a study in scarlet

... since this report is long formatted, signed, filed, and sent off with the rest of the reports submitted, then there's no reason for me to stick to format.

I'm not sure why I'm bothering. Why I'm doing this. I think it's... a matter of respect, really. Not respect for you Runners, you psychopaths. Just a respect for... human life, maybe?

Let me tell you lot a story.

I had just been put on assignments when I was assigned to a mark, a part of a group. The mark was... unstable at best, had fought off several other unrelated proxies, and seemed to be on some kind of warpath. He... uhg, had a necklace of ears, smelled like, god, I'll never forget it, a fetid pile of corpses and sweat and blood. He terrified the ever loving shit out of me, so I approached their group with, bless me, food and water, explaining who I was, telling them to just skip town, that I'd fudge my report and that I wanted as much to do with them as they wanted to do with me.

... He had a sword. The kid couldn't had been more that sixteen and he was carrying around a sword. How had the police not caught him and he was charging at me laughing about how he'd

Some things are none of your business. 

It took me a long time to figure out how I was going to make this work. Running away that night had done something to me.

Don't act like you're all godamn innocent. It's happened to all of you as well; the first time, you're unprepared. you don't know what the hell the enemy is planning, and you're forced to run. Forced to squeeze through the darkest of crevices and over every bump and molehill

Like a rat.

And you stumble and you trip and you cry and you jibber and you maybe even pray, because at that moment you're not a Runner or a Proxy or anything else. You're just afraid.


... my mark this week was our last; the one we needed to meet quota. I had been following and tracker her for at least three weeks; only seems fitting I'd get the kill order. She was... maybe seventeen. Brown, curly hair the deepest chestnut I had ever seen, and stunning pale blue eyes. Tiny but strong and with an incredible drive for survival.

We played cat and mouse; me with nothing but a knife and my footsteps, unseen in the abandoned harbourfront she had lead me to, and her slowly abandoning her humanity, bit by bit. I watched. Watched her duck through buildings and cry and scream and curse and slowly, ever so slowly, give up. 


Have you ever seen a lithe young girl dive through alleyways so small that she gets her skin rubbed raw from the brick on either side of her?


Have you ever seen a lady dive through a pile of garbage to get to a hole in a fence?


Have you ever seen a person hide in loads of fish guts and mud, sobbing silently?


I have.

And after a good four hours, she had been sufficiently dehumanized. I cut off from her route; it was easy to guess where she'd be heading, just a matter of making sure we intersected at the right time.

I lit up a cigarette. I had time to waste.

We met in the intersection not twenty minutes later. Managed to convince her that this... "thing" (she called me Iblis. Iblis! Can you imagine?) was stalking me as well, probably for some disgusting ritual for that rather Slender Gentleman.

Because you see, since people in desperate situations are very afraid, they are also very malleable. Open to suggestion. Trusting. I had stripped her of all logic and sense; she was just instinct now, and I've got one hell of a poker face.

So can you blame her as I held her in my embrace?


Told her that I would protect her?


That I would fix this?


How, as I kept talking, I slit her throat?

... my method is far from time-effective. It's not brutal nor efficient. It has loopholes. It requires me to stay out of visual sightpath of my marks at all times.

But it's kinder this way.

I take their humanity first so they don't have to die with it.

Because hey.

Most of us lost that a long time ago.


... big assignment is coming up. Enjoy the show, all you glorious bastards, watching us sing and dance on display!







... Her name was Shoshanna.