[center] [img] https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/b31e218f-e509-4597-9d67-552977634fac/d9nimf3-53fb234e-6fe5-4aa9-a0f3-db7566b0b0b1.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_683,q_75,strp/strip_at_night_by_photoartbk_d9nimf3-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3siaGVpZ2h0IjoiPD02ODMiLCJwYXRoIjoiXC9mXC9iMzFlMjE4Zi1lNTA5LTQ1OTctOWQ2Ny01NTI5Nzc2MzRmYWNcL2Q5bmltZjMtNTNmYjIzNGUtNmZlNS00YWE5LWEwZjMtZGI3NTY2YjBiMGIxLmpwZyIsIndpZHRoIjoiPD0xMDI0In1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.SxoZtKRqtbRYRuBasYBGo5f0HvWhiJHf29fEsJL-ydM [/img] [/center] Morgan could smell burning wood, and crackling fire, on the wind. She could feel that crushing, smouldering heat against her skin. She closed her eyes, plunging the world into darkness. [i] It’s not real.[/i] She told herself. [i]Those are just the ghosts of flames long since extinguished[/i]. When she opened her eyes again, and colour returned, the fire was gone. It wouldn’t last, though. The flames always came back. “You alright there, Morgan?” Rafael Velez, a fellow Anarch, asked her, plucking her out of her head, and dropping her back into reality. Or at least, what she [i]thought[/i] was reality. “Yeah, fine.” She lied. The apparitions had gotten worse over the years, and would only get worse still in the years to come. Morgan knew that she was cursed with the knowledge that she was losing herself to insanity, and also the inability to do anything about it. The plunge into madness was sadistically slow. [i]”Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad, you’re mad.”[/i] “Let’s get this over with then, yeah?” Rafael prompted, shooting her a look of mild concern. It was getting harder to hide the fact that she was breaking apart from the world around her. Soon, she would only be jagged splinters of the woman called Morgan Holloway. “Why do I always get the crazy ones?” Rafael murmured. “Why do I always get the bigoted ones?” Morgan shot back, a snarl creeping into her voice. “What..?” Rafael stared at her, blankly. Morgan suddenly realised that he had spoken those words, only thought them. She cursed herself for once again forgetting how to tell the difference. “Nothing,” she waved one hand dismissively, “let's crack on.” Directing a torrent of blood and power into her legs, Morgan sprang up off of the ground, leaping through the night like a spry flea, and bound through the air. The Malkavian hit the railings above with a thud, her fingers wrapping tightly around a cold metal fence. Rafael followed suit, and soon the pair were clambering up over the railing, and dropping down into the courtyard on the other side. They slipped softly across the concrete, darting through the darkness on the quietest of feet. To the ears of kine, they would have been imperceptible. “Let’s make this one quick and easy,” Rafael murmured, lowering his voice to a soft whisper, “there’s no need for this to get messy.” Morgan and Rafael were on something of a mission for their Anarch comrades. The insurgents had gotten word that [i]Horatio Ballard[/i], a powerful Ventrue, who was considered something of a major player out in the Windy City, had brought a massive stockpile of blood, through various underhand channels, which was being kept on ice in a private storage facility, not far from Hollywood Hills. The Anarchs reckoned that Ballard’s investment could do a lot more good spread amongst the needy than sitting about as the private reserve of some greasy tycoon, so Morgan and Rafael had been sent to [i]liberate[/i] it. “Understood, boss man,” Morgan grunted “quick and easy.” They made their way towards a series of blocky, shed-like containers, with bright green metal doors, reinforced with thick steel bars. “Know which container we’re after?” Morgan asked. “Number thirteen,” Rafael chuckled, “trust a ventrue to be so unnecessarily theatrical about the most mundane fucking things.” It was only a brisk walk over to the thirteenth container, scurrying nimbly through the shadows. “Ready to crack this bad boy open?” Morgan shot Rafael a brash smirk. The suave-looking Brujah grinned, tugging at the edges of his snappy leather jacket. “Forty five years of un-life, and this never stops being fun.” Evoking the supernatural discipline known as [i]“Potence”[/i], Rafael sent a surge of raw strength flooding through his body in a tsunami of magical power. He gripped hold of the bars which ran across the container’s front, and pried them straight off, ripping them free with ease, and by-passing the need for a key completely. “Lets rob the shit out of this fucking tyrant.” Rafael beamed, reaching down for the slight crease between the container’s metal shutter, and the concrete grown below, and wrenching the cover upwards. [b]“Caine’s balls!”[/b] Inside, there was not a big fridge, full of frozen blood. There was, however, an awful lot of un-frozen blood. The red tide washed over their feet, soaked through their shoes, and running beneath their toes. It was fresh. The corpse of what had once been a security guard was hung from the ceiling, the flesh of his head fused into the cold metal roof, as though it had been pressed into the steel, like putty. His uniform was ripped open at the chest, exposing the horror which lay beneath. His skin and ribs had been carefully pried open, and his internal organs hung freely out of his stomach. A sickly trail of gooey intestines was draped through the air, swinging loosely in the night wind. It then dawned upon Morgan that the man’s heart, which dangled out of his open chest, was still beating. His lips had been melded together, rendering him incapable of speech, but his terrified eyes twitched and jerked in their sockets, red and raw from crying, as they pleaded desperately with Morgan and Rafael. He was still alive. “What the fuck is this shit..?” Rafael wheezed, gasping for words, “This poor fucking bastard.” Morgan had seen this before. She turned on her heel, and looked back the way they had come, staring into the blackness. She saw the faint outline of Calantha Teohari gazing back at her, before she vanished into the incessant dark of the night. “What the fuck is going on?!” Rafael demanded, of no one in particular. Morgan’s eyes fell upon the man-sculptures exposed heart, strung up at the end of a thread of viscous muscle, and intestine. “It’s a symbol,” the Malkavian told him, “[i]she’s giving me her heart[/i].”