Current Status

I suppose that, after so long, I should provide you with a status update to confirm that Phillip, James, and myself are still alive and breathing.

Phillip, James, and myself are still alive and breathing.

You will have to pardon the levity there; I have to take comedy wherever it can be found. There is precious little in the way of stress relief available to me in my current situation.

James is drifting sporadically in and out of consciousness. When he is awake, he usually inquires after the location of Miss Waterman incessantly until he lacks the strength to speak. He is running quite an impressive fever: one hundred and four point seven degrees Fahrenheit, to be precise. I would dearly love to be able to take him to a physician, for I believe him to be in sore need of professional treatment as well as some powerful antibiotics, but he has no insurance, no identification, and so on. Besides, both The Cold Boy and The Archangel are fond of hospitals. You will find many of their servants hiding among the personnel there. We cannot risk it. We can only attempt to lower his fever through liberal use of the hotel's ice machine and hope that he recovers.

I say "we" because Phillip has awakened and is recovering. There were several worrying lacerations on his abdomen when I peeled back the bandages to look, but according to him, the wounds are superficial, and I have seen no sign of infection. Granted, my medical expertise is sorely limited, but as he is upright, shows no signs of fever or weakness, and is capable of fully-lucid conversation (and acting as normal as he ever has), I see no reason to worry about him when there is so much other work to be done.

Miss Waterman is still missing. Following her somewhat overzealous treatment of Thaddeus during our interrogation, she vanished, and she has taken the car with her. Thaddeus is gone as well. I can only hope that he has not somehow managed to overpower her and steal away with our only means of transport. Some part of me believes that we dealt with him too easily. There has to be more to the story than what we have seen.

After some reconnaissance work (done, much to my chagrin, by foot due to our lack of a vehicle), we have discovered that we are in the same city that holds the abandoned house wherein we conducted our little session with Thaddeus. Phillip and myself have been back there several times, searching for clues regarding the whereabouts of Miss Waterman and Thaddeus. We found several interesting items, but none of them gave us any clue as to where the two of them might have gone. Every mirror in the house is broken, and the glass is scattered over the floor. The restraints which we placed upon Thaddeus have been removed, though the chair is still bolted to the floor, and there is no sign of them anywhere in the house. Every book in the house is entirely blank. Upstairs, there are two bedrooms: a master suite, entirely normal, and a child's bedroom, full of marionettes. I believe that I may have realized what this house was to Miss Waterman, and why she failed to mention it to us before.

Phillip and I are attempting to develop some means of procuring medical treatment - or, failing that, antibiotics - for James. As of yet, our ideas are very few and all have an exceedingly low chance of success, but I will not give up.

Miss Waterman is not here. Phillip has never been a leader. James is unconscious and appears to be dying. It is up to me to find a way out of this mess, find Miss Waterman and Thaddeus, and get us out of this mess. Or, at the very least, as far out of this mess as Runners can ever be. I am not going to let these "Fears" claim Phillip and James as well.

And, if you are reading this, Thaddeus, I will not let you have them either.