Mark Norris, aka G.I. No, was still naive enough to believe that anything he desired was within his reach if he truly wanted it, and worked for it. He had amassed many a follower on his social media apps by sharing such feel-good sentiment, all the while unsuccessfully walking his talk.

Among everything else he called his own but hadn't earned, the title of deputy was as false as the structure that Mark and his fellow militia buddies referred to as a police station. He'd dreamed aloud of leaving his small town, and becoming a police officer and soldier, but had always omitted that control and respect-on-demand were his primary reasons for desiring such occupations.

Failing each written, oral, and physical examination put before him were strong indicators that desire and work would never deliver him the power he craved. Instead of correctly interpreting those failures, and choosing another career path he had chased his dream to an even smaller town, and had joined a group of civilians who, as the man called Mr. Lyle had accurately worded it, got off on cos-playing cop.

Mark didn't appreciate Lyle's accusation; was, in fact, specifically, offended that someone had looked at him, looked straight through him, and had seen the truth.

Turning a called-out shade of crimson from the neck up, Mark passionately argued, "Protecting the world from terrorists is honorable, not cosplay, but y'all know that."

"The world," Lyle drawled with false interest. "My sympathies go out to the world if you're its guardian. You're not even capable of protecting yourself from a genuine threat, a real terrorist. And," Lyle added with a friendly wink at Broots, "who said cosplay isn't honorable?"

Mark, enraged suddenly, jerked his gaze to the others in the room, those seated at the white, odd-shaped table, and those in the shadows whose faces were unseen but whose presence he felt.

Mark—woefully unaware that Lyle was referring to him—desperately sought the terrorist Lyle spoke of, longed to slay the person based entirely upon hearsay, without an arrest, a trial, or evidence.

Justness, truth, and proof were foreign concepts to Mark. Typically, he lied his way out of trouble, and, after planting incriminating evidence, pointed fingers at others. He was entirely unaccustomed to accountability.

Mark stood suddenly, and shouted, "It's my duty to kill terrorists."

"Kill them?" Lyle asked. "Are you positive it's your duty to kill them, and not arrest them, ensure they have a fair trial?"

"I kill them," Mark repeated sharply.

Parker, weary of the theatrics after two hours of Mark's self-righteous blather, injected coolly, "Like you killed Miuna?"

"That's right," Mark answered, arrogantly, resuming his seat. "After we all did that to her, I-"

"What," Lyle asked pointedly, "did you all do to her?"

"I," Mark answered neutrally, "I stopped by the garage, and I don't know why she ran. I ordered her to stop, but she didn't. She provoked me. I think she was going to the diner, which is something she never did because she likes her food kosher or something, but I caught her and dragged her into the woods. I had sex with her there, and-"

"Stop," Lyle demanded. "What was that again? You had what with her?"

"Sex. I thought the others would kill me for it because she's not our kind. She's too good for our food. That thing she puts her hair up in? Everything about her is different. We're not suppose to have sex with people who are different-"

"You didn't have sex, Mark. You raped an innocent woman."

"Same thing basically. We both know she isn't innocent. She's not from here, and she was wearing that thing on her head! Where I'm from people keep their love lives quiet, it's not everyone's business, and we didn't have a bisexual like her. She had another girl with her for a while, and they spent all of their time in that trailer, and I know what they were doing because I looked in the window one night. They were doing unnatural things."

"Oh, then people who are in love don't get married in your birth place of origin?" Lyle asked casually.

"They get married, alright, but it ain't natural to-"

"So," Lyle continued casually, "people aren't all that quiet about being in love in your small town after all. I didn't think so. They aren't quiet about their affinity for fatty foods, or religion, either, and probably proudly wear a lot of church merch in hopes of offending an atheist. Tell me, Mark: how do they feel about rape and murder in your small town?"

A young woman who wore sunglasses and a sharp dagger through her green bouffant leaned forward, and informed Mark crisply, "Nothing is more unnatural than rape."

Mark noted her forked tongue and recoiled. These people, he was beginning to suspect, weren't one of the more popular clandestine military contracting agencies, evidently.

"We blew off steam. After the others were done with her, I snuck back in the old moonshine cellar to be alone with her. She woke up and started fighting me, and screaming."

"Moonshine cellar," Lyle repeated, addressing the shadows, and, unbeknownst to Mark, a text was hastily composed and sent to a Centre operative still on the ground in Georgia.

"Did you kill Miuna Azahaari?" Parker asked, irritably.

"Yes, I killed her. I killed her with my bare hands. Even y'all recognize the value in that, and that I'm an asset. That's why I'm here, right? Working for a place like this is what I always wanted."

"Tell us, Mark," Lyle rejoined, "why you chose to implicate Jarod in Miuna's death."

"That wasn't my idea. Why does it matter? No one even knew who that guy was. He had no known associates or family, no work experience, no priors, nothing in any database that we could use. Plus, he really fouled up our plans to frame him, too. We thought he'd left town for the day to pick up car parts for his girlfriend, but by the time he got back days later her bod was already getting ripe, and he got himself caught on a Stop and Rob's surveillance camera filling up that car and buying a water- once on his way out of the state and again on his way back in."

"Hmm," Lyle hummed. "Is that why he was rotting away inside that pathetic excuse for a holding cell?"

"Partly. We were going to starve him to death, make it look like he'd escaped, got trapped in the woods."

"And Miss Azahaari's body?"

"We were going to plant it a few yards from Jarod's body, in a shallow grave filled with evidence that incriminated Jarod, but then that bitch's parents went on the news and called in the Feds and ruined that plan."

"That doesn't track, Mark. Either there was dissent in the ranks or you and your people planted Miss Azahaari's blood in her laundry room, specifically in the hamper. Test results reveal that bed sheets were the primary target. You knew she and Jarod had slept together, and how it would look."

"No, I didn't. I mean, yes, I know how that would look, but I didn't do that. None of us did. So, anyway, I'll take this gig," Mark said. "What kind of payday am I looking at here anyway? Six figures? Seven?"

"Close," Lyle answered Mark with an amiable smile, recalling Jarod's fondness for the figure eight, and addressed those in attendance, "I propose we proceed now to  phase two of the trial."

"Trial," Mark shrieked. "You mean interview?" He was, he still believed, above reproach.

A balding gentlemen in a purple ballgown nodded agreement at Lyle, and, said impassively, "I second."

"You mean interview, right?" Mark asked again, recoiling from the large man approaching him.

Another stiff in a dark suit.

Mark, still in his tactical camouflage and kevlar cosplay ensemble, swung his fist, punched only air, and gasped when a hand closed around his neck.

"Careful," Parker shouted at Sam, reminding authoritatively, "He is Jarod's."

"Wait, Jarod's alive?" Mark asked, struggling to escape the detaining hands. "Why would you let him live?"

Mark's questions weren't answered, would never be answered, and he wouldn't have believed that, between himself and Jarod, Jarod was the valuable one.

It was another phase of the interview, Mark convinced himself. He didn't resist being escorted onto an awaiting lift, and off again. To my Crucible, Mark mused, clinging to soothing mantras and delicious fantasy.

He was more curious than frightened when Sam shoved him into an immense room that smelled of death and kerosene. Concrete flooring and flickering fluorescent reasonably aligned with Mark's lofty delusions. Of course there's a cage. No cage fight is complete without one. Wait. Are those--

"Shackles mounted in the wall?" Mark asked with withering certitude, but succeeded in inspirational-quote-ing away the doubts.

The toughest soldiers fight the toughest battles.

Onward Christian soldier!

A torture wonderland made perfect sense to Mark, and it did, undoubtedly, in a warped psychologically-mind-fucked, evil-shadow-government, black ops kind of way. For all of his grousing about deep states Mark had absolutely no objections to being recruited into the deepest and darkest of the deep states.

He studied the room with opened-mouth awe, envisioning himself as dungeon master. "Hey," he yelped when he was lifted off of the floor, and hoisted over Sam's shoulder. Sam, Mark realized, was not only well-groomed and expensively attired, he was unbelievably jacked. For a stiff in a suit, that is.

"Is it starting already?" Mark asked. "I don't get a tour or nothing first?"

Sam entered the cage, returned Mark's feet to the floor, and closed the cuffs tightly around his wrists and ankles.

"What now?" Mark asked. "Hey," he said when Sam withdrew from the cage. "You can't leave without saying something. Are there rules or do we fight to the death? Hey, are you going to answer me? Hey!" Mark shouted. "Are you nuts or something?"

"No," Sam answered brusquely, adding ominously, "but Jarod is."

Jarod? Jarod is nothing.

What's he going to do?

Come in here and cry at me about his girlfriend?

"Speak of the devil," Sam said, withdrawing hastily from the room.

Mark swung his gaze at the door where Jarod and Lyle stood. The pair looked strange standing there, Jarod in a black suit, the one called Lyle in white. 

Suits. Two stiffs in suits.

"You," Mark shouted. "Hey, yeah, come on in, Jarod. What are you going to do? Hit me? Cry some more?"

Lyle, with tender encouragement, his words reaching only Jarod's ears, said, softly, "It's all right, Jarod. Go ahead. You know you want to. Consider it a gift."

Lyle wasn't wrong.

Jarod did want to. Terribly, in fact.

Miuna had been tortured and murdered, and he'd been beaten and starved, accused of hurting Miuna, and was now a fugitive in every U.S. state, and several countries as well. If he could escape the Centre, which was rather unlikely considering the hosts of long-overdue security upgrades, there was no where to run, no refuge for him. Because of the wannabe cop, Jarod was never going to leave the Centre again. Jarod was never going to see his family again. Furthermore, Mark deserved to be held accountable and punished for his crimes.

Miuna deserved justice.

Jarod wanted to seek justice for her, wanted, in fact, to exact revenge, and the Centre was offering him an opportunity to do precisely that; they had, quite literally, gift-wrapped Mark—in chains and steel shackles—for Jarod.

Sydney taught me better.

I'm better than this.

Miuna wouldn't want this.

I won't become this monster.

"What a pussy," Mark said with a triumphant scoff, breaking ground on his own grave. But he didn't know that yet.

Neither did Jarod.

"That's your problem, Pussy. You should have stayed and protected your bitch, and her nasty pus-"

For his enduring asininity, Mark was awarded a front row seat, a truly incomparable POV, to an incredible and terrifying transformation.

It was as if, Mark believed, someone had flipped a switch inside of Jarod.

Suddenly, and much too late, Mark wished someone would turn Jarod off.

There wasn't even time for Mark to process Jarod's entrance into the room, into the cage, Jarod loosening the cuffs—giving Mark the opportunity to hit back—the first punch, or the following ten.

Jarod had been standing near the door, and then the second hand jogged forward, and Mark's vision, inexplicably, blurred.

G.I. No immediately lost sight in his right eye, and couldn't open his mouth to complain about it, because Jarod's first punch had connected with his jaw, and not, as Mark believed, his eye. Pain and bright light exploded behind Mark's eyes, and his mouth filled with blood.

"Stop," Mark cried, exhaling blood and saliva, his words wet and slurred, sounding more like dod than stop.

And Jarod might have taken Mark's splintered pleas into consideration had he heard them over his rage.

Mark moved his lips to plead for his life, but three sharp blows, delivered in rapid succession, mangled his thoughts, as well as his bottom lip. Jarod's swift assault easily outpaced Mark's ability to process it.

Mark was still contemplating his partial blindness when his head recoiled off the wall behind him. He made an effort to beg again, but his lips weren't even working correctly. He pushed his tongue around his mouth and discovered, with a jolt of horror, that a segment of his bottom lip was inside his mouth, straddling, and imprisoned by, at least two of his teeth.

Suddenly, he was looking left instead of right; his theories regarding that were interrupted by a stomach-churning crack. Mark watched, in disbelief, the room spin and darken. His nose throbbed painfully, and with an eerie numbness that, he feared, indicated it was broken.

He heard himself gasping for air, and imagined a fish out of water, and a human in water, and saw Miuna's face marred in terror and mirroring his, and he wanted someone to shut off the television. He loathed the dreaded static noise screen, all gray fuzziness.

"No," Jarod snarled, and Mark's mind simply didn't know any better than to play along, provide appropriate imagery for the narrative. He observed as Jarod reached through the squiggly dot patterns, adjusted the rabbit ears, and, for good measure, conducted a little percussive maintenance on the television, but Jarod wasn't slapping the side of an antique television set. He was slapping Mark across the face. Repeatedly. "No. You don't get to lose consciousness."

Mark sought the strength to beg for his life, but there was nothing left inside of him but a whimper.

The abuse concluded as abruptly as it began, and Mark hoped that it meant they'd be moving on from the initiation phase.

Working quickly, attempting to outrun himself and what he'd done, Jarod cuffed Mark's wrists and ankles, observed the man's body dangle uselessly from the cuffs.

Jarod wanted to care. He truly did. He wanted to walk away, was already turning to leave.

But a thick ribbon of blood traveled down Mark's neck, and past the torn shirt collar.

Had Mark been capable of supporting his own weight, standing upright instead of slumped forward, Jarod wouldn't have seen the script tattoo on his chest, or the violent scabbed-over scratches that Miuna had righteously inflicted with her fingernails.

It worked, Mark thought. I'll be damned it worked! Because I wanted it enough. I'm going home. Going home with a new career.

Mark's favorite quotes rang alarmingly false.

He felt Jarod's fingers at his neck, and the single vigorous jerk of hands, and his shirt ripping down the middle, revealing his chest. He yelped and shuddered reflexively, and, as result, teetered violently from his binds.

"Miuna fought you," Jarod said with a dangerous glint in his eyes. "She scratched at that tattoo, those words," he added with a snarl, removing leather work gloves, and his suit jacket, and slinging them across the room.

Jarod appeared blurry and distant when observed through Mark's only properly functioning eye. Mark had sight enough to observe nitrile gloves, the kind healthcare professional use, and a scalpel. He knew what scalpels were from the various late night dramas he'd binged over the years, enough to know he didn't want one anywhere near him. He made a small sound of protest when Jarod passed the scalpel's tip over his blood-coated chest.

"Oh, no?" Jarod cooed in response, all mock innocence and bewilderment, "but it says right here on your chest that," Jarod squinted briefly, and carefully recited the words, "what you allow is what will continue. Apparently, you're allowing me to do this, Mark, and why shouldn't you? These words are what she saw last before you murdered her," Jarod added angrily, his voice catching, "and if the scratches are any indication she didn't like them."

With a new surge of rage, a more controlled and focused rage, a rage with a purpose and a real future, Jarod plucked away the scab, the first of dozens, ignoring the accompanying attempts at pleas and screams. "It's what she saw last," Jarod repeated angrily, noting with acute fascination that the largest scab almost entirely obscured the word allow.

The Pretender slipped beneath Miuna's skin, saw what she saw—vapid words concealing unpopular and unpleasant truths—and he knew what he had to do. He laughed darkly and abruptly, frightening Mark, and frightening himself.

Jarod laughed like a man who, after wandering lost in the dark, saw, at last, a flicker of light. He extended a hand, and collected a chisel and hammer from a rusty toolbox. Swiftly, he pressed the tip of the chisel to Mark's chest, and lifted the hammer.

Mark might have attempted to protest or compose a coherent question, despite the evident futility, but he was experiencing a rather tardy epiphany.

That Sam fellow hadn't misrepresented the truth, after all. Jarod was, in Mark's opinion, a newly unearthed breed of insanity.

Jarod was the thing waiting beneath the bed, lurking in the closet.

And the quotes, all of them, Mark realized, were horseshit. Mark had only ever needed to be on the other side of life's genuinely fucked up shit, experiencing it for a change, to understand that neither fate, faith, will, luck, hard work, nor his silly fucking quotes could save him—just as Miuna hadn't been saved.

Jarod answered the question in Mark's mostly-swollen-shut left eye, nevertheless, "I'm just finishing what Miuna started," and, with earnest determination and precision, struck the chisel with the hammer.