Kyle

I lay stretched out on a bench, half dozing sleeping off the alcohol in my system, which to be honest wasn’t much. I’d been far more pissed than this before, but there were extenuating circumstances, like the need to relieve myself into the nearest potted plant and the presence of one of London’s finest there to arrest me for public indecency and a couple other misdemeanors. I’d put in a call to my lawyer, who would arrive in the morning to pay the fines and such and get me released. Until then I was stuck in this cell, enjoying the peace and quiet. At least I had been until the door opened up and a number of voices, all talking at once, jolted me from my beauty sleep. The sound of them drew closer and closer, a couple of the Bobbies telling the lot to quiet down and then into the holding cell they were all nudged.

Into my holding cell. I sighed and sat up, rubbing at my face, stifling a yawn and looking around at the motley collection of people. Two men in suits who obviously knew each other well, and hated each other’s guts. There was an animosity between them, but being stuck together in this situation was forcing them to stick together. A courier, all lean muscle and tight clothing, and currently high on likely marijuana. A homeless man, not worried but happily claiming the other bench for his own and laying out on it, happy to be out of the rain that was falling outside. Last, but not least, a janitor, worried and scared, a look of shocked innocence on his face. I made eye contact with the man and scooted over, offering him a place to sit. The benches weren’t that big. He gratefully took a seat next to me, his eyes flicking to the others in the room and then back to me.

“Did they grab you too?” The man asked, his accent slightly strong on all the wrong syllables. I snorted and shook my head.

“Nah mate. They caught me pissing in a potted plant…and then on the officer when he made me turn around. You look like you’re having a rough night of things. What’s going on?”

“There was a murder in the office building I work at, down in the lobby when the security guard was on his rounds. The police brought us all in because we’re all suspects. But I didn’t do it!” The man’s voice cracked slightly. At his assertion the other three men, who couldn’t help but overhear, spoke up to say much the same. Only the homeless man said nothing and ignored us all. Smart man that. I glanced back to the janitor and looked at him for a long moment before I turned my eye to outside the cell at a camera pointed into the cell, watching us all. It’s blinking red light was like an admission of intent.

Alright then, if that’s what you want, fine.

“Well gentlemen, some of you might be in luck tonight. I might be able to help you. Name’s Killian. Kyle Killian….I’m kind of….a freelancer in law enforcement, you might say. I work with these boys off and on. Why don’t you start by telling me exactly what happened tonight.” I stood up and fished around in my jacket pocket, pulling out a small notebook and a pencil. One of the suit boys spoke up then demanding to know if I was a cop, that they weren’t going to say anything without a lawyer present, I was trying to entrap them. The other suit boy backed him up, naturally. Close ranks. I looked back to the janitor, raising an eyebrow at him. His eyes kept darting to the suit boys. He was jealous and covetous of their success and his lack of the same. He also didn’t know who to trust. I sighed and put on my most charming smile.

“Alright, I get you. You don’t know me from a hole in the ground. How’s about a little quid pro quo, eh? I’ll tell you about me and you tell me about what happened tonight. Fair exchange of information. I’ll start. See the boring shite of childhood and such is just that, boring shite. I got parents, there were upper class sorts, had money and all that. I didn’t really grow up wanting for much of anything. Private school, the best of education that money can buy. Not much in the way of friends for the most part. I was a bit of an ass even as a wee boy. I was too clever for my own good, you see. Nothing was much of a challenge for me so I was always bored and acting out. My grades suffered because I didn’t see the point in telling the teachers that I knew what I knew. Of course I knew it, why should I have to explain what I knew to them. Waste of everybody’s time.”

“Barely graduated and then it was time for university, but I wasn’t having any of that. There was more to life than listening to boring old professors droning on in lecture halls. I still loved learning, but I could do that on my own. I had rather unintentionally decided on a bohemian lifestyle of wandering where they wind takes me, soaking up knowledge and experience like a sponge. Which is how I wound up in almost the same situation as you lot are in now. In jail, suspected of murder.”

I had their attention now, even the suit boys. The homeless man wasn’t sleeping, he was pretending well though and listening. The janitor asked what happened next, but I turned it back on him, I’d told enough, now it was time for them to talk, to tell me what happened tonight. It took a moment but the janitor began to speak first. A woman, an executive, was working late at the office and she’d been murdered, down in the lobby. He’d been up on the 12th floor, cleaning the offices there when the police found him and arrested him. He knew nothing about the murder. I asked him a few questions about his relationship with the victim, how well he knew her, what time his shift started, what was his usual route through the building cleaning.

Then I looked to the suit boys. They were both working up on the 9th floor, together, trying to get things settled for the Steinslaw account, so they couldn’t have done it. They were each other’s alibi. The courier arrived at the building at 8:58 and took the stairs up to the 15th floor to deliver three packages that absolutely had to be there by the morning. He used the bathroom and must have dozed off because when he went downstairs it was 9:45 and the woman was dead and the police were there. Nobody knew anything about the homeless man or where he fit in. I waited a moment to see if he’d speak and when he didn’t I finished making a few notes in my book and began to slowly walk in a circle, speaking again.

“Right, so there I am, living a life free of responsibility, as long as I don’t embarrass the family, which I tried to at every opportunity. That of course ended up with me being tossed in jail, I believe I was 21 at the time. I was busted at a party of a so-called friend of mine with enough cocaine on my person that I could have charged with intent to distribute. Of course the police who arrested me were looking to charge me with murder, as I’d been found unconscious in the room, holding a bloody knife, which was the murder weapon. The inspector who had my case was a real hard ass, and he didn’t like me from the first time he saw me. They tried to wring a confession out of me. 75 percent of the people at the party were being held and questioned. All their attempts to get me to admit to my guilt only served to piss me off, to burn away the drug haze in my mind. They threw me back in with the lot of them as they continued to pull people out for questioning, only to send them back.”

“That’s when it happened….that’s when my mind cleared and began to tick over like a well-oiled machine. It was like everything slowed down around me and took on a new clarity. Colors, movements, spoken words, facial expressions, everything just kind of reached out to me. I was always clever….always perceptive, but now, with the last of the cocaine burning through my brain, I saw things so much clearer. It was like someone opened the top of my head and poured in information until I felt like my head would pop. Then all that information just crystalized in my mind and suddenly…I knew who had murdered the girl.”

I paused for dramatic effect and the homeless man spoke up, having rolled over to face us all, asking who had done it. I took that moment to turn the question back on him, asking him about his presence here. Grudgingly he said he knew how to open the doors to the lobby and often did on cold rainy nights when the guard would go for his rounds, he’d sneak in and bed down in a quiet part of the lobby. He heard the murder happen…9:24, but he hadn’t seen anything and he wasn’t going to move and risk being seen by a murderer. I knew he was a smart man. I made a few more notes and asked another round of questions, what the homeless man’s usual route through the city was. If the courier ever picked up deliveries from a number of seemingly random streets. Did the suit boys play any sports together? Which one of them was up for a promotion next? How was the janitor’s wife and children? More answers….more notes made.

“So there I was, locked up in a cell with a bunch of people, suspected of murder with the realization of who it had been burning in my brain. I screamed for the inspector until my voice was hoarse and he came and asked if I was ready to confess. He’d known I was coming down off the high and withdrawal would be hitting me and it was, but I was ignoring that because something else had my mind occupied. I laughed in face, called him a rude name and then told him that I didn’t want to confess, I wanted to help him, catch the real killer, the one who tried to frame me so inexpertly. Despite being a hard ass, he wasn’t a complete idiot. He took a good hard look at me and realized I wasn’t just raving. He took me out of the cell and into an interrogation room for some privacy. We had a long chat then and I explained to him I know who had killed the girl, but not the how or the why yet. I didn’t have enough information, I needed more and I was certain he would have it.”

“He was hesitant at first, until I told him that I knew he lacked more than the blatant evidence against me and that he was pursuing other suspects and I listed off the top five of them along with reasons why. He finally gave in and said while he couldn’t let me at any of the evidence, he would answer my questions. So for the next two hours I asked him question after question drawing on the table surface with a pencil he gave me laying out a timeline of the night. By the time I was done all the pieces were in place. The good inspector only had to find the evidence I was sure existed. I was left in the interrogation room while he did his job and investigated. Now, time for a few more questions from you lot.”

I peppered them with more questions, strange random questions that seemed to make no sense to ask as they didn’t pertain to the case. They’d gotten into both my story and the habit of answering so they did without question and with little hesitation. What’s your birthstone? Last vacation spot? Last time you had good sex? Favorite beer. Favorite film. Last book you read. Last time you called your mother. Dozens of random inane questions, but there were a few pertinent ones slipped in here and there. When I finished asking the last of the questions I leaned back against the bars and eyed my notes, flicking back and forth through the pages.

“By the time the good inspector came back I was sleeping, he woke me up by kicking the table and giving me a coffee. He sent men out to find the evidence and they found it. I had been right, I was innocent and being framed. Turns out the real culprit thought he had a thing going with the girl and went I’d slept with her I’d proved him wrong and he was the jealous type. He went after her, argued with her and eventually stabbed her to death in the bed while I lay unconscious mere feet away. Don’t mix your drugs at a party, it can do a number on you. So I was let free but the inspector gave me a card and told me to pay a visit to men and women there. Government place, they were looking for talent like me. Turns out I wasn’t much good at playing by their rules, but playing by my own rules does get the job done. So I’m useful and able to help out where I can, like with you lot today.”

The far door opened and several sets of footstep approached, a number of policemen and my old friend, Chief Inspector Mercurio.

“Good news for 4 of you. You’ll probably be on your way shortly. The 5th, not so much. You my poor lost soul with no home, did not kill anyone tonight. My poor addled pothead, you could not have, not when you were smoking up in the bathroom when the murder took place. As for you two well-dressed gentlemen, sadly your alibies are nothing but lies. You two weren’t working together at all, you hate each other. You were each trying to one up the other by being better prepared for tomorrow’s big meeting. Hoping to impress. Of course that doesn’t mean you killed her.” I turned then to look at the janitor, shaking my head sadly.

“But you my friend, you did kill her. You wife has left you and taken the kids, you’re alone, wallowing in misery, hoping to find a new love. The young woman who you murdered was nice to you, kind, she thought you were sweet….but she wasn’t attracted to you. So she was caught off guard when you met her in the lobby, knowing when the guard went on patrol….knowing when she left to go home. You asked her out on a date….and she turned you down cold. Maybe she laughed at you, but you just snapped and attacked her….strangled her with your hands. The same hands you’ve spent the past while trying to wipe clean with your kerchief, despite them being spotless. Also you speak perfect English and you only fake an accent because people overlook you then and you can get away with stealing information and selling it to their competitors, which is why the Steinslaw account was tanked last week, you just two just didn’t know it yet.”

The door opened and the policemen filed in, cuffing the janitor and dragging the others out. I went to leave as well, but Mercurio closed the door on me with a satisfied smirk.

“Good job, Killian. Thanks for the assist. You just sit tight here until your lawyer gets here in the morning to pay your fine and fill out the paperwork. Sleep tight.” The man turned and swaggered off down the hall. I sighed and shook my head, muttering to myself what a bloody bastard he was. Still, at least I was alone again. I tucked my notebook and pencil away and laid back down on the bench, covering my eyes with an arm to try and get some shuteye.

Paradigm - A Mechanistic Cosmos

Practice - Chaos Magick, Crazy Wisdom, Dominion

Instruments

Art

Blood & Bodily Fluids

Bones & Remains

Drugs

Eye Contact

Fashion

Languages

Mass Media

Music

Ordeals

Sex & Sensuality

Social Domination

Symbols

Thought Forms

Toys

Tricks & Illusions

Voice

Genius - The Grand Network. Everything is connected, all of reality no matter the form or function of the disparate parts, they are all connected. The threads of connection spread out overlapping, interweaving to form a vast web of connections. This is the Grand Network. To glimpse it is to glimpse the fundamental Truth that existence is a system and thus can be understood. But the system, the Network is too large for any one mind to fully grasp easily and quickly. Understanding the Network allows for changes to be made, new connections formed, old connections broken. The Network is a grand living breathing entity formed of much smaller entities. Power can be leverged to effect change, to direct nodes. The Network is Truth.

Procedures

Detect Lies (Life 1/Mind 1) - With this procedure Kyle can observe someone and get a sense of whether they are being truthful or not based on their breathing rhythm, pulse, microexpressions, general composure and the choice of words they employ.

Take Two (Life 2) - With this procedure Kyle can make use of first aid procedures and modern medicine to heal overnight.

Disguise (Life 2) With this procedure Kyle can use rudimentary disguise techniques to affect changes in his appearance beyond what should be capable.

Better Body (Life 3) With this procedure Kyle makes use of cutting edge and experimental pharmaceutical drugs to alter his body chemistry allowing him to improve himself physically.

Skimming the Mind (Mind 1) With this procedure Kyle can pick up the surface thoughts and emotions of another.

Mind Shield (Mind 1) With this procedure Kyle can erect a mental barrier around his mind guarding him from the will of others.

Focus (Mind 1) With this procedure Kyle can focus his mind allowing him to process information more quickly.

Read Surface Thoughts (Mind 2) With this procedure Kyle gains a deeper understand of a person and is able to understand what they are thinking.

Empathic Bond (Mind 2) With this procedure Kyle is able to pick up on subtle clues and understand on a deeper level what a person is feeling.

Create Impressions (Mind 2) With this procedure Kyle is able to wordlessly convey meaning to another with a look or a gesture.

Mental Impulse (Mind 2) With this procedure Kyle is able to incite an emotion in another, forcing them to react a certain way.

Synchronization (Life 3/Mind 3) With this procedure Kyle adjust his own body rhythms to synchronize with another person, truly allowing himself to get into their phsyical and mental space, giving him a deeper understanding of what drives them, of how they would react to a given situation. This has its drawbacks, however, as it can alter Kyle's own mind.

7% Solution (Life 2/ Mind 3) With this procedure Kyle administers a solution of drugs into his system and locks himself away in isolation with as much information on a problem as he can. The drugs send his mind into a lucid dreamscape where he can truly delve into the information as it exists on a metaphysical level, glimpse the Grand Network and the connections between nodes of information.