thanks to Dexterity. “Just quit the racket okay?”

“Back against the bars. Hands out.” The guard said going on. The three guards outside my cell were a lot less civilized than the guards I’d seen yesterday. Who all seemed to have gone at this time. Judging by the light streaming in through the open door it was early morning. Must have been a shift change.

Keeping my hands up I felt a jolt of panic at the thought of more memories crowding my brain and stopped before the cell door. The guards saw my hesitation and immediately got the wrong idea.

“Don’t make us come in there you damn Rogue. I ain't got time for any funny business.” He said warning me.

“I’m moving! I’m moving.” I said hands out as I turned around, back facing the guards as I stepped towards them. “Just be careful. My hands are-”

Before I could get another word out I felt a grip like steel yank on my wrist hard enough I slammed against the door. The back of my head bouncing off the bars as I saw stars. I let out a yelp of pain as my other arm was dragged behind me. A warm, almost hot band going around both my wrists as they cinched together. Like a pair of handcuffs.

“Let’s go.” The guard behind me said quickly to his two followers. Both of them taking positions on either side of me as I stumbled out the door. I was dazed but still mostly able to think straight. At least, I had a clear enough head to not start cursing out the guards for being rough. I felt a pit in my stomach as I moved forward. What was going to happen to me now? Every cop show and drama I’d seen had given me a pretty solid idea of what I could expect on Earth. But that all meant next to nothing here. Did they even have an equivalent to lawyers I could call? Hell, did I even have that right, or any rights in the first place?

My thoughts turned to more darker topics as the full scope of my situation hit me. There’d be no Presumption of Innocence here. Might not even be a jury I could appeal to. Just a judge…or an executioner. An involuntary shiver made me go stiff with worry as the guards continued moving me down the street. I was so in my own head that I barely noticed the streets we turned down on.

I could have stayed like that for a long time. Spun up a hundred different scenarios as my growing fear ran wild. But as the guard who manhandled me relaxed he let his guard down ever so slightly. A gauntleted hand falling low enough to brush my fingertips.

“He’s inside?” I asked skeptically. The Shieldsman nodded. Eyes flashing back towards the guard house and the prisoner within it. “Good.” I smile. About time something went right for me. Fishing out the coin purse I placed it in the Shield’s waiting hand. “And what will you tell the Captain?” I asked. Already knowing the man would tell me what I wanted to hear. He looked me dead in the eye. Eyes bright with his new fortune. “I never saw you.”

I jerked back away from the memory. Like a drowning man coming up for air. It had been more vivid and real than any of the others I’d seen. But it was the contents of that memory that shook me more than anything else. A shadow dropped over my face, making me register the fact that we weren’t on the main street anymore. We were moving down an alley.

I turned my head back towards the guard who was behind me. The one who had bribed his way to my cell. “You.” I said. Realization building as my mouth fell open in shock at the reason why he’d come for me. “You’re not-”

Before I could finish my sentence. I felt a shiver in my mind. The shimmering shard of Identify that made up my Danger Sense. I hadn’t even realized the thing had still been active since I’d poured mana into it last night. It wasn’t a shout of warning. Not a siren either. It was barely enough to be considered a tingle. It was a whisper. A combination of half a hundred sensory inputs working to piece together two words.

Behind you.

I ducked as the baton cleared the space my head had occupied a second ago. The force of the swing had been powerful but unbalanced. The rod connecting with the face of the guard- no. The Rogue who had been at my back. As he fell to the ground groaning the third man lunged for me. Fear and desperate panic burned away my reservations as I drove my knee into his crotch. Before the man with the baton out could get the idea to try braining me again, I jumped back. Eyes scanning for an exit. But there was none. We were too far down the alley and the only way back to the street was through the Rogues.

“Yan you stupid fucker!” The man on the ground clutched his head as he got to his feet. Any pretense of matching a guards measured tone long gone. Glaring murder at his companion who was still standing with his baton, shock clear on his face. As if he couldn’t believe that his weapon had betrayed him by hitting an ally instead of me. Then he looked to his fallen man, who was still keeled over and clutching his pearls. Moaning softly.

“Rah! Get him!” he roared.

And that was my cue. I turned, arms still held behind my back by the magic cuffs and bolted deeper into the alley. My gait was awkward, at best but still semi-fluid with Dexterity compensating. I ran until the paths split ahead of me. One to the right and one to the left. Without slowing down I chose left and took the corner fast. Skidding to a stop as I cursed at the solid wall at the end of the alley. I reversed. Going down the right path as I lost my lead advantage over the Rogues. I could hear the stomping of their boots ringing off the walls around me as I ran.

The path turned left and I took the corner hard. Clipping a shoulder on it as I made it around the bend.

“Shit!” I hissed. The alley ended in another wall. The rotting stench of garbage immediately clogging my nose as I searched for a way out. There was a small mountain of garbage that rose almost to the top of the wall at the end of the alley. There were doors on both sides of the alley but they were both boarded shut. I flexed my arms to try and break the restraints on me. The brief look I got at the cuffs over my shoulder told me that my cuffs. A solid band of see through light. Wasn’t budging.

With a cry of frustration I hurled myself into the garbage heap and started climbing. With my arms behind my back I had to use my head and shoulders as much as my legs to force myself upwards. Forcing my face into the rotting remains of something that might have been a fruit once I gritted my teeth through the stench and climbed.

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“Got him!” I heard a triumphant shout behind me as that same steel-like grip from before clamped onto my ankle. I kicked with my other leg. Adrenaline giving me the frenzied strength I needed to fight back. A storm of curses were hurled at me as my heel found a face. But that grip, that I realized must have been enhanced by the man’s own attributes, was too strong. The Rogue heaved and I lost ground on the trash heap. Falling back down as I turned. My hands coming into contact with the trash.

An absolute riot of mental images and sensations contained in the piles of refuse I was clawing through. Tore through my mind.

My hand brushed a bottle the swirl and bubble of froth cascading, slammed down on the bar. My hands quivering against the glass as I raise a hand for more.

My grip on cloth slackened as over and over back and forth. I barely held back a sob as I stared at the stain. It still wasn’t coming out!

A broken thing cut my hand as it shattered against the wall but I barely noticed. That bitch thinks she can refuse me in front of my Father! I’ll buy out her whole family’s shop and-

I screamed as the never ending torrent of thoughts smashed into my mind. I tried to bring my arms up, completely forgetting my physical struggle as I was forced to fight off a mental onslaught of fragmented memories and sensations. Even as actual, physical blows rained down on me as I was dragged to the ground. I felt the pain. I didn’t become any lesser for being drowned in everything Psychometry could pull out of the garbage. But it was so much less than the feeling of slipping. There had been impulses and feelings that were so strong that they had made me forget even for a brief instant. That I was me.

[Status Condition: Psycho-Strain (Greater) has increased in severity to Psycho-Strain (Critical)]

[Decreased resistance to Psionic remnants. Further damage to your Psyche may result in memory and personality fragmentation.]

[Aberrant Psionic remnants are at risk of being assimilated. Beware. Beware. Beware.]

I couldn’t even process the notification. That feeling of getting everything that made up who I was shoved down as half a hundred different people took my place scared me more than anything else I’d ever felt before. I’d almost forgotten that I was getting mugged before a kick to my gut reminded me, leaving me wheezing. I looked up, one of my eyes half lidded as the bruise started swelling. The man I’d put down with a knee to his crotch near the entrance to the alley had finally joined up with the rest of his buddies.

He was walking a little funny now. And his face was so red with anger he could have been a tomato. My head was so scattered that I found that funny for some reason. I smiled through the taste of blood in my mouth before I could reign myself in. The man reached me and picked me up by my shirt lifting me off the ground with a disturbing level of ease.

“Pollock wait.” One of the men said holding a hand out. “The boss wants him ali-”

The meaty fist that hurtled into my face kept me from hearing the rest of that sentence. As I fell into unconsciousness.

I hadn’t ever been knocked out before. I’d assumed that it was almost like sleep. But I was wrong. Sleep is nice and warm and doesn’t involve the constant buzz of pain that flared up whenever a trickle of light entered your eyes. I had brief sensations of movement, of being roughly handled and moved somewhere before my thoughts were dragged back down into the black of unconsciousness again.

Time lost all meaning. I could have been down for weeks or minutes and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Reality was just some hazy thing that existed outside of myself. Untouchable. And then all too quickly. The world came rushing back in as I jolted awake. An overpowering, almost primal level of fear passing through me as I felt the echoes of memories in my new surroundings.

“It… killed them here.” I groaned. But I didn’t know why. My eyes struggled open as they took in the place I was in. It was large. Made up of a mix of brick and wood. I heard the sloshing of water nearby. It was a warehouse of some kind, one that connected to a different river. Only this one looked condemned. Part of it had fallen in on itself. I felt hands dragging me along, my legs skidding along the ground as we moved closer to the building.

“What?” One of my captors said. “Oh, the fool’s awake.”

We were moving close to an entrance on the partly collapsed side of the building. Hard looking men stood outside holding crossbows as they watched us move closer. My eyes widened in panic as we marched towards the entrance. My hands weren’t touching anything except the air but I could feel the pain and agony coming off the building in waves. A stain on the world that chilled me to my core. Couldn’t they see it? Feel it? If we went in there we’d die.

Every last one of us.

I struggled against the holds on me as I tried to speak. “N-no! Wait! You can’t!” Panic giving strength to my voice as I stammered.

“Shut him up!” One of the guards shouted as I was struck over the head with a baton. My vision going black at the edges as I struggled to stay conscious. Before I could stop them we were inside the building. And I shuddered, my mind drowning in the dread. The echoes of suffering so thick they stained the walls. My eyes rolled around expecting the monster inside the walls to leap out at me at every turn.

I started shivering as we went further in. I could hear it. The pleas for mercy. The last breaths of too many lives cut short. The deafening silence of the dead.

“We got the guy Dumo.” One of my guards said casually. I whipped my head back and stared at the man holding me up. How could he be so calm? Didn’t he hear them? Any of them?

“Good. Good.” A mountain of a man rumbled. As he drunk what smelled like alcohol from a mug. His arms were thick like telephone poles and his gut bulged out, threatening to tear his shirt. As he studied me I looked around the room I was in.

The wood of the walls and floor were worn but the furniture was new. Tables and chairs standing out against the dark grain of the room. There were barrels of what I assumed were ale or something in the corner as well as some other supplies. Crossbow bolts, a discarded guard’s helm, and other stuff I couldn’t see. It was a nice room.

As long as you ignored the walls that felt like they should be bleeding and the floor that should be stacked with corpses.

“You a chicken shit boy?” Dumo said putting down his mug as he strolled over. Floorboards creaking under his weight as he leaned close to me. “Because you look like a chicken shit. You gonna cry too? Piss on your leg? Beg for mommy?” He chuckled. Clearly amused by just how scared I was. But he’d be scared too if he weren’t deaf and blind to the memories soaking the air.

“Don’t see why Vike wanted you so bad.” Dumo rumbled. Slapping both his greasy hands to the sides of my face. “I could pop your skull with my bare hands.What do you think of that huh, little chicken shit?”

I’d thought that emotional whiplash of going from emotion to emotion as Psychometry fired at every scrap of clothes and garbage had been rough. But this was so much worse. The overwhelming horror of the memories in the walls knocked the air out of me like a sledgehammer to the gut. I struggled to get by breathing under control. Forcing my mind to focus on the words my ears heard instead of the sounds of the dying in my head. “We…we have…to get out of here.” I panted.

Dumo boomed as he belly laughed. Taking his hands off my face. “We ain’t going nowhere chicken shit. But you. You get to go somewhere special.”

He looked to my kidnappers and said. “Take him to the meat locker.”

“Yes Dumo.” They said. All three responding in unison. I was dragged away. Not even registering what had been said to me. I was lost. My mind barely holding it together enough to realize the place they were taking me was worse. The place where the pain was most concentrated.

Before I knew it there was a door looming ahead of me. A metal one not unlike the ones you’d see in a commercial freezer, only thicker. The air felt so thick with despair I felt like I was choking on it. I shook my head only now realizing where I was going. They were going to put me in there.

“No…” I begged. Not even caring how pitiful I sounded. I had to stay out of that room. I must never enter that room. It still lived in there. Dead and not dead and waiting and waiting and waiting to breathe again. “No!” I cried. Fighting back against the one pulling me along as we reached the door. The man I’d kneed in the crotch grinning as he opened it wide.

“Haha! I think he’s scared of the dark Uleg!” He laughed. “What are you afraid of!”

My three Dexterity had been the difference between getting away and getting caught before. But now? With my hands still cuffed behind my back and that solid grip on my arm dragging me forward. I was helpless as I was flung into the room.

I saw the chains hanging from the ceiling and the sharp hooks on the ends of each of them as I fell forward. I cried out in terror at the thought of touching the ground as I hit it and writhed like I’d fallen onto a pit of snakes. The memories staining the floor taking turns as they bit into me.

Fingernails breaking as they clawed at the door. The others were dead. Dead or dying as they hung from the hooks. He was here! Sliding between the hanging bodies. I had to get out. Out before-

“I can give you anything!” I screamed into the dark. “Money! Women! Power! It’s yours!” I sobbed as I saw the knife gleaming in the dark. “P-please…”

Blood gurgled out of the holes in my lungs. My hands slick with my blood as they scraped at the hook in my shoulder and the chain that held me above the ground. I… was going to die here-

I was off the ground and sprinting towards the door half mad with fear as I wordlessly yelled. I didn’t even see the kick wind up before I felt a boot smash into my ribs. Sending me flying back into the room as my head bounced off the floor hard. As the door slammed shut I tried to get up as fast as I could but I couldn’t keep my hand from pressing into the floor.

I tried prying my hand off the ground but it felt like it had fused with the floor. The memories gripping it tight and not letting go. I felt my eyes roll back into my head as the sensation of something crawled up my arm. Reaching up to touch my mind and slither between my thoughts. I opened my mouth to scream but I made no sound.

I fell away as my mind recoiled from the horror. Out of my body and into a darkness so deep it smothered all that I was. As something… something else. Took my place.

[Aberrant Psionic remnants assimilated. Status Condition: Psycho-Strain (Critical) has been lost.]

[New Status Condition: Psyche Spliced (Lesser)]

[An additional personality has evolved from the Psionic remnants in your mind. Unless it is exorcised, it will vie for control of your body. Memories, thought patterns, and consciousnesses will diffuse between both your personalities until the weakest is consumed. Beware. Beware. Beware. Beware. Beware…]