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"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
~Mark Twain
Chapter Six: Ghosts
"Commander...I'm too old to start believing in ghosts." Bradford paused for a swig from his hip flask, which was an idea Gallant thought quite brilliant. He fondly wished for one of his own, but his desk only had a computer terminal and pen and paper someone had insultingly provided despite its obsolescence. He wasn't sure whether to blame Tygan or Julie Richardson, but someone was being cheeky about his stay in stasis.
"You and me both." Gallant rubbed his chin. "Someone had to access Rov-R remotely."
"Agreed." Lily Shen sat in comparison to Bradford's martial lean in the office doorway, and her eyes were wide and intent. "I was able to pull a set of coordinates from the transmission...I think. It's all encrypted, but it bears the hallmark of proper coordinate encoding."
"Advent's setting a trap," Gallant guessed immediately. "We send a team there, they'll be shot up or taken."
"Sir...it's not Advent style encryption." Shen swallowed. "Commander, it's XCOM standard. From the old days."
"It could still be a trap," Gallant warned. "You said your father's dead."
"He is." Shen ran a hand through her hair. "I don't know how it's possible, but someone is using all his old clearance codes...accessing systems he helped build."
"If they could access Rov-R, there's no telling what else they may be able to do." Bradford's eye twitched. "Sir, I don't like it, but I strongly suggest we make it a priority to investigate that signal."
Gallant sighed. "Investigate how?"
"I'll start by decrypting the transmission," Shen said. "I'll bring Tygan in, and we'll try to crack the code whoever this is put on their coordinates. Once we figure that out, we'll be in touch about how to get there."
"In the meantime," Gallant ordered, "I want you to shore up the base's electronic defenses. Some kind of firewall, in case whoever this is comes back for another round."
"Yes, sir." Shen saluted. "In that case, let me get back down to the lab and collect my files. I'll take them over to the Labs as soon as-"
Beep! Beep!
"Oh, that's me." Gallant reached up to his communicator, wasting a moment cursing as he tried to locate the button on its side. "Gallant. Speak."
"Commander," said Richard Tygan. "I've completed work on the implanted chip. I'm sure you'll find the results intriguing."
"When it rains, it pours." Gallant groaned, pushing himself up with his desk as support. "I'm on my way."
VOLUNTEERS WANTED!
"For what?" Julie Richardson wondered, taking in the poster spread out in the Barracks. She glanced around her idling colleagues, all preoccupied with drinks and lunch and magazines of less than classy nature, before chancing a more detailed look at the poster.
"Volunteers wanted..." She traced over the purple backlighting, and the searing tendrils of light shooting across the paper. "For...they're not serious!"
"Are you really looking at that?"
"Rogers!" Julie jumped. "What? Why?"
"That poster's been up since last night," Cameron Rogers grunted. "I hear they've almost got the facility up and running, even after all the accidents."
"It...I hadn't heard that." Julie blinked slowly. "Do you think they still have room?"
"Room?" Rogers regarded her like she'd lost her mind. "Damn it, woman: they have nothing but room."
"I would have thought they'd have to turn people away."
"Then why don't you volunteer?" Rogers demanded, a little testily. "I'm not keen on getting my head blown up in the name of turning me into an Elder or a step down!"
"Yeah, but...psi-op..." Julie glanced back at the poster. "Can you imagine having the Gift? Just like a sectoid, or a priest?"
"Yeah. And I don't like it." Rogers stuck his hands on his hips. "Come on. You aren't stupid enough to wander down to the psi-labs, are you? You know what happens to people who tap into the Gift. Aliens take 'em."
"I volunteered to fight. If I die..." Julie swallowed, not being enthusiastic to try. "Well, that's the nature of things. I volunteered once. What's a second time?"
"They aren't going to kill you," Rogers snapped. He leaned in conspiratorially. "They'll make sure you live, Richardson. They'll mind-control you and double-pace-march you to the nearest black site."
"I've heard the rumors." Julie took a breath. "It's crap. It's all crap. Black sites where they mutilate and maim people? Cut me a break."
"They'll vivisect you," Rogers warned. "They'll take your brain and put it on life support. You won't be able to do anything, not even scream, as they turn your body to food for the baby berserkers. Or maybe a chryssalid breeding carcass."
"I...chryssalids..." Julie shivered. "I don't like them."
"You belong to them if Advent gets you," Roger insisted. "You leave well enough alone, and maybe they'll just kill you quickly. Besides! You ever wonder why the aliens are so bad?" He slapped the poster. "Fucking mind powers. That's it right there. Go down the road they did, you'll become just what they did."
"How do you know?" Julie eyed the poster, tingling. "It sounds amazing to me." She inhaled. "I'm going to volunteer."
"You're fucking serious?" Rogers growled when Julie, a bit defiant, nodded. "Whatever. Your funeral, idiot."
"I'm not an - hey!" Julie gaped when Rogers just turned and stormed off, muttering under his breath. "Rude!"
VOLUNTEERS WANTED! And that purple background...the glow of power...
"I'm going to do it," Julie muttered. She turned for the door, making sure to almost bump Cameron Rogers in passing. He broke from his conversation with Rookie Liang to give her an annoyed look, and that made everything worth it.
"I'm going to do it," Julie repeated, as soon as she was out the Barracks door. She hurried for the elevator, thinking of mind control and opening psi-rifts and...and...
"I should do it," she whispered, thinking of alien torture facilities and surgeons heedless of her screams. Her brain on life support? Sounded like something out of a B movie from sixty years ago, but maybe...what if it was true? The Elders did have an obsession with the Gift...
"Should I do it?" Julie wondered, as she entered the elevator. She examined the buttons. There was the psi-lab, brand-spanking new and ready for use...
What if it hurt to unlock her Gift? She'd heard rumors about other Resistance cells that had tried it...it supposedly took weeks, and what if it was painful and she got lonely in the psi lab and...and...
"I should," she decided. "For the war effort? Especially if no one else will, I should. I should go and...and..."
Chryssalids...
"I should go to the range. Target practice." Julie rubbed her sweaty palms on her pants. "Just a bit of target practice. I'll check the labs after, right? They'll still be there."
Gallant elected not to mention to the laboratory's chief inhabitant how long it had taken him to find the door. Instead, he spent a moment briefly concocting a reason for delay that had nothing to do with bathrooms. He could at least be original when he lied, right?
Hiss. The door opened when he touched it, and Gallant supposed there was some sort of fingerprint ID at work. He set his cane and legs to work, and three limbs came down in an alternating sequence: thump, thump, Thump!
"Unbelievable." There was Tygan, leaning over his desk and examining that alien chip, hovering in its glass case like last time. Gallant watched the scientist as he absently rubbed at the back of his head, and those wild scars. "So much of my own research, based on this simple design...if only I had known..."
"Doctor." Gallant paired that with a cough into his elbow. Tygan paused.
"Ah, Commander!" He rose, managing a smile. "Excellent. There's been some...progress."
"Progress, Doctor Tygan?" Gallant leaned on his cane with both hands. "You said you'd completed your analysis."
"And I have indeed. I've managed to break down several key components of the 'chip' implanted in your skull." He turned to his monitor, and Gallant watched as he pulled up what looked like an X-ray.
"Is that me?" he wondered. Tygan nodded.
"My analysis reveals that the chip's primary function seems to be that of a conduit, passing vast amounts of data directly to your cerebral cortex."
"Data?" Gallant blinked. "What data?"
"I can't say for certain. With the primary connection severed, much of it is lost." Before Gallant even finished swearing, Tygan had a hand up. "However, some fragments do remain. Ghosts, if you will." He pressed a few buttons. "Observe."
Gallant did, and a moment later, images flashed over the monitor. Images distinct and yet clouded, familiar and intimate and yet...alien.
"That's..." He coughed. "That's Malin Larsen."
"But not the woman herself," Tygan cautioned, as Gallant watched what looked like footage of XCOM's greatest soldier fighting against a swarm of mutons. There were so many other faces he could almost name...like men he'd met in a dream...
"That's an outsider." Gallant tilted his head. "Doctor, what the hell is this? False memories?"
"Tactical combat simulations." The egghead seemed to relish those three words. "War games. The sheer volume of encounters you were processing was astounding. It..." He shook his head, taking Gallant in very differently from before.
"Yes?" The Commander glared. "What's the point?"
"It's...remarkable that you survived as long as you did," Tygan finally said. "Information overload should have killed you years ago."
"So now I'm twice a dead man walking." Gallant stared at the feed, and he reached up to feel his chest. His heart burned. "Do you have some water?"
"Commander?"
"Water, damn it. Get me water." He appropriated the first chair he saw, and sat without asking. While Tygan hesitantly hurried to a little sink, Gallant produced the bottle Bradford had given him.
"You have a heart condition," Tygan observed, reading the bottle's label while he offered a small glass. "I imagine it was brought about by your...injuries...during your active tour in Iraq."
Gallant took it, popping the pills into his mouth.
"Gee, aren't you observant?" Gallant coughed, thumping his chest gently while the medicine went down. "You read my file, Tygan?" He snorted when the scientist nodded. "Hopefully you can do something if I have a heart attack."
"Commander...while this may seem...disconcerting..."
"That's one way to put it," Gallant snapped, acid in his tone. "How the hell do I know which of my war memories are even real anymore? They had me in a box, making me hallucinate...God only knows what they were doing to me." He shuddered. "Fuck those bastards. I'm gonna ram a lamppost up every Elder's ass. The same lamppost."
"As I said, though this may seem disconcerting, there is some good news." Grudgingly, Gallant spared Tygan his glowering attention, and the scientist returned to his computer. "This chip bears a striking resemblance to a medical implant I briefly assisted in developing during my time working at the gene therapy clinic in New Providence."
"And?" Gallant frowned. "You want to get your hands on one of those?"
"Precisely."
"Where the hell do we find one?" Gallant wondered. "In case you hadn't noticed, Doctor, we're a good ways away from Providence."
"That kind of journey won't be necessary. It was my understanding that these implants were intended for high-ranking Advent officers only...captains, or above." Tygan clasped his hands behind his back. "If you give the order, I can perform an autopsy on the body we have in storage. The lacerations and incisions Corporal Kelly delivered on the specimen will not have damaged the chip, and will not impair my ability to determine its precise function."
Gallant eyed the chip, smugly hovering in a prison much like his own. "Well. A greater understanding of these implants would benefit us all."
"My thoughts exactly, Commander." Tygan waited a moment as Gallant shoved himself up. "Shall I consider that a directive to proceed?"
"Do it," Gallant ordered. "I want results on my datapad right away."
"Of course, Commander." Tygan saluted, then turned back to his work.
Gallant didn't move. He watched the scientist fiddling with the equipment on his desk, typing requests to the inventory detail for the officer cadaver's movement...
"You're curious about my scars," Tygan surmised, after a long moment. Gallant didn't blink.
"Among many other things." He curled his lip. "Gene therapy clinic in New Providence, huh?"
"It is not something I am proud of." Tygan turned back around. "I was fresh out of medical school when the alien invasion began. I wound up working in the pharmaceutical industry, which fell apart once Advent was formed. I was unemployed, and curiosity and need formed a powerful cocktail that drove me to seek work with the aliens' medical groups."
"What made you run away?" Gallant asked.
"Many things. As Advent tightened its grip on the world, I noticed disturbing parallels to certain times in human history. I've always considered myself an educated man, and I didn't like what I saw." Tygan shrugged. "If I hadn't been forced to remove my own implanted chip myself, the scars would be cleaner."
"You ripped...you ripped one of those from the back of your skull..." Gallant blinked slowly. "Are you serious?"
"Deadly, I'm afraid. I only had a handful of off-the-shelf painkillers and an old shed in upstate New York, apart from a small box of surgical tools I took with me, foreseeing the need. I used an automobile's rear-view mirrors to help me see as I worked."
"Jesus." Gallant shook his head. "You're a tough one, Doctor."
"I am fortunate I was able to get in touch with the Canadian Resistance." Tygan rocked his head side-to-side. "If not for them and their help nursing me back to health, I likely would have died, or been discovered by vipers. Through them, I eventually made contact with Central, and he brought me along when his forces secured the Avenger."
Gallant turned all of that over. "He seems to trust you."
"Do you?" Tygan looked impassive enough.
Gallant shook his head. "I don't trust anyone right now, Doctor. Anyone but John."
"He's the only connection you have to anything you remember. This is logical." Tygan nodded slowly. "I can only hope we come to an understanding given time, and the best service I can provide."
"Yeah. You keep hoping." Gallant turned for the door. "Get me that autopsy result as soon as you've finished work."
"Here." Evangeline Moreau handed her card through the window. "Merci."
"De rien," said the blur who took it, stuck it into his reader, and let the tech do the talking from there. After a moment, the reader beeped, and he handed her card back. Before Evangeline had even finished putting it in her purse, she was offered a white paper bag. "Your order, madame."
"Merci," Evangeline repeated, smiling before hitting the accelerator. Her old but dependable little three-wheeler moved, and in a moment she was back on the road.
The drive home was normal, except for her time stuck behind a slow truck full of Advent soldiers. They waved her on when they decided she was clear to pass, and that kind of courtesy was something Evangeline never wanted to take for granted. She even got a good look at the viper sedately curled up with her team, and wished she could have taken a picture. But for someone whose eyesight was quite terrible to start with, attempting to snap a picture while driving in front of the authorities seemed like a bad idea.
Evangeline took the turn for home. She drove down a busy street, then made sure to take an extra left, even though it was out of her way. She held her breath, lowering her speed and remaining careful of the many people hurrying around on the sidewalks and the chance they might cross without looking.
She sighed regretfully as she passed the building, still broken and battered, though covered in scaffolding and swarming with workers.
Next time, she told herself. There's always next time.
Five minutes more took her to home, and Evangeline pulled into the little driveway of her white, oblong house. She tapped the ignition, and it read her fingerprint and obediently disabled the engine. Evangeline claimed her purse and her datapad before clambering out of the car, leaning on it for a moment as she found her balance. Lovely her shoes were, but sometimes...with a wistful sigh, she closed the door and started for the door-
"Oh, merde." Evangeline turned, and she had to open everything back up and fetch her white paper bag, still sitting pleasantly in her passenger seat. The brunette cursed her own absent-mindedness.
"Bonjour," said Henri, as she came inside. "Is it still closed?"
"How do you know I drove by?" Evangeline wondered. She set the bag on their self-cleaning counters. "I brought Advent burgers."
"You're ten minutes later getting home than you would be if you just drove straight here." He chuckled. "You always look."
"It..." Evangeline removed her glasses, rubbing them clean on the hem of her dress. "It was after our meeting. On the way home." She sighed. "Still closed."
"That's no good." Her husband fished in the bag. "And Charlotte?"
"We talked, we competed on those data-games she loves so much, we had drinks!" Evangeline waved. "It was lovely." She hesitated. "Charlotte doesn't think I should visit the clinic, after it reopens."
"Why?" Henri frowned. Evangeline shrugged.
"I think she believes I might be caught up in another terrorist attack, like the one last week. Live fire in downtown Paris?" Evangeline shuddered. "I don't think it's likely, not if I'm just getting my eyes looked at. I'll be able to see without these..." She slipped her glasses back on. "I'm the only one at work who wears them. They must think I'm too poor to afford gene therapy."
"We'll make it work," Henri promised. "You'll still wear the glasses, though, won't you? Just from time to time..." He broke off when she raised an eyebrow. "I...I like the look."
"Do you?" Her lips twitched. "Men are all the same, aren't they?"
"Well..." He shrugged. "Forgive me?"
"Mama?" a six-year-old voice asked, its owner hurrying out from the living room. Evangeline smiled.
"I'm back!" she agreed. "How was school?"
"Fine." He lit up when he saw the Advent burger bag. "Did you-"
"There should be a toy in there," Evangeline allowed. "What did you study today?"
"Numbers," Nathan explained, eyes still fixed on the bag. "And vipers!"
"I saw a viper on the way home," Evangeline told him.
"You did?" Her son's eyes glowed. "Did you take a picture?"
"I would have," she promised. "I couldn't because I was driving."
"Oh." He deflated a bit. "Maybe it'll be a viper in the bag!"
"Maybe!" Evangeline produced her son's meal. "You can open it before eating, but you can't play with it until after."
"Oui, mama." Nathan wasted no time ripping the bag open. "It's...it's...oh." He pulled his new toy free. "It's another chryssalid."
"Aw." Henri laid out Evangeline's food and his own. "Maybe next time."
"Vipers like giving hugs," Nathan explained, very seriously, as he set the chryssalid to the side. "They're very friendly. That's what my teacher says. Chryssalids too. Like...like dogs?" He frowned. "I've never seen a dog."
"Hopefully you never will," Evangeline said. "Because that would mean you left the city centers. And life is good here." She didn't spare the Advent camera in her dining room ceiling a glance. "Life is very good here."
She was as beautiful today as the day they'd met. Those eyes, those cheeks, her gentle laugh and smile...
Carlos Mendoza contemplated the pictured of his beloved, fighting that curling twinge of loss that stalked him every day. If she was here in the darkened locker rooms, she'd only have sarcastic words for him about it...something to the effect of live in the present. It was good advice, especially for a soldier.
It was hard advice.
"Mendoza?"
"Si?" He looked up, jumped when he saw the black-clad figure approaching at a steady walk, and then hurriedly shoved the picture back into his breast pocket. "Liang!"
"Family?" Da-Xia Liang asked, frowning. Head to toe dressed in black, this woman, with hair to match. Of course, Carlos wouldn't see it for long. She had her head wrappings in hand, as if she wanted to be sure she was invisible here in the gloom. Like a ninja.
"Something to that effect." He coughed. "Do you need me?"
"Scuttlebutt says we've got a drop coming up," she confided. "It's been three days since we retrieved whatever Shen's thing was. Three days is a long time to be waiting."
"This is true." Mendoza eyed her. "You think you're going?"
"I'd rather be prepared and left behind than called on unexpectedly."
"Well, that's certainly logical."
"Besides, I'm scheduled to meet with Central in three hours." Liang looked impassive, but there was trepidation in her voice. "Me and Jane Kelly. I came to let you know you and David White are in after me."
"Fantastic!" Carlos stood, stretching out his scarred, tattooed arms. "I'm looking forward to getting my shot at Advent."
"Aren't we all?" Liang wondered. "We all have debts to pay."
"What's yours?" Carlos raised his hands. "If it's my place to ask."
Her lips twitched. "They wrecked my car."
"That's it?" Carlos chuckled. "Must have been a wonderful car."
"It was," Liang agreed. "They made me ram it into one of their network towers. I almost took the thing down."
"Made you?" Carlos hurried for the door to the Barracks. "A gun to your head? Mind control?"
"They were shooting at me. If I'd turned left or right, they'd have hit me."
"And they didn't when your car wrecked?"
"Well, they thought I died in the crash. One of their soldiers came in too close." Liang mimed snapping a neck, and Carlos shuddered from an odd cocktail mix of emotions. "I found he had a grenade, and that chaos was enough to cover my flight."
"Why were you running to start with?" Carlos inquired. Her eyes darkened.
"That is not your place to ask."
"All right! I have my dark memories." He raised his hands again, more defensively. "Forget I said anything."
"I'll try. No promises." She clapped his shoulder. "Come on. I'll find Kelly - probably in the bar again, that Irishwoman - and you can hunt White down."
"Shooting range," Carlos guessed. "I think I'll clock an hour or two in there myself, if we're deploying."
"Not a bad idea," Liang allowed, mulling it over for a moment. "Well, let's find our people first. Then...meet you there?"
"Make it interesting?" Carlos beamed. "We compare scores. Loser buys the team a round after we get back."
"I'm going to look forward to thrashing you, Mendoza."
"You're too trusting, John. The Skirmishers are Advent. Advent is the enemy. The enemy..." The man on screen shrugged, almost disinterestedly, before taking a swig from a green bottle. "...is food."
"Say what?" Edward Gallant mumbled, pausing at the edge of the bridge. "Say what?"
"Try not to remind me of that when we talk, Volk." Bradford looked rather off-put, but he rallied himself in the nick of time. "Look, I don't trust the Skirmishers much either, but they held up their end of the bargain. What about you?"
"We'll see." The man on screen angrily thumped a fist down by his smoking, waiting cigar. "Volk, out."
The screen went dark, leaving only an afterimage of his annoyed grimace. Bradford shook his head.
"I think...he might actually come," he mumbled, wonder in his voice.
"Friend of yours?" Gallant thumped his way over, ignoring the sidelong looks from the bridge crew. Bradford turned.
"Commander!" He saluted. "Good to see you this morning."
"Central." Gallant nodded to the screen. "What the hell was that about?"
"That was Konstantine Volikov, or Volk, sir. Leader of one of the three major Resistance factions across the globe. The Reapers, they're called."
"Reapers." Gallant tested the word. "Sounds...video gamey."
"Finally, someone who would understand my old pop culture references." Bradford looked giddy at the thought. "Well, there's three of these organizations. Together, we think they'd make one hell of a fighting force against Advent."
"Let me guess." Gallant sighed. "They hate each other?"
"Unfortunately." Bradford turned back to the monitor, and he quickly pulled up data on all three of the factions, from symbols to leaders to tactical information. "The Reapers are a large part of the reason you're standing here, Commander. One of theirs managed to slip into the facility in Paris and confirm your presence for our raid."
"But?" Gallant leaned on a control console, heedless of the tech who now had to work around him. "I'm smelling a but, John."
"But she was working with a tip provided by the Skirmisher faction." Bradford highlighted them, and Gallant jumped as the images popped up.
"What the hell?" he demanded, eyes wide. "Are those..."
"Advent soldiers. Yes." Bradford raised a calming hand. "The Reapers are loners living in the shadows on the edge of the wild, sir, but the Skirmishers were Advent soldiers - officers, troopers, even the odd priest - who managed to break their mind control and flee the aliens' oversight."
"Did they, though?" Gallant wondered. Bradford shrugged.
"Volk and the Reapers don't think so. However, the Skirmishers have held up fairly in any bargain I've struck with them...including this latest one."
"What latest bargain?" Gallant frowned. "What didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't hide anything, sir, if that's what you're asking." Bradford looked a little defensive. "I was just...it was set in motion before your recovery, and I thought adding you to a complex negotiation halfway through was counterproductive."
Gallant's stare tuned to an icy glare. "I'm not a deadweight. I'm not a load."
"No, you're not, sir." Bradford sighed. "Look, these two groups hate each other. You're not the soft-spoken, silver-tongued type."
"And you are?"
"More than you, Edward." Bradford turned back to the computer. "The Skirmishers have agreed to send a representative to meet with one from the Reapers. Together, they'll hammer out some kind of truce. Neither faction trusts the other, but both of them trust you, sir."
"Me?" Gallant blinked. "They've never met me."
"But they've heard of you. I'm the point man on this, but they know XCOM isn't out to shank either of them. With that in mind, they're allowing us to send a two-man escort detail with each envoy, and they've put the meeting on neutral ground."
Gallant grunted. "I see. Some warning would have been nice, Central."
"Sorry, Commander."
"But..." Gallant pushed himself up. "Now that it's in motion, I suppose there's nothing for it. It sounds beneficial to the cause."
"Indeed, sir." Bradford inclined his head. "Shall I proceed?"
"Consider it a directive," Gallant agreed. "Let's make peace."
"Commander!" A tech waved from across the bridge. "Given our position...we're in the Sahara, sir. The meeting point is in Novosibirsk. There's no way the Skyranger can reach that position."
Gallant coughed. "John..."
"Who said anything about the Skyranger?" Bradford looked amused. He touched his comms. "Shen, are we ready?"
"For what?" Gallant wondered. Apparently Shen's response was good enough, because Bradford smiled.
"Hold on to something, sir." He gestured to the railing around the holodisplay. "Trust me."
"Bradford-"
"This isn't a base, Commander," Bradford explained. "Initiate vertical takeoff."
"Vertical-"
The base shook. Things rumbled and groaned, and a terrible roaring filled the air. Gallant seized the railing with both hands, clutching his cane under his arm as everything shook like an earthquake back in San Francisco.
"Oh," he finally whispered, as an abrupt weightless feeling struck him. "The Avenger. Like a ship."
"We are airborne," a tech reported. "All systems are green."
"Then take us to Siberia," Bradford ordered. "Let's fly."
Author's Note 6: Off the Ground
And we finally have the Avenger in the air. This was originally slated for last chapter, but it only made sense on the way to a mission...and kicking off Lost and Abandoned and cutting the first mandated Guerilla Op just seemed like excellent streamlining. Don't worry! There's still a lot of missions on the list.
Tygan will complete what research is necessary at the speed of plot, and the same for Shen's manufacturing of equipment. There will still be in-game and in-story logic applied to these things, so don't expect the soldiers to whip shard cannons out of their asses, but I'm not going to bind myself to all the actual game's requirements if my intuition strikes up a better story, any more than I am for cutscenes or fight choreography or missions.
I mentioned last time that I'm an author by trade. That's correct, and I have written close to 20 books - it depends on which of my early projects you count, whether this counts, etc. I don't know if I'm allowed to link to any external samples of my professional work, but they do exist! Hopefully I'll clear up whether a link is acceptable at some point.
Until then, Vigilo Confido.