A New Goal

James is gone.

I suppose that this comes as a surprise to precisely no one, after his last message. I wish dearly that I had been there to help him when he awoke, to do something to change his mind. I do not know what he was talking about when he spoke of the price that Thaddeus paid, though I can guess.

If what James said about The Archangel swimming in his veins is true, then the Eleventh Plague that Thaddeus inflicted him with is nothing less than one of the entity's alternate forms. This is... troubling, to say the least. Is it a true disease, with varied modes of transmission, capable of spreading from person to person without their knowledge? If so, then there may be no way to combat it. Or is it more like a venom of some sort? I hope for the latter, and the fact that it had to be inflicted upon James by Thaddeus' knife-wound would seem to indicate that. But it is not concrete enough evidence to reach a conclusion.

And then there is the matter of Thaddeus' allegiance. From James' last message, it would seem that he serves The Rake. And yet he possesses, or at least possessed, the ability to inflict upon others the torment born of The Archangel. What does this mean? And what message did he have to pass on to us? He has not contacted us again since leaving that comment, either via the comments here or through the mirrors.

James, on the other hand, has been busy. Or, more accurately, I can only hope that it is James, and not The Rake itself, that is responsible for our latest troubles. We are still incapable of leaving the hospital, with Aqualung stalking the hills outside. But someone in here with us has begun murdering the patients.

Surgical implements actually make for quite useful tools of murder, it seems. Three of them have died during the past few days. And each of them has had the word "surrender" written on the walls of their room. I am sure that I do not have to say what was used in place of ink.

I have my gun at the ready, as does Phillip. If Thaddeus has changed his mind, then we have no real out at this point. We are going to have to run, and keep running as we did before. We will have to hope that we stumble across some way to save Miss Waterman, or some way to end this claimed "war" over myself without condemning the world to the mercy of one of these entities.

But, right now, we have something more pressing to deal with.

James, if you are still reading this, I am very sorry for what we have to do now.