On a related note, I finally have a new laptop, and I’m getting a chance to catch up on the projects that have been building up over the past month. If all goes well, I should be able to start writing the next episode of Whitechapel this week, and maybe (fingers crossed) have an episode up next week. (I do talk about the delays during the episode, but that was before I had my laptop drama, so just take that and multiply it a couple of times.)

Thank you all for being very patient with this, and I hope this Q&A episode will get you back into the Whitechapel groove.

Six killed Liz while under the influence of Jack. During a desperate search of her home, he discovered that she was really Rachel Parks, an agent for the mysterious organization Lacuna. His escape from Liz’s home was interrupted by the arrival of one of Lacuna’s agents. Six took Liz’s appearance and tried to bluff the recently arrived Agent Timm into believing that he was the female agent. Six convinced Timm to put him in contact with the head of Lacuna, Zachery McPhearson. Unfortunately, McPhearson wanted Six to come out to the car parked outside and speak to him directly. Six was left with a handful of bad options, and all while trying desperately to keep Jack from taking over again.

Episode Seventeen – Slipping the Leash

I don’t want to kill Timm.

I try to justify the decision. I have to assume that McPhearson is right outside, and any delay in coming out to meet him will arouse suspicion. While I could theoretically kill Timm and take his skin, it’ll make things worse. The smart move is to keep playing along until I can make my move.

But that’s just an excuse. The reality is that I’m sick of killing. As soon as I play this bluff out, I’m going to go far away from all of this and take some time to think about what I’m going to do about Jack.

Jack.

I feel him moving in the back of my head with just the thought of his name. He’s pushing, trying to gain control. The headache is building again, and it’s getting hard to think straight. I put my hands to my head, trying to keep my brains for squirting out of my eye sockets.

Which means I take my gun off of Timm.

In a second, Timm has me by the throat and shoves me back into the closet. The sudden violence takes me by surprise, and I drop the pistol in the scuffle. Timm bounces my head off the back of the closet, and my headache explodes in intensity. I try to get my hands under his so I can pry his fingers off my neck, but it’s getting hard to see, hard to think straight. I’m starting to fade.

My body suddenly goes limp. I’m not unconscious – my muscles all just spontaneously relax against my will. On instinct I follow the impulse, letting the weight of my body draw Timm off balance. He changes his grip and eases me to the floor before looking back to find the pistol.

Stupid move, asshole.

Jack leaps up and grabs Timm’s head in his hands. Jack twists hard, and I can hear a cracking sound before Timm goes limp in my arms. He eases Timm to the ground, in a parody of how Timm eased me to the ground just a moment ago, before scooping up the pistol.

“Time to kill the stupid motherfucker that thinks he can keep me on a leash.”

He looks and sees Liz’s body. I can feel the warmth and pride flooding through his body (my body) at the sight of his handiwork. He notices the patches of missing skin, and my mouth twists into a smirk. “So, you took her skin,” Jack says. “Clever boy. But we make a terrible woman. I like your idea of taking this one’s skin.”

I try to scream, to fight, to stop Jack from what he’s doing, but I can only watch as his hand spasms into a fist. I can feel the knife forming in his hand, heavy and sharp and perfect, before he slices into Timm’s flesh, peeling his skin off in wet, ragged strips. Each time Jack gets a wet strip he slaps it onto my skin, and I watch it twist and wriggle before burrowing under my own flesh. I don’t feel anything, but whenever I try to close my eyes to block out the grotesque sight, Jack opens them again and takes another slice.

“Nice and easy,” Jack murmurs. “Don’t want to bleed this one out, not yet. Plenty of time to gorge on his blood later.”

He unbuttons Timm’s shirt as he continues. “In bouncing around in your head, I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve been sloppy. Not the good kind of sloppy either – the kind involving blood in your mouth and guts in your hands. No, I’m talking about the kind of sloppy that could get us killed. All this time you’ve been play-acting, pretending to be someone else when you take their skin. But there’s a better way – a much, much better way.”

The knife plunges into Timm’s chest. Jack tries to make a slow, careful incision, but soon he’s ripping ragged chunks of flesh out in his eagerness to get to his prize. I want to be disgusted by this butcher shop autopsy, but I’m swept up in the intensity of Jack’s passion and love of murder. Despite the ferocity of the surgery, there’s very little blood as Jack plunges my hands into Timm’s abdomen. I can feel his fingers gripping around something slick and muscular.

“The heart is for amateurs,” he says as he pulls Timm’s stomach out with both hands. “Everyone tells you that the heart is what you need to know a man, but that’s bullshit. A man’s soul is in his stomach; it’s true. Anyone who has had a bad day can tell you that a good meal will make you feel a hell of a lot better than having some blood pumped around the body.”

He transfers the stomach to my left hand, and the knife appears in my right. He casually uses the knife to slice off a chunk of the stomach. “Now’s the part where I would make some bullshit comment about how you are what you eat, but I can tell you’re not in the mood for bad jokes. So let’s get down to business.”

Jack puts the piece of stomach in my mouth and starts to chew.

The taste of bile and blood floods my tongue as Jack bites down on the rubbery muscle. I want to gag, but my body betrays me, luxuriating in the vile sensations as if I were eating the best steak in the world. The thrill and the excitement of the disgusting pleasure overwhelm me, and Jack revels in the meal.

After a few moments, I feel a strange sense of deja vu. It’s not deja vu, but it feels like it – like you’re seeing the same thing you’ve seen before, but with a different level of knowledge that you can’t quite place. Looking at Timm’s body, I know that this house was purchased a few months ago by Lacuna as part of Rachel Parks’ cover story. I know that he was a new recruit, fresh out of college. He is… he was proud and excited to serve his country, to find and take down dangerous criminals, to be on the path toward becoming James Fucking Bond. I reach down and pick up his pistol, the one that Mr. McPhearson gave him in the car.

As I feel the warm metal of the pistol in my hand, I realize that it’s me that has Timm’s pistol in my hand. Not Jack. Maybe something in acquiring Timm’s knowledge pushed Jack back.

It doesn’t matter. The other thing that eating Timm revealed to me is that McPhearson is waiting for confirmation from Timm that everything is normal, and he was expecting it several minutes ago.

What do I do now?

Try continuing the bluff with McPhearson?

Run out to the car and shoot McPhearson?

Let Jack take control, and see what he does?

Try to kill McPhearson from here with my mind?

Or do I just run?

The choice is yours.

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Six killed again. This time, his victim was Liz, the mysterious woman who met him in the hotel he woke up in after a hospital stay. The murder was much more intense than previous ones, as he was under the influence of Jack the Ripper while it happened. Six even started thinking of the unnatural urges inside of him collectively as “Jack.” After the murder, Six was covered in blood and had to think of a way to deal with the situation he was now in.

Episode Fifteen – Dead Letter

The first thing I need to do is find out who Liz really is… although “was” would be more accurate, I guess. Maybe if I can figure out who she worked for, that’ll give me something to go on. I briefly consider searching going back into the other room and searching Liz’s body for clues, but my stomach lurches at the thought. I’ll look around the house first.

I take another drink from the bottle, and my eye catches a piece of paper on the counter, partially tucked under a napkin holder. I pull it out, and it’s written in the same handwriting as the note from the hotel.

“Nothing is what it seems. Elizabeth.”

You were fucking right about that, Liz. I drop the note on the counter, leaving red smears all over it. Maybe instead of depositing more forensic evidence around the house, I should clean myself up a bit. I wash my hands quickly in the sink. My hands are still red when I’m done (red with her life, the life I stole), but I don’t have time to be more thorough – I need to get back to work figuring out who Liz really was.

I open the coat closet and find her purse. I bring it back to the kitchen and dump the contents out onto the counter. I go right for her wallet and start digging through her credit cards. Each one seems to have a different name on it, but I notice that the name “Rachel Parks” shows up a few times. The last one is a corporate card – black with silver accents. I’m about to toss it onto the pile with the others when I notice that it’s not in any of her other names, but it’s still a name I recognize.

ZM Lacuna.

God damn it, she lied to me! She was working for Lacuna. This had to all be another attempt to get me back in a fucking cage. On a hunch I quickly shuffle through her business cards, and sure enough one turns up one under the name Rachel Parks for the Whitechapel Project.

Fuck, isn’t anyone who they say they are anymore?

I flip open the wallet and take the cash within – I don’t count it, but I see a couple of hundred dollar bills flash by as I shove the wad into my pocket. I debate taking the credit cards too, but I toss them into the trash instead. If Liz or Rachel or whatever the fuck her name is was right about Lacuna coming after me, they’ll track any transactions made with her cards. Even if she was lying to me about that too, once she turns up dead the police will track her cards anyhow, and thus far I’ve been doing good to stay away from the police since my time in the hospital. I do grab her car keys, though. The rest of the contents are useless – a pack of gum, a couple of cheap pens, a notebook. I open the notebook, hoping for a Hollywood-style clue, like a mysterious phone number scrawled with the words “My Boss” next to it, but it’s just blank. I sweep it all into the garbage.

My headache starts to build up again. I stumble through the living room, trying to find something that resembles a bathroom, and maybe some painkillers. I catch sight of the corpse out of the corner of my eye, and I feel nausea welling up inside me again. I try to force it down when the headache explodes, throwing spots in front of my eyes, and a buzzing noise fills my world again. I stumble down the hallway and yank open a door without looking. I can barely make out a medicine cabinet through the spots. I open the door. I find a bottle of pills. I open the bottle of pills. Buzzing, churning chaos rings in my ears. I can just make out words as I dry-swallow a handful of pills.

Where’s her cell phone?

I blink hard, staring at the mirror in the darkened room. The spots start to fade, and I can think again. I never found a cell phone in her purse, and there wasn’t one anywhere in the kitchen. If I can find it, there might be emails or texts or something on it that will give me a better clue as to who she is. I stumble out of the bathroom and start looking.

Each room is as sterile as the last. The bed looks like it’s never been slept in. All of the books in the library are Reader’s Digest compilations, lined up as neat and orderly as a showroom. I open every drawer and door and look under every chair and couch, not being too careful or subtle in my search. I even looked in the dryer, and was about to close the door when I instinctively checked the top of the empty drum and found two pistols taped there. I ripped the tape off and stuck the guns into the waistband of my jeans.

Now I have money, a car, guns, and some pain pills. Just what a serial killer needs for a night on the town. But where in the hell is her cell phone?

I walk back into the main room. Her corpse is still there, her back to me like a petulant child curled in a ball. I take a deep breath to steady my nerves, but the smell of blood and shit overpowers me. I gag, and cover my face with my hand as I make my way over to her. I try not to look at her as I dig around in her pockets.

I find something hard, about the size of my palm, and I pull it out. It’s her phone. I quickly leave for the safety of the kitchen. My hands are covered in blood again, but I try to smear some off of the phone’s screen. I notice that it’s a single unit, not a flip phone, and I can just make out the name of the last person she called in the glow of screen – Zachary McPhearson.

Wait a minute. I smear the blood off of the screen some more. There’s a timer, and it’s counting up. Looks like something’s been running for the past twenty minutes or so. Maybe she didn’t get a chance to hang up her phone.

Which means that whoever she called last heard everything that happened.

I stab at the button to end the call, just as I hear someone starting to open the door.

What should I do?

Try to find a back door to escape?

Find a place to hide so I can see who it is?

Shoot whoever comes through the door?

Or shoot myself before they can take me?

The choice is yours.

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Six discovered that he was tied to the notorious Jack the Ripper. Liz found him in a local hotel, and took him to a car wash to inform him that his clothing had been bugged by Richard Marsh, a.k.a. Mister Rich, an agent of Lacuna. Once the clothing was disposed of, she drove him to a house that she claimed was theirs. Six didn’t recognize anything on the inside, and a nagging suspicion led him to realize that there were no photos of the two of them together. He suddenly got a headache, the kind that came before a manifestation of his powers. Liz pointed a gun at him, and told him it’s too soon for him to have a headache. She begged Six to not force her to use the gun on him.

Episode Fourteen – Broken Home

I close my eyes as my head throbs. Pain leaks out of my ears, my eyes, my pores. I press my hands to my head, holding in whatever is trying to get out. I can’t move, can’t think.

“Get away from me,” I say through gritted teeth. “You have to get out of here.”

Liz starts to answer me. I open my eyes to look at her.

Big mistake.

My throat suddenly fills up, and I choke. I feel like I’m going to vomit, but as I cough and splutter, my face starts to burn. My hands curl into blunt claws in response to the pain, and a loud buzzing fills my ears. My arms ache with long-repressed activity. Every part of my body is tense, trembling as if ready to burst. The only way I’ll feel normal again is to have someone’s blood washing over my hands.

The axe is in my hand, the phantom axe I used to kill a guard and a police officer. Normally it’s indistinct, more of an idea than a weapon, but this time I can feel it clearly. The heft and weight are comfortably solid. The handle is covered in hard leather, and shaped to feel natural in my hand. As the blade comes into focus, it folds and stretches, going from a heavy axe to a long, thin blade. It’s perfect. It’s a part of me, a part of me that I’ve been missing for so very, very long.

My lips curl into a smile. I look at this bitch, this stupid bitch’s pale, lovely neck, and the tension in my arms shoots up, making the knife tremble with anticipation. I want nothing more than slash at that neck, turning the canvas of white into a red, wet mouth. I can taste the warm saltiness of her blood on my tongue, and my whole body feels warm and comfortable at the thought.

An hour ago, a lifetime ago, I wanted to gently ease her clothing off of her and fuck her. Now, I want to kill her, to leave her blood-soaked body cooling and spent on the carpet. And it will be so good, so good.

I can see that she’s yelling at me, but I can’t hear her over the buzz in my head. The stupid bitch should have shot me and gotten it over with, but her gun just dances in front of her, a useless threat. She doesn’t realize that I’m not who I think I am, and she’s afraid she’ll kill me. Maybe her government loves me, or maybe she loves me, or some stupid bullshit like that, but I don’t care. I put my left hand to my head, keeping my right hand hidden, and I stumble toward her, moaning. She looks confused and worried, and she opens her arms to catch me.

Stupid bitch.

I whip my right hand out from behind my back and punch her in the face, just over her right eye, holding the blade in my fist. Her look of pain and shock is so beautiful as she falls to the ground. I leap onto her, my legs straddling her, holding her down with my weight. I can smell her warm skin next to mine. I can feel her firm body under mine. She tries to scream, to tell me something, but I can only hear the vibrations in my own head.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but what I can take.

I bring my arm down, slicing the blade across her throat. Her skin unzips into two neat halves, and her blood splatters over my face. I revel in the taste of her coppery life as I slash again and again and again. The tension leaves me, filling me with pure, unadulterated joy. I have never felt this alive, this wonderful, this peaceful. I can’t believe I stopped myself from doing this for so long. I never want to stop killing. Not ever.

She thrashes under me, but the stupid bitch doesn’t realize she’s already dead. I slash again and again, and her struggles grow weaker and fade. Finally she stops, so I stop. I’m panting and covered in blood, and I feel like I’ve just had the best sex of my entire life.

And it’s all thanks to you, you stupid bitch. My forgotten lover. I lean down to kiss her cooling lips. I can smell the faint stench of decay on her breath, taste notes of it on my lips. Her hair is plastered across her face as my fingers clench. I imagine the soft silkiness of her neck in my hands.

I imagine…

* * *

I remember.

I remember this image of Liz, this woman, this life. I remember this was part of my dream when I woke up in the cell. I thought it was a memory, a key to my past, but all this time it was a warning of my life to come, of what I was capable of.

Oh my god.

I look down at my hands, covered in blood. There’s no knife, but there’s plenty of blood. The exquisite taste in my mouth turns my stomach, and I gag and choke as I spit out as much of it as I can. I try not to think about what I’ve done, try not to think of myself seeing her as nothing more than an outlet, as nothing more than a stupid bitch, but my eyes are constantly drawn back to her corpse.

I must have blacked out since I… no, since he murdered her. I notice that her face is turned toward the wall of the living room, and her legs are drawn up with the feet close to the wall. Her head is barely held on by what remains of her neck, and I can see that she has an abrasion near her eye from where Jack punched her.

Yes, Jack. Not me. I didn’t do this. I didn’t kill her. It wasn’t me. I’m not a monster. I’m not a monster.

Please, don’t let me be a monster.

I stumble to the kitchen, and find a bottle of whiskey on the counter. I rip off the top and gulp, feeling it burn down my throat. I pretend that it’s washing the blood out of my mouth, but I know I can never escape it. Still, the whiskey calms my nerves. I don’t feel normal, and I don’t feel human, but I feel like I can think again.

I’m in a strange house. I’m covered in blood, blood that I’ve tracked all over. There’s a mangled corpse on the floor in the other room. I’ve got to do something, right now.

What should I do first?

Take the time to clean myself and the house?

Check around to find a clue to Liz’s identity?

Try to find a phone book and call someone for help?

Look for a way to dispose of the body?

Or take her gun and her car and just get the hell out of there?

The choice is yours.

Previously on Whitechapel

Six woke up in a hotel room. After a few clues, he uncovered the fact that he is somehow tied to the notorious Jack the Ripper. A mysterious woman named Liz found him, and told him to keep quiet as they made their way from the hotel. Six spied a black van that he thought was similar to the one that held the men who knocked him unconscious, but it turned out to be a red herring. Liz drove Six to a car wash in the middle of a bitter Ohio winter, and told Six that his clothing had been bugged. She also revealed that they had been lovers once, and as they pulled out of the car wash, Liz dropped the biggest bombshell of all: that the bugs in his clothing may have come from Richard Marsh, also known as Mister Rich, an agent of the organization that claims to own Six – Lacuna.

Episode Thirteen – Where The Heart Is

I shake my head at her comment. “Mister Rich works for Lacuna? That doesn’t make any sense.”

She shrugs for a second while turning the wheel. “Sense or not, that’s the truth. Your buddy’s a spook.”

I close my eyes and try to work through the pain killers to go back over all the information I have so far. I didn’t remember seeing any reference to any other organization in Dr. Tucci’s files, but the name Lacuna has been ringing a bell since Liz mentioned it. Where have I heard it before?

After a moment, it hits me.

… My mind runs on autopilot. Feeling a sense of déjà vu, I dig around in the remains of my victim, stealing from what’s left of him in order to save myself. I find his wallet and pull it out. The license says “Alex Cochrane,” and he’s got a small stack of hundreds tucked inside the billfold. No police business cards or ID cards, and only one credit card – a corporate one made out to ZM Lacuna….

Those police officers that Mister Rich shot at in the parking lot of the motel had credit cards made out to ZM Lacuna. But that doesn’t make sense. On the one hand, Mister Rich wouldn’t be trying to kill people that work for Lacuna if he worked for them as well. On the other hand, he was almost immediately suspicious of them, so maybe he knew who they were before they noticed him. If what Liz is telling me is true, then it’s likely that the men who knocked me unconscious at the hospital also worked for Lacuna, or at least worked for a group that was run by Lacuna.

But where does Liz fit into this?

“If Mister Rich works for Lacuna, who do you work for?”

She turns and glances at me for a moment, smiling that quirky smile of hers again. “You don’t believe that I rescued you from Lacuna just to keep you for myself?”

“I don’t believe anything right now.”

The quirky smile blooms into a sincere one, and she looks back at the road. “Of course. You’ve always been clever. That’s how you’ve survived this long, and why you’re so valuable to a lot of people.”

“So answer my question. Who do you work for?”

She pauses for a moment, thinking something over. Her eyes dart over to me and then away again before responding. “I work for a different government than Marsh does, but I only joined up so I could find you.”

Government. No, governments. I’m not surprised by that – hell, I’ve suspected it for a while – but it’s still a lot of take in. “So Lacuna is a government organization?”

She nods. “A special section of the Department of Homeland Security. I guess you could say they’re… professional rivals to the people I work for.”

I turn a little in the seat to look at her. “And who do you work for?”

She points at the windshield, indicating something in front of us. “We’re here.”

I’m irritated at her change of topic, but I look to where she’s pointing. During our conversation, she’s brought us to a residential area. It’s not a suburb – we didn’t drive long enough to get out of the city – but the entire street is crammed with slouching houses. The older-model cars dotting the road are covered in snow and ice, but the spots I can make our are clean and in good repair. The road is salted, and the snow has been shoveled into careful piles along the sides. The house she’s pointing at is red brick, and the driveway looks like it hasn’t been cleaned out in a long time.

“What’s that?” I ask.

She pulls the car in front of the snow-covered lawn. “That’s our home.”

* * *

The house is cold as Liz skitters off to turn on the thermostat. The furnishings look comfortable and relatively modern – the kinds of things that would have been popular in Ikea a few years ago. The floors are all hardwood, with rugs carelessly placed under tables and in hallways to provide some traction. The usual domestic clutter that a house accumulates are scattered around – television set, kitchen appliances, coffee tables – all placed with a casualness that feels like they’ve been used before, instead of the careful placement of a showroom floor. The pillows on the couch show some wear, and the rugs have faint divots in them from where a piece of heavy furniture has been moved. It all looks like it’s was lived in at one point, even though the owners haven’t been home in a while.

And I don’t recognize any of it.

Liz comes back into the room. “Sorry – I’ve been overseas for a while, so it’ll take a minute for the house to warm up. Do you want me to make you some tea?”

I nod, and she leaves the room again as I continue my examination.

Something about the house is off – wrong in a way I can’t place. It’s like there’s an itch in the back of my head, or maybe a buzzing sound, like a thousand bees all buzzing in harmony. I can feel a headache start to wash over me as I continue to look around, desperate to find the source of the buzzing, the buzzing that oscillates up and down, sounding…

… sounding almost like words, words forming in my mind as a familiar pain jolts through my head.

Where are the pictures?

I walk around, holding my head. I look at the tables, the shelves, the counters. There aren’t any pictures anywhere – not of me or of Liz. Why wouldn’t there be any pictures of us if this is our house?

Liz comes back with a steaming mug. She frowns as she sees me holding my head. “Do you have a headache?” she asks with concern.

I nod as I take the mug from her. “The pain meds must be wearing off.” I glance at the mug. It’s black tea, with milk and sugar. I sip it carefully while my head splits again. “Maybe I need to sit down.”

Liz bites her lip for a moment, and then takes my arm and leads me to the couch in the living room. “It’s too soon for you to have a headache.”

I take another sip, and the pain in my head doubles, triples. Spots appear before my eyes. I try to set the mug on the table, but I miss. Hot tea splashes all over my hands, but I barely feel it as I grab my head. “What… is going on?”

Liz runs out of the room, and comes back with a gun pointed at me.

“Too soon… it’s all too soon. Please… please don’t make me have to use this.”

What happens next?

Someone unexpected arrives

I lose control of my powers

Liz tries to shoot me

Or does the moment pass uneventfully?

The choice is yours.

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Previously on Whitechapel

Mister Rich, Six’s mysterious benefactor, was shot and fell unconscious in a gunfight, before Six himself was stunned with a taser shotgun shell. Three days later, Six awoke in a hotel room under the name “M. John Druitt,” which turned out to be the name of one of the suspects for the notorious Jack the Ripper back in 1888. As Six struggled to cope with the revelation that he’s somehow connected to the serial killer, a strange woman mutely informs him that he’s once again being looked for, and beckons for him to follow her. He goes with her to her rental car, when he hears the engine on a black van start in the hotel parking lot.

Episode Twelve – Lacuna

She puts a key in the ignition and starts the car. I ask her what’s going on, but she revs the engine and puts a finger to her lips again before putting the car in reverse and slowly backing up. Fuck it – I settle back into the passenger’s seat, letting the pain meds settle in me like a fuzzy blanket. Mysterious car rides with mysterious people are almost becoming old hat for me.

She carefully guides the car out of the icy parking lot and onto the main road. I glance at the rearview mirror, watching the black van pull in behind us. I look over to the woman and point it out. She catches the motion and looks up at the mirror herself. She shrugs, and turns left out of the parking lot. I go back to watching the van, and it turns right, away from us. As it turns I catch a glimpse of an advertisement for a carpet company on the side. False alarm. I guess after you get hospitalized for a few days by a couple of guys in a black van, you start seeing enemies in every black van.

I glance over at the woman to see if she noticed my unease, but she’s concentrating on the road. I realize that I don’t even know her name, and I don’t have any way to ask her. I remember the notepad and pencil that I took from the hotel, but they’re in my bag, which I put in the trunk. I open up the glove compartment and rummage around, but all that’s inside is the owner’s manual for the car and a copy of the form from the rental agency. I close it back up and consider looking in the backseat for a pen or something, when I notice that we’ve already pulled in somewhere – an automatic car wash.

A car wash? In winter? I point to the car wash and look at her, trying to ask what’s going on. She just gives me a cute little smile and pulls up to it. The car wash is made up of a huge tunnel covered by a series of dangling plastic strips, with a small screen and touchpad mounted on a thick metal pole off to the side. The driver’s side window purrs down, and she pulls out a credit card, swiping it through a slot on the side of the touchpad. She punches a few keys, and the screen starts flashing the words PULL FORWARD. I hear loud machinery start up inside as the hood of the car parts the plastic strips.

A set of rotating brushes hovers over us, ready to descend on the car like a bristly Sword of Damocles. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel flashing the same instruction as the keypad – PULL FORWARD. As soon as the wheels make it over a bump in the floor, the light changes to read STOP. Something pulls on the wheels, and the car lurches forward to be slowly dragged through the tunnel. The brushes descend, and I can hear the sound of heavy air whipping over the car.

She puts the car in park and turns to me. “A car wash is a great place to have a private conversation, don’t you think?”

I’m surprised when she finally speaks, but the drugs take the edge off my confusion, and I decide that it just doesn’t matter. “Who are you?” I ask.

A look of sadness flickers over her face for a second, but she quickly replaces it with a small smile. “I’m Liz. We used to be… quite close at one point, Jack.”

Jack. The name takes me back to the revelation of my nature, to the images I’m trying to keep buried. I imagine the thick bristles of the car wash wearing the skin off of her face, and shudder. “Don’t call me that,” I say.

“Why not? I think it’s a good name for you,” she purrs.

Power and rage well up inside of me, ready to burst out in a spray of meat and bone. I look into her eyes and speak, very calmly. “I said, don’t call me that.”

She tries to hold my gaze, but soon enough she glances away. I could see that, for a brief moment, she was utterly terrified by what she saw in my eyes. The car feels cramped and stifling, and I try to change the subject. “How close were we? Before, I mean.”

She covers up her fear with the sex kitten act again. “Close enough that you wouldn’t mind taking off your clothes for me if I asked you to.”

“And is that something you’re likely to ask me to do?”

“Yes, but not for the reasons you’re hoping for. I have it on good authority that you have a tracking device in your clothing somewhere. The coat should have dampened the signal a bit, but we need to get it off of you as soon as possible, before Lacuna finds you.”

“Lacuna?”

Liz smirks again. “You can ask me questions as long as you’re changing. There’s a package under your seat with new clothes. You need to be completely changed by the time we get out of here.” She glances to the end of the tunnel. “Which is probably about three minutes.”

The insanity of the situation is overwhelming. I’m sitting in a rental car with a woman I’ve never met before, one who claims I’ve slept with her, and she’s telling me that I need to take my clothes off in an automatic car wash in the middle of winter because some unknown entity may have put a tracking device on me. I try to remember the last time anything was sane in my life, but Liz just glances at her watch and tells me that I have two and a half minutes left.

I struggle with my clothes in the confined space while struggling to keep my thoughts in order. “What’s Lacuna?”

“The organization that thinks they own you. They fund a research group called the Whitechapel Project that was created to study your unique condition.”

“By ‘condition,’ you mean the fact that I’m a serial killer that’s over a hundred years old.”

“More or less,” she says.

I get stripped down to my underwear, and start to reach for the package under the seat, but she motions to my crotch. “Not yet. Take everything off.”

Shit. I try not to look at her as I slide the underwear off. The package under the seat is covered in a large sheet of brown paper that’s been taped together. Inside is an entire outfit of carefully folded clothes that reminds me a little of the stack I found in my hotel room. I dig out the underwear and slip them on, trying to keep my growing erection hidden from Liz. She seems amused by my attempts as she openly watches me work.

I look up. The car wash was almost over. I scramble to finish putting everything on. “So how did they get a tracking device into my clothing?”

She looks back up at me and shrugs. “Not sure. Could be something that Marsh slipped in at some point.”

“Marsh?” I manage to get the shirt over my head just as the car is leaving the tunnel. She takes the pile of hastily discarded clothes and rolls down her window. The clothes land with a muted thump in a metal garbage can just outside the car wash.

“Richard Marsh,” she says as she makes her way out of the car wash. “Also known as Mister Rich. He works for Lacuna.”

Where are we heading now?

Back to the hotel

To a house here in town

To a restaurant

Or to a parking garage?

The choice is yours.

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Previously on Whitechapel

After Six escaped from the Whitechapel Project, his mysterious comrade-in-arms, Mister Rich, was shot and fell unconscious. In trying to escape from two unknown men in a black van, Six ended up outside an emergency room before facing down two police officers and being stunned with a taser shotgun shell. After lying unconscious for three days, he awoke in a hotel room under an assumed name – M. John Druitt. A quick Internet search combined with the events of recent days pointed him to a startling conclusion: he is the most notorious serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper. He starts to leave the hotel in a panic when he notices someone watching him.

Episode Eleven – Silent Running

I notice an attractive woman watching me. Long black hair frames her long pale face. She wears a charcoal gray suit that is fitted to her lean frame, and she’s looking at me with a finger to her lips.

My first thought is to marvel at how beautiful her throat would look as blood spills out of it. I imagine the warm, wet slash against her cold, white skin, and I force myself to be revolted. I shove the image down, trying to get rid of it, but another image pops back up, like a balloon in water.

… I can smell the faint stench of decay on her breath, taste notes of it on my lips. Her hair is plastered across her face as my fingers clench. I imagine the soft silkiness of her neck in my hands…

She’s the woman from the vision in my cell!

I open my eyes and start to speak, to ask her why she haunts me, but she frantically waves her hands and puts the finger to her lips again. She’s asking me to be silent. I nod in understanding and draw a question mark in the air. Why do we have to be quiet?

She reaches into the jacket of her suit. I get a quick glimpse of cleavage and a black lacy bra, and the image of her lying dead is finally submerged under a soft wave of vague lust. She puts on a pair of small wire-framed glasses and pretends to look for something in the distance, and then under a nearby chair. I feel like laughing out loud – I just found out I’m a perverted serial killer, and here I am playing charades in a five-star hotel with a woman I’ve never met before. I shake my head in confusion, to let her know that I don’t get what she’s trying to tell me, when it hits me. Someone’s looking for me – maybe the men from the black van.

I change my shake to a nod of understanding. She smiles and grabs my arm, yanking on it urgently. I pull out of her grasp for a moment to grab my bag, but she looks reluctant. I hold the bag up to show it to her, but she shakes her head and waves dismissively at it. I can’t tell if she means that I should leave it here or that she doesn’t care about it, but she’s already leaving the room, so I take it with me.

As I follow her to the car, I wonder if this is the mysterious Elizabeth that left me the notes, my alter ego’s wife carrying the name of one of Jack the Ripper’s victims. It would certainly explain how she found me, and maybe how she knows me. But why the silence? Is she mute? Did something happen to her voice? Did my image of slicing her throat somehow sever her ability to speak?

She leads me to the lobby and then points to the ground. Stay here. I nod and sit in a nearby chair as she goes to the front desk. The table next to the chair I’m sitting in has another notepad of the hotel’s stationary and a small, thin pencil like the ones you find on golf courses. I snatch both of them up and put them into my duffel bag – if we’re going to continue to communicate silently, writing things down will be more efficient than acting them out. In a few moments she comes back with a rolling suitcase with a collapsible handle. She deftly slaps the handle in and lays the suitcase on its back, crouching down on the floor to unzip it. As she’s opening the suitcase, I use the opportunity to take another look down the front of her suit coat. I look back up to notice her looking at me, and she smiles and winks. She leans over a little bit more and goes back to digging through her suitcase.

I can feel myself smile at her flirtatious look. A part of me wants to be embarrassed because this woman I’ve never met noticed my casual lechery, but another part of me is strangely comfortable with the exchange. It feels good to think about something normal like admiring a sexy woman, and as long as I’m thinking about her warm body, I’m not thinking about her cold corpse.

The image of her cut throat bobs to the surface again. I force it back down, but my moment of normalcy is shattered.

The woman hands me a worn brown leather coat with a thick lining. I take it and look at it while she puts on a black leather coat of her own. It looks broken in, but not torn up – someone’s taken care of this jacket. Holding onto it, I casually check the pockets, but they’ve all been carefully cleaned out.

She zips up her coat and notices I haven’t put mine on yet. She points to the front doors and wraps her arms around her in a mock shiver. I look to the glass doors, and can see that the snow has piled up a few inches. I nod and shrug into the coat.

She walks toward the front doors, never looking behind her to see if I’m following. The pretty receptionist smiles at us as we leave, and I smile back, trying to feel as normal as possible. We’re a regular couple checking out of their hotel room and going on their way back home, or to their plane flights. Just a mute mystery woman and a psychic serial killer doped up on pain meds out for a casual drive in the Cincinnati snow.

Speaking of pain meds, I start to feel them kick in. I feel my eyes get heavy, but the bracing cold wind wakes me back up in a second. The snow leaks into my socks as I stomp through it toward the parking lot. She pulls a keychain from her pocket, and a nearby silver sedan flashes its lights and honks. The plates are from Miami, and the sticker on the windshield comes from a local rental car company I recognize from an ad I saw in the hotel. She opens the trunk and tosses her suitcase inside before pointing to my bag. I put the bag in alongside the suitcase, and she slams the trunk shut.

That’s when I hear an engine start. I turn my head at the same time as the woman does, and we both notice a black van in the parking lot with its lights on. Two men are sitting inside the van. I can’t tell if they’re the same men that cornered me at the hospital or not.

The woman looks back and me, smiles, and casually gets into the car as if nothing was wrong. I get into the car as well, and wonder what’s going on.

What’s going on?

She’s leading me into a trap.

She doesn’t know about the men following me.

She’s going to help me escape once we get out of the parking lot.

She has her own plans for me, which have nothing to do with the men in the van.

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Previously on Whitechapel

Six escaped from the Whitechapel Project, thanks to the help of the mysterious Mister Rich. Although Six got some clues to the nature of his past, he had more questions than answers when Mister Rich was shot by a man masquerading as a police officer. A high-speed chase with real police officers and a van with two unknown men led to a showdown at a hospital, during which Six was knocked unconscious. He awoke in an expensive hotel room with a note from someone named “Elizabeth” and a wake-up call from the front desk that referred to him by an unfamiliar name.

Episode Ten – Mr. Druitt

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Druitt?”

I say no and hang up before the receptionist could respond. I don’t know any “Mr. Druitt,” but I’m too sore to build up too much hope that it’s my real name – I’ve been burned too many times to think that it’s just that simple. I make my way to the bathroom to find some pain killers to make me feel more human, or as human as a psychic killer can feel.

The bathroom is as big as my cell. It has all the carefully-placed clutter of a high-end hotel – soap bars wrapped in elegant tissue paper, glass glasses covered in plastic wrap, and soft hand towels folded into animal shapes. Next to the elegantly nondescript toiletries is a bottle of white pills and a small stack of neatly-clipped together papers. The top sheet is a pink hospital admission form, and the logo on it matches the one on the pill bottle – Mercy Anderson, the hospital I left Mister Rich at. The hospital I was knocked unconscious at.

Ignoring the bottle for the moment, I snatch up the papers, sit on a small leather couch in the bathroom (who has a couch in a bathroom?) and devour all the information they contain. A John Doe was admitted on January 7^th at around 3am – not too long after the time I dropped Mister Rich off. The person admitting John Doe was listed as “Richard Marsh.” I didn’t give Mister Rich a name when I admitted him, but I didn’t give a name for myself, either, and I certainly don’t remember signing any paperwork.

I puzzle over the names for a moment before it hits me: Mister Rich. “Rich” is short for “Richard.” It’s likely that Mister Rich is Richard Marsh, or at least the pseudonym he gave. That probably makes me John Doe. Did Mister Rich wake up after I admitted him? How did he get me away from the men in the wool coats? I skim the page again, and find a signature from a police officer, and a note that I was a witness of some kind. Looks like the police managed to win the fight with the overcoats somehow.

I turn to the next page. It’s another pink form – a discharge form for January 10^th. The patient’s name is listed as M. John Druitt, discharged by his wife Elizabeth Stride-Druitt. Trying to find the connection, I flip back to the first sheet and compare the two. The patient numbers between John Doe and M. John Druitt are the same – at some point between the time I went in and the time I went out, I gained a name, the same name the receptionist at this hotel called me. The woman claiming to be my wife is also probably the same Elizabeth who left me the note. Now that I see the name written down, “John Druitt” does ring a faint bell, but I don’t get the impression that it’s me – I feel like “Six” is more me than “John Druitt.” Then again, the idea that I’m married seems new to me as well. For all I know, I have a wife and kids somewhere who are wondering where their daddy is. Or worse, they’ve already given up hope and assumed I’m dead.

I shake my head – no point in getting worked up over a family that might be a complete fabrication. I have to focus. The next page is a copy of the doctor’s chart, with a picture of my face stuck in the top right corner. Most of it is gibberish to me (guess I’m not a doctor), but I do notice that I was kept under heavy sedation the entire time. I can’t find anything on the chart to explain why I was sedated, but it looks like they treated me for a variety of minor injuries. No reference to an EKG or any other kind of brain scan – that’s probably for the best.

I look at the last page. It’s an invoice from the hotel for a day of pre-paid Internet time in the name of M. John Druitt. The name – my name, at least for the moment – is circled with an arrow pointing to it, and the word “Internet” is underlined.

Whoever Elizabeth is, she apparently assumes I’m an idiot. That’s fair – most times, I feel like one.

I look at the bottle of pills, and find that it’s Vicodin. I dry-swallow a couple and drop the bottle into my pocket before folding up the pages and putting them in with the bottle. I snatch up the clothing, and find a small black gym bag folded underneath them. I stuff the clothes into the bag and head out of the hotel room.

*     *     *

The front desk is an expanse of marble manned by efficient men and women in dark, pressed suits. I glance at one of the women – a small, pretty thing with short brown hair. My mind flashes back to the man in the cell, the first man I killed, and I feel a strange sense of euphoria at the thought. No. I push the memory away. I take a deep breath. In. Out.

I approach the desk and ask if there’s anything for John Druitt. A moment later I have a brown envelope with “M. John Druitt” written across the front, and the number six in the top left corner. Cute. The envelope is heavy and feels like it has some kind of padding inside, so I tuck it away in my bag to open later in case it’s a gun or a bomb or a severed hand – something that these five-star eager beavers might frown on having displayed in their efficient marble bee hive. I ask where I can get to an Internet terminal, and the cute brunette gives me directions to the business center on the second floor. Within minutes I’m typing in the code from the invoice and pulling up a browser.

I type the words “John Druitt” into the search bar. On a hunch, I add the word “Whitechapel” before I hit Enter. Within seconds, the screen is full of web page links, but I don’t have to click on any of them to know what they’re talking about: The Whitechapel Murders of 1888.

Jack the Ripper.

As I stare at the screen, the information floods into my brain. One of the main leads for the identity of Jack the Ripper was a barrister named Montigue John Druitt (born 15 August 1857, died 1 December 1888). Jack’s third victim was Elizabeth Stride. His victims had many similar cuts – the throat slashed open with two deep cuts, the lower abdomen ripped open with a deep, jagged wound. My mind starts picking out pieces and throwing them in front of my eyes.

The guard in my cell: I can see myself taking the axe out of my head and chopping at his throat; once, twice, until his head flips back like a candy dispenser. In my mind I feel my arm pumping as I slash open his stomach.

Francis, the guard: “Your patient couldn’t have gotten far, but… well, you’ve told us enough times what happens if he starts killing.”

Mister Rich’s threats to me: “If you’re telling the truth, I won’t let that thing inside of you take over. I will kill you first.”

The fake police officer at the motel: The axe slashes across his throat once, twice, nearly severing his head. I see his body fall backwards, as the axe splashes open his abdomen. Loops of intestine spill onto the snow while the frozen air turns white with his escaping heat.

I look down at my hands, hands I’ve seen covered in blood, hands that I’ve imagined around a woman’s throat. They kept me locked up, doped up, chased me down and tried to contain me. All this time, I thought it was because they wanted to use me, that I was some freaky experiment or government project gone rogue. I thought I was the plucky underdog, trying to escape from impossible odds to find my life and go back to being a normal person. I never though that I was the mad dog that needed to be put down. I never thought I would turn out to be the most notorious serial killer in human history.

All this time I’ve been bitching about answers, and now I have one. Are you happy now, Six? Are you happy to know that you’re a fucking monster?

I stumble back from the computer, knocking over the chair in the process. I have to get out of here, now. I have to get away, have to hide, have to think. But where can I go to hide from myself, hide from the thing lurking inside of me, waiting to come out?

I turn around, and see that someone is watching me.

Who is watching me?

Mister Rich?

One of the men from the van?

A woman I’ve never met before?

Or a man I don’t recognize?

The choice is yours.

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Previously on Whitechapel

Mister Rich rescued Six from the Whitechapel Project and gave him some clues about his past. When the two stopped at an out-of-the-way motel for a shower and new clothes, two men dressed as police officers followed Mister Rich back from a shopping trip. Six reluctantly killed one of the men with his powers, while Mister Rich shot the other (although he ended up injured in the process). A mysterious black van showed up after the altercation, and Six barely managed to get Mister Rich’s unconscious body into his car and drive off before the two men in the van could catch up with him. A chase ensued, and Six managed to get Mister Rich to the hospital before he was knocked down with a taser shotgun shell. Six tried to find out who they were, but he was only told that they were Six’s owners before knocking him unconscious.

Episode Nine – Two Wakings

I wake up just in time to puke all over the concrete floor. I start to wipe away the vomit with my hand, but a plastic loop slaps into my cheek, dangling loosely from my wrist. It’s one of those hospital bracelets with a little piece of paper in it, which has two letters printed on it — VI. I’m back in my cell.

Standing in front of me is a tall man in a suit that looks a couple of decades out of date. His short sandy-blond hair is turning the same shade of gray as his eyes. He looks at me intently – not the soft stare of concern over another human in distress, but the intense stare of someone carefully watching a barking dog straining at the end of its chain.

“I’m glad you’re awake.” His voice reminds me of bleak Virginia winters – cold, Southern, and harsh. “I was worried that the trip would have damaged you in some way.”

I try to stand up, but an ax slams into my head, and I stagger back to my knees.

“No, don’t try to stand up,” he says. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” He squats down, sitting on his heels, and stares directly into my eyes. “You are very valuable to me, Six.”

I stammer, trying to get my mouth to work. “What… what did you call me?”

“Six. It’s something one of my co-workers called you. I think it’s appropriately dehumanizing, don’t you?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m your owner, and you’re my very special attack dog. That’s all you need to know.”

“Own? You can’t own people.”

He casually brushes some imaginary dust off of his sleeve. “And yet I do. How unfortunate for you.”

I close my eyes and try to reach out with my mind to hurt him, but he just slaps my face. “Now now, Six. You may be a rabid dog, but you can’t bite your master’s hand. And I have such plans for you. Such plans.”

After that, all I can remember is screaming…

* * *

I wake up screaming.

I swing my fist at the man in the suit, but he’s not there. Instead, I roll out of bed and land face-first on the floor. I push myself up off of the thin, scratchy carpeting and look around.

I’m in a bedroom of some kind. There’s a large king bed with thick covers and nearly a dozen pillows all over. A couch sits across from the bed, and it’s near an entertainment center with a television and a couple of black boxes plugged into it. There are two nightstands with tasteful lamps on either side of the bed, and there’s an entrance to a huge bathroom full of granite and bamboo. Off in one corner there’s a small desk with a chair. Nobody else is in the room with me.

I’m also completely naked.

I notice a stack of freshly-laundered clothing folded neatly on the couch. As well as the Wal-Mart specials I was wearing when I went unconscious, there are more shirts, jeans, socks, and underwear. I put on the clothes I was wearing before and search the nightstand drawers. They’re both empty. A similar search of the entertainment center reveals a sole remote control. I push the on button a couple of times, but nothing happens, so I throw the control on the couch and keep looking.

The desk is clean except for a phone and a folded piece of paper. It has the letters VI written on it in flowing, elegant handwriting. I unfold it, and it had four words written in the same hand: “Come find me. Elizabeth.”

… I can smell the faint stench of decay on her breath, taste notes of it on my lips. Her hair is plastered across her face as my fingers clench. I imagine the soft silkiness of her neck in my hands…

I shake my head to get rid of the stray memory. The ivory paper is crisp and thick to my touch, and I can make out a few threads in the weave of the paper – expensive stuff. At the top is a small logo that says “The Cincinnatian Hotel” and an address: 601 Vine Street, Cincinnati, Ohio. I sniff the paper, almost expecting a whiff of perfume, but it only smells like paper and ink.

The phone is made of thick molded plastic, but its form is flowing and elegant, matching the décor of the room quite well. Picking up the receiver reveals a small, tasteful plaque in the cradle, giving me the numbers for the front desk and room service. There’s a dial tone, but I’m not sure who to call, so I put the receiver back in the cradle.

It sit back on the bed. One minute, I was in a high-speed chase with police and a bleeding man in a car that wasn’t mine, only to end up shot with a fucking shotgun and knocked out by people who claimed to own me. Next minute, I’m having nightmares about Southern spooks before waking up in a hotel suite that was at least four stars, if not five.

I did a quick list of pros and cons. On the good side, I wasn’t in jail, in the hospital, or in my cell. On the bad side, my only contact is unconscious in the hospital, and I didn’t have a weapon or a car anymore. I also had no idea who put me in the hotel room, or how they related to the Whitechapel Project.

Plus, someone named Elizabeth wanted me to find her. I wasn’t sure whether that should be filed as a pro or a con.

The phone shatters the silence with an ear-piercing ring, and my heart stops for a moment. I look at the phone, dreading what might happen. Who could be calling me? Would it be another person plunging me back into that world of darkness and death? For a moment I consider just not answering it. I imagine opening the door and walking away, leaving behind a string of corpses and a thousand unanswered questions.

I force myself off the bed and pick up the receiver on the third ring.

“This is the front desk with your eight A.M. wake-up call.”

Well, that was disappointing. “I don’t remember asking for a wake-up call.”

The receptionist’s voice sounds apologetic, polite, and professional. “I’m sorry, sir. I have a note to call room 501 at eight A.M. Has there been an error?”

I don’t know, has there been? Whoever put me in this room also left a wake-up call for me. Why? I address the receptionist again. “No, it’s fine. Thank you.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr…?”

And then she called me a name I didn’t recognize.

What name does the receptionist call me?

Mr. Marsh?

Mr. McPhearson?

Mr. Smith?

Or Mr. Druitt?

The choice is yours.

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Author’s Port-mortem

Previously on Whitechapel

Mister Rich revealed some tantalizing information about Six’s past, although he was wary of Six’s true intentions. After Six had some food, a shower, and some new clothes, Mister Rich was followed by two police officers to the run-down motel that they were staying at. The situation escalated, and Six killed one of the officers with his mind while Mister Rich was wounded in a gunfire exchange with the second officer. Six realized that the cops were fake, but just as he was pulling Mister Rich’s car around to get him to a hospital, a black van showed up at the other end of the motel parking lot.

Episode Eight – The Van

Fuck this. I’ve killed enough tonight – I can’t let someone else die because of my negligence. I lean over Mister Rich and slide my arms under his armpits. I try to pick him up, but his muscular bulk makes it feel like I’m trying to lift a boulder. I switch to his legs to drag him to the car. The fluffy snow helps to slide him along, leaving a red smear on the frozen ground behind him. It’s slow work, and the whole time I look for some kind of super-strength or telekinesis or something that might be lurking inside my brain, but all I get is a bigger headache.

It feels like hours getting Mister Rich to the car, but the van hasn’t moved. A couple of men are standing on either side of the van, wearing thick, black wool coats over button-down shirts, ties and slacks. One is walking toward the pile of meat that used to be Cochrane, and the other is talking into a cell phone while scanning the area.

I realize that how I’ve parked Mister Rich’s car next to the police cruiser effectively hides me and Mister Rich, as long as I stay low. I finish dragging Mister Rich to the car, wincing at every snap of a twig or bounce of Mister Rich’s skull. Once I get him to the open door, I try to fold his upper body up and shove him into the back seat. I’m sure I’m breaking a thousand medical procedures, but he only might die if I get him into the car, instead of certainly dying if he bleeds to death in the snow.

I keep pushing, and Mister Rich finally flops forward with a solid thump. I breathe a sigh of relief, and quietly close the rear door before crouching toward the front door and opening it softly. I grab the keys from my pocket and slide into the driver’s seat.

Mister Rich’s phone rings. I feel a scream rise in my throat out of surprise, but I manage to clamp it down. I look at it to check the ID of the caller, but the screen just says “ZM Lacuna,” same as on the cop’s credit card. Why would the company that issued the credit card that a fake police officer was carrying be calling Mister Rich?

I throw the cell phone on the passenger seat along with the pistols and the clothes, and I settle into the driver’s seat, crouching low. I put the key in the ignition and turn it just far enough to unlock. I ease the car into reverse and take a deep breath. My hand grabs the key, and starts to turn it.

Suddenly, there’s a pounding on my side window. One of the men from the van is pressing his face against the glass, holding his hand next to his eyes in order to see through the window tinting. I can barely make out a muffled “Marsh? Are you in there?”

I briefly consider taking on the disguise of Mister Rich, but the memory of Dr. Tucci’s skinned corpse comes back. No. No more killing.

I crank the key hard and stomp on the gas. The car shoots back as I turn hard on the steering wheel, and I can feel the back wheels start to slide. The man pounding on the window falls back and rolls out of the car’s way as I hit the breaks. I slam the car into drive and hit the gas again. I can hear the tires spinning for a second before the car lunges for the turn out of the parking lot.

My life becomes nothing but a series of turns. Hard left. Try not to swerve into the trees. Hard right. Watch out for the truck. Hard right again. I try not to think about where I’m going – I just pick random turns and focus on keeping my car on the road and going as fast as I can.

Which is probably why I ended up driving past a police car at 110 miles per hour.

I hear the siren kick in behind me. Fuck. I risk a glance in the rearview mirror, and I can see his lights flashing. Behind the cruiser are a pair of large, bright headlights, but it’s too dark to make out who they belong to.

I glance around the dashboard, looking for inspiration. I notice that Mister Rich has a built-in GPS system, and I get an idea. Quickly tapping the screen, I program in a course for the hospital. If I can get to the hospital before I’m pulled over, maybe the police will help me get Mister Rich inside, and the presence of real police might shelter me from the men in the van long enough for me to think of another way to escape.

I listen to the soothing electronic voice giving directions while I try to keep one eye on the slowly scrolling map glowing in the darkness of the car. Merge right. Straight ahead to the highway. Take this exit. Ignore the police officer screaming for me to pull over through his mounted bullhorn. Another three miles. Two miles. My destination is on the right.

The lights move alongside me, and I can see a cop angrily gesturing for me to pull over. I start to shake my head, but realize he can’t see me. The glowing sign for Mercy Anderson Emergency Room jumps out at me, and I yank the wheel hard into the turn. The cop car speeds past, but I notice out of the corner of my eye that it manages to make another turn into the hospital campus.

I park the car in front of the emergency room drive-up and rush inside the automatic doors. “Help, I have a man bleeding in my car outside!” A few people dressed in scrubs rush out with me, one of them bringing a gurney with him. I turn around and head back outside to lead them to the car.

The police are already there, pointing their guns at me. They start to shout orders, but I raise my hands and point to the car. “Wait! A man is bleeding to death inside my car! Let me open the car for the ER team, please.”

The cops pause for a moment, and then one tells me to throw him the keys to the car. I do so, and he picks them up while his partner covers me with her pistol. I tell him to open the front door and look for a button on the dashboard.

He has the door open when I hear a crack, and I feel like someone has kicked me in the side, knocking me over. I try to scramble back up to see what happened, but my body won’t respond. My muscles are stiff, locked rigid. I can hear the cops shouting at someone else, and something about a taser, but out of the corner of my eye I see one of the men in the black wool coats holding a shotgun and showing some kind of card or badge to the police officers.

I feel myself being rolled onto my back, and I look into the eyes of the other wool overcoat. He’s holding a device in his hand that crackles electricity. I feel my jaw loosen a bit, and I manage to ask “Who are you?”

The man looks bored with the question. “We’re your owners. And you’ve been a very bad dog.”

He presses the device to my flesh, and I black out.

Where will I wake up?

Back in my cell?

In a hospital?

Or in a bedroom?

The choice is yours.

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Episode Nine – Two Wakings

Previously on Whitechapel

Six was picked up from the Whitechapel Project by Mister Rich, a man who knew Six before his memory loss. Mister Rich confronted Six about his disguise as Dr. Tucci, but after Six told Mister Rich the truth, he decided to trust Six for now. They went to a run-down motel, where Mister Rich revealed that Six was found in London, England, and that his powers are as dangerous to Six as they are to everyone around him. After Mister Rich went to get new clothes for Six, he came back saying he was followed. Six leaves the motel, and notices two police officers asking questions of the other motel patrons.

Episode Seven – Fighting the Law

I walk to Mister Rich’s car, forcing myself to look casual and unhurried. The cops are behind me, and I try not to imagine them shooting me in the back as I walk. I start to sweat in the freezing cold, and each step seems to take longer and longer. Left. Right. Left. Right.

After an eternity, I make it to the car, and risk a glance back. The cop in the cruiser is talking into a handset, while the other is shaking the woman’s hand. When they’re not looking, I dart into the trees to stand behind Mister Rich. He puts a finger to his lips and points to the snowy ground. I crouch down next to him, and he looks back to the parking lot, holding his gun ready.

“What’s going on?” I whisper.

He shakes his head. “They’re not cops,” he whispers back.

I try to get another look of the two uniformed officers, but a tree blocks my view where I’m kneeling. “Who are they, then?”

“Not sure, but they’ve been following me since the store. If they were police, they would have pulled me over, or gone undercover if they were investigating me.” He leaned around a tree to get a better view. “They probably recognized my car. Fuck me for keeping it, I guess.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We aren’t going to do anything. You’re going to stay here. I’m going to keep them from following us any further.” He gets up and starts to make his way along the treeline, stalking back to the other end of the parking lot.

One thing I’ve learned since waking up in that cell is that nothing is what it seems. The problem is, I’m never sure which side of the problem is the false one. I consider the options. Maybe Mister Rich is on the run from the law, and this is all just an excuse to keep himself out of jail. Could be the police are after me, and Mister Rich is wrong about them not being who they say they are. Or maybe they just think we’re a couple of drug dealers trying to make a buck. I shift between two trees to see if I can make out the police cruiser.

The second uniform – the one talking to the woman – is gone. I can still see his partner in the car, but the other one isn’t anywhere to be seen. I glance back down the treeline, and I can just make out a flash of orange as Mister Rich moves closer to the cruiser.

“Freeze!”

Looks like I found the other cop. He’s holding his gun at me in both hands, his legs spread on the icy concrete. All I have on me is a plastic bag full of smelly clothes, and Mister Rich is probably too far away to help me. Face it, Six, you’re fucked.

The cop continues to bark orders at me. “Drop the bag and kick it over to me.” I stand up and do what he says in a haze, but my mind is still whirling, trying to think of what I can do.

I think about the man I killed in my cell, and suddenly the mother of all headaches splits my skull in two. I can’t stop myself from falling to the ground and closing my eyes because of the pain. The cop’s voice is coming from far away. I barely notice what he’s saying as I imagine the weight of the axe in my hand. Whether I like it or not, I’m going to kill him.

I remember what Mister Rich told me about the thing inside of me. I remember what the guard said at the Whitechapel Project about what happens if I kill again. Whether this cop is a fake or not, I can’t afford to murder someone else. I scream “Get away from me! If you want to live, get the fuck away from me!”

I close my eyes and try to imagine dropping the axe and walking away, but I can feel my arm swinging down. I hear the cop’s firm orders turn into screams of pain. The axe slashes across his throat once, twice, nearly severing his head. I see his body fall backwards, as the axe splashes open his abdomen. Loops of intestine spill onto the snow while the frozen air turns white with his escaping heat.

My hands shake as I open my eyes. Once again, my dream has become a horrible reality.

A gunshot cracks, and then another. I spin to look over at the police car, and I can make out the other cop. He’s out of the cruiser and slumped against the side of it, his gun lying in a slowly growing pool of his own blood.

My mind runs on autopilot. Feeling a sense of deja vu, I dig around in the remains of my victim, stealing from what’s left of him in order to save myself. I find his wallet and pull it out. The license says “Alex Cochrane,” and he’s got a small stack of hundreds tucked inside the billfold. No police business cards or ID cards, and only one credit card – a corporate one made out to ZM Lacuna.

No time. I shove the wallet into my pocket, and take his pistol and the plastic bag. I quickly mutter “I’m sorry” to Cochrane before I run between the trees to where I last saw Mister Rich.

He’s lying on his back, unconscious. His gun is in his hand, and blood is oozing out of his jacket, near his shoulder. I put my fingers on his wrist and then his throat. His heartbeat is strong.

I go to check on the other cop, the one slumped against the cruiser. The hole in his forehead tells me he probably doesn’t need 911. I take his gun and his wallet as well.

I force myself to take a breath and assess the situation. Even if this is a bad part of town that doesn’t ask a lot of questions, there’s at least one witness to two cops getting shot. Mister Rich needs a hospital, but I don’t know how much time I have. I can’t drag him to a hospital, so I’m going to need a car. I gingerly search Mister Rich’s pockets for keys. They’re there, along with a cheap flip-open cell phone. I take them both and rush back to the black car.

Throwing the pistols and the plastic bag on the seat, I start the car and swerve around the corpses to pull it as close as I can to the trees hiding Mister Rich. I scan the dashboard and find a button marked “Rear Door Lock.” I punch it, and both rear doors pop open with a gentle click. I get out of the car and run over to Mister Rich.

At that moment, a black van slowly pulls into the opposite end of the parking lot. I can just make it out from where I’m crouched over Mister Rich’s body. It’s heavy-looking with tinted windows, and something in the shape or the color reminds me of Mister Rich’s car.

My instincts tell me to run, to get away from this van and whatever it contains. If the passengers are associated with Mister Rich, then I can leave him here, and his own people can take care of him. But he mentioned something about “keeping the car” – what if he’s as much on the run from the Whitechapel Project as I am?

What should I do?

Take Mister Rich’s car, but leave him here. It looks like it’s more armored, and Mister Rich can take care of himself.

Take Mister Rich’s car, and take him with me. He’ll be safe in the car.

Take the police car, but leave Mister Rich here. The police car is probably faster than the black car.

Take the police car, and take Mister Rich with me. I can run the sirens and get him to a hospital faster.

Flag down the black van, and take my chances that they’re sympathetic to Mister Rich.

Or I can hide in the woods until it all blows over.

The choice is yours.

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Author’s Post-Mortem

Episode Eight – The Van

Previously on Whitechapel

Six escaped from his cell at the Whitechapel Project, only to be picked up by a black car driven by a man known only as Mister Rich. The mysterious driver seemed to play into Six’s disguise as Dr. Tucci, one of the employees of the Whitechapel Project, but when they arrived at their pre-arranged meeting place of Eden Park, both Six and Mister Rich found a wreck with the skinned body of Dr. Tucci inside. Six confessed to everything that happened, and Mister Rich admitted to knowing Six previously. They drove to a run-down motel, where Mister Rich offered to answer a couple of questions in order to satisfy Six’s curiosity.

Episode Six – Questions

One question jumps to the front. “Why did you call me ‘Six’ back at the park?”

Mister Rich smiles. “It’s a nickname I gave you. When I picked you up at the Royal London Hospital…”

“The what?” My mind reels from this news. The Royal London Hospital is in Whitechapel, London, England.

Mister Rich puts a finger up. “Look, I’m only going to answer a couple of questions, and I’m only going to answer them once, so I suggest you shut up and listen.”

I nod. “I’m sorry. Continue.”

“When I picked you up at the hospital, you were listed as an anonymous patient, with only the letters VI on your file. Due to the nature of your acquisition, I was encouraged to keep your real name a secret, but calling someone VI all the time gets cumbersome, so I started calling you Six.”

“They called me Six at the Project,” I say.

“Yeah. I never told them your real name. Then again, they didn’t ask for your real name.”

I try to keep the emotion out of my voice. “You know who I am.”

He nods. “And that’s not a question I’m going to answer right now. At this point, I think it’s best to keep you a secret from yourself as well.”

I look down at the gun. “If you know so much about me, why don’t you trust me?”

He gets up and starts to pace back and forth in the small hotel room. I notice that he’s pacing on the other side of the bed, away from me, and that he still has his gun in his hand.

“It’s not that easy, Six. If what you say is true, then the amnesia treatments worked.”

“I certainly can’t remember why I was eating old jellybeans, if that’s what you mean,” I say.

He suddenly turns to face me. “That’s exactly your problem,” he says, bringing up the gun and pointing at me with it for emphasis. “It’s bad enough that you’ve killed – twice now – but you’ve always been a little too smart for your own good.” He lowers the gun and continues pacing. “I’m trained by the government to do a lot of things, and one of those things is sniffing out when someone is lying. Not that bullshit training that cops and lie detector people get that’s no better than guessing – I’m talking about the real deal.

“When I picked you up in London, you were always a quick wit. You were able to dance circles around MI-5, but I could tell you were lying. But not because your eyes shifted or your brow clenched or your arms folded, but just because I could put the facts together in a way that Five couldn’t. At one point I knew for a fact that you were completely bullshitting me, but there wasn’t a single twitch in your manner that told me that.”

He turns to face me. “I want to believe you, Six. I do. But you’re too smart, too good. If you’re lying to me, I don’t want to tip my hand and let you know how much I know, let you feed me more subtle lies to draw me in further. And if you’re telling the truth…”

He stops for a moment, and then puts the gun to my head again. “If you’re telling the truth, I won’t let that thing inside of you take over. I’ll kill you first.”

I try to stop myself, but the questions blurt out. “What thing? How am I too smart? Why did I lie to you before I…?”

Mister Rich shoves my head a bit with the gun and walks away. “No. Enough. I’ve told you plenty, probably more than I should have.” He takes a large sniff. “Go take a shower. You smell like dead guy.”

I lift an arm to my face and take a whiff. He’s right – the smell of Dr. Tucci is still haunting me. “Fine. Good idea. Do you have any more clothes for me?”

“What do I look like, Armani? I’ll run out and get you a few essentials from the nearby Wal-Mart.” He motions at me with the gun. “Get in the bathroom, and I’ll lock you in until I get back.”

I head into a small nook with a sink, a cracked mirror, and a door. For a moment, I glance at the mirror. I see a man, Caucasian, with short brown hair and brown eyes. Stubble covers the bottom half of his face. His eyes are hazel, flecked with green, and he has a scar under his right eye. He looks ordinary, plain.

Conceptually, I understand that this is my face, but I don’t recognize it at all.

Mister Rich makes a noise behind me, and I open the door. The bathroom is a tiny closet with a shattered tile floor, a toilet with one hinge broken on its lid, and a shower stall. The plastic curtain has green spots all over it, and the shower head hangs from a ragged hole in the wall. Gaps in the yellowed wallpaper show that most of the walls are brick. No convenient windows to crawl out of. As soon as I step inside, Mister Rich closes the door behind me, and I can hear scraping as something is shoved under the doorknob. I can barely make out what he says before I faintly hear the door to the parking lot slam shut.

I gingerly strip off Tucci’s borrowed clothing. I examine my toe, which still appears to be broken, but it’s not in as much pain. Maybe I can splint it at some point or find a way to keep it from getting worse. I search my head for some kind of magical medical knowledge, but nothing comes up. Great – I can tell you where a hospital is in a foreign country, but I have no idea how to deal with a broken toe. Guess I’m not nearly as smart as Mister Rich thinks I am.

I turn the water up as hot as I can, and step into the shower. The feel of the shower isn’t quite as heavenly as the food was, but it’s certainly up there. I look for the tiny bar of soap and the worn washcloth, and I scrub away the layers of grime and vomit and blood. I try to lose myself in the simple pleasure of the shower, but my mind keeps going back over what I’ve learned.

The fact that I was found in England explains the European currency I found, as well as the name of the Project – there’s probably ongoing communication or research or something happening between England and the United States. Mister Rich admits to be government trained, but didn’t specify which government trained him. But I’m actually further back than I thought with the letters VI – they don’t really stand for the number six, though “Six” is as good a name as any for now. I was or am a fantastic liar, which might explain some of how I got out of the Project. For everything I’ve learned, though, there’s another question. Why was I in England? Why is it so dangerous to reveal who I really am? What happened to me in Whitechapel?

I turn around, and let the scalding water run over my shoulders. I’m avoiding the real problem, the real concern. There’s something inside of me, something that Mister Rich is afraid of. It’s not just that I’m a killer – the way Mister Rich handled dealing with Tucci’s corpse made it clear that he’s seen death – but there’s something that my murders are helping to unravel or reveal or feed or… something.

I punch the wall in frustration. Who the fuck am I? What the hell is going on with me? Why is every answer a doorway to another fucking question? Who the hell is this man in the football jacket? Why am I surrounded by violence and death? Suddenly I realize I’m screaming and pounding the brick over and over again. The pressure of everything going on tightens my chest and claws up my throat, like the monster inside of me wants to get out and murder again.

I sit down in the shower, and I scream and cry until the water runs cold.

* * *

After what seems like hours, I’m out of the shower and toweling myself off when I hear scraping outside. The doorknob shifts and turns, and Mister Rich throws a plastic bag at me full of clothes. “I think I was followed here. You have two minutes to get dressed, and then we’re gone.” He slams the door, but not before I see him pulling his gun out from under his jacket.

I quickly scramble through the bag, yanking off tags and ripping open plastic. The clothing inside is basic – a few pairs of jeans, some T-shirts, packages of boxers and socks, a brown ball cap with a picture of an old video game controller on it. My toe screams again as I shove Tucci’s workout shoes back onto my feet. I’m stuffing my old clothing into the bag when Mister Rich opens the door again.

“Time’s up. Let’s go. Close the room behind you when you leave.”

I step into the room, but it’s already dark. Mister Rich left the door open, and is calmly making his way across the parking lot. Snow starts to swirl into the room. I carry the bag with me as I leave. I turn to close the motel room door behind me, when I see something out of the corner of my eye.

A police cruiser is sitting at the end of the parking lot. Two uniformed cops are outside of a room at the other end of the parking lot, talking to a woman covered in a blanket. Oh shit. Are they looking for me?

I glance back at my roommate, and I see he’s not going right back to the car. He’s walking into the trees by the car, like he’s going to take a piss. As soon as he’s in the woods, he crouches down in the snow and pulls his gun.

I don’t know a thing about Mister Rich, not even his real name. He might have his own reasons to kidnap me. Maybe the police are looking for him, and not for me. It could be that I might have a better chance going with the police, or even trying to make it on my own.

I look back at the cops. One of them is walking back to his cruiser, and the other looks like he’s about done interrogating the woman. I only have a moment to choose.

What should I do?

Should I walk over to Mister Rich and see what he has planned?

Would I be better off attracting the attention of the police and trying to go with them?

Or is it best for me to run away from all of them and try to make it on my own?

The choice is yours.

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Author’s Post-Mortem

Episode Seven – Cop Killer

Previously on Whitechapel

Six escaped from his cell at the Whitechapel Project disguised as Dr. Tucci, one of the project’s employees. After leaving his prison, a black car pulled up that seemed strangely familiar, and Six was told to get in. During the ride, the mysterious driver referred to him as Dr. Tucci, but asked some unconnected questions, constantly keeping Six on the ropes. They finally arrived at Eden Park, where the meeting between the driver and Dr. Tucci was supposed to take place, and they found Tucci’s car wrecked on the side of one of the park’s roads. Inside the car was a corpse completely missing its skin. As Six examined the body, the driver shoved him against the car, put a gun to Six’s head, and demanded to know what happened.

Episode Five – Mister Rich

I struggle to put my hands in the air while I’m awkwardly shoved against the side of the wreck. I take a breath to speak, and the cloyingly rotten smell of the corpse assaults my nose again. “Okay, I’m not Dr. Tucci. I’ll explain what I know. Let me up.”

“If you try anything, I won’t hesitate to kill you. Do you understand?” The driver pokes the heavy metal object into my head again for emphasis.

I swallow a smart-ass comment and simply say, “I understand.”

I nearly fall backwards when the hold suddenly vanishes, but the smell doesn’t seem to go away. I grab the side of the car and quickly steady myself before I let go again, my hands back into the air. I close my eyes…

… and I hear the malice in the driver’s voice. “I know what you can do. I said not to try anything.”

I open my eyes in surprise and look at my captor. He’s taller than me and wearing a Cincinnati Bengals jacket, brown slashed with orange stripes. It suits him, since he’s built like a football player – wide shoulders and thick legs encased in fitting jeans and sturdy work boots. His hair is short – it looks like a military cut, but I can’t be sure. He’s certainly not what I expected a partner of Dr. Tucci’s to look like.

He’s also pointing a gun at me. A large gun.

I try to ignore the hand cannon. “How do you know what I can do?”

The man shakes his head. “No. I have the gun, so I get to ask the questions. You don’t have the gun, so you get to answer them.”

I nod. “Fine. Can I at least put my hands down? My arms are tired.”

“Not just yet.” He walks over to his car and opens a door to the back seat before waving the pistol at me. “Get in the back seat, and sit on your hands.”

I carefully walk over to the car, feeling a sense of deja vu. Have I been captured before? A scene explodes into my brain…

… I can taste old jellybeans in my mouth, gummy and dusty. I want to spit them out, but I force myself to swallow as a brown dog with one ear sits next to me, hopefully wagging her tail…

… and I’m on the ground, face-up, frozen grass poking into my neck. My captor, my savior, whatever he is has the gun by his side. His face is surprised, concerned. “Six… is that you?”

My mask. The skin of Dr. Tucci is gone, taken by the stray image in my mind. He doesn’t seem to be shooting me over this revelation, so I risk sitting up. “Do I know you?” I ask, feeling like everything has been a question or a bruise since I woke up.

“Do you know me? I’m…” The man falters for a moment, and his face closes back up. He’s the detached professional again. “For now, I’m Mister Rich.”

Mister Rich. The name rings a bell, a faint one. I get the impression that I know more, but… the moment is gone. I nod slowly. “Okay, Mister Rich. I’m sorry I fell over. I just had an image of eating stale jellybeans, and for some reason it knocked me over.”

Mister Rich laughs. “Yeah, that was the time that I… well, never mind that. Go sit down.” His gun isn’t pointed at me anymore, but it’s still in his hand, ready and available. He seems to know me, but he still doesn’t trust me. That’s fair – I don’t trust myself, either.

I sit back on the hard seat and put my hands under my ass. Mister Rich crouches down on the frozen grass, arms over his knees, his gun dangling from one hand for easy access. I try to think about what to say, what to pass on and what to leave out, but instead I’m telling him all that I know. I describe everything from when I woke up to when I came out of the building. The story pours out of me like fountain, a steady stream of murder and lies and theft that led me to the back seat of his car.

And the whole time he’s looking at me, listening. He never interrupts me or looks distracted. He just sits there, a patient receiver of every impression, every image, every word. Finally, the stream becomes a trickle, and then a drop. I finish the story and look over at the wreck.

Mister Rich notices the look. “Did you realize your disguise would kill him?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t… I was hoping that maybe it was a mistake, that it was someone else’s body in that car. I had this feeling like I was wearing his skin, but I thought it was an abstraction, a way of understanding what’s going on in my head. I didn’t think…”

Mister Rich stands up and looks down at me. “And you don’t remember anything else?”

“No, nothing.”

He looks around at the frozen park. “Okay. This wasn’t how I planned to spend my evening, but what the hell. We need to get out of here.” He opens the passenger side door and reaches inside.

I lean over and start to pull my door shut, but Mister Rich grabs the door before I can. He startles me with how fast he is. His face is close to mine, and for a moment I panic. Maybe it was a lie. Maybe he’s just going to shoot me and cart my body around in the soundproof, air-tight backseat of his car.

He throws a paper bag into the back seat before handing me a paper cup with a straw. “God, you stink. But here’s that food I promised you. We’ll eat on the way.”

I don’t even notice the car glide back out of the park. I devour everything in the bag as if it were the finest meal ever made. Right now, at this exact moment, there aren’t any secret underground hospitals or mysterious gun-totting drivers or amnesiac psychics who can kill people at a distance. All that exists is a hamburger, french fries, and a cup of ice-cold soda. I lose myself in the simple joy of food.

All too soon, I’m left with the cardboard and paper corpses of my meal. I bury them all in the bag when the speaker crackles back to life. “There’s a motel nearby that I know. We’ll be able to find a room for the night.”

I set the bag of trash next to me before leaning back into the seat. “Can you put the divider down?”

“Not just yet, Six. We have a lot to talk about before I trust that you won’t cut me into bloody ribbons.”

“Do you mind if I ask some questions while we drive?”

“We’ll have time for all that at the motel.”

True to his word, within a few minutes we pull into the parking lot of a motel that should have been condemned. He tells me to stay inside before walking into the lobby. Soon the car is parked behind some trees, well away from the street, and he’s leading me to room 339. He pulls out a plastic card to swipe through the lock, and I shiver. It’s not because of the cold.

The room itself is uninspiring – two twin beds with faded comforters, a scratched and worn nightstand between them with a lamp, a dresser across from them with a TV set that looks twenty years old, a chair and a desk that were probably salvaged from a school. Wallpaper flakes off in long, ragged strips, and there are dark stains on the threadbare carpet. Mister Rich motions to one of the beds and sits down on the opposite one. The gun is still in his hand, resting in his lap.

“It seems like you’ve been straight with me, so I’ll try to be straight with you. I don’t completely trust you yet, but it’s clear you’re looking for answers, and I might have some of them. Some questions I won’t answer, but I’ll try to answer a couple that won’t make our immediate relationship more awkward.”

“Who am I?” I blurt out.

“That’s one of those questions I won’t answer,” he says. “Not yet.”

I look at the gun in his lap. “Can you put the gun away, at least?”

He smiles. “That’s oh-for-two.”

I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, trying to wrestle with all of the questions in my head to settle on a couple that Mister Rich might answer.

What two questions should I ask?

“Why were you meeting with Dr. Tucci?”

“Why did you call me Six?”

“What do you know about the Whitechapel Project?”

“If you know me, why don’t you trust me?”

“What do you know about my powers?”

“What happened to Dr. Tucci?”

The choice is yours.

(Author’s Note: There were a couple of tense mistakes that I didn’t notice before recording. I edited them here, but the podcast may not completely sync up as a result.)

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Author’s Post-Mortem

Episode Six – Questions

Previously on Whitechapel

Six wakes up with amnesia, and escapes from his cell after killing a guard with his mind. He breaks into the office of Dr. Harold Tucci and learns that he’s part of something called the Whitechapel Project. Using a different aspect of his powers, he disguises himself as Dr. Tucci and manages to convince another guard to help him escape. As Six is enjoying the winter air, a mysterious black car pulls up and opens one of its doors invitingly.

Episode Four – Eden

I study the car for a moment. The dark glass and the rapidly fading dusk makes it impossible to see who is inside, or how many people are waiting for me. The car is clearly too expensive to be a police vehicle, and it doesn’t have government plates. Its arrival is too much of a coincidence to be unrelated to my escape, so the people inside either have something to do with the Project or something to do with me. And if they were out to get me, they wouldn’t invite me inside a car when we’re so close to the place I just escaped from – they could just as easily jump out and take me down right now. So, odds are pretty good that they’re here to help me, or at least here to help Dr. Tucci.

But what if I’m wrong? I can’t risk it.

I start walking past, acting as if I don’t recognize the car. I’m near the bumper when the lights flash and I hear a window roll down. “Get in before they see us,” the driver says. His voice is deep, male, and used to giving orders.

I don’t have any more options. I can’t outrun a car or a bullet, and those guards will eventually figure out that I’m not inside. I get into the car and close the door.

The warmth inside is a blessing at first, but the heated leather seats are hard under me, and soon all of my aches and pains come flooding back. The black frosted glass divider keeps me from seeing my driver, and there’s no sound coming from the small speaker set beneath it. I try to relax as the vehicle pulls away and I watch the small building that imprisoned me smoothly fade into the winter night.

The car pulls left onto the main road, as the speaker clicks to life. “You missed our arranged meeting, Dr. Tucci. I was getting worried. Is everything all right?”

My hands fly instinctively to my face, as if to straighten my mask. He sees me as Tucci. I’m still wearing my borrowed skin. But I don’t have any cues to work from with this man, no way of sensing how he knows Tucci. I close my eyes and try to feel the skin again.

“I ran into a few unexpected complications, that’s all.”

This seems to satisfy my mysterious driver for the moment. The frozen river slowly unrolls on my left, while snow-covered trees and the occasional railroad crossing crawl past on the right. After a while, houses and gas stations start to break up the landscape, and cars start to show up on the road. Gas prices are in dollars to the gallon, and I find more Ohio and Kentucky plates. It looks like I’m on the border between Ohio and Kentucky, so the river to my left is likely the Ohio River. That puts me in Cincinnati or Florence.

I reach into my pocket and pull out the strange collection of bills. If I’m American, why am I so surprised to be in America? Then again, if I’m in America, why did Dr. Tucci have a handful of European currency? For that matter, why is the project named after a district in London? I put the money in my pocket and lean back into the seat. The adrenaline starts to fade, and I feel drowsy from the heat and the exertion.

My silent contemplation is broken by the speaker clicking to life again. “I’m surprised you chose Eden Park to meet at. It’s a pretty big place.”

Eden Park? I try to search my scattered memories, but nothing about an Eden Park comes up. Is it a park? It could be the name of an office building or a gated community, or even a small rural town for all I know. I force myself to sit back up and focus on the conversation. “Well, I wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

The driver grunts noncommittally, and our drive continues. I feel my stomach growl. I haven’t eaten since I woke up, and my last meal is probably still on the floor of my cell. Now that I think about it, I’m utterly starving, and my hands tremble with the thought of food.

“Hey, could we stop and get something to eat? I…” I stop, realizing that I was about to admit that I haven’t eaten in a long time. I remind myself that I shouldn’t add any details that I don’t need to. “I’m hungry,” I finish awkwardly.

There’s a long pause. I start to wonder if I’ve overplayed my hand when the speaker clicks back on. “Yeah. There’s a drive-through up ahead. I’ll get you the usual, and then we can eat at the park.”

I reach into my pocket again and pull out a few of the dollar bills. “I have money. Can you put down the divider so I can give it to you?”

A chuckle comes from the speaker. “Don’t worry. I think I can spare a few bucks. Just relax – we’re almost there.”

I sit back again. So Eden Park is a park. Why would Dr. Tucci be meeting this mysterious man in a park on a cold winter evening? It seems likely that the driver isn’t directly related to the Whitechapel Project. Otherwise, they could have met in Dr. Tucci’s office, or at least someplace more comfortable.

I sit in silence as the car pulls up to the window of some local chain that I don’t recognize – all I can make out are splashes of red interspersed with black-and-white checkered bars. I see an arm lean out of the driver’s side window as the order is placed. The hand is pale, and the jacket arm is orange with black stripes, like a tiger’s. Certainly not government issue. A brief glimpse of his wrist reveals that he’s not wearing a watch. I can’t make out anything that’s said, but he pays in cash before receiving a couple of drinks and a bag of food. My mouth starts to water, but after a moment I realize that I can’t actually smell the food at all.

A soundproof and air-tight divider. The owner of this car is definitely expecting trouble.

I go over possible escape plans in my head, but nothing comes to mind. I could try and see if I have another ability to deal with this, but I don’t know if that means I’ll stop being Dr. Tucci. I suppose I could try and kill my driver like I did with the guard in the cell, but that might cause us to crash, which could also kill me. Although with a car this well-built, I’d probably survive the crash. On the other hand, this driver has been the only ally I’ve come across so far, even if he’s only allied with me because he thinks I’m someone else.

I look out the window again, and I can see trees and a small lake. We’re driving through a park. Panic starts to set in, but I try to look as calm as possible. I go over the complete lack of plans I have a second time, as we start to slow down near a car smashed into a sturdy tree just off the road. Smoke is still rising from the demolished hood of the wreck. My driver stops our car next to the crash, and the speaker comes to life. “Someone might be hurt. You should check it out.” I hear the door next to me click open.

For an insane moment I consider just slamming open the door and running for it, but I force myself to calmly step out. The cold smacks me in the face again, and I savor the feeling for a second before I head over to the site of the crash. I can just make out the wreck’s driver slumped over the wheel. I kneel down and try to get a better look, ignoring the sound of another car door closing behind me.

The smell is almost palpable. The black wool coat that the driver wore is brittle and cracked, like it had been burned, but the rest of the interior of the car doesn’t show any signs of a fire. The driver’s gloved hands are still clutched around the wheel, but the arms of the coat bulge strangely, like the driver’s arms are broken in a hundred different places. I reach in to touch his wrist and feel for a pulse, but I quickly jerk my hand back. Blood and slime cover my fingertips, remnants of my would-be patient. He’s certainly dead.

I grab the corpse’s shoulder and try to push it back from the wheel. Blood and viscera stick to the steering column as I shove the sack of meat into the seat. Unlidded eyes stare at me behind shattered eyeglasses.

For some insane reason, this corpse is completely without skin.

A heavy metal object is shoved into the back of my skull, pushing me closer to the corpse. I frantically push on the side of the car to get away from the body, from the smell, but another hand holds me firmly against the door of the wreck.

“You’d better tell me right fucking now why there’s a skinned corpse in Dr. Tucci’s car, or so help me God I’ll blow your brains all over this wreck.”

How can I get out of this?

Do I tell him the truth, and drop my disguise as Tucci?

Can I continue my role and talk my way out of this?

Or should I try to incapacitate or kill my assailant?

The choice is yours.

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Author’s Post-Mortem

Episode Five – Mister Rich

Previously on Whitechapel

A man known only by the roman numeral six wakes up in a padded cell. He discovers he has strange abilities when he turns his guard into a bloody mess just by thinking about it. Six makes his way into the empty office of a Dr. Harold Tucci, who turns out to be part of something called the Whitechapel Project. Six also discovers a stack of currency from a number of countries, as well as a pistol. He’s about to leave when an alarm goes off, and someone is knocking at the door.

Episode Three — Escape

My heart is hammering in my chest as I try to think. If there’s a guard on the other side of the door, he probably wouldn’t be scared of a pistol, and I’m not sure I would be on the winning end of a gun fight. I also don’t know enough about my powers to be able to use them on command. As I consider killing him, I remember the thick smell of blood from the guard in my cell, and for a second the nausea returns. I force myself to push the thought out of my mind; I have to try and talk my way out of this.

Ignoring the gun, I look down at Harold Tucci’s ID card sitting on the desk. He has thinning brown hair, hazel eyes and thick bushy eyebrows. There’s no other pictures of family or girlfriends around the office. He’s probably a man married to his job or his country.

Another knock. I scramble to think of something convincing, but the screeching of the alarm and the thumping on the door conspire with the pounding in my head, and every thought feels like it’s going to fall onto the floor. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to steal a single moment so I can think clearly.

My heart slows a little as I take in the feel of the soft fabric against my skin. I imagine that these clothes are the most natural thing in the world for me to wear. I’m just a middle-aged man who’s trying to stay healthy. I try to eat the right things, and every day I jog around the complex to get some exercise in. Sometimes I work late, but I live alone, so it doesn’t bother anyone. The work is what’s most important. The axe swings again, buried in my brain, and my head starts to throb with the pain. I visualize taking the ax and hacking away at myself, at my identity, killing anything that doesn’t fit into the mold of Dr. Tucci. I imagine wearing the skin of a man I’ve never met.

The knocking is louder, firmer, more insistent. “Dr. Tucci? I’m coming in.”

I open my eyes, and I can feel the skin speak for me.

“No, no… I’m sorry. I’ve just been having so much trouble with this computer, and I got frustrated. I…”

The voice cuts me off. “Why didn’t you respond earlier?”

“I kicked my desk in frustration, and I broke my toe. I… I might have passed out for a bit. I’m sorry. I’m okay now.”

“I can give you medical attention.”

Fear sends my heart racing again, but I force myself to take a breath. “That won’t be necessary. I’m just going to pack up a few things and head home.”

A moment passes, and then I hear the magnetic lock click. The door starts to swing open. I look back at the gun and consider making a grab for it, but it’s already too late. Another man in a button-down shirt and slacks is in the doorway – a larger, more muscular version of the corpse in my cell. He’s got a gun, and he’s looking right at me. I’m wearing Tucci’s skin, but I’m afraid he can see right through it, see right into me, and I’m never going to find out who I am or what’s going on, and oh my god I’m going to die I’m going to die I’m going to…

The guard blinks, and his eyes look like they’re out of focus before he smiles and puts his gun back in the holster. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. Reynolds didn’t report in from his vitals check on Six, even though the key card shows he went in and left again. I went to check it out, and… he’s dead, sir. Six is gone, so I have to do a room-by-room search.”

My eyes catch the ID card clipped to his shirt. It’s similar to the one on the desk, but his reads “Blake Francis.” “I understand, Francis. Do you need me to stay here, or can I leave?”

Francis looks into the hallway, then back at me (no, not me, Dr. Tucci, remember I’m Dr. Tucci). “Your patient couldn’t have gotten far, but… well, you’ve told us enough times what happens if he starts killing.”

I nod and try to look concerned, but all I want to do is grab his shirt and scream What happens when I start killing? Dr. Tucci speaks again. “Perhaps you’re right. I’m sure I can find someplace to sleep here tonight.”

“No offense, doc, but I wouldn’t wish a night in your office on my worst enemy. Come on – I’ll escort you out, and let Simmons finish the search.”

I nod, and start to walk toward the door when Francis suddenly says “Wait a minute!” I freeze, and out of the corner of my eye I see him reaching for the gun on the desk. I try to remember how to kill him when he grabs the pistol by the barrel and presses it into my hand. “You might need this.”

I thank him and follow him down the tunnel. I force myself to stand tall as the ax keeps swinging. The tunnels curve around to an old freight elevator, one with a lever instead of buttons and a flimsy metal gate instead of a door. Francis coaxes the ancient device up three floors before the gate rattles open onto another metal door with another keycard slot. I step out of the cage and Francis gives me a quick salute before closing the gate and heading back down. My hands tremble as I slide the card through the slot. The light turns from green to red, and I push open the door.

* * *

Free. I’m free. Inhale. Exhale.

My breath comes out as a white cloud as the cold starts to nip at my face. The sky is just turning dark as the last rays of the sun dip beyond the horizon. There are a few small clumps of melted snow that have frozen into shiny gray chunks of modern art. The grass crunches under my feet as I make my way to the small parking lot. There are a few cars neatly lined up on the concrete – a small green car, a blue minivan, a tan SUV. They all have Ohio plates. The lot has no lights, but I can still see a short road connecting it with a two-lane street up ahead. Beyond that, parallel to the street, I can make out a large body of water – maybe a lake or a river of some kind. Behind me, the unmarked metal door I walked through is set into a small concrete bunker with no signs on it. It could be a small electrical building or storage shed in any Midwestern town. The cold takes away my pain for the moment, and I enjoy the simple sensation of being free.

I can see headlights going down the street as the sky turns to night. Ice chunks in the water dance in stray beams of light before the car turns into the parking lot. The headlights blind me, and I instinctively put my hands in front of my face. I can feel my grip on Dr. Tucci’s skin slipping, and I look for somewhere to run.

The lights swerve out of my eyes again. I lower my hands and blink a few times, trying to get the spots out of my vision. The headlights are now pointed off to my right, reflecting off the frozen grass and melted snow. It’s a black sedan, still running…

… I can see metal and plastic and leather and glass, all in a thousand different shades of black. My body aches, throbbing in time with the vibrations of finely-tuned machinery…

I recognize this car from my dreams, or my visions, or whatever I was having before I woke up in that cell. But what is it doing here?

I hear the soft ca-chunk sound of automatic car door locks, and the rear door opens slightly.

Are these the people that captured me? Maybe I should run for it.

Maybe they’re here to rescue me. Should I get into the car?

They could just be showing up for work, and I can pretend to be Dr. Tucci before taking their car.

On the other hand, they could be police, investigating the alarm. I could tell them what I’ve found.

Or maybe they have nothing to do with me, and I should just keep walking.

The choice is yours.

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Author’s Post-Mortem

Episode Three in French

Episode Four – Eden

A hospital patient wakes up in a padded room with a massive headache. The only clue he has to his identity is a plastic bracelet with the letters “VI” printed on it. As he tries to figure out who he is and what’s happened to him, a man dressed in business casual clothing steps into the cell. The patient realizes that the well-dressed man is his captor and imagines slashing at him, only to find the jailer in a bloody mess at his feet. The patient steals a card key from the corpse and opens the cell door, all the time trying to understand this ability to kill with his mind.

Episode Two – Honor

I push open the door to my cell and look out. The hallway is a rounded tunnel of crumbling brick, stretching to the left and right under the faint glow of a few naked bulbs. There’s a rusty metal door in front of me, a solid plane except for a curved handle and small empty frame for a sign of some kind. I step out onto the floor, which is just as cold and gritty as the one in my cell. I don’t notice the door swinging shut behind me until I hear the dull click of the magnetic lock. The frame on my door says “Subject VI,” and the card reader looks much newer than anything else in this tunnel.

I look down at the card in my hands. It’s a plain white card with a black magnetic strip on one side. Idly flipping it over, I only find the words “Whitechapel Project” printed in the same font as the letters on my bracelet. What is the Whitechapel Project? Some kind of government experiment? A medical study? A corporate project?

I almost fall to the ground as the headache comes again…

… and now I’m walking on a different concrete floor. I can hear the rumble of a subway train, but there’s white smoke everywhere, and I can just barely make out a rounded wall and the vague forms of people all around me. A man is coughing, trying to yell for everyone to put their hands on the right wall and follow it to the exit. He starts to repeat the order, but his voice collapses into thick, hacking coughs…

I bend over, taking huge, deep breaths, trying to avoid choking. I barely notice the nausea creeping back into my throat before it fades away again, along with the migraine. A couple more deep breaths and I’m upright, if a little wobbly. The plastic bracelet slips down my arm as I put my hand on the right wall and start walking toward the next pool of light in the tunnel.

The walls curve slightly to the right, and soon I can see another pair of doors facing each other in the tunnel. Both are shut, but the one on the right has a card reader like the one by my cell. I swipe the card and open the door, only to run right into the impenetrable darkness of the room. I slap blindly on the inside walls, looking for a light switch. No luck.

I haven’t seen anyone else, but it’s probably only a matter of time before someone notices that I’m gone. I put my hands out and shuffle carefully into the room, looking for something, anything that provides light. My toe slams into something hard. I hear it crack, and the sudden unexpected pain fills my leg. It feels almost cleansing after the slick, nauseous pain of the migraine. I start to fall over, but my hands land flat on a large object — a table or something — and I’m able to stop my fall. I grope around until I nearly knock over something heavy and metal, which feels like a lamp. I find a switch and push it in with a solid click.

I’ve run into a desk. Not some flimsy balsa wood desk from Ikea, but a big mahogany monstrosity that’s right out of a Victorian study. The computer on the desk isn’t much more modern, a boxy slab of tan plastic connected to a keyboard with a curly wire that reminds me of an old telephone. Pain shoots with each step as I stumble back and close the door — apparently this one doesn’t swing shut like my cell door did. My toe is already turning dark red and purple — probably broken. Fuck. I shuffle back behind the desk and slump into the black leather chair to rest for a second.

The office looks to be the same rough shape as my cell, though the padding has been replaced with a pale green color that keep the hospital theme in my mind going. The floor is covered in a thin ivory-colored carpet. There’s a small table with a couple of chairs off in the corner, and a framed black-and-white photo of some soldiers from World War I or World War II wearing those huge gas masks that make you look like an insect. They’re crouched in a trench, holding rifles against some unseen enemy. Next to one is what looks like a wiry black dog wearing its own gas mask, which is little more than a canvas bag with glass lenses. It looks equal parts terrifying and ridiculous.

I stab at the power button on the computer a few times, but nothing happens, so I start to search the desk. There’s a black duffel bag underneath that I pull out. It’s a workout bag — gray towel, gray socks, gray sweat pants, and a plain gray T-shirt. There are even a pair of gray sneakers at the bottom. I dump everything out on the desk and quickly rip off the flimsy gown so I can use the towel to wipe off the blood and vomit still sticking to my skin. My toe screams as I try to put on the shoes, but I ignore it. It feels so good to wear real clothing again.

The first drawer I open has the usual office detritus — discarded black binder clips, half-used pens, scissors, and a nearly-empty bottle of pain killers that I quickly snatch up. The pills taste dusty as I dry-swallow them. There’s also a small key on a thin wire loop that I take.

The next drawer is locked, but the key smoothly opens it. All praise human laziness. Inside is a stack of blank paper with no letterhead. On top of it is a worn leather case, zippered shut. I pull the metal tongue smoothly along its track, and open it to find a small stack of currency. I recognize American and Canadian dollars, British pound notes and a couple of Euros, but the rest of the money is foreign to me.

I also find a Whitechapel Project ID card with a picture of a balding man and the name “Harold Tucci.” He has some gray business cards that just have his name and a phone number. It’s depressing that the mint green walls are the most colorful thing I’ve found so far.

I sit back and take a moment to think. I know Whitechapel is a neighborhood in London. (How do I know that? Best not to dwell on that too much right now.) Is this facility somewhere in England? Am I English? I look back at the stack of money. Some of this looks vaguely European, so wouldn’t I know what they are if I was English? On a hunch, I grab one of the pieces of paper and a pen from the drawers, and write a single word across it:

HONOR

Not “honour” with a “u,” which would be the British or Canadian spelling. I guess I’m American, then. Maybe I should have a cheeseburger to celebrate.

I start to take the money out of the case, and I find a scrap of paper mixed in the stack. It looks like a to-do list — file paperwork, update report, update Six’s vitals…

I look back at the bracelet. VI is the roman numeral for six. Is that my name? Probably not, but that’s what this project is calling me. So why am I called Six? Were there five more like me? Is it some kind of codename? Or do these people just have an unhealthy obsession with sci-fi television? I snatch the scissors from the desk and hack the bracelet off of my wrist. I’m tired of looking at it. I’m tired of asking myself questions that I don’t have the answer to.

The bottom drawer is also locked, and the key doesn’t work. I check the desk again for another key, but there’s nothing. Out of frustration I kicked the drawer with my non-broken foot. The crack sounds like a gunshot in the silent office, and the drawer slides open a little. I pull it out the rest of the way and reach inside, and I touch cool metal.

I carefully pull the pistol out of the drawer. It feels heavy, awkward and uncomfortable in my hand. I look it over, but nothing looks familiar about it. I wonder if it’s loaded.

Suddenly I hear a clanging sound outside the office. Some kind of alarm. I don’t know if it was from kicking the desk or someone noticing I’m not in my cell, but I have to go, now. I set the heavy gun on the desk and start stuffing the bills into the pockets of the sweat pants. The pain in my foot is fading a bit, so I stand up, ready to move toward the door.

Knock, knock, knock. Someone’s at the door.

“Dr. Tucci?” I can’t make out the voice, but it sounds American. “The alarm’s going off. I need to come in and check on things.”

Damn it, damn it, damn it. Now what do I do?

Should I try to bluff my way out of this?

Can I scare him with the gun?

Or should I try and kill him?

The choice is yours.

Episode Two in Spanish

Episode Two in French

Author’s Post-Mortem

Episode Three – Escape