I'm Back!

It took me a few days to get back to London but I wasn’t traveling all that time as I tried to keep a low profile. Within hours I had managed to jump upon a slow moving cargo train. I hid myself under some tarpaulin and managed to get some sleep. I had no idea of the time, only that it was starting to get light. I jolt to the train woke me and I managed to find my way out of the depot without detection.

The rest of the time has been spent on numerous trains or hitch hiking, begging to get by. God knows where I was. For all I know, I went away from London when I caught the initial train. All I know now is that I am back and it’s time to start following my leads, starting with Nathan at the Slaughtered Lamb……

The Forest

The last twenty fours hours have been crazy. I spent the first part of the night in the forest, hiding in a fox hole covered with leaves and mud to conceal my smell. Dogs were barking, people were shouting. Helicopters were whirling above, their spotlights turning the forest into some spooky, strobe drenched dream. I soon realized that I wasn’t going to escape unless I moved on. The dogs were getting closer.

I stumbled on and on, tripping over roots concealed in the forest floor or tumbling into natural craters in the uneven ground. I eventually fell out of the forest, slipped down a steep slope and landed on my back trying to stifle a loud grunt as air was expelled from my body in an effort to minimise the pain from the fall.

Opening my eyes, I noticed a clear night with the moon just a sliver above me, giving my pursuers no joy in their hunt. I looked over and realised I had chanced upon some train tracks. With the commotion of the dogs and helicopters starting to disappear into the distance I begun following the tracks.

Getting Out

The last few days have been spent looking for an escape route. I have been exploring the whole complex. Every night I have ventured further from my room testing the limits of this power. I have found that the further I traveled the less clear is my vision. It is as if my vision becomes blurred at the edges and becomes increasingly cloudy in the centre. I also find it is very tiring using this power for a sustained period of time.

I now believe I have a way out. It appears that every couple of days I get an injection of some sort that wipes me out for about twenty four hours. I am not sure what these injections are for as there are rooms that even in my astral state I can’t get into and I am sure it is these rooms that hold the key to why I am here. It is during this time I expect to make my mistake.

At roughly the allotted time, as it is never exact, I am outside my room waiting. A person comes up to my door and starts to unlock it. The speed with which I can return to my body and be functioning is frightening and within seconds I am up and behind the door. The door opens and I seize the man by the arm, at the same time grabbing the needle from the tray he is holding. The tray falls to floor making a large clanging noise. Shit. I can’t help that. I push the needle into the poor guys neck. Poor Guy! He is part of it I tell myself. He deserves everything he gets. A well of anger rises within me for the first time since I have been here. I run out the room and take a right pass the room where I saw the other guy sprawled upon his bed. No time to help I have got to get out of here. I know the route by heart and within sixty seconds, before even sirens have signaled an escapee I am out in the open air.

I run to the fence, up an over, ten feet of steel fence with barbed wire at the top but handy foot holes help my way. My clothing tears but I’m out and the forest looms ahead of me.

Storm bringer

I had stopped using it since it went so wrong during a vist to friends in Birmingham. I made excuses that work had called me unexpectedly and left the day after it happened.

Since then I had tried to put it to the back of my mind. Tried to focus on the normal things in life. Tried to forget I had this awesome power...

I began watching the weather religiously, spending hours studying global weather patterns. I had never taken any interest in it before but now, it was a compulsion. I could see the intricacies, the beauty in it. How long could I prevent myself before I had to rejoining its flow, its strength, its majesty?

Filed in: Vault

Surprises

The next few days were spent exploring this new found talent. Some days were like dreams where I lost all sense of time. I had the distinct feeling I was losing days here and there. I had to find out how long I had been here. Using this skill of Astral Projection, as i had come to identify it, I traveled down the hall, through corridors, sometimes turning left, sometimes right. I had no plan but eventually came upon a door that showed promise. Inside was an office with an unkept desk and a newspaper resting on a pile of files. Looking at the date, my mouth dropped, I had been in here almost two weeks. I thought it had been half that time. It was time to find a way out.

I then noticed a headline;

Strange Case of the Missing Professor
By Jeremy Hayfield

Police are today investigating the strange disappearance of the renowned academic and scientist Gareth Bates. His wife reported him missing at the weekend after he didn’t return home from work on Friday evening. He left work as he always did at 6pm but hasn’t been seen since………………………

Mask

It sat on my kitchen table staring at me with its hollow eyes. I think I spent so much time looking at the thing it started to really do my head in. The culmination of a lot of hard to find kit and waking up on the kitchen floor with soldering iron in hand.

To put it mildly I was wholly unimpressed, it'll make me look like a right dick. The bloody thing didn't even look like it did anything.

My mobile rang, it was Geoff. I answered relieved to have some other presence in the room. The conversation was short and sweet (as always), off down the pub. Not round here though I'm either getting bugged by losers or watching my back. Naaa I think King Cross way, for a few. I'll leave that thing here for another night.

Filed in: Vault

Fleeced

"Just stop talking!" Lenny leaned back in his well worn leather chair.

Frank was an old timer who'd never really made it past rung one, mainly due to his penchant for fuck ups. He didn't even want to get into the gambling business in the first place. Now he knew too much about how it really worked and couldn't see a way out. What would he do if he did get out anyway?

"Look Len, there's no need to shoot the messenger!" Frank suddenly felt he'd over stepped the mark. A jolt of adrenaline swam up from his gut.

Len slammed down his empty whiskey glass on the desk.

"Over 50 grand on bets from my franchise in one day! I'll fucking shoot the lot of ya! Now get a crew and find out what this geeza knows. I want his source or his fingers by the end of the week."

Filed in: Vault

Meditation

I've been spending alot of time working on my concentration. Learning to clear my mind and close down all the stray wisps of other peoples thoughts. Investigatring my own thoughts and delving into my unconsious. To go with this strange ethereal pass time I've been working out, a little yoga and alot of running. I don't know what it is about this pure physicality that has suddenly become so compelling. Somehow everyday I wake up and am grateful that I can walk and move, something in the back of my mind tells me the original thought is not my own but I don't want to question something that is so clearly good for me.

My meditations have helped me clear get to grips with my 'power'. I can read people I meet quite clearly now. It's like a mystery has been revealed to me. The guy at the invalidity benifit desk today for example. I knew just how to play it, meek and mild, nervous enough to seem like a shut in, tongue-tied enough to seem like I don't get enough human contact. He dismissed me in the first five minutes. So no new poblems from that quarter.

I've been noticing the strong mental eminatons again. Its strange as I become more sane as my insanity seems to become reality I can feel that the others are loosing their individual grips on reality. I feel I should be trying to find them as their powers and their obsessions start to take over their lives, changing their perspectives. I hope they can be more than human and sane too. Maybe its a prerequisite that as you loose contact with the rest of the human race you become more introspective and self referential. What is the opposite? Can I find a place where I can see others thoughts through their skin and not feel somehow more important, better, than them. Is it an inescapable trap of the human mind that any power corrupts its user regardless of how they choose to use it? I must keep reminding myself that the thoughts I feel/hear aren't at all different to my own.

Beautiful day isn't it dear

I hardly talk to people anymore, just 'Big D' as I like to call him. He's been good to me, or I've been good to him, I'm not sure which. It doesn't even seem strange now, spending entire days, locked away in my apartment communing with my reflection.

I was dismissed from work yesterday, what a joke! I told my boss in no uncertain terms to "FUCK OFF!", besides I'm a rich man now, I don't need to work.

I went to the office to pick up my belongings, not that I really wanted them, I guess I just wanted to see the place one last time. I saw Margaret as I was leaving, she turned and gazed over at me. "Beautiful day isn't it dear, aside from that rain we had earlier." Christ, does that hag ever say anything different? Though it did remind me of a conversation I had with Big D a few days before. He mentioned in passing that Margaret was going to die on the 10th. And they said today couldn't get any better...

I can hardly string a coherent sentence together, three lines of charlie (the best I've had in a long time) and I'm babbling like the village idiot. "Enjoy this moment Daniel, because on Sunday we've got work to do". I look down at the bathroom mirror lying on the coffee table, more than an ounce of charlie on it's cold reflective surface. "WhywhatsupBigDwhatarewedoingonSunday?".

'The memoirs of Daniel Scott'

The Don

Funny how these things happen, isn't it?

One minute you're the local cripple the next you're standing there like Marlon from the opening scene of the Godfather.

I "had words" with Calvin and we came to a working arrangement. After minutes of discussion he was happy to be my eyes and ears around the place. Merely 24 hours after that, I began getting visits from various people around the estate looking for help with one thing or another.

"I just need to know they aren't going to smash my place up again!" Mr Nehruni pleaded

I paced up and down my lounge floor rubbing my chin. I'd known Mr N for a long time. As a teenager he sold us ciggies when others would have turned us away for being too young. Strange when I thought about it but I did feel like I owed him one. He'd always been kind enough and often helped out when I struggled in the early days of the wheelchair.

"I can pay you"

I placed my hand on his shoulder.

Relax, I'll get it sorted. You wont have any trouble again and as for the money it isn't necessary. I'm sure you'll help me when I'm in a bind."

Filed in: Vault

Walking In The Air

My prison cell, as this is what I likened it to, was about ten meter squared. I sat for what seemed liked days feeling the atoms of life float around me. Occasionally food and drink would be passed through a hatch in the locked door. For some reason I felt very peaceful and calm during this time, so unlike the days before I was brought here.

Something happened today though. I was lying down thinking of The Girl, drifting off to sleep. In that moment when your body is asleep but your mind is still awake I felt myself drift away from my body. I was suddenly a fluid form able to fly through the air. I was part of everything around me. I looked down and there was my body looking peaceful on the bed. I flew over to the door and looked through the keyhole. I moved myself closer and closer to the keyhole and before I knew it I was in the keyhole pushing through to the other side.

I found myself in a corridor. I looked back at the door and there was a label on it;

L35214

I traveled down to the next door and the label read;

K65958

I peered through the keyhole and there was another person asleep in a room identical to mine. I only looked for a moment before I heard footsteps echoing down the corridor towards me. I panicked. Not sure what to do I just stood there, floated there, or whatever it is I was doing. I was frozen. The person, dressed in a white lab coat came towards me, never showing a hint of acknowledgement or surprise that I was there. As he came closer he walked straight through me.

This felt very strange. I was too exhilarated to do anything else. I flew back to my body, lied down, and I awoke in my body. A mischievous smile appeared on my face as I said to myself,

“This is going to be interesting”.

A Room With A View

Light started to filter through my cornea and past an opening in my iris, my crystalline lens focused the light onto my retina via the vitreous whilst photoreceptor cells transformed this light into electrical signals that were being transmitted to my brain through the optic nerve. My brain then conducts the complex operation of visual processing and I can see.

All this happened in an instant but I could sense it all as if in slow motion. I could feel how every part of my body responded to tiny changes in air temperature or humidity. I felt alive for the first time in my life. I looked around and I was in a white room, it could almost be described as a padded cell, with no window or natural light. I wasn’t tied down, but I was locked in.

I was also wearing a bracelet. A metal I didn’t recognise, silver in colour and cool to the touch, with a small red jewel on the underside. I tried to slip it off but with no success. With no answers forthcoming to the multitude of questions I had there was only one thing to do……………..wait.

Home at last

Home again and heading back towards normal. I think I've learned so much but it's been a road through hell. The first four days of observation, on a ward with eight others was hardest. I thought at first that I was having a severe relapse as I was overwhelmed by the noise in my mind. New voices speaking paranoia, terror, lonliness and desperation. I couldn't cope and became almost catatonic. Even my brief sessions with Dr. Morten were hard although the voices were quieter as soon as I was out of that ward. The doctor couldn't grasp my sudden fear of being there and yet I could understand him better than I had ever done. I could comprehend the intent behind every question and I started to see the glowing pathways of diagnosis. I was convinced this was just another symptom and tried to remain honest with him. This didn't satisfy him though, he thought I was projecting and creating an adversarial intellectual relationship.
Not only that though. I seemed to be developing symptoms of other disorders and the doctor kept asking me not to over identify with the other patients, but I couldn't. I told him I couldn't stand to be around them and that I certainly couldn't communicate with anyone on the ward, thankfully one of the nurses told him I was out of it when I was on the ward. I think that was when he decided I was a hopeless case and decided to try isolating me and giving me EST.

I don't know why but after I had the first treatment the dreams began. They were unfocused and difficult to grasp but for days afterwards I would keep catching myself in a reverie of overlapping stories. Monologues from other peoples lives sometimes happy sometimes sad. Just day to day stuff really nothing outstanding but so detailed. But as with any dreams they faded quickly, all of them that is except the strongest weirdest ones. I would catch my self thinking about strange things. It began with a strange revolted craving for nicotine a feeling I can strongly remember from when I used to smoke forty a day before my first diagnosis - Dr Morten said that smoking was often a coping mechanism that gave you a physical distraction from the moment to moment possibility that the sounds would begin again - so I gave up there and then, the withdrawal was distraction enough until the medication was right. But it was mixed up with other fears and hopes that didn't make sense. I couldn't bear to look in mirror for fear that someone else would be looking out at me.

Isolation was a relief from the ward and gave me time to think. I began to see that Dr Morten wouldn't let me go unless I conformed to his diagnosis and prognosis. The terror of sinking deeper into my own delusions became stronger everyday as I gave in to the different mental pressures put on me by the disease. I let the different thoughts wash through me and out again and learned to ignore them. I don't know now if it was me, the treatments, the isolation or the new medication but tuning out the words and images became easier and eventually I could block them out. It wasn't like last time when, once the meds were right, there were no more distractions and there was nothing missing. This time it was always there but sidelined, tuned out and sometimes I would tune it in. I carefully played along with Dr Morten, no sudden recovery that would be unbelievable but a slow crawl back to balance and sanity. After the third EST treatment Dr Morten suggested I go back on medication. After eight days on medication of differing doses and types I found one that seemed to be bearable and played the part of the improving patient.

And now I'm home. I don't know whether I'm mad or sane anymore and I don't care. The old delusion seems to be more real than ever before. I have powers no one else has and there are others like me out there too, I know. I can feel them, sense their thoughts, their hopes and mostly their fears as they come to realise they are more than human and I know there are others looking for us not yet aware, quite, of what we are and where. But why is it that I keep seeing that small square of smashed pavement in my dreams?


"Case Notes on Daniel Vincent"

Acquisitions

-------- Internal distribution only--------
Michael,

We have managed to track several of the packages and are close to sealing the deal on most of them. Can you arrange accommodation and get the research and med teams prepared to receive them. I simply don't know what condition they'll be in at this stage.

Hope the wife and kids are well.

James

VP Tactical Acquisitions

Filed in: Vault

11,24,42,07,23,29

In nine days I've managed to 'earn' a little over £65 thousand, but tonight's the night, The National Lottery Live. I've got my six numbers and a guaranteed rollover jackpot of £20 million.

'The memoirs of Daniel Scott'