Lester didn't expect Hell to be cold.

Surely, he had to be in Hell: he was dead now, swallowed up by darkness, unable to feel anything at all. He was dead and in Hell; there had been no place in Heaven for a creature like him, with his unholy shape so far removed from the Lord's design. Still, the cold was very troubling. Perhaps they couldn't find a place for him yet- his flight to Hell was full, so he would have to spend the night at the terminal. With dry, aching lungs, he laughed at his own joke; he never knew he would be so much funnier after he died.

A stinging started somewhere. The cold was starting to frostbite him, which was strange. If he was dead, how did he have toes to feel being numb? How could he have fingers curling up for warmth? And how could he be feeling this intense horrific pain in his shoulder getting worse and worse and worse by the second-

With a sharp intake of breath, Lester's eyes flickered open as he came fully awake. Nerves fired like a gattling gun as his brain panicked, struggling to locate all of his limbs, while his conscious mind reeled at being faced with a strange white void that filled his vision. It took several minutes for him to calm down, and he acknowledged that the void was the cloudy sky, while his limbs were still safely attached to his body. He was lying on his back outside, and the winter cold was digging into his flesh. Where he was, or why, or how long he had been unconscious were still total mysteries.

Slowly, he tried to turn his head, and was punished with a sharp pain in his left shoulder. He could turn it the other way, but all he could see was a brick wall. Why on Earth was he outside? How did this happen?

Lifting himself up on his right shoulder, Lester peered around him. He was in an alleyway, sheltered from the wind by a dumpster and in the shadow of some low-lying old factory buildings. Coarse red brick scratched his back through his undershirt, and his whole body ached, the pain radiating out from his injured shoulder and seeping into all his bones and swollen joints. Nothing looked familiar, and he had no idea how he got so far from home.

He didn't even have a blur: there was nothing but a dark void in his memory between the now and when he collapsed...

He collapsed. The memory of the night before (or whenever, he couldn't remember) came rushing back like a tidal wave, sending a shutter through his body. He remembered a horrible feeling of sickness, pain and suffering, rolling around on the floor in agony-but why? The memory dissolved into a buzzing mess, as if reality itself had flickered out of existence. Chaos ruled after that, and then... just silence. Darkness.

Blood.

Reeling backward, gasping, Lester saw a huge red blotch in the corner of his vision. Forcing himself to look down through the pain in his shoulder, he saw that his tank top was soaked through to his skin with fresh, crimson blood. An acrid stench stung his tongue, iron sticking to the walls of his throat and making him cough. More frightening was the fact that the blood was still warm.

Frantically, Lester sat up and stripped off his shirt, examining his chest. Quivering hands felt of his smooth, slimy skin, checking just barely, as he was afraid of running his hand into a gaping wound and touching an exposed organ or some other gory horror. At first, he was relieved to find that he was still intact and not losing his stuffing.

Then he realized that meant the blood wasn't his.

'

Retching, Lester tried to pull his head back from the sight. This only earned him a wicked bolt of agony from his broken shoulder that sickened him further; the taste of blood came up into his mouth, but at least that has to be his own.

Holding his breath, praying as hard as he could, Lester inspected his hands. Each finger was tipped down to the knuckle with blood, like a quill pen in ink. His palms were stained with the reeking, scarlet stuff; literally, he was caught red-handed. The insides of his arms were streaked with blood. It seemed to soak him through, right down to his dirty soul.

What had happened?

That question seemed stupid. A better one was, "what have I done?"

A whimper escaped him as he fought to push himself up onto his feet, and the pain didn't stop when he took the weight off his injured side. The swells of agony went all up and down, from his left shoulder all the way down to his hip. Balance was difficult, and his body seemed to fight him when he tried to move his legs apart or his shoulders back; it was almost like his bones were tied down. That was the least of his troubles, of course. He was a murderer.

The full thought didn't really process. A concept was all it was, a fact that he knew, but didn't understand. The fact that he was a murderer didn't make sense; he was a good person! Good people don't go around killing other people and getting blood smeared all over them! Lester O'Hara was an honest, hard working member of society who had never even gotten a traffic ticket, not someone who was unstable or wicked, and certainly not someone who even thought of hurting other people.

But he had thought of it. His mind went back to the day before, or whenever it was. Back to when Marrdock had taunted him and that little voice had said those strange things...

Something inside him snapped, as if a door had been slammed. The memory vanished in a puff of smoke.

Blinking, Lester was left staring at an empty hole in his memory.

He shook it off, and rubbed his aching head with a bloody hand. Right now, he felt driven to get home. Tired, injured and afraid, instinct drove him to seek shelter.

A staggering step. Another. Slowly he adjusted to the change in his balance and found a comfortable gait, shuffling along slowly out into the labyrinth of alleyways between the old worker barracks. Warmth from the houses kept him from freezing, and even allowed him to dispose of his blood-soaked t-shirt in a nearby Dumpster. The thought of someone discovering the shirt didn't even cross his mind; it wasn't important right at that moment, so he could only ignore it. No higher thought could pierce through the heady fog wrapping his brain and the hideous pain bursting from his shoulder.

A door opened. Lester's ears picked up, turning toward the sound; both fear and relief conflicted in his exhausted mind as he tried to decide if he should stay still and yell for help or run for his life. A young man with a little blood on him wouldn't scare anyone... he didn't do anything! All of this was so silly, it was almost funny. Lester O'Hara was as pure as the driven snow and couldn't hurt anyone.

Somewhere up ahead of him, a door opened-he couldn't see it with his clouded vision and one cataract-infested eye, but he could hear the sound of frost-rusted hinges. The vague shape of a person stepped out into the alleyway, hefting two large bags and dumping them into another Dumpster.

"Please!" Lester shouted, his voice raspy and far-off as an old HAM radio message. "I need help!"

The person turned, but Lester couldn't see their face. He couldn't see their reaction, or read what they were going to do next.

"I'm hurt!" Lester called, his voice growing weak. "Please!"

A person started to become apparent from the clouded shape, a young woman with long hair and soft eyes, someone who would pity a crippled man suffering in an alley.

Instead, horror and disgust curled the girl's pretty face. She staggered back, gasping, as Lester lurched toward her; fear made her lovely face a terrifying mask.

Your face! Like a mask!

Lester jumped back as the girl let loose a harsh scream, tearing back into her house like a bat out of Hell. The door slammed, and Lester could still hear her yelling inside. Confused, afraid and unable to process why the girl had fled from him, he couldn't figure out how to react. Should he run? Should he stay? Should he be afraid?

A man poked his head out of the door, a boy about the girl's age. While Lester just stood there, dumb, the young man pulled out a weapon.

"You get out of here, freak!" He shouted. "We don't want you here!"

Why was this boy yelling? Lester cocked his head, puzzled, and then he saw the gun. The cold glint of the six-shot revolver sent a wave of terror through him, and finally his feet decided to move. Against the pain in his shoulder, Lester bolted like a frightened deer, ripping away at superhuman speed.

"And don't come back, ya freak!"

###

Lester didn't remember what happened between then and when he collapsed in his apartment. The trip faded in and out, and whenever he tried to concentrate on remembering, that strange impenetrable wall would slam down in front of him and seal him out of his own mind. He strained to think, but he couldn't. It was almost painful.

The only thing he knew was that he had just landed on his side on the cold floor of his filthy little rat's nest after crawling through a window. He didn't even know how he got up to the sill, which was almost forty feet off the ground.

Breath heaved in and out. His shoulder throbbed. His heart beat painfully in his ears. Basic functions of life were Herculean tasks for the beaten young man, and he wouldn't move for three hours. Three hours of aching, whimpering and silent crying.

Sometimes, I wish that things could go back to the way they were.

Strange voices drifted in and out while he lied there, but he wasn't able to process them. Sleepy, he allowed it.

You know, Lester... I don't want you to be afraid, but you're really in for it. The Family loves you-don't forget that, but the danger is real.

I guess you don't really have any say in it, anyway. You're on my terms, now. My body, too. Kinda funny how these things happen, isn't it?

Doc Lamb would say that you should embrace your inner self. I never knew what that meant until now. Doc Lamb's always right, y'know. She's our mother. Our mother and leader. Oh... and you wouldn't remember Eleanor. She was beautiful. She's going to save us all.

As the sun came through the windows, Lester finally started to wake up. The voice crawled back into the dark shadows of his mind, and he was alone inside his head. What he didn't realize was that he wasn't alone in his apartment.

###

Jackie Turner was concerned. That morning, while Lester was being menaced by the man with the gun, she had been enjoying a morning coffee with the Sunday newspaper. All of that pleasantness had ended when she saw the headline: NIGHT OF TERROR: Sting of Murders Shakes Chicago.

She read on, nervous. These killings, three killings, had taken place in a poor neighborhood very close to her flat. Three people, two women and a man, had been murdered- no, eviscerated-over a course of five hours the night before. She felt nauseous, and had to close the paper then.

A few moments later, she realized she knew someone in that neighborhood: that Lester O'Hara, the strange young man who was always in the library in the afternoon during the week and in the morning during the weekend. He fancied her, she knew, and he always made her uncomfortable, but he was sweet to her and never said more than two words at a time. Maybe she had been too quick to judge him: his horribly scarred face was frightening, and his raspy voice was like something out of a horror movie, but that didn't make him a bad person. She certainly didn't want to see him murdered!

She had his library card, which had his address on it. Right after reading that headline, she told her boss that she had an emergency and would be back in minute. Jackie got in her car and drove down Arkham street to the decrepit, shadowy apartment building on the corner of Arkham and Whippoorwill. Shivering, Jackie walked up the path to the front door, fingering her father's Swiss army knife in her coat pocket as she walked past a man slumped against the cold brick wall.

The doorman glared dangerously at her as she entered, but she tried to ignore it. Giving him her sunniest smile, she asked to see Lester O'Hara.

"The freak?" He asked. Lifting an eyebrow, Jackie just barely nodded.

Smiling with tobacco-stained teeth, the doorman gave her a key to the stairs.

"Room 45, gorgeous. You be careful-the freak's got... 'quirks.' He's a real nut job, with all that twitchin' and that freaky eye that's always halfway hangin' out of his head."

"I'll remember that."

No, Jackie didn't suspect Lester. It hadn't even crossed her mind that he could be the killer. He had never done anything to make her think he was remotely capable of such a crime, and he treated her better than any man in the city. Maybe he just needed a good woman to help him settle back into society after whatever horrific event had made his face like that. Not that she was that woman. He scared her.

When she arrived at door 45, there was a strange silence. Not even the sounds of a TV or radio came from the other side, even though it was past noon. The fact that Lester didn't arrive at the library was troubling enough, but this was just disturbing.

"Lester?" She called.

Inside, Lester was still on the floor. He twitched, the sound of Jackie's voice piercing the ether clogging his mind. At first he was incapable of understanding who it was or where the sound was coming from.

"Lester?"

The second call got him to wake up a little more. Now he realized that he might be in peril, so he replied with a weak moan.

On the other side, Jackie gasped. Lester was hurt! What if the killer had struck his apartment? She started jerking the door, expecting it to be locked, but it came open easily and slammed into the far wall, bouncing back and shutting behind her.

"Lester? Lester! Are you alright? What happened?"

Panicking, she kneeled next to her friend, who was still lying broken on the floor. A hand went on his side, and she let out a sigh of relief when she found he was breathing. Her touch made him curl up like a pill bug; she took that as a good sign.

Lester didn't know who it was, but having someone nearby that wasn't acting strange or waving a gun at him. Relaxing his tense muscles, he tried to roll over and face his savior.

"Oh... oh God."

That was never a good sign.

"What is it?" He asked drunkenly, "what is it?"

Jackie scooted backward. Horror of horrors, what had happened to his face? What made him-

"Oh, Lester," She whimpered. "What happened to you?"

JACKIE?

Immediately, Lester snapped awake and lifted his head enough to look this person in the eye. Jackie Turner was sitting in front of him, looking afraid. Why was she here? How did she know to come here? At that moment, he thought this beautiful entity here to save him had to be an angel sent from Heaven.

"Jackie," he coughed; a skeletal hand reached out to touch her, but she pulled away like he had the plague. She was afraid of him, too!

"Don't go away, Jackie. Please. I'm not gonna..."

He broke into a vicious coughing fit, and blood sprayed from his mouth onto the dirty floor. Jackie flinched, moving away from him. That made it twenty times worse. His one good eye fixed on her, scanning her frightened face and trying to divine some sort of truth out of her. Why was she so afraid? Had he done something to her? What could he have done... it would have been in the last minute or two, because why would she come to rescue someone she hated?

"What's wrong?" He asked dreamily, lolling his head to one side. Jackie looked about to be sick.

"I... oh, Lester," she stammered, looking away. "Don't ask that. Just don't."

"What?" He asked. His voice was starting to fail him, and he went into another vicious coughing fit. It lasted and lasted, until all the air was ripped out of his lungs; if it had gone on another second, Lester was sure he would have died.

Paling, Jackie stood and started toward the door. Fear came off her in waves, and it made Lester furious-why? Why was this happening?

"Your face, Lester. Something happened to your face. And your hands. And... everything. I have to go."

She turned, and started to flee. Involuntarily, Lester reached out and grabbed her ankle, a horrible hiss rattling out of his wretched throat-she screamed. She screamed a harsh scream that made something inside good, sweet, lovable Lester snap.

Bellowing a high-pitched screech, Lester's body heaved up and he swatted his bony hand at her, snagging her blouse and ripping away one of her sleeves. She screamed again, grating his eardrums and fueling his unnatural rage; rage that burned in him as if it came from another plane.

It did.

Do it do it do it do it! Kill her! She's a liar and a deceiver and a filthy gene slave! Look at her fear! She's a slave to herself and ancient stupidness!

At the sound of the voice, Lester let her go. His own fear of himself saved the life of the only person he loved.

At that moment, Jackie Turner disappeared out of Lester's life. Her arms shaking, but no longer screaming, Jackie fled down the stairs and vanished; poof. Like magic, light was gone from his world.

He had to see. He had to know.

Lifting his heavy body, Lester dragged himself back into his apartment and closed the door. Stumbling, shuffling along, he staggered into the bathroom and flicked the switch, numb and not knowing what he would see.

Was he surprised when he saw the creature staring back at him from the mirror? No. Part of him already knew the beast. Lester wasn't stupid, either-he could work out what happened-not how, but what. Some people would be surprised if they discovered one morning that they had become something so unnatural and hideous it was sickening to even see; for Lester, it was almost a part of life.

One eye. No nose, only a hole. One ear. Huge, sharp teeth that curved like daggers and hung far out of his mouth. Thick muscles bulging out from under his clothes, straining them to the breaking point. A curved spine, like a gargoyle's.

Fingers were claws. Toes were curving and dexterous, tipped with lethal talons. Looking back at him in the mirror was a creature that was half-man, half-beast. What beast it was wasn't even apparent: it was somewhere between man, ape, wolf, snake, bird and a pinch of something from another world.

A Spider Splicer. That's what you are. Doc Lamb... she made me strong. She took me off the streets and gave me a purpose, a part in the Family. She made me one'a her avenging angels.

Phineas. The door blocking off his memory of the day before lifted, the trauma all hitting Lester at once.

I didn't want you... frying out on me, so I blocked you from remembering that I'm in here. Phineas said. There was a lightness in his voice, a humor.

But now the cat's outta the bag, I guess. I owe you an explanation.

"I already know who you are," Lester said, his voice flat. Inside, he was fighting to keep his wits from snapping.

That's good. Then you know why I'm so miffed.

"No."

Then let me tell you something, mack. Phineas said. And this is all you need to know about me. I'm you, and you're me-well, I guess only the second part is true. You're me. You're a product of MY brain. Right now, your nerve center is a tumor somewhere in my frontal lobe. We share that tissue, you and me. I can hear your thoughts, but you can't hear mine, and I can control all the ADAM cells in your body. That's most of them, by the way.

You probably don't understand any of this, you not being a Harvard graduate like me, so I'll make it simple: you are a tenant in MY body. I'm not a voice in your head-you're a voice in MINE.

Lester swallowed. Only now did he realized that the horrible creature in the mirror had been mouthing the words his other self had been saying in his head.

"I don't understand," Lester whispered. "All of it was real? Rapture? You?"

Well... that's where it gets a little complicated for your stupid little head. YOU invented a lot of that from MY memories. You only remember the good parts of Rapture, none of the bad. No, that's MY cross to bear.

Excuse me. Doc Lamb would be ashamed to hear me talkin' like that.

"Why are you killing people?"

Because Doc Lamb said so.

And that was it. Phineas's presence vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Lester was left alone, in his dirty little apartment, unable to process what he had just learned. Those last words echoed over and over in his mind, pounding against the sides of his skull like a hammer.

Phineas was insane and dangerous, and he lived inside Lester's head. All of it was true. Everything in Lester's world was some sort of carefully crafted lie, layered with brainwashing and a linen-light masquerade. He couldn't remember anything because he didn't have anything to remember.

Ready to give up?

Phineas returned. Lester knew he had been listening.

You know... you could end this right now. Just give up. Let's join back together, be one again. That's in Metamorphosis and Transformation, you know. "In the end, we shall all join hands and become one with the Holy Daughter."

You do wanna get saved, don't you, Lesty?

Lester ignored him. Now, he was backing out of the bathroom and into the main room. His eye fixed on the window, and he went up to it. Steady hands undid the latch and opened it wide; cold air brushed his monstrous face, and brought a few salty tears to his single eye.

A siren blared. It was very close by; a moment later, Lester saw a sleek police cruiser pulling up to the front of the building. Jackie must have called the police; clever girl might have even figured out that he was the killer, if she knew about the slayings yet. In less than a minute, there would be a tidal wave of armed men beating down his door.

"Well, Phineas, you win. I give up."

Without another thought, nor a moment of reconsideration, nor a feeling, warm or cold, Lester O'Hara closed his one golden eye, held his breath, and gave up.

He jumped.