INTERMISSION: DETECTIVE TALUS.
LA Noire: Now Yank City - The Crimson Intermission
Case File: 47-B - "The Prophet's Fall"
Desk: Homicide
Partner: Detective Rusty Galloway
The Black Dahlia of Now Yank
The rain fell on Now Yank City like God had a grudge against the pavement. It was 1947, and the war was over, but the city was still bleeding. My office on the eleventh floor of the Hall of Justice smelled like stale coffee and desperation. The name on the door read DET. TALUS, but some days it felt like it should read DOORMAT.
The call came in at 02:17. A stiff in the warehouse district. Not unusual. But the dispatcher's voice had that tight, controlled tremor that meant this one was different. This one was going to be a long night.
The warehouse belonged to a shipping outfit, "Barzakh Imports & Exports." The name meant nothing to me then. It was just another brick box in a city full of them, full of shadows and secrets. Rusty was already nursing a cup of joe when I grabbed my coat.
"Let's make it quick, Talus," he grumbled, his face a roadmap of too many nights like this one. "I got a date with a bottle of bourbon that's been waiting patient."
The scene was a circus. Blue and red lights painted the wet brick walls in strokes of neon misery. Uniforms held back a gaggle of reporters, their flashbulbs popping like cheap fireworks, each one stealing a piece of the poor soul inside.
"Who's the vic?" I asked, ducking under the yellow tape.
The coroner, a man named Emmerich who looked more dead than most of his clients, peeled off his rubber gloves. "Jane Doe. No ID. Found by a night watchman an hour ago."
And then I saw her.
She was laid out in the center of the concrete floor, posed with a sickening, deliberate artistry. She was beautiful, even in death, with a kind of ethereal quality that felt out of place amidst the oil stains and decay. Her dark hair was fanned out around her head like a halo. Her clothes were expensive, but torn, shredded as if by a wild animal. Or a wild man.
But it was the details that turned my stomach. Small, precise cuts covered her body, not random slashes, but symbols. Patterns that looked like some kind of deranged scripture. And her face... her eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling, but they weren't seeing the dusty rafters. They were seeing something else. Something that had scared her to death long before her heart stopped beating.
"Christ almighty," Rusty muttered, taking a drag from his cigarette. "What kind of animal does this?"
I knelt down, the rainwater soaking through the knees of my trousers. I saw the small, golden hair clutched tightly in her hand. Not hers. It was coarse, strong. A man's hair. And I saw the faint, almost invisible tracery of light around her wounds, a shimmer that vanished the moment I focused on it. My head throbbed. A flash of a dream, a memory that wasn't mine: a trench, a phosphorescent green light, a feeling of absolute violation. I shook it off. Just fatigue.
"Get a close-up of that hair," I told the tech. "And bag her hands. She was holding on to something. Or someone."
Her name was Hermes. We found that out later. But in that cold, wet warehouse, she was just another ghost in Now Yank, and I was the man hired to ask her questions she could no longer answer.
The Warlock and the Mystic
The Barzakh Import office was on the top floor, all polished mahogany and smoked glass. The man who ran it was named Ungar. He didn't look like a shipping magnate. He looked like a man who ate shipping magnates for breakfast. He was tall, built like a redwood, with eyes that seemed to hold galaxies and a quiet that was more intimidating than any threat.
"We're sorry for your loss, Mr. Ungar," I began, my notebook open. "Can you tell us the last time you saw your employee, Miss...?"
"Hermes," he finished, his voice a low rumble. "She was a prophet. Not an employee."
Rusty snorted. "A prophet? In the shipping business? What'd she do, prophecy the next freighter arrival?"
Ungar's gaze shifted to Rusty, and for a second, I saw the temperature in the room drop. "She saw things. Things that were useful. Things that were... dangerous."
"Like what?" I pressed.
"Like the schisms. The cracks in the world where things crawl out."
Rusty rolled his eyes, but I leaned forward. "What kind of things, Mr. Ungar?"
He looked past me, out the rain-streaked window at the city lights. "The kind that don't like being seen. The kind that take exception." He paused, his eyes finding mine again. "She was looking for something. An Aegis. A promise. She believed it was lost in a trench."
"A trench?" Rusty laughed. "Lady, we're in a city, not the navy."
"It's a place," Ungar said, his voice dropping lower. "A wound. A place where reality is thin. And she found it. Or it found her."
The interview was going nowhere. He spoke in riddles, in metaphors that felt like half-remembered nightmares. But he wasn't lying. That was the problem. He believed every word of it. As we left, I felt his eyes on my back, and I had the strangest feeling he wasn't seeing a cop. He was seeing something else entirely. A wave in an ocean.
Our next stop was a mosque in the old part of town, a place of peace and learning. We were there to see an Imam, a scholar named al-Tayyib. He was old, his face a map of wisdom and sorrow. He knew Hermes. He spoke of her not as an employee, but as a friend, a fellow traveler.
"She was a seeker," the Imam said, serving us tea that smelled of sandalwood and stars. "Like all of us. But she sought in the dark places. She believed to understand the light, you must first understand the shadow."
"She tell you she was in trouble?" I asked.
He shook his head slowly. "The trouble found her. It always does, for those who walk the Barzakh, the imaginal world. She was wounded. Not in the body. In the soul. I saw it in her eyes the last time we spoke. A shadow had been planted there. A seed of despair."
"A shadow?" Rusty was getting impatient. "Look, Reverend, we're looking for a killer. Flesh and blood. Not spooks and shadows."
The Imam gave Rusty a sad, knowing smile. "Is it not the flesh and blood that is often driven by the spooks and shadows, Detective? The most real things are often the ones we cannot see."
He told me about a man she'd been spending time with. A strange man. A restless man. A man who called himself the Great Sage. A man who answered to the name Wukong. And he owned a club downtown.
The Monkey King's Court
The "Great Sage Equal to Heaven" was a jazz club on the edge of Chinatown. The sign was a neon monkey holding a cocktail shaker. Inside, the air was thick with smoke and the sound of a saxophone weeping a blue note.
The owner was exactly as the Imam described. He was a wiry, energetic man with a mischievous glint in his eye and a way of moving that seemed too quick, too fluid. He was Chinese, but he didn't look like anyone I'd ever met. He was polishing a glass behind the bar when we walked in.
"Detectives," he said, his grin wide. "What can I get you? The house special is called 'Leaping to the Edge of the Cosmos.' It's a kicker."
"We're not here for drinks, Mr. Wukong," I said, laying a photo of Hermes on the bar. "We're here about her."
His grin didn't falter, but the light in his eyes changed. It went out, replaced by something ancient and cold. "Hermes. A restless spirit. A shame."
"You knew her," I stated.
"Everyone knew her. She was hard to miss. Always asking questions. Always looking for the next horizon."
"Where were you two nights ago, around midnight?" Rusty asked, his tone accusatory.
Wukong laughed, a sound like wind chimes in a storm. "Ah, the classic question. I was here. Ask my bartender. Ask my band. Ask the lonely souls drowning their sorrows in my kickers. I was here, shaking cocktails and breaking hearts."
I didn't believe him. Not all of it. "The Imam says you were close. That you traveled together."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "We walked in dreams, Detective. We fought shadows. We talked about the nature of the ocean. She wanted to find the bottom. I told her the bottom was just another surface."
"The ocean?" I asked, my head throbbing again. The green light. The feeling of drowning.
"The Ocean of Being," he said, his eyes distant. "She thought she could find a lost weapon there. An Aegis. I told her the only weapon she needed was the knowledge that she was just a wave. She didn't listen. She always had to smash things."
He was telling the truth. But it was a truth wrapped in so many layers of metaphor it was useless. He was a ghost in our world, a story walking around in a man's skin. He couldn't give us what we needed. A name. A motive. A straight answer.
As we left, I looked back. He was still polishing the same glass, staring out at the rain, and for a moment, I saw him standing on a cloud, a golden staff in his hand, defying a heaven I couldn't see. I blinked, and he was just a bartender in a smoky club. The case was getting stranger, and the city felt smaller, more like a cage.
The Void and the Darkness
The forensics report came back. The symbols on the body were untraceable. The golden hair was a dead end. No matches. The only thing they found was a strange residue on her skin, a kind of phosphorescent dust that reacted to UV light, glowing with the same faint green I'd seen at the crime scene. It was unidentifiable. Alien.
Rusty was ready to write it off. "Some psycho with a god complex, Talus. Happens all the time in this town. Let's pin it on some jealous boyfriend and call it a day."
But I couldn't let it go. The words kept echoing in my head. Trench. Ocean. Shadow. A seed of despair. This wasn't a normal murder. This was a message. Or a warning.
My gut led me back to the warehouse district, to a place the uniforms had missed. A small, unmarked office building next to the Barzakh warehouse. The sign on the door read "Gildarts Experimental Solutions." It was locked, but my lock picks and a bad feeling got me inside.
The place was a mad scientist's playground. Beakers full of shimmering liquids, strange humming machines, diagrams on the chalkboards that looked like blueprints for impossible realities. And in the center of the main lab, a single chair. Restraints on the arms and legs.
And on a nearby table, a stack of files. I thumbed through them. They were all about Hermes. And about me. About Ungar, and the Imam, and Wukong. Psychological profiles, behavioral patterns, predictive models. They were running simulations.
"Looking for something, Detective?"
The voice was high, manic, and utterly devoid of sanity. I turned and saw him. A tiny man in a lab coat, with wild hair and glasses that magnified his eyes to an impossible size. He was holding a floating orb of mint-green light that made the air around him warp.
"Dr. Gildarts, I presume," I said, my hand on my piece.
"Presume! Assume! Consume!" he squeaked, hopping from foot to foot. "You're a variable, Detective Talus! A stubborn, resilient variable! But all variables can be bent! All equations can be solved! With a little... kaboom!"
He pointed the orb at me. "She was a test subject! A beautiful, fractured test subject! We needed to see how deep the rot went! How much despair a Prophet could hold before she shattered! The results were... delicious!"
He was confessing. But it wasn't a confession a jury would ever understand. "You killed her," I said, my voice flat.
"Killed? No, no, no! We... re-calibrated! We showed her the trench! We let the little whispering horrors plant their seed! She didn't die in the warehouse, Detective! She died in a dream! A beautiful, bespoke nightmare!" He giggled, a horrible, unhinged sound. "The body was just... a delivery system. For the message."
"And what was the message?" I asked, my gun trained on his chest.
"That we're here! That the Void is watching! That the Prophet's little clique is full of cracks! And we're going to use those cracks to break the whole damn thing!" He raised the orb, the light intensifying. "Now, be a good little data point and hold still! This next kaboom is going to be a masterpiece!"
I didn't hesitate. I fired. The shot went wide, hitting a humming machine behind him. The room exploded in a shower of sparks and green light. The air twisted, gravity shifted, and for a moment, I was standing in the trench again, the screams echoing in my ears. Gildarts shrieked with delight as reality itself came undone around him.
I ran. I didn't look back. I just ran from the chaos, from the truth that was too big to fit in my head.
The Fall of the Prophet
I found her where the Imam said she would be. A small, quiet park overlooking the city. She was sitting on a bench, staring at her hands, trembling. It was Hermes. Alive. She had escaped. Or been released.
I sat down next to her, not saying anything. The rain had stopped, but the city was still weeping.
"They didn't break my body," she whispered, her voice raw. "They broke my soul. They showed me... things. Things that can't be unseen."
"I know," I said softly. And I did. I'd seen the echoes of it in Gildarts' lab.
"A part of me is still there," she continued, tears tracing paths down her cheeks. "In the trench. A part of me... liked it."
I didn't recoil. I didn't judge. I just sat there, a witness to her pain, a solid thing in a world that had become fluid and terrifying. The case was closed, but it would never be solved. Not in a way that mattered. The killer wasn't a man. It was an idea. A force. A Void.
I looked out at Now Yank City, at the millions of lights, each one a story, a secret, a potential schism in the fabric of the world. I was a detective, a man who dealt in facts, in evidence, in the concrete world of cause and effect. But I had looked into the abyss, and the abyss had looked back. It had a name. Barzakh. And it was hungry.
The job wasn't about finding the killer anymore. It was about holding the line. About standing in the rain, in the dark, and being the one who says "no." No, you can't have this city. No, you can't have these people. Not on my watch.
The intermission was over. The main story was waiting. And I, Detective Talus, had a role to play. I just hoped I was strong enough to see it through.
LA Noire: Now Yank City - The Crimson Intermission
Case File: 48-A - "The Clockwork Heart"
Desk: Homicide
Partner: Detective Rusty Galloway
The City That Never Wakes Up
The rain hadn't stopped. Not for a week. It fell on Now Yank City with the persistence of a bad memory, turning the streets into canals of reflected neon and despair. My office on the eleventh floor of the Hall of Justice still smelled like stale coffee and the ghost of Hermes' breakdown. Two weeks had passed since the Barzakh warehouse case, a case that was officially closed but felt like a wound that refused to scab. They'd promoted me to Homicide. A pat on the head and a heavier gun. Rusty, my new partner, saw it differently.
"See, Talus? They give you the shiny badge and the corner office with the view of the gutter 'cause they know you can handle the weird shit," he said, pouring two fingers of something that smelled like turpentine and regret into a pair of dirty glasses. He slid one over to me. "Welcome to the big leagues. Now you get to see the real monsters."
I took the glass. The liquid burned all the way down. Rusty Galloway was a dinosaur. A flatfoot who remembered when the biggest threat to the city was the mob. Now, we had Ork-run protection rackets in the docks and Elven diplomats causing diplomatic incidents by reading minds in the UN. The world had cracked open, and all the things we'd told ourselves were just stories were now walking among us, paying taxes, and, occasionally, killing each other.
The call came in at 03:45. The dispatcher's voice was clipped, professional, but with an undercurrent of something that sounded like awe. "10-90. Homicide. The Celestial Spire, penthouse suite. Victim is... non-human. All units, approach with caution."
The Celestial Spire was the newest, tallest skyscraper in the city, a needle of crystal and alloy that pierced the perpetual smoggy clouds. It was home to the new money, the new blood, the new species. Humans who'd adapted, and the ones who had arrived.
The scene was quiet. Too quiet. No flashing lights, no screaming reporters. Just a single, black Federation cruiser, its engine a low hum, and two officers who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else. They nodded at us, their faces pale.
"Who's the vic?" Rusty asked, lighting a cigarette.
"Name's Alistair Finch," one of the uniforms said, his voice barely a whisper. "He's a... a Gearman."
A Gearman. One of the Artificed. Beings of clockwork and steam, their souls supposedly bound into intricate mechanisms of brass and crystal. They were the city's inventors, its engineers, its chronic tinkerers. They kept the lights on and the pneumatic tubes running.
We took the private elevator up. The car was silent, the walls a single, seamless screen showing a serene, animated forest. It felt like a lie. The penthouse doors were already open. The air inside was cold, sterile, and smelled of ozone and hot metal.
And there he was.
Alistair Finch lay in the middle of his workshop, a sprawling space of blueprints, half-finished automatons, and tools that looked like surgical instruments. He was tall and slender, his body a masterpiece of polished brass, copper, and intricate clockwork gears. His face was a delicate mask of silver, with two lenses of polished quartz for eyes. He was beautiful, in a terrifying, inhuman way.
But he was broken. His chest plate had been pried open, not with force, but with a surgeon's precision. And inside, where a complex, whirring mechanism of a thousand tiny gears and glowing vacuum tubes should have been, there was nothing. A hollow, empty cavity. His heart, his very soul, had been stolen.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Rusty breathed, crossing himself. "They stole his goddamn ticker."
I knelt down, my gloved fingers tracing the edge of the empty cavity. The cuts were clean. Exact. This wasn't a robbery. It was an extraction. And then I saw it. Tucked into the corner of his empty chest, almost hidden, was a single, perfect, black feather. It was iridescent, shimmering with an oily, rainbow light that seemed to drink the room's illumination.
"Bag that feather," I told the tech, my voice tight. "And get me a list of everyone who had access to this penthouse."
My head throbbed. A flash of green light, a feeling of being hollowed out, violated. I pushed it down. Not now. This was a new case. A new nightmare.
The Warlock in the High Castle
The list of suspects was short. Finch was a recluse. The only regular visitor was a "business associate." A name that made the uniform who typed it up flinch: Ungar.
The Federation's headquarters was a brutalist slab of concrete and steel that looked like it had been dropped from orbit. SuperIntendent Ungar's office was on the top floor, but it wasn't an office. It was a void. The walls were black, the floor was black, the ceiling was a perfect, starless black. The only furniture was a single, massive obsidian desk. And behind it, sat Ungar.
He was even more intimidating here, in his element. He didn't look like a cop. He looked like a fundamental force of nature given a suit and a badge. His presence filled the room, pressing in on you, making you feel small and fragile.
"Detective Talus," he said, his voice the same low rumble I remembered from the warehouse. "And Detective Galloway. I've been expecting you."
Rusty shifted uncomfortably. "Expecting us, huh? You psychic or something, SuperIntendent?"
Ungar's gaze, which seemed to hold dying galaxies, settled on Rusty. "Something like that." He turned his attention back to me. "Alistair Finch. A tragedy. A unique mind. A unique soul."
"You knew him," I stated.
"We consulted," Ungar corrected. "Mr. Finch had a... unique perspective on reality. He saw the connections between things. The machinery of fate."
"He was a clockwork jockey," Rusty muttered.
"He was a seer who used gears instead of stars," Ungar countered, his tone leaving no room for argument. "He was working on something for me. A device. A way to... stabilize the schisms. The cracks."
The schisms. The word sent a chill down my spine. Hermes' words, echoing in the dark. "What kind of device?"
"A resonator," Ungar said simply. "Something that could reinforce the walls of our world. Something that could... heal the damage."
"And you think his murder is connected to this device?" I asked.
"I know it is," Ungar said. "His heart wasn't just a mechanism, Detective. It was the resonator's power source. It was a fragment of pure, ordered reality. A piece of a world that worked correctly. And someone took it."
He stood and walked to the black wall. For a moment, it shimmered, and I saw it. Not a wall, but a window. Looking out into a swirling chaos of fractured realities, screaming colors, and things that had no name. The Void.
"They're getting bolder," Ungar said, his voice quiet. "The things from the other side. They used to only be able to whisper. Now, they can reach out and touch. They want to unmake us. Piece by piece. And Alistair's heart is the key to doing it on a scale we've never seen."
He turned back to me, his expression grim. "This isn't a homicide, Detective. It's an act of war. And I need you to find my soldier's killer before they can turn his heart into a bomb."
The Monkey King's Riddle
The feather was our only solid lead. The lab techs were stumped. It wasn't from any bird on Earth. It wasn't biological, exactly, but it wasn't synthetic either. It was... something else. The only person in the city who dealt in "something else" was the man who ran the jazz club in Chinatown.
The "Great Sage Equal to Heaven" was still open, the saxophone still weeping its lonely tune. The place was mostly empty, save for a few sad-eyed Orks nursing glowing beers. Wukong was behind the bar, polishing a glass with the same impossible energy as before.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't Now Yank's finest," he grinned, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "Back for another 'Edge of the Cosmos'? I've tweaked the recipe. Now it comes with a premonition of regret."
"We're not here for drinks, Wukong," I said, laying the evidence bag with the feather on the bar. "We're here about this."
His grin vanished. He stared at the feather, and for the first time, I saw something other than playful arrogance in his eyes. I saw fear.
"Where did you get this?" he asked, his voice low, serious.
"Crime scene. A Gearman named Alistair Finch."
He let out a long, slow whistle. "Oh, you boys have stepped in it deep this time. This isn't from around here. This is from... the Between Places."
"The Between Places?" Rusty scoffed.
"The realms that aren't realms," Wukong explained, his gaze fixed on the feather. "The echoes. The places that exist in the shadow of a real world. This is from a Silencer. A creature that doesn't belong. A parasite."
He reached out and tapped the bag. "They don't kill like this. They're not messy. They're... precise. They take things. Quiet things. Important things. They're the librarians of the Void, and they're building a collection."
"Who hired them?" I pressed. "Who would want a Gearman's heart?"
He looked up at me, his expression unreadable. "Someone who wants to build something. Or unbuild something. A heart like that... it's not just a power source. It's a blueprint. A perfect, mechanical blueprint of reality. You could use it to build a perfect world... or you could use it to find all the flaws in this one and exploit them. Every crack, every schism, every weak point."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "You're not just looking for a killer, flatfoot. You're looking for an architect of chaos. And trust me, they don't leave fingerprints. They leave... ripples."
He told me about a place. A hidden market in the tunnels beneath the city, a place called the Glimmer Market. Where things from the other side were traded. Where you could buy a stolen dream or a bottled nightmare. It was our only lead.
The Glimmer Market
The entrance to the Glimmer Market was through a sewer grate in an alley that smelled of rot and desperation. Rusty complained the whole way down. "I'm too old for this shit, Talus. Chasing spooks in a sewer for a case that's got SuperIntendent Spook's personal seal on it. This ain't police work. This's madness."
The tunnels opened into a cavern that defied logic. It was a marketplace, bustling and chaotic, lit by floating orbs of softly pulsating light. The air was thick with the smells of alien spices, burning incense, and wet fur. The vendors were a menagerie of the impossible: hunched-over Trolls selling glowing minerals, ethereal Fae offering vials of liquid starlight, hooded figures with too many fingers hawking whispered secrets.
And the customers were just as strange. Dapper Goblins in tailored suits, hulking Minotaurs arguing over prices, humans with eyes that glowed with an unnatural light. This was the underbelly of the new world, a place where the old rules didn't apply.
We stuck out like two sore thumbs. Two human cops in a sea of monsters. We were getting looks. Hungry looks. I kept my hand on my piece, my eyes moving, scanning for trouble.
We found the stall we were looking for. It was run by a thin, nervous man with skin like old parchment and eyes that darted everywhere. He sold "Curiosities and Relics." His stall was filled with junk, but I felt a pull from a small, wooden box in the back.
"We're looking for information," I said, trying to sound casual.
The man jumped. "Information! Yes! I have information! The price of shadow-essence is up! The Goblin markets are crashing! A fine time for investment!"
"Not that kind of information," Rusty grumbled. "We're looking for a Silencer. Or someone who hires one."
The man's eyes widened in terror. He started shaking his head, his hands wringing. "No, no, no. I don't deal with them. The Between Folk. They're bad for business. Very bad. They take things. Not just money. They take... memories. Names."
He pointed a trembling finger at the wooden box. "They came here. A few nights ago. A man in a suit. A human. But... wrong. His shadow didn't match. He was looking for a power source. A 'pure mechanical heart.' I told him I didn't have one. But he knew."
"Who was he?" I asked.
"He didn't give a name," the man whispered, glancing around nervously. "But he paid with this. He left it behind. Said it was a down payment. A taste of things to come."
I opened the box. Inside, nestled on a bed of faded velvet, was a single, perfect, silver gear. It was about the size of my palm, intricately designed, and it hummed with a faint, almost imperceptible energy. It felt cold. Wrong. As I picked it up, the world tilted.
A flash of green light. The feeling of being held down, of being violated. A high-pitched, chittering laugh. The gear in my hand grew hot, and a voice, not my own, echoed in my mind. The seed is planted. The vessel is prepared.
I dropped the gear, stumbling back. Rusty caught me. "Talus? You alright, partner? You look like you've seen a ghost."
I had. I'd seen mine. The gear was a tracker. A beacon. And it had just shown me who the real target was.
"It's not about the heart," I said, my voice shaking. "It was never about the heart. It's about me."
The Architect of Chaos
The gear was pulsing now, a soft, rhythmic beat that only I could feel. It was pulling me, leading me out of the Glimmer Market, back towards the surface. Towards the Celestial Spire.
"He's leading us into a trap," Rusty said, his gun drawn.
"No," I said, my mind clear for the first time in weeks. "He's leading me home."
We went back to the penthouse. The crime scene tape was still up, but the place was different. The air was thick with a cold, green energy. The shadows were wrong, twisting and writhing on the walls.
And standing in the center of the room, over the body of Alistair Finch, was a man. He was tall, wore a perfectly tailored suit, and had a smile that didn't reach his eyes. He was human. But he wasn't. His shadow was a writhing mass of tentacles and wings.
"Detective Talus," he said, his voice smooth, polite, and utterly soulless. "I'm so glad you could make it. I was getting impatient."
"Who are you?" I asked, my gun trained on his chest.
"My name is Volker," he said, with a slight bow. "And I'm a facilitator. I help... transitions. I help things from the other side find their place here. And you, Detective, are a very important part of the transition."
He gestured to the Gearman's body. "This was never about him. He was just the locksmith. His heart was the key. A key to open a door. A door inside you."
He smiled, and it was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. "You see, you're a special case, Detective. You're a schism. A walking, talking crack in reality. You've been to the other side. You've tasted it. It left a mark. A seed. And Alistair's heart, combined with that little tracker you picked up, is the perfect fertilizer."
The gear in my pocket grew hot. The green light in the room intensified. I could feel it, a presence in my mind, cold and hungry. The seed Hermes had talked about. The seed that had been planted in the trench. It was growing.
"You're going to be our beacon, Detective," Volker said, his voice filled with triumphant glee. "You're going to open the way for all of us. And this city... this world... will finally be remade in our image."
The room exploded. Not with fire, but with darkness. The shadows tore themselves from the walls, forming into winged, multi-limbed horrors. The Silencers. And they were all looking at me.
Rusty opened fire, his shots echoing in the chaos. "I don't know what the hell is going on, Talus, but I got your back!"
But I knew it wasn't enough. They weren't here for him. They were here for me. I closed my eyes, reaching for the cold, hungry presence inside me. I could fight it. Or I could use it.
I let it in.
The world dissolved into a storm of green light and screaming chaos. I could feel everything, every mind in the building, every fear, every desire. I could feel the city, a sprawling organism of light and shadow. And I could feel the cracks. The schisms. The weak points.
And I knew what I had to do. I wasn't just a cop anymore. I was a weapon. And it was time to go to war.
LA Noire: Now Yank City - The Crimson Intermission
Case File: 48-B - "The Summit of Shadows"
Desk: Homicide
Partner: Detective Rusty Galloway
The Weight of the World
The aftermath of the Celestial Spire left a scar on the city that wasn't physical, but psychic. The Glimmer Market was sealed by Federation black-ops teams, their faces grim and their weapons humming with energies I didn't want to understand. Volker was gone, vanished back into the Between Places, but his parting gift remained. The seed inside me was quiet now, a dormant cold spot in my soul, but I could feel it. A patient, alien presence waiting for the right moment to sprout.
Rusty hadn't said a word about it. He just poured me a drink, lit one of his foul-smelling cigars, and acted like I hadn't spent ten minutes speaking in a language that made the lights flicker and the air taste like ozone. He was a good partner. He knew when to push and when to just pour the whiskey.
The city held its breath. The newspapers were full of it. The Now Yank Summit. The most important gathering in human history. The leaders of the world were coming to our city. Truman, Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle. And they weren't alone. The Gargaplax and the Zadon. Our new, terrifying allies.
The Gargaplax were crystalline beings of logic and light, who communicated through complex mathematical equations that made your teeth ache. The Zadon were... something else. Massive, gelatinous slugs, the size of a Buick, who left a trail of shimmering, psychically-active slime wherever they went. They were the Premier's species, a race of empaths and telepaths who had helped us end the war with their ability to simply... know things. They were our friends. Our saviors.
The summit was to be held at the old Grand Imperial Hotel, a place that had seen better days but now bristled with enough military and alien technology to make a fortress look like a dollhouse. The security was a joint effort. The US Army, the Soviet NKVD, British MI6, and the Federation. A powder keg of paranoia and ideology, all pointed at the hotel doors.
My desk was buried under a mountain of threat assessments, background checks, and security clearances. It was busywork. The kind of job they give you when they don't know what else to do with you. I was a liability, and they knew it. A cop with a monster in his head.
The call came in, not from dispatch, but from a secure, scrambled line. The voice was Ungar's.
"Detective. My office. Now."
The Warlock's Gambit
Ungar's office was still a black, starless void, but it felt different. Tense. He wasn't behind his desk. He was standing by the window-wall, looking out at the chaos of the city below.
"They're here," he said, without turning. "All of them. The leaders of a world that can barely lead itself, and the ambassadors of worlds that see us as children playing with matches."
"We're on it," I said. "Every nutjob with a grudge is being rounded up. The city's on lockdown."
Ungar turned, and for the first time, I saw something besides cosmic indifference in his eyes. I saw fear. "You're thinking like a human, Talus. You're looking for a human killer with a human motive. A grudge. An ideology. But the threat isn't human. The motive isn't politics."
He waved a hand, and the black wall shimmered. An image appeared. A complex web of light, representing the summit's security. It was a perfect, impenetrable sphere. "This is what our security looks like. To us. To our technology."
He waved his hand again, and the image changed. The web of light was still there, but now it was shot through with thin, dark, almost invisible lines. They writhed and pulsed like veins.
"This is what it looks like to them," Ungar said, his voice low. "The Between Folk. The Silencers. The things Volker works for. They don't see walls. They see patterns. They see... seams."
"Seams?" Rusty asked, speaking for the first time.
"The places where realities touch," Ungar explained. "The Zadon Premier, for example. He's a powerful empath. His mind is a beacon. To protect himself, to filter out the psychic noise of seven million humans, he surrounds himself with a field of pure, ordered thought. A psychic shield. But that shield... it creates a seam. A boundary between his ordered mind and our chaotic world. A perfect place for something to hide."
He zoomed in on the image. One of the dark, writhing lines was touching the sphere representing the Zadon Premier's personal suite.
"Volker's assassin isn't going to sneak past a guard. He's not going to plant a bomb. He's going to step through a seam in reality and kill the Premier in a place that doesn't officially exist. And when he does, the Zadon, who see the world through emotion and empathy, will feel it as a psychic scream. They won't see a political assassination. They'll feel a murder. And the Gargaplax, who are allied with the Zadon through a treaty of pure logic, will calculate that the only logical response for a murdered ally is total war."
"The Gargaplax don't do 'total war'," Rusty said, his voice skeptical. "They send politely worded ultimatums."
"They do when their allies are empaths," Ungar countered. "They will calculate the Zadon's grief and rage, and they will respond with a force that will turn this planet into a glass parking lot. This isn't about starting a war, Detective. It's about unmaking a world."
He looked at me, his gaze intense. "I can't stop this. My people, we're too much a part of the system. We're part of the pattern. But you... you're a schism, Talus. You're a walking, talking seam. You're the only one who can see the world the way the assassin does. You're the only one who can walk in his shadows."
The Monkey King's Map
Finding an assassin who didn't walk the same roads as us was impossible. We needed a guide. We needed someone who knew the shortcuts.
The "Great Sage Equal to Heaven" was closed. A sign on the door read, "Gone fishing. In another dimension." But I knew where to find him. The old tea shop in Chinatown, run by the Imam al-Tayyib. It was a neutral ground. A place where worlds met.
The Imam was there, serene as always, serving tea to a very agitated Wukong. The Monkey King was pacing, his tail twitching, his usual manic energy replaced by a rare, focused anxiety.
"It's all wrong!" Wukong exclaimed, seeing us. "The whole city! The patterns are twisted! The air tastes like broken clocks and screaming! It's a mess! A terrible, terrible mess!"
"We need your help, Wukong," I said, cutting to the chase.
He stopped pacing and looked at me, his eyes narrowing. "Of course you do. The big, serious human detective with the monster in his head needs the irrepressible, handsome Monkey King to save his bacon. It's always the same."
"The Zadon Premier is going to be assassinated," Rusty said bluntly. "We need to find the killer."
Wukong's playful demeanor vanished. "The Slug? He's a decent sort. For a puddle with ambitions. His mind is a quiet place in all this noise. Who'd want to kill him?"
"Someone who wants a war," I said. "Someone who works for Volker."
Wukong snarled, a sound that was surprisingly feral. "Ah. The librarian. The man who files his shrapnel. I should have known." He sat down, pouring himself a cup of tea. "He won't use a door. He'll use a wrinkle. A fold. You can't guard against that."
"Then how do we find him?" I asked.
"You don't find him," Wukong said, a slow, dangerous grin spreading across his face. "You find his door. And you wait for him to use it." He pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket and began to draw on the wooden floor. "The city is a map. Not of streets, but of feelings. Fear smells like ozone and wet pavement. Hope smells like baking bread. And the place between... it smells like nothing. It's a hole in the world's senses."
His chalk moved with an impossible speed and precision, drawing a complex, spiraling pattern that made my eyes water. It wasn't a map of the city. It was a map of its soul. He marked places with strange symbols: a weeping willow for the old morgue, a crackling flame for the power plant, a coiled dragon for the train yards.
"Volker's boy will need a place to enter," Wukong explained, his finger tracing the lines. "A place that's already... thin. A place where a lot of something has happened. A lot of death, or a lot of dreams, or a lot of lies." He tapped a spot on the map, right in the center of his spiral. A symbol I recognized. An old, abandoned movie palace. The Orpheum.
"They're showing a revival of a romance picture," Wukong said, his grin widening. "A lot of forgotten dreams in that place. A lot of people wishing for a life they don't have. It's perfect. It's a psychic soup. A perfect place to hide a wrinkle in the world."
He stood up, dusting off his hands. "He'll be there. Before the summit. He'll be preparing. Getting his bearings. The question is, Detective... are you ready to meet him on his own turf?"
The Ghost in the Machine
The Orpheum Theater was a tomb. A grand, dusty, rotting palace of forgotten dreams. The marquee still advertised "Casablanca," but the letters were cracked and faded. The lobby was a cavern of velvet and gold leaf, now shrouded in cobwebs and shadows.
The air was thick. Not just with dust, but with something else. A psychic residue. The echoes of a thousand audiences, their hopes and heartbreaks soaked into the velvet seats and threadbare carpets. It was the kind of place Wukong had described. A thin place.
We went in the back, our footsteps echoing in the deafening silence. The auditorium was a vast, dark pit, dominated by the giant, silent screen on the stage. The only light came from the single, red "EXIT" sign over the far door, casting long, dancing shadows.
"He's here," I whispered, the cold spot in my soul pulsing in agreement. "I can feel him."
Rusty drew his .38, his knuckles white. "Where?"
I closed my eyes, reaching for the seed inside me. I let its cold, alien senses bleed into my own. The world changed. The shadows became deeper, more solid. The silence became a pressure. And I could see it. Not with my eyes, but with the monster in my head. A distortion in the air, a shimmering heat-haze in the center of the auditorium, about ten feet off the ground. It was a door. A wrinkle.
And standing in front of it was a man.
He was tall and impossibly thin, dressed in a simple, grey suit that seemed to absorb the light. He wasn't holding a weapon. He was just... standing there. His face was blank, his eyes empty. He was a void. A human-shaped hole in the world.
He didn't seem to notice us. He was just... waiting. Tuning. I could feel it. He was attuning himself to the frequency of the Zadon Premier's mind, preparing to make the jump.
"We've got him," Rusty whispered, raising his gun.
"No," I said, putting a hand on his arm. "You shoot him, and that wrinkle might tear open. We don't know what will come out."
"So what do we do, Talus? Ask him politely to surrender?"
I had an idea. A stupid, dangerous idea. "Keep him covered. I'm going to go talk to him."
"Talus, you're out of your damn mind."
"Probably," I admitted. "But it's the only shot we've got."
I walked out into the open, my hands raised. The man didn't move. His empty eyes didn't flicker.
"I know who you are," I said, my voice echoing in the vast space. "I know who you work for."
The man's head tilted, a gesture of mild curiosity. "You are an anomaly," he said. His voice was flat, toneless, like a recording. "A flawed variable. You should not be able to perceive me."
"I'm full of surprises," I said, taking another step closer. "Volker's plan won't work. We know about the seam. We know about the assassination."
"The outcome is inevitable," the man said. "The Zadon Premier will cease to function. The treaty will break. The Gargaplax will respond. The world will be... corrected."
"It's not about politics, is it?" I said, pushing my luck. "It's about the noise. All these emotions. All these chaotic, messy, human feelings. You can't stand it. You want to silence it. You want to turn the universe back into a quiet, orderly library."
For the first time, something flickered in his eyes. Not emotion, but... a process. A calculation. "You are more perceptive than the data indicated."
"I'm a detective," I said. "It's my job to see the patterns. And I see yours. You're not an assassin. You're a censor."
I was close now. Close enough to see the faint, shimmering outline of the wrinkle behind him. Close enough to feel the cold, dead air coming off him.
"It's over," I said.
"The calculation is complete," he replied. And he lunged.
Not at me. At the wrinkle.
He didn't run. He simply... ceased to be there, and reappeared, a blur of motion, reaching for the shimmering distortion in the air.
But I was ready. I didn't try to grab him. I reached for the wrinkle myself. And I pushed.
I pushed with the only thing I had. The cold, alien presence in my soul. I poured it into the wrinkle, feeding it, amplifying it. I didn't know what I was doing, but it worked.
The wrinkle didn't just open. It screamed.
The air tore open, not with a neat, silent slit, but with a deafening, reality-shredding roar. The wrinkle became a vortex, a swirling chaos of green light and screaming color. It wasn't a door anymore. It was a tornado.
The assassin was caught in the middle. He let out a sound, the first and only real emotion he'd shown. A sound of pure, unadulterated shock. The vortex pulled at him, tearing at his grey suit, at his very form. He fought it, but it was like fighting a hurricane. He was stretched, twisted, and then, with a final, silent pop, he was gone. Consumed by the chaos he had tried to control.
The vortex collapsed in on itself, leaving behind nothing but the smell of ozone and a single, perfect, black feather, which fluttered to the floor of the Orpheum.
Rusty ran up, his gun still drawn. "Talus! What in God's name did you do?"
"I don't know," I said, my body trembling, the cold spot in my soul now a raging, blizzard. "But I think I just filed Volker's librarian in the wrong section."
The summit went on as planned. The Zadon Premier gave a speech that was translated as a series of warm, contented gurgles. Truman and Stalin scowled at each other. The world didn't end. We had won.
But as we walked out of the Orpheum, leaving the ghosts and the dreams behind, I knew it wasn't over. I had used the monster inside me to win. And it had liked it. It had liked the power, the chaos. The seed wasn't dormant anymore. It was awake. And it was hungry.