Disclaimer: Story will contain graphic, heavily violent scenes (in later chapters), strong language, and adult themes so reader discretion is advised. All characters are property of Quantic Dream and in no way does the author claim any rights to their entities forthwith. Blah blah blah please don't sue.
Chapter I
Norman Jayden failed to save Shaun Mars, that was all there was to it. How could it have happened? Norman was the best at what he did - a psychological profiler, with a keen and astute nature to find the details and nuisances in a psychopathic killer's mind. In fact, he was the best amongst his colleagues at the bureau, excelled to the level of bordering superhumanly brilliant, he could have had a promising career full of advancements and promotions. And with ARI at hand, the device which helped him to disseminate huge amounts of impregnable information in virtual space, he became somewhat Godly: invincible, flawless and unstoppable.
Yet despite all his fine honed mental attributes, and the advanced technology to enhance his capacities as a profiler, he failed. Shaun Mars was dead, the Origami Killer escaped, and life was inexorably cruel and unfair. If only it could be as beautiful and serene as the virtual world of ARI, where Norman Jayden was now sitting cross-legged, hugging his knees close to his body. He was at the top of the world, at the peak of a canyon plateau, overlooking a basin lined thick with tropical vegetation, and a cascading waterfall to the side that descended onto a river which snaked through the forest. Here, the virtual landscape felt limitless, above the clouds, and just beyond reach of the endless, cerulean skies. However, Jayden's true world, his inner being, felt anything but; it was finite, flawed, imperfect and fragile in all its humanity.
What could he do now? His perfect record of solved cases was blemished, his character as the star FBI profiler now suspect, and most of all, a child died because of him, and countless more would soon follow. Jayden never realized how hard it was to actualize and face the burden that plagued him, devouring and eviscerating him from within until all that remained was the guilt at the brutal guts of his being.
Just what are you going to do now?
"I don't know. Resign? Try to forget…" he croaked in a dead-pan voice. "I don't know…"
Maybe he could take some Triptocane, sweet and blissful Triptocane, his ideal & sinful wonder, his personal narcotic maiden. How could he not take Triptocane, especially now when things were so difficult for him? How unbiased and welcoming she was; she would not judge, she would never reject, unboastful and unabashed, and most of all, she gave him the transient and regrettable pleasure that could ease the pain of his predicament, make him forget and never record any of his wrong doings. How merciful, how kind, how forgiving she was! To Norman, Triptocane was like the loving mother, the teacher, the secret goddess that held him close to her bosom in a caress while the edge of a blade pressed dangerously to his throat.
Is Tripto part of your plan to forget?
Norman knew this answer: Triptocane was the most effective way he found. But it was not the solution, and deep down he knew this. However, for that moment, the solution was the last thing to dominate his mind, which once was brilliant and beautiful now reduced to a murky miasma of personal hellish demons, of deep Triptocane nightmares, of the desire to forget.
Things may have affected you more than you think, Norman.
Why would that be? Surely he was okay, surely Tripto would never betray him, his mind and body would never betray him, he would get through this, together with his lady of the drug, together with his ignominy and failure.
"I'm getting through this. Let's just take it easy," said Norman solemnly as he rose wearily to his feet, and added, "See what happens when this is all over."
And then he turned slowly, to the figure standing behind him, and was chilled to find himself standing before him. But it was not just another Norman, but the mirror to himself, the ultimate truth that reflected the immutable and unchangeable: that the weight of his failure had consumed him, that the narcotic maiden he called Triptocane had reaped him, that he was not a God, but a mortal, dying human being.
'It may never be over, Norman,' said his mirror ominously.
That was the moment the walls of reality began crashing down on him, ARI phasing out completely for Norman's final digital session. He was no longer at the beautiful, virtual canyon, but in a grungy motel room, splayed on a grimy stained carpet as dozens of Triptocane vials were scattered around him carelessly. Norman was breathing hard, his heart punching rapidly against his chest, as he was curled on his side in a fetal position. Then he rolled to his back, in a haphazard and useless heap, staring up in the dilapidated ceiling as he could feel the last few breaths leave him. Faintly, he could hear a distant rapping, growing into a thudded knock, was this the reaper coming to claim him at last? Was this the Triptocane finally showing him how decadently savage she was? It was far too late for Norman to consider that now…
First breath. His lungs stung hard, as if brambles had jutted through his airways, forcing blood to stream out of his nose. Second breath. His heart felt like he was being lanced, crucified for the world to see his shame. Final breath – and he realized the horrible truth of it all: he was alone, as he always was, and will be now, forever and ever. And then, the final visage of his humanity bubbled forth from his eye, just a single tear, as it cascaded over his lid, and rolled down the side of his face.
What would Norman think if he was still alive for those next few seconds? Perhaps he would have stewed further in his failure, be his own worst critic, consider another round of Triptocane? Or he might have dwelled into shameful, self deprecating, masochistic thoughts that would punish himself into oblivion? How could Norman have known through his narcotic haze before his last breath, that the knocking he heard earlier had not been the reaper at all, but the Anti-Christ himself.
Carter Blake crashed open the door to Norman's motel room, muscling his way through the room as a furious tempest. Norman's greatest foil and rival had unexpectedly arrived due to a phone call made to the lieutenant before his overdose. Earlier in the motel room, Norman's night first started with self-loathing, then some bottles of alcohol until his watch read "Beer-o-Clock" in his buzzed mind. When he was sure his inhibitions were squared away, he called Carter on his cell phone to spew out a litany of foul phrases full of diction and syntax only a crass collegiate could formulate (something along the lines of circus midgets fisting Carter, whilst he copulated a dog in full decomposing necrosis, and coprophagia with Tapatio hot sauce on top, just to name a few) followed by a grim epitaph about this being the last time he'd hear from him before hanging up, and then snorted up about a dozen or so phials of Triptocane. Nothing like giving the big, proverbial finger to the man you loath so much by making a call you know that could never be returned, because you would be dead, just like Norman was as he laid sprawled so pathetically on the carpet, overdosed on his delightfully vicious Triptocane.
And so when Carter stopped at the end of the hallway and saw Norman sprawled on the ground, with some half-empty & some filled teal vials littering the dirty floor like some kind of gross abstract art with the FBI agent as the centerpiece, the lieutenant knew what this was, all too well – drug overdose by Triptocane. True, his job in the police force had made this scene so commonplace that an overdose by any drug bordered on the mundane and could identify such situations immediately, but in actuality he had a much personal experience in the younger part of his life, a similar situation that made this moment all too familiar and painfully intimate: the shady motel room, the expired body, and the copious amounts of Triptocane all over the ground.
"Fuck!" he cried out, partly irritated, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Shit!"
As if he were being controlled by a puppeteer, Carter's limbs moved on their own, being willed by a deeper presence inside of him. He swooped down beside Norman, put his hands above his chest, one over the other, and started pumping downwards. Yes, he was definitely a brutish and belligerent police officer, doing illicitus and violent things on the job, and yes, he could very well be a psychopath according to Norman (though this might be debatable), and yes, he was a major douche bag, so much so that if you looked up that very word in the dictionary, the words "Carter Blake" would be the principal definition.
But he wasn't without his fractured past, he wasn't one without remorse from a moment gone awry, with another person, somebody like Norman, intelligent and highly motivated, but with the only remarked difference was this person had bypassed all of Carter's barriers and walls, and gained access to his most fragile self. It was a moment gone so horribly wrong, ending with a regrettable death, that it became the cornerstone to the man he was today, not as rookie cop Carter, but as Lieutenant fucking Blake.
And just like that moment in Carter's past so long ago, the reaper had come to make his claim again at this moment in the motel room. And Carter was not the most humble of losers, very far from it, leagues even. In fact, he was such a sore loser that he could not bear to let death claim Norman, even if the very presence of the FBI agent had continually spiked his blood pressure to ridiculous levels.
One, two, three pumps later, and Carter took a deep breath. He screwed his eyes shut, partly out of vehemence, and partly out of disgust, that not only had he to breath into Norman's mouth, but that he'd have to make some sort of residual, human, and grotesquely personal contact with the man he so desperately loathed – mouth to mouth, breath of life into a body without, a part of him entering into Norman, God forbidding…
One, two, three pumps again, then another exhaled breath with lip contact again, and again and again. Motion after motion, automatic and, to the lieutenant, hideous but necessary. He wasn't going to let him get away with it once more, he wasn't going to let Death win. Not when this was Carter's time to right his past at this moment of personal redemption.
"C'mon," he hissed between gritted teeth. "C'mon you fuck, breathe!"
Frustrated, after making his final mouth to mouth contact, Carter balled his hand into a clenched fist and slammed Norman in the chest. He roared the loudest fuck that made the whole world know and tremble - that Lieutenant Carter Blake was raging, very, very hard.
Then came the quick intake of air, a deep gasp as Norman's body lurched at the sudden influx of life returning to his body, heart beating once again. The acute surge of suddenly living distilling into his being was so sharp that he let out several raspy coughs afterwards, then settled. His vision which started off blurred was slowly starting to come to focus. He saw a dark cloud above him, morphing slowly into a shadow, then a solid silhouette, until he recognized Carter leaning over him with a tight fist pushing against his heart.
He heard the lieutenant let out one laugh of relief, followed by another louder one, until the laughs strung together to be maniacal to the point of insanity. Oh God, this was it, Norman had died and this was his new circle of hell as punishment, something beyond the nine he'd known from the Divine Comedy, maybe some unknown tenth layer or much deeper, where the true Anti-Christ that was Carter Blake would mock and laugh at Norman with such indignation into infinity and beyond. But no, this was it; this was reality all over again, only he had a second chance at life.
But what Norman hadn't known was that Carter wasn't just relieved that he was alive, but somehow overwhelmed, with the joy that he had beaten Death at his own game, the one opponent the lieutenant thought he could never win, and some semblance of redemption from a personal past had been resolved.
And it pleased Carter even more to see such confusion across Norman's slowly-regaining conscious face.
They both didn't know it yet, not at this time, but someday Carter would tell the man of that fractured past gone awry, and Norman would open up just the same with his own. It would be several moments that both didn't know would ever happen, the moments that through their shared experiences, their barriers would be stripped away, and their fragile selves would be exposed to one another. Not that of FBI Agent Norman Jayden or as Lieutenant Carter Blake, but as two human beings, brothers in arms, eking to find their place in this twisted world that was called life.
But right now, at this moment, Carter only had one thing in mind as he stopped laughing abruptly, and loomed over Norman, eclipsing him in his indomitable, mountainous presence and stature.
"You okay?" Carter asked in an admonished, but careful tone, highly uncharacteristic.
There was a moment shared by the two, awkward but also something unusually intimate, with a strong fist against his chest, and their eyes locking. Norman had just been resuscitated back from the edge of death's hands, and none other by his antithesis Carter, realizing that his essence was swirling inside his bronchioles and circulating through his very blood stream. Good Lord, the situation was almost comically ironic, like some form of crude, fucked up slapstick.
Norman had to wheeze in a couple of breaths before he could answer, "Yeah…I think so…"
Then Carter lifted Norman by the collar of his shirt and delivered a mind-crunching head butt, knocking the FBI agent completely unconscious.
"Fuckin' asshole!" yelled the lieutenant at Norman's passed out face, raw from his solicitous phone call earlier that night.
Then Carter immediately regretted his decision, after dropping the agent to the floor. He now just realized that hauling Norman's unconscious body would be more troublesome now than if he were actually awake to help walk himself to the car, and get him to nearest hospital to flush out the near lethal dosage of Triptocane from his system intermingled with however much alcohol he drunk. Though partly, and with a shit-eating grin on his face, Carter was rather glad to have struck Norman anyway.
It had taken the Thin Man awhile to find him, but after much sleuthing, Scott Shelby was found. It hadn't been by any purposeful meaning, strolling through the streets, hunting and prowling, finding leads after leads of loose trails and dead ends, only to spy one rainy night completely by accident, through the window of a café, Scott Shelby sitting idly in a booth. Scott Shelby, the great Origami Killer, had been found, only to discover that he was reduced to sighs and lonely coffee in a 1950's style café just staring into his cup after midnight.
This was the great white whale he was hunting? This was the famous serial killer who evaded the likes of investigative reporter Madison Paige, elite FBI Agent Norman Jayden, and even Lieutenant Carter Blake and his posse of police thugs? Now reduced to solitude and java?
Christ, Scott Shelby wouldn't even be worth it with the lack of vigorous, zealous countenance he had seen through his works, of all those children he drowned, the message of pain he addressed to the world. There needed to be something tangible, something gripping, there needed to be a villain, there had to be a monster, the darkness of the soul! Otherwise this wouldn't make any sense; it would be like killing a quadruple paraplegic – helpless and pathetic.
What the Thin Man saw from Scott Shelby and his slouching form and frowning face, was a once bestial lion now turned into a retreating wounded cub, nurtured and comforted by some form of regret and guilt, my God! Scott Shelby was turning human! This won't do, this won't do at all, and the Thin Man had seen this before, if Scott finds redemption the great white whale would be impossible to kill, worthless. This world needed justice, and having a redeemed monster was the sickest form of cruelty bestowed upon him in a failed, lawless world.
No, the Thin Man decided that instead of killing the gimped humanized Shelby now, he would slowly cultivate his darkness, nurture it, regrow and reshape it once more. The beast known as the Origami Killer will be resurrected from beyond the shadows, grasping it by the throat and birthed into the light to be admired, in that brightest and most feral moment. And then, when the monster rears its head, its power reaching its apex, the Thin Man will kill it. The thought of it all simply excited him, almost obscenely orgasmic, his sick thrill, and of something much, much darker.
Things were going to start getting…ferocious…
Author's Note: Thank you for reading! All comments and constructive criticisms are always welcome. :)
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