Dark felt sick. He felt dizzy, lost and confused. Ever since seeing his wife, things had lost focus, everything had soft edges, nothing mattered.

Except her. She was so sharp it cut and it cut deep. He didn't really know what he'd expected. In retrospect hoping for a happy reunion, a cliched running into each others arms with kisses and tears of joy was naive. His stomach lurched as his guilt bubbled within him like bile. He'd made this happen, he'd left her. He was a fool to have expected anything less than what he'd received.

She screamed and suddenly the pain in his broken hand flared up, as if it secretly shared her pain. He watched her mouth move silently and then jumped as she emitted a piercing, high-pitched rasp and he finally knew. He knew what they had done, what he had done and he wished he'd died, wished he'd stayed behind and been executed by her side, wished anything other than this.

He remember a quote from Harlan Ellison's story.

"Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of wafer thin printed circuits that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate."

He burst into tears and ran out of the room. Kai dodged out of the way as Dark burst past.

"Dark? Dark! Are you alright?"

Dark reached the bathroom and retched violently into the toilet bowl over and over again, every wave of vomit being followed by a crushing aftershock of shame and guilt that only started the process all over again until his throat was raw and dry and he was left curled up, fetal, sobbing into his hands at the foot of the porcelain throne until he reached unconsciousness.

The last thing he heard was "Christ. Help me get him cleaned up."

Clean. He'd never feel clean again.

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Author guidance for This story

This Author's Guidance is updated continuously... please take the time to read it as there is VITAL information there. Who is who, who is where, that sort of thing.

********BEFORE POSTING*********
**READ THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS**

This helps you get a feel for the story. I know there's a lot, but if you don't you're going to miss stuff and we will loose the flow of the story. Until now we've done a good job and there haven't been too many glaring errors and they've generally been fixed quickly.

The basic premise is similar, creative/artistic minds are the outcasts of society. They're shunned, even hunted by the rest. And we, a literary society known as the Protagonizers, have formed a resistance movement.

Come as you, come as your protag-self, and let's stick it to the man!

********SOME SUGGESTIONS********
---> Mark all the posts relevant to your particular storyline as you go along.
IE: Asheyna and Afroferret are travelling together, I've (Asheyna) marked all posts written by us so I can find them easily and refer to them when writing.
---> If you're going to write and include other characters in your chapter there's two great options:
* Leave the ending open, allow them to respond to what you've introduced
* Confer with them before committing them to a course of action
* Neither of these are necessary, just something to consider when writing as you may be unaware of an ongoing plot-line that is developing behind the scenes between other authors
---> Last but not least, aim for continuity, whether it's character personality or events in the story.

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The Story So Far (July 2)

Sly - on the move with Pvt Addams

*Unknown Hideout - New Safe?*
Darkliquid, Robyn, Kai, Gwen, Archi, Druidx
-Dru appears unable to speak... is she having a change of heart?

Raven - formerly Bluejay, met up with her father, heading to Eastern Canada to get new ID?

Asheyna and Afro - trapped by LitPol on a train
-Afro just revealed to be former agent, has be betrayed them?

*Bard's Hidout*
Brenden, Spockeh and crew
-the Bard has been helping Spockeh et al? can he be trusted? is he really the Bard?

*In a hospital*
Faltarego - unclear as to what's going on around him... no ID to tell the hospital staff who he is.

*RIP*
Bluejay's guard
Eloosive
"Bluejay"
Jack

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Further Guidance:
The Protagonists are a non-violent group. They stand for creativity and free expression. While they have no clear set "mission" they are attempting to remind people what it used to be like. Showing people beauty in art, literature and music.

After their main meeting place, The Safe, was compromised by Spockeh he was instructed to blow it up (taking a few LitPol with it). A new building is now needed for the Safe, as well as a method to alert other Protagonists as to it's location.

updated Jul 2 '09 by Asheyna