It may seem strange in retrospect but I didn't realise how dangerous the situation was until I got the call from Jack Byer at Servitude. Stupid really. It was round the time that the studious look was in. During the shoot they gave me a slip of paper and said "look like you are writing or something". So I doodled.
Unfortunately what I doodled was one of it's designs. I don't know why, there must have been something about the shape that appealed to me.
When the whole roll of film was D-noticed, Jack decided to give me the heads up warning. Intruder only knows what that cost him, but he wasn't working for them when I called in to re do the shoot.I spent the next few days waiting for the knock on the door.
It never came.
Which in many ways was more scary than if they had. That was the point that I realised it could have been no accident that I found it in the road. Some body wanted me to have it. And some body didn't want anyone else to know I'd got it. And that some body had enough clout to pull an entire photo shoot from Servitude's best camera team. I wasn't sure if they were all the same 'somebody'. But who ever it was didn't seem to want it back.
Of course it took me a while to realise that. After the call I started carrying it every where I went. Next to my skin when possible. It was more than just not wanting it to be stolen from me, there was something about its cool smoothness that was comforting. In those long quiet pauses on BPN's I would stoke it though the lining of my jacket. At one point Kr'tn accused me of wanking and was treated to howls of derision of Iona about his poor understanding of anatomy. But I was already used to ignoring them both.
I began to realise that there were some common elements in the designs. Surprisingly it came to me when I was collapsed on the sofa in front of the TV. Some Gorezone that I wasn't really watching. A particularly messy decapitation left a pattern on the sand of the arena that seemed familiar. It took me a while to realise that the shape was a component part to two of its designs. After that I started looking for more similarities.
It was a bout a month after that realisation Iona shopped me to Department of Psychology.
She said the scrawling on my bed room wall were freaky. Whatever the hell that was meant to mean. To me it was just a convenient place to put notes on my observation. She shouldn't have been in there anyway! Of course she also had loads of comments and records on things on BPN's that hadn't gone right, and she saw me as a convenient scapegoat.I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. It wasn't like Squad loyalty was ever that high on her agenda, and looking back I should have at least been grateful she went to the department and didn't just splash it all over the gossip sheets. Mind you given the servitude event maybe she tried and was d-noticed.
The department decided the best way to bring me in was to send an old friend round with the bad news. Some joker decided Preen was the messenger boy of choice. He strode round the room, staring at the patterns and designs and the connections I had made between them, slowly shaking his head.
Then he dropped the appointment card on the table and left without saying a word.The interview was short and direct. I don't really think the guy listened to anything I said, not that I was inclined to say much. The psych exemption form was handed to me already completed, and I know he didn't write anything down. All it needed way my signature to make it valid.
But I wasn't ready to be classed as insane just yet...
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