Erika woke up that morning to find me still awake. “What’s the matter?” she asked as we searched about our little hovel for our meager possessions. I owned one cell phone that couldn’t be recharged, the red baseball cap that Escher had assigned me, and now (by her own insistence), Erika.

“Nothing,” I said. I’d been thinking about Guts for a while. The depression did a good job of covering up the confusion and frustration and dread.

She rubbed my arm above the elbow. “Seriously? Nothing?”

“It’s… it’s nothing. I’m just stressed.” I didn’t want to bring her down. She hadn’t really known him.

She rubbed my back. I moved away from her. I had other things to think about—like dying.

“How are we going to do this today?” I asked.

“Improvisation,” she laughed. “We’ll just go with the flow.”

I didn’t think she was taking this very seriously.

“Aren’t you worried about getting captured… or killed?”

“In my experience, there is a certain way things are supposed to work out. Just relax, Clark, and let events unfold like they’re supposed to. Besides, I trust you. I know you’ll lead me in the right direction.”

I had no idea where to go or how to get there, and my legs felt weak and shaky as I descended down the flights of stairs that led to Escher’s office. When we reached the bottom we laid eyes on Mal, who was standing in a particularly menacing fashion at the fire exit—I suppose making sure we didn’t try to escape.

I noticed a single weapon on his body, but it didn’t look like it was made for combat. A rusted dagger in a leather sheath rested on a chain around his neck.

I didn’t try to talk to him this time, as he didn’t seem inclined to do much speaking anyway. Instead, I went straight to Escher’s office, keeping Erika tightly in tow. Mal made me nervous for her.

I pulled open the door. Whisper was seated at his chair with a pale cat in front of her on his table. She was stroking it gently and apparently speaking softly to it.

“Where’s Escher?” I asked.

“He’s gone, I’m afraid. I do not know when he’ll return. He has some things that only he can accomplish.”

“We have a few questions about this mission of ours,” Erika said.

“He means for you two to figure things out on your own,” replied Whisper. “Think of it as a way to win back his trust.”

“Win it back? When did he ever trust me?”

“His first impressions of you were favorable, though piteous. It’s rare that Escher likes anyone,” Whisper said. She straightened herself, apparently realizing she was speaking more than was required. “Anyway, it’s time you two leave. I have a map so you will at least know where you’re going—and don’t try to lose Mal. He’ll follow you, and if you misstep, he’ll most definitely kill you both. He wants to.”

“What is he?” Erika asked.

“A killer,” replied Whisper. “I told you before. If compassion is the essence of being human, he’s not human. Mal is a serial killer. He lacks the ability to feel empathy for other human beings, and left to his own devices, he would only cause pain and havoc. He only listens to Escher..

“Frightened Boy,” she continued, “you need to understand that what we do here is very important. You have to succeed in your mission at all costs. If this does not succeed, Escher will enact Project Epoch.”

“And what is that, exactly?” Erika asked.

“No one but Escher knows for sure. He says he came across Epoch in his travels before arriving in Banlo Bay. What he means by that, I’m not sure. Epoch is the moment in which one realizes all knowledge is false, but what that means to Escher is anyone’s guess. He refers to it as a last resort, though, so it must be dire. It would be best if we didn't find out.”

I took the map she offered. It was a brochure for the trolley system in Banlo Bay, with a red X marking the location of the WNBB broadcast studio. The colorful pastel illustrations of such a barren and dangerous city were a darkly ironic contrast. Was Banlo Bay ever happy? I wondered.

I donned my red cap, silly as it was, and Erika and I set out of the double doors of the abandoned office building that we had come to understand was a Stranger camp. The early morning sunlight sandblasted the sleep from my eyes as my pupils drank in the fluorescent beams.

Erika held the map out in front of her and directed us forward. Mal was only a few feet behind, his tall, dark form drawing the attention of anyone who happened to walk by. Maybe Escher had put some thought into this after all. No one could possibly notice the relatively normal Erika and I when a shirtless black man covered in strange tattoos glared at everyone who came near like a starving tiger stalking his cage.

“So, what’s the plan?” Erika asked.

“What do you mean?” The news station’s call letters were coming into view.

“I mean, haven’t you thought of anything yet?”

“What happened to ‘just wing it'?”

“Well, I mean… didn’t you think of anything?” Erika asked. I could tell she was a getting nervous. “I wish—”

“What?” I snapped at her. I was a little irked that I was supposed to think up everything. “You wish Escher was here?”

She looked sharply at me. “I was going to say that I wish I had a gun.”

I sighed. “First off, we’re not going to shoot anybody,” I said. I turned to our accompanying Stranger and asked, “Mal, would you wait across the street?”

Mal sniffed.

“You look like you kill people for fun,” Erika accused him.

He nodded, agreeing.

“That’s going to make it hard to earn their trust,” I said.

Mal shrugged and walked to the other side of the street, where he turned and began to glare as us.

“There must be a back entrance or something,” I said. “We can’t just walk through there.”

“Why not?” Erika asked.

“Because they’ll ask us who we are, that’s why.”

“So you’re telling me you think the receptionist there is going to stand up and physically restrain you from walking past her? Look at her, Clark.” Erika nodded at the woman. She had gray hair and wore glasses and was perched behind the large rectangular desk just inside the Plexiglas doors of the news station.

She was pretty small. One punch to the face, and… I shook my head. “Erika, I’m not punching an old lady,” I said. “I don’t give a shit. Let’s just try it your way then. Let’s walk through.”

Erika opened the door and motioned me inside. Mal stood across the street, watching us with his arms folded.

We stood in the lobby. Rather than waiting to get permission, we marched past the receptionist. She watched us with big questions in her eyes.

“We have to be inside,” I said, without looking at the older woman. My cheeks burned red.

“We have to be in there right now,” Erika added awkwardly.

We pushed open the dual doors that led inside the station. As they closed behind us, Erika whispered: “See? Easy.”

“You wanted to shoot her,” I accused.

The station was a crowded office, and the stares of the people who worked there only deepened my blush. However, in the land of distrust and paranoia, no one stopped to ask what we wanted or where we were going. Like me, they preferred to mind their own business and keep their heads down.

Not understanding the layout, we chose to walk through the largest sets of doors we could find, moving through corridor after corridor of double-doored hallways until at last we reached one with signs warning us to REMAIN SILENT! FILMING.

We crossed these doors, sending us into an airy, dark accommodation that seemed miles removed from the rows of tightly packed cubicles we’d just escaped. The lights were focused down toward the center—the news desk—and we moved through the shadows unnoticed.

They were between shoots; the studio was deserted.

Flint Amstrong, the news reporter I watched for most of my adult life, shuffled through a stack of newspapers in the opposite corner of the studio.

I’ve let this man make me afraid most of my adult life. But the world was dangerous, wasn’t it? I began to wonder how much of that danger was Little Brother’s doing and how scary the world really was. I thought back on the hundreds of stories I’d heard Flint Amstrong report that might be false. Did the dogs all really have rabies? Was bird dander truly infected with deadly parasites? I didn’t know. Was I wrong to distrust everyone?

Erika strode forward purposefully. “Mr. Amstrong? Could I have a word with you?”

He turned around. His steely gray eyes and structurally sound silver hair glinted as he faced the light. “Do I… know you?” he asked. He sounded exactly like he did on the news—every word urgent and dramatic. When he noticed that Erika, he undid the button on his sports coat. It fell open just as he put a hand over his heart and flashed his smile.

“I’m a big fan,” she said as I stood back near the doors and watched her act. “I have a favor to ask.”

“What favor…would that be?”

“I need you to play my tape on the air,” she said. She rubbed her toe against the ground, held her arms behind her back and pushed her chest forward.

“Is it… a demo?” he asked as he smoothed back his hair. “We…” he turned to one side and then looked back at her. “We aren’t hiring, but maybe for you…” He took off his glasses. “Maybe for you, miss, we can make an exception.”

“Something like that,” she said. “I really want you to see it.”

“Well… we can’t air it, obviously, but… I can take a look. Why don’t you come into my… office?”

“I’d rather do it in the control room,” she said with a devious grin.

“I… see,” he said. “It’s not very…” He cleared his throat. “Uh, it's not very private in there. Why don’t you come back to my office? Maybe you can be my new… weather girl.”

I ground my teeth together until my eye sockets hurt.

Time seemed to slow down as a dark fist came from the shadows near Mr. Amstrong and connected with his head with such force that blood flew out of his mouth and across Erika’s face. Mal stepped out of the shadows, melding with the darkness surrounding him. His tattoos were the only part of his body darker than his skin, so they seemed transparent against the lightless corner of the studio—as though the shadows were climbing up his chest and arms like abhorrent veins, pumping darkness through him.

He stepped forward into the staggering news anchor, knocking him backwards as he punched him in the lower back. He followed up with a series of vicious blows to the man’s spine that landed before Amstrong hit the ground.

But Mal didn’t stop there. Instead, the killer continued pounding into the newscaster’s fallen form until his body was laid out flat on the hard studio floor, and then he began stomping into the back of the man’s head. Erika stumbled backward from the gore, mouth agape.

I turned away, unable to stomach the ferocity of the attack. I heard cracking and squishing sounds coming between the pounding of the stomps on the solid floor.

I moved toward Erika, averting my eyes from what must have been Amstrong’s exploded skull. I grabbed her hand and pulled her along with me as I headed toward the empty booth that housed a long series of monitors, keyboards, and soundboards.

I wasn’t completely alien to video-monitoring equipment, as I had worked with similar stuff in Tasumec Tower. Still, I didn’t know how to start a live broadcast.

I popped the CD into a large computer and began to look around for some sort of program that might control the broadcasting schedule. I was intensely curious as to what was on the disk, what Escher’s message to society would be.

Then, the monster was opening the door and stepping into the booth with us. Erika and I started backward, moving away for every step forward he took. The fingertips of his left hand were scarlet, and something resembling a long piece of stretched-out gum that’d been run through a bowl of scrambled eggs was stuck to his shoe. The brains of the anchorman.

Only fear kept my stomach clenched, kept me from vomiting. “Please don’t kill us. We haven’t failed yet,” I cried. I pushed Erika behind me, and she fell over a small wastebasket. We were forced as far into the corner as the room would allow.

He ignored us, but rather leaned over the computer and worked quickly, as though he knew exactly what to do. He probably does, I realized.

Everywhere his hand went, he left a sticky blood trail. I noticed a red mark on his right wrist—the tattoo of a red bat, deformed and drawn in a classical, cartoonish style.

The monitors above us turned on, but only displayed a black screen. Mal pressed one last button, then stepped back and looked up at them.

This was it—Escher’s disk was being broadcast. I watched, unable to breathe, but ten seconds later, the screen was still blank, black.

Mal looked confused for a moment but then shrugged and walked out the control room. He stalked across the studio floor and stood stoically in front of the double-door entrance we had come in from. He licked his lips, and moments later, a security guard burst through.

Before the officer had time to react or even raise his weapon, Mal’s hand was wrapped around his throat. The struggling officer’s eyes exploded with red, and I knew his veins had burst from the pressure Mal was forcing into his skull. The smiling Stranger held him up with one arm even as the guard’s legs dangled limply under him.

He didn’t stop crushing the dead man’s neck until another officer burst through the door, and then he tossed aside the first lifeless body and thrust the edge of his hand into the throat of the next man. It was obvious from the way his head limply lolled that not only was his windpipe crushed, but his spine was dislocated as well.

Tears were rolling freely down Erika’s eyes by now. I looked away in disgust and focused on the still-blank screen; I wasn’t sure what I was watching. I didn’t know why this was important or if it was working at all.

It wasn’t until four minutes and fifty seconds into the black screen, while Mal was on his third victim, that a simple white message appeared: “This five minutes of peace was brought to you by the Secret Society of Strangers.”

I grabbed a crying Erika’s wrist and pulled her out of the control booth, but she resisted. “Get the CD,” she said. “Escher wanted us to.”

She was right. I popped the disk out and put it back into its case and into my pocket.

If we had been good criminals, we would have planned an escape route, but we hadn’t. I didn’t wait for Mal; I didn’t want to be anywhere near him, and I'm sure Erika didn't either. I hoped he died in the studio.

We rocketed out of the studio through a fire escape door, alarm bells ringing noisily as we pushed it open. I stopped in the daylight; it felt alien after the grisly mess of the shadow-infested newsroom.

My hand froze around Erika’s wrist. I bolted off with her in tow, running as fast as I could. We ran together back the way we had come, sirens and police cars alighting in the distance.

Four blocks away from the news station and three blocks from our destination, Erika began to tug back at my arm.

She had to stop. In my blind panic, I could have sprinted for miles.

Erika gulped down thick breaths of air and leaned up against the side of an abandoned liquor store.

“That was…” she panted, “…terrible.” Tears fell freely down her face.