Recently I saw a post on the Planet Deus Ex forums someone created to discuss her desire to write her own novel that would use some of the more interesting, under-developed characters of the Deus Ex story, such as Gunther Hermann. I found it humorous that she stated she didn’t believe that characters like Jaime Reyes and Alex Jacobson aren’t all that worth expanding on in fiction… Both of who play major roles in the planned Twist timeline. Personally, I think Jaime and Alex perfect characters to be thrown into a mess of unexpected events - For the most part, they’re normal people. They were normal at the beginning of Deus Ex, and were normal at the end. But they both had little corners that would have been great if expanded upon. That’s partially why they’re part of the Twist story - They’re taken out of the roles they played in Deus Ex, introduced to completely new, unexpected events, and are left to adapt to them. This, I say, will bring out those worthy of note traits, and perhaps some new ones. Now, I’m not saying the writer of that forum post is wrong - I’m just saying that, as fascinating as Gunther Hermann might be, I wouldn’t like to just go and leave Jaime and Alex in the dust.
Anyway, I know it’s been a while since I’ve written a chapter of Twist. Things are slow as of late. That should change soon. Here’s the next chapter - Keep sending in your thoughts. Thank ye, kind sir! And thank thine milkduds!
Oh, and I almost forgot - Here's a picture of me, Ghandaiah! Yes, that's really me! Bahahaha! ph34r my l337 skIllz!!!!!!11
--- --- --- --- CHAPTER FIVE
--- --- --- ---
Jaime Reyes sat on the single stiff cot planted in the cell he’d been thrown in. He couldn’t do anything in that room. The walls were bare concrete, a single drainage grate, too small for anything to fit through, was on the floor. One window, through which he could only see another cell, the one that Jock and Alex Jacobson were both in. The thick metallic door was completely impenetrable, and the one small mirror on the wall he had already reluctantly smashed to use as a means of looking through the window, around the corner.
They had been deserted for hours. Every time he inched up to the window and held the shattered piece of glass in front of him, all he’d see would be an unoccupied desk and a single swivel chair that never had anyone in it.
Reyes still clenched the mirror shard in his right hand. His left shook uncontrollably. His clothes were dampening with sweat. He knew it was a bad idea to begin with. He knew they’d get caught.
Jock stared at him from the other cell.
He looked down at the grate on the floor. Something dark had stained and dried around it. Old blood.
Jaime sucked in a breath and stood up. He started pacing around the cell. Cement. Concrete. Metal. He was claustrophobic. He leaned up against one wall, breathing heavily. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. He felt like he was going to have a heart attack if he didn’t do something.
Something tapped on the window. He turned his head.
A UNATCO guard looked down on him from the hallway between the cell blocks. Jaime recognized him. This guy used to be a close friend. He stepped over to the door and opened a small, rectangular window on it. His eyes were expressionless.
“You shouldn’t have tried it, Jaime. Manderley got paranoid when JC broke out and tried to blow the joint. Every one of us got bugged. Manderley didn’t want anymore… valiant escapes. Figures the three of you would’ve been on Denton’s side.”
Jaime didn’t say anything. He just turned around and looked at the floor.
“Doesn’t matter now,” the trooper said. “They’re both dead.”
Jesus, Jaime thought. They got Paul. They killed him.
“You’re lucky we only drugged you and tucked you away into a comfy cell instead of letting Gunther beat your head in,” he remarked.
Reyes stared at him. He clenched the shattered piece of mirror forcefully.
The small door flung shut. Footsteps were heard fading away.
Jock had vanished from his window.
Jaime Reyes was once again alone.
--- --- --- ---
Dominic stood up.
At that moment, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell you his name. Where he lived. What city he was in. His birthday.
The velocity of a fired bullet varies between 600 and 5000 feet per second.
Dominic’s mind returned to his body at about that speed. Everything flooded back to him, hit him in the face like a propelled cinder block. And the things he remembered - He remembered hurting - Pain. He could recall the sickening sound of his spine snapping. He could vividly see his body, broken on the floor, bleeding helplessly, not able to move… He should be dead. Nobody could take a beating like that.
But did it really happen?
He was in the same room he remembered passing out in. The radio to his right crackled with static. It haunted him.
Dominic didn’t think he had a single memory that seemed more real than that one.
Somebody called his name. It was distant; muffled. He didn’t respond. His body was confused; being sent signals that it couldn’t interpret. Everything was still hazy and incomplete.
He heard his name again.
Everything was back to normal.
He looked. Jess stood in the doorway.
“Dominic, what the hell happened to you?”
He blinked. Looked down at his clothing. He was covered with blood. Looked back up at Jess.
“Is that your blood?”
Dominic didn’t know. He didn’t have a mark on his body. He couldn’t feel a single painful wound. The only thing that his memory saw now was a single, concentrated focal point: The voice that spoke to him. Told him to break into UNATCO headquarters. The voice that was capable of bringing pain and bad things. The voice that haunted him, and he never wanted to hear again in his life. And now here he was, standing in a sterile room, in the dust, covered in blood, perfectly fine, hazy, tired, on the verge of breaking down and losing any sense of sanity he’d ever had. He didn’t know what to think anymore. It wasn’t worth thinking about. Something disembodied presence that had threatened his voice also threatened everything that kept his sane, and he couldn’t do anything else but listen to it. He was taking orders from a voice in his head. It couldn’t make any more sense.
“Dominic!”
He still didn’t say anything. He just walked up to her. Stood very, very close. Stared at her with the most abandoned, forlorn, empty look she’d ever seen in her life… And then slipped past and vanished into the next room.
Jess stood in the doorway, unmoving, completely stunned.
--- --- --- ---
Garrett sat at the desk at the entrance to the cell block. Paperwork. Things to sign and forms to fill about the prisoners, so that they could end up on Manderley’s desk, unread, because he already knew everything about them, but it was part of the job, and the papers had to exist for the men in black suits that brushed in and out of Joseph Manderley’s office on occasion, just because that’s the way it was.
Garrett sighed, put his pen down, leaned back in his chair… Grabbed the coffee mug on the table, had a sip. He looked at Agent Hermann over the top of the mug. Gunther had been standing in the cell block all day. Just staring at the prisoners.
Over many years of human evolution, bridges had been gapped. Some rightfully so, other that shouldn’t have ever been attempted, let alone accomplished. Gunther was part of a living experiment, a human/machine, logic and reason combined with human emotion, metal flesh and gray skin. Yes, he was struggling with it, and yes, he was losing, and yes, his sanity had lost itself long ago. He’d realized that several times over, and he knew it. He tried to convince himself he was not a machine, he was a human. Not a metallic thing to be used like an appliance. But he was employed by a company that used him just for that. An appliance for killing. Human troopers were not enough. Killing machine troopers were what was needed. The pseudo-excuses and mechanics of it were an incredible thing. It could start with none other than the public school system, a device used for filtering, not for learning, and go from there, so that the country was made of “yes sir,” “no sir,” “I’ll follow those orders without thinking about them, sir.” Gunther had emotions, alright. But he was trying to bridge the wrong gaps. He was trying to reach ones made intentionally unreachable; and thus, he was using the wrong passions. And he could realize this as many times as he wanted, and say, “no, it’s all false, I’m not a machine.” But everybody around him couldn’t give a flying crap, and he was left on his own, in a paradox struggle, a vicious loop that got him nowhere, and only made his lack of sanity even worse every time he went through it.
And vicious cycles, regardless of their names, always end. More often in a very, very bad way than a good one. A vicious cycle would stretch itself so thin, that it would snap. Like a rubber band being pulled to its limits.
This is exactly what happened when Garrett, the UNATCO trooper, the man with a wife and three children whom he loved, with dreams that he had accomplished, with things that he approved of and things that he did not, a man with his own beliefs and absolutely nothing that the world could possible hold against him, walked over to Gunther Hermann to ask, “are you okay, Agent? Would you like anything?”
But Garrett would never get to finish that statement, because the moment he opened his mouth, Gunther Hermann’s vicious cycle finally came to a kicking, screaming, burning, halting, murdering end, and something in his head finally snapped, and before he knew what he was doing, he had UNATCO trooper Garrett’s head pressed up against the window of Alex Jacobson’s cell, using only one metallic arm, clenching down on the man’s head like it were the world between his fingers.
The glass windows of UNATCO’s cells were made thick, so that escape through them was made impossible. So thick, in fact, that if you were to force a human body up against them, and press it with unimaginable pressure, the human body would be completely mutilated before the glass would ever sustain a single scratch.
And this is what happened as Alex Jacobson and Jock watched from inside his cell. Watched as Gunther Hermann pressed the body of Garrett up against the window. Watched as the trooper’s head exploded into a red mess, regardless of his helmet, completely soundless. Gunther dropped the crumpled body onto the floor. Fresh blood oozed down the glass.
Complete. Dead. Silence.
Gunther stared at his drenched hands. He looked up at Alex. Said nothing. Made no motions. Breathed heavily. Alex stood in disbelief. Mouth hanging open. Eyes full of soundless shock. Jock swore quietly.
Jaime, in the other cell, turned around to vomit.
Gunther Hermann left the building.
--- --- --- ---
Dom stepped into the room. His entire squad was bored. Didn’t know what to do. Did the same nothing every day. Wanting to see their families, but not allowing themselves to. Feeling too lost.
“Go home,” Dom said.
Everyone stared at him.
“Everybody go home. Visit the people you want to visit. You don’t have to be a part of this anymore. Things are going to get dangerous. I want you to go home. All of you.”
They didn’t know what to say. Just looked at each other. Stared at Dom’s blood-drenched clothes.
“Leave. Now.”
People started to get up, reluctantly. Puzzled. Jess walked in, looked at what was going on.
“What’s going on, Dominic?” she asked, quivering. “Tell me what the hell is going on. Tell me what happened to you.”
“I am going to break into UNATCO headquarters,” he said without looking at her. “And you are going to help me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“UNATCO. I’m breaking in.”
“You’re insane.”
“Probably.”
She laughed, cynically, completely embarrassed and confused with Dominic. “Fine. Go ahead. Break into UNATCO. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We’ll all go home, if that’s what you want. You never wanted this from the beginning. You don’t want it now. Some leader you turned out to be, you idiot.”
Dom turned, grabbed her by the shoulders, pressed her against the wall.
“I am serious, Jess, God dammit! I feel like I’m going insane! I can’t tell you why I’m doing this! I don’t know why! But I’m doing it! And I want all of them to go home while I still have a shred of my mind left in my body! They don’t want to be a part of this! I’m not going to make them a part of something so fucking stupid! I need to do this!”
He turned, looked at Brian, the small, twitchy guy.
“Brian! You, come here! Everybody else, go home!”
Everyone got different looks on their faces. Disgust, annoyance, confusion. But they all left. They didn’t care anymore. They didn’t want a leader like Dominic, they were completely disturbed by him. And now they would all go home and feel like their fight for everything the NSF believed in was worthless, and think that Dominic was complete trash, but everything in the world was screwed over enough as it was, and nothing really made sense anymore. All Dom knew was this. He wasn’t thinking straight. He couldn’t. He was following a voice in his head, a gut instinct, a very small shred of hope.
“Dominic, please-“ Jess started.
“No, stop. You’re not listening to me. I’m doing this with or without you. But I need you.”
Brian stepped over, puzzled. “What?”
“You’re coming with me too.”
Brian shrugged. “What?”
“We’re breaking into UNATCO.”
Jess lost it. She hit Dominic in the face as hard as she possibly could.
Dom stumbled backwards. He stared at Jess.
Dominic walked over to her. Stared at her with that completely empty, forlorn look he had before. “I know this sounds completely insane. It is. I know you don’t understand. You don’t need to understand. I am going to do this, whether you like it or not. It is the last thing left in my head. The last hope I have. You can help me or not. But I’m doing this.”
Brian twitched, blinked. “I’ll go. Sounds cool.”
Jess looked at Brian, then back at Dom. She shook her head softly. “You’re right, Dominic, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Truthfully, I think you’re completely insane. I think what you’re talking about is stupid. And I know that if I help you, I will one day regret it.”
Dominic didn’t say anything.
“I’ll help. But just because I’m afraid of you getting yourself killed if you don’t.”
He nodded.
“When are we doing this?” Brian asked, seemingly completely unshaken by all of this.
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