All right! So, wow, it's been a long time since I've updated this story, but I've finally managed to get around to it! I've wanted to continue this story for a long time, but got swamped by so many other things going on in real life over the years. To anybody out there that is still interested in reading this, I'm really sorry for the long gap in updating, and I hope you enjoy this latest chapter. Any new readers are also welcome! :)
DISCLAIMER: Only my OCs and plot ideas are mine. Everything else belongs to Visceral Games/EA.
"Praise the Great Marker. Allow me to move onto the next life with ease and eventually become one with you."
Sutton took a deep breath as she folded her hands in front of her and bowed her head in reverence, her black hair falling in front of her face as she continued to face the medium-sized Marker model in the living room. It was something that now gave her hope, and she hoped it would help her deal with all the stress in her life. To her, Unitology was an escape of some sort.
"Praise the Great Marker," she whispered again, raising her eyes after standing in a meditative position for a couple of minutes. She touched the model she had purchased at the Unitology gift store and felt her heart sink at the fact that she knew little to nothing about this sacred artifact. She had only been a member of the Church for almost a month, but she still felt there was so much she didn't know. But she wanted to. Oh, she definitely wanted to know more. Unfortunately, she had forgotten the precise reason why she converted to Unitology, but it didn't matter anymore.
Sutton traced her fingers along the side of her stomach, where her scar still resided. She remembered how Riley and Madison had freaked out over it, and how she had reassured them that it was nothing to worry about. What she would never admit to them was that it had brought her immense pain at first. It was just a blood test, Daina had told her when she first made the cut. They had asked for a sample of her blood to keep on record, though she didn't know the reason behind all this. After the way the priests had dragged the knife across her skin, she didn't think she wanted to know. That was the only thing she didn't like about Unitology so far.
She then turned her thoughts to the way Madison had tried to force her to talk to Riley's therapist. Obsessed, she thought, I am not obsessed with Unitology. Sure, I may preach a little bit of Altman's word to everyone I know, and I may talk about the religion all the time, but I'm certainly not obsessed.
Or am I?
Sutton rubbed her eyes as she left the living room to return to her bedroom, laying out her uniform for the next day. Now that most of the day had come and gone, she was starting to feel bad for snapping at Madison. The rational part of her brain was yelling at her to apologize to her friend, and after thinking about it, she figured Madison was only trying to help. Riley, too, for that matter. Maybe…maybe I should give them a chance, she thought, shrugging as she began to pack her medical equipment and lunch into her bag.
While she was doing that, she suddenly heard a loud thump, making her jump and drop her stethoscope. "What the hell?" she muttered under her breath. She abandoned her bag and hurried back into the living room, where she noticed her Marker model had somehow been knocked over.
"Huh?" she asked out loud, "How'd this end up on the floor?" She quickly scooped it up into her hands and placed it back on its pedestal, making sure it stayed where it was. Satisfied, she turned to go back to her room when she heard a door slam.
"Hello?" she called out, remaining frozen where she was, "Marcus, is that you?"
She didn't get a response, so instead, she ran back into her room, ducked under the bed, and grabbed a Divet she kept stored there. The weapon was a gift from her father, a security officer on the Sprawl, who wanted her to have it "just in case". Just in case of what? She had asked herself at the time, but now, she decided it was good to have something to defend herself with. She briefly wondered what her father would think if he knew she was part of the Church of Unitology now, but she'd worry about that later.
Sutton crept back into the living room, pointing the Divet in every direction as she tried to determine which door had just slammed shut and whether or not someone was in her apartment. From what she had heard a second ago, the sound had come from the kitchen, and she tiptoed there, glancing at the Marker model in the process.
Altman, give me strength, she prayed as she continued on her way, the Divet shaking in her hands. She tried to imitate Riley's constant cool attitude, which ironically, the latter had picked up from her, but ever since she had joined the Church, she realized she had become much more prone to anger than ever before.
"I'd leave the Church if I were you."
Sutton froze in the entrance to the kitchen, blinking as she didn't lower the Divet. No, she thought, I didn't hear a voice just now. There's no one else even here but me.
"Hello?" she called out, stepping further into the room.
"You're still a relatively new member, aren't you, Miss Fields?" the same voice asked, which made Sutton's heart beat faster.
"Who are you?" she asked, "How do you know my name? Show yourself!"
"You're slowly being corrupted by the Church's teachings. I know. I can see how you've been acting around everyone who's not part of Unitology."
"Show yourself!" Sutton snapped again, resting her finger on the trigger of the Divet.
"Not until you promise me you'll leave the Church. It's not too late for you. You've been with the Unitologists for almost a month now. You can still leave, you know."
"Wherever you are, get out!" Sutton yelled, "Get out of my house!"
"Sutton…" the voice whispered, almost in a pleading manner, "Please…"
"Leave me alone!" Sutton screamed, raising the Divet.
"Don't listen to the Church!" the voice insisted, "Its teachings are wrong! Everything you know about them is a lie!"
"Stop it, stop it, stop it!"
"Sutton?"
Sutton screamed as she whirled around and pulled the trigger on her Divet, opening fire as the loud explosion made her ears ring.
"Sutton! Sutton, stop! It's me! It's Marcus!"
Sutton took a deep breath as she slowly lowered the Divet in time to see Marcus standing a few feet behind her, holding his hands up in the air in self-defense. His eyes were wide and his face turned pale at the sight of his girlfriend pointing a weapon at him.
"M-Marcus," the nurse whispered, lowering the Divet and shaking her head.
"Jesus, Sutton," Marcus also whispered as he slowly approached her, "Are you all right? What happened in here? You're shaking really badly."
Sutton gulped, her voice shaking as she replied, "Did…did you slam a door earlier? When did you get back?"
"Just now," Marcus answered, "Are you okay? What was all that shouting? And why are you using your Divet?"
"I thought someone had broken into the house," Sutton explained, "There was someone here before, speaking to me in the kitchen. See for yourself."
Frowning, Marcus pushed past his girlfriend and bolted into the kitchen, checking all the doors and hallways in the apartment as Sutton followed behind him with the Divet.
"I don't see anyone," he pointed out.
"What?" Sutton asked, "That's not possible! I heard someone! A man, it sounded like. He was right in there!" She pointed at the kitchen.
"Well, I don't see anything," Marcus replied, "Just try and calm down, okay? Everything's all right now."
It took a few more minutes, but Sutton eventually calmed down, nodding as she picked up the Marker artifact and placed it back on its stand. She returned the Divet to its box underneath the bed and resumed packing everything for tomorrow as Marcus entered the room and took off his shirt. She was just in the middle of folding her uniform to pack in her bag when she happened to catch a glimpse of her boyfriend's back.
"What happened there?" she asked, pointing at the large black and blue bruise on his upper back, "Where'd you get that bruise?"
Marcus crossed over to the mirror, glancing over his shoulder as he noticed the injury, which still hurt like hell from before. "Oh, that," he said, "I got into a fight with one of the patients at the hospital earlier. He was trying to grab Riley and I pushed him away from her, which pissed him off."
"Riley?" Sutton echoed, raising an eyebrow, "Why were you and Riley at the hospital today? You guys don't usually stop by without seeing me."
"Madison was with us, too," Marcus explained, "We were…visiting my mother." Sutton frowned, as if she didn't believe him, but she stayed silent, waiting to hear the rest of the story.
"Do you know anything about a patient named Nolan Stross?" Marcus asked, reaching for an ice pack from his girlfriend's kit to apply to his bruised shoulder.
Sutton's frowned deepened, and she put her bag aside so she could sit down next to Marcus. "Nolan Stross?" she repeated, "That's who you got into a fight with?" She punched him in his uninjured shoulder.
"Are you insane?"
"Ow, watch it!" Marcus gasped, wincing, "But yeah, he was the one. He looked so scrawny at first, but when he slammed me against the wall…damn."
Sutton shook her head. "I don't know much about Nolan Stross, but I've heard of him from other nurses around the hospital. I don't know how long he's been there, but you'd do best if you avoided him at all costs. From what I've heard, he's a psychopath. He murdered his own wife and child!"
"What?" Marcus gasped, wincing as pain suddenly began radiating in his shoulder again, "You're kidding, right? Why would he do something like that?"
Sutton shrugged. "Hell if I know. Like I said, I've only heard about him through the grapevine. Just promise that you won't get into anymore scuffles with him, okay? He sounds like an infidel and we don't need any of those around us."
Marcus frowned at the word infidel, a pang forming in his chest as he thought about the fact that trying to help his girlfriend was the reason why he had even been at the hospital in the first place. And also the reason why I've been banned from seeing my mother for God knows how long, he thought as he buried his face in his hands.
When did things get so complicated and out of control?
Two days later…
"Wait, are you serious?" Riley gasped into her RIG as she continued to pace around her kitchen on her day off, cleaning everything in sight as her lunch of spaghetti and meatballs cooked on the stove.
"That's what Marcus told me yesterday when he was on his break," Madison replied from her end, "I couldn't believe it, either. Maybe that's why Nolan Stross is being kept in the psych ward."
"Unbelievable," Riley muttered, shaking her head as she thought about the bomb her friend had just dropped on her. She took a break from dusting off the microwave dish to glance down at her wrist, where Stross' hand print was finally starting to disappear, leaving only purple-green bruises in its place. The skin around them was still tender, and she found that flexing her hand brought her some pain, which she had to alleviate with pain killers. Along with her nightmares about her "soul-cleansing" ritual, she found that Stross had now wormed his way into them as well, grabbing her by the arm and neck as he screamed at her, calling her "Alexis" the whole time as he tried to take her away to some place far from the Sprawl.
"Well, we saw how violent he was a few days ago," Riley said with a sad sigh, "Unfortunately, the idea of him killing his own family doesn't seem so implausible." She took another deep breath as she resumed dusting the plate in her hands.
"So, let's review what we've discovered so far," she continued, "Marcus went to go visit his mother when he first discovered Patient Five and his bleeding eye."
"That's right," Madison said.
"All three of us then went back to the hospital to try to talk to Sutton when we ran into Patient Five again, whose name we now know is Nolan Stross."
"Correct."
"Nolan Stross confronted us, calling me Alexis and insisting I was his deceased wife, despite the fact that I probably don't look anything like her. That's why he and Marcus got into their fight."
"Good, keep going."
"From everything Dr. Edgars said, it seems like we weren't supposed to be there in the first place. Not with patients like Stross running around. So he took away Marcus' visitation rights and told us never to come back."
"Exactly."
"But now here's the part that doesn't make sense. Why would Dr. Edgars go through all that trouble to keep us out if they weren't doing anything secretive or illegal? What did Stross mean by 'They're coming'? He's obviously being treated for some kind of illness, so what kind of regime does he go through that makes his eye bleed?" And most importantly, why was Franco taking notes on our scuffle with Stross? She thought silently to herself, What kind of investment does the Church have in some random psych ward patient?
"Those are a lot of tough questions, Riley," Madison answered, "Who knows if we'll even be able to get the answers to all of them? At the rate we're going, we'll never find out. Dr. Edgars probably has all our pictures on file to tell security not to let us in the Stasis Wing."
Riley pinched the bridge of her nose. "You're right. I was thinking about that, too. But keep your chin up. We'll be able to figure all this out."
Suddenly, a faint beeping from Riley's bedroom caught her attention, and she ran to peer through the doorway as a flashing light from her closet caught her eye. "I've gotta go," she said, "I'll call you back in a few minutes." She proceeded to disconnect from Madison as she hurried over to her spare RIG, raising an eyebrow in confusion as she realized that somebody from only one place could have been calling her on this one.
"Hello?" she greeted as she pressed a button and stuck the ear piece in her right ear.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Price. Is this a bad time for me to be calling?"
Riley felt her stomach turn as she took in the familiar voice on the other end, who, to her surprise, wasn't Daina.
"No, Franco," she said, clearing her throat, "No, not at all. Though I have to admit that it's kind of weird. You know, after the way Daina humiliated me at that meeting." She shuddered as she remembered the smug smirk Daina had given her after she had lost her cool.
"I'm sure it is," Franco said, "But she deeply regrets her behavior from that night. She even thinks that the fire in the Relic Room shortly after was Altman himself trying to punish her."
Riley's throat closed up for a second. She knew that that fire hadn't been divine intervention, and she hoped that Daina and Franco never found out that the real culprit was none other than Daina's very own secretary.
"Anyway," Franco continued, "The reason I called you is that I was hoping that Daina's aforementioned behavior didn't turn you off to Unitology altogether. There's still so much else for you to learn from us, and now that you've gone through the soul cleansing ritual, you're already halfway there. You can't stop now."
Riley closed her eyes, weighing the pros and cons of returning. As much as she wanted to know why Sutton was changing so rapidly, she didn't want to be subjected to Daina's scrutiny again. It had become clear to her that infiltrating the Church was a lot more difficult than she thought it would be, but a part of her did not want to give up. I can't do that now, she thought as she frowned, Other wise, I would have gone through the hell that was the soul-cleansing ritual for nothing.
And what about Lara? I can't leave her in there on her own, even if I still don't know what exactly she's up to. I know she's not my biggest fan, but she seemed sincere on wanting to help me. Perhaps she can provide some leverage if Daina starts getting to me.
It was with that thought in mind that she exhaled and replied, "No, it hasn't turned me off from the Church. I'm still very much interested in proceeding with my education."
"Excellent!" Franco cried, sounding positively delighted, "Can you stop by tonight? We're having another meeting like the one from a few nights ago, but I will be leading it this time instead of Daina. I figured that might make you feel more welcome."
Riley scoffed. Right now, she felt as welcome as a broken bone in that place, but she pushed all that away as she nodded.
"Sounds good. See you tonight."