Page 28 - Hunter the Vigil - Mortal Remains

THE RESPONSE

watch the left side of the frame. See the woman running into the frame? recovery was low, and his chance of psychological recovery was virtu-
We all assumed she was a bystander, but based on where she’s coming ally nil, so I decided to take Providence where I could and do a little
from, she’d have gotten to the camera about the time the feed cuts off. exploration. In the end I found his internal organs to be remarkably
I think there’s something to that. intact, so I removed one or two to graft into my own body and stowed
— note left in file (subject: Birmingham Incident), London archives his corpse in a trunk.
Following that, I found the area became increasingly hostile. Peo-
The Union ple held vigils. They went looking for his killer, flinging around words
What does it take to make hate? like “cult” and “demon worship.” The police broke several laws and
It takes heat. Heat from the deadest, driest part of summer. Heat from violated people’s Fourth Amendment rights in service to tracking down
the Hellfire your pastor promised. Heat from the shame on your cheeks. the killer of a boy that this very community had assaulted.
It takes blood. Red-blooded American boys can feel proud and hate- I did not stay to suss out the logic of it all. I simply took his — my
ful and proud of their hate! The blood comes from that flag you shoved — kidneys and left town.
in my mouth. From my mouth and nose once you hit it, again and again. — a letter from Imp to “Dr. Brine”
It takes fear, but we don’t talk about that. Just say “faggot” again The Created that mind their own business and don’t hurt
like a magic word, like a talisman that keeps it all away. people only tend to draw the Union’s ire if one of the members
succumbs to Disquiet. Any Created that are more monstrous
What does it take to make hate?
or overt, though, tend to run up against the Union quickly and
It takes people. It takes a village. directly. Remember: Union members are policemen, civil ser-
— “Hate,” from the journal of Walter Wilde vants, and other professionals who have access to sensitive data.
The Union is, in many ways, a Promethean’s worst night- Since most Prometheans don’t have legal existences, which
mare. The Union is odd among the hunter organizations in makes them hard to track through the system, even a mug shot
that it tends to be reactive, rather than proactive. Union cells taken a few towns over can prove problematic. If gaps in data
are arranged around a neighborhood or a city, and while they doesn’t lead the Union to a Promethean, they might simply
stay in contact with other cells across the country, for the most stumble across one. Nothing says that the guys who work at the
part their focus is local. The fear of the stranger, which Pro- scrap metal yard (near where the Created has been hiding out)
metheans exacerbate so much, is already an intrinsic part of aren’t Union, or the pastor who runs the soup kitchen, or the
how the Union responds to supernatural threat. Add Disquiet nurse who works at a high school….
into the mix, and the Union is a step closer to the “murderous People don’t have spirits, but spirits love people. Spirits feast on
mob” stage than most other organizations. anger, love, fear, and hate, and people can provide all of these, some-
Because the Union is so home-focused, a Wasteland in times even in the same day. But when people get near me and their fear
their turf doesn’t go unnoticed for long. When walls start to and hate rises — as it inevitably does — the spirits that it attracted are
crumble or a lake begins to congeal, it’s the Union that orga- not the small, mote-like fearlings and hate-wretches that I see from more
nizes a campaign to clean it up or investigate to find out what’s mundane manifestations of these emotions. No, they are the Furies.
happening. Tracing the Wasteland back to the Promethean re- But, if the emotions are genuine and then amplified by my pres-
quires a leap of logic; after all, the land doesn’t noticeably be- ence, the Furies change. They become…unfocused. Blurry around the
come blighted at the creature’s passing. Once Disquiet sets in, edges, as though they are becoming more abstract somehow. This is
however, the Union is willing to blame the Created for anything strange, because it would seem that the emotions would strengthen
— Wasteland included. them, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Usually, the Union isn’t interested in studying, helping, — from the journal of Orestes Vrettos
or cataloging the Promethean. They just want to protect their The Union keeps all of its archives online, and so a mem-
own. ber wishing to find out about a “person made of dead people”
The proverb goes something like, “I against my brother, my broth- has all of their collected wisdom to draw on. Of course, if she
er and I against my uncle, my uncle, my brother, and I against the doesn’t know how best to use a search engine (and it is a skill
stranger.” It’s rather a strange sentiment, I think. If someone’s going to set, especially since the Union’s files aren’t archived especially
get punched in the face either way, what difference does it make who’s well), she’s likely to find all kinds of references to “dead people”
doing the punching? (Allowing for variance in punching strength and without much data on the Created.
method, of course.) From the Archives: yeah i mean this dude was nuts. like he just
And yet this sort of defensiveness — “I won’t let you hurt this per- stood there and was like ‘hit me’ and we’re like ‘no dude,’ and then
son that I was going to hurt anyway” — seems to be a human mainstay. he punched Chris in the chest and killed him. no kidding right. so we
To wit: the boy I found nearly dead underneath a jungle gym at threw down and beat his ass and then Chris’s brother pulled out a gun
the local park one night. His tibia was fractured, probably with a blunt and just unloaded into this guys chest, and he got back up and was like
weapon. His nose was broken, obviously from a punch, and one of his ‘yeah ok that sucked’, and then the cops came and we all scattered. no
hands was sprained or fractured. (I didn’t cut him open to verify; by idea wtf that was except that dude really wanted to get hurt
that point it didn’t matter.) I calculated that his chance of full physical — from the Union’s bulletin board

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