Harry March
Location: ???
Date: Beginning of the End - Day 1 (Friday Afternoon)

"Your jokes," Harry said as he settled into his newfound vision, "aren't even funny."

Indeed. The time for humor is past, Harry. Are we not a man of action?

Harry grinned at a joke nobody else could hear, as a woman's voice laughed in his ears.

So? Let's act.

He looked around at the concrete walls, and it was a pit. Blood on the floors, gray walls reaching so high that you could never climb them, a corpse, and a man who should be dead. He cracked his neck, letting out a sigh.

"You call him an asshole, but without me what would you even be doing? Lying around in some facility where suits try to figure out what makes you tick? Getting prodded at by some man of science who only wants to know how objects can be sentient?"

He knelt down, looking at the corpse, his eyes scanning up and down across the jacket, clicking his tongue as he thought.

No badge. Jacket in tatters. No vest. Doesn't look like someone you know, Harry, but you ought to pay your respects.

Harry nodded as he stood up, closing his eyes and clasping his hands together as he inclined his head to the body. After all --

In another world, that's you on the floor and him standing over you. Your life's already complicated enough as it is, Harry. Let's not add more corpses onto the pile.

His eyes flicked over to the wall, and he moved towards it, feeling the wetness at the bottom of his shoes where the blood on the ground was seeping in through the soles. Inside of the wall, was a notch - too small for Harry to tell whether it was a lever of some sort, or a secret of some kind.

But his glasses had told him to mess with it.

And you are not the sort of person, Harry, a stony voice echoed in his ears, to ignore a voice in the corner of your head.

Maybe yes and maybe no. Harry listened, but avoided responding. With his glasses always around, it was hard enough to avoid rumors of his slipping sanity as was. If he had started to reply to the others as well...

That'd be a step too far for most of the men and women he found himself either casually acquainted or working with. Business was slow as was outside of police cases - no need to slow it down even further.

City's mad, Harry, not you. Never you, a woman said in a tone more reserved for the bedroom then in public. Harry could feel his neck heating up, her words enveloping around his shoulders like a coat, murders, kidnappings, and eyes. Can't escape them all, no matter how hard you try. But you, Harry? You?

They both spoke as one, and Harry reached out a hand with a dangerous grin on his face as he groped around inside of the notch.

You belong to us.

"Clock's ticking, feet approaching--" he grunted as he pushed and pulled and pressed, "and I'd still kill for a cigarette and a light."

A vice, a man said.

A vice, a woman agreed.

Vice was all Harry really had left. Giving it up would be like giving up a part of himself that felt like himself.

We're in this together, Harry, she reprimanded him with a light laugh, and it felt like someone had flicked him in the forehead for a moment, disregard us as you may, but we're the only ones who would never betray you.

Never.

Harry waited for the notch to do whatever it was supposed to do, and pretended like he hadn't heard a thing.