The Moloch: a setting sourcebook for KULT

Chapter 10: Getting Away With Murder

When he comes to he lies in a bed in the barracks and someone is shouting at the soldiers to wake up. The others quickly rise and dress while Kurt finds that the leg has been neatly replaced, with only a thin line like a tan line which a cord tied around the leg would leave on his upper thigh. The number burnt into his arm is still there as well. He decides to play along, completely befuddled, and the soldiers are assembled and told by the camp leader, who turns out to be Josef Bern in younger years, that the camp has to be evacuated for security reasons, all prisoners are to be shot, and all rumours that the enemy was closing in are insubstantiated and punishable by death.

At that time the enemy has already circled the camp and attacks it immediately. Kurt is taken prisoner along with some officers; most of the artifically created soldiers are too dumb to surrender and have to be put out of their misery.

Kurt finds himself on a lorry next to Josef on one side and another officer on the other. Both Kurt and Josef have their old clothes back, and Josef is old and sick again. The officer next to Kurt whispers to him to kill Josef, then they would all be free to go. Kurt fights with his conscience and the idea of killing someone, but telling himself it was all a dream anyway he finally strangles Josef. The lorry goes into a tunnel and comes out on the other side as the train they had boarded at the beginning, with Kurt sitting next to the dead (and obviously strangled) Josef and six other, oblivious people in the carriage. The doors hiss open and they are at the station they have been going to in the first place. Kurt screams 'Oh god, he's dead' and the other passengers look at the two of them, warily. Kurt runs from the train.

Peter meanwhile awakes in a hospital bed, a nice young nurse at his side. When he asks where he is she tells him that he is at Dr. Schilling's clinic and has suffered a breakdown in the lobby the day before. The doctors have not found any reason for it save for his undernourished condition - and there is this strange number burnt freshly into his arm.

Kurt runs through the streets but the dimensions seem to stretch while he has the impression of actually running backwards (his sanity has slipped enough for time and space to behave like crazy on him when the GM desires). Next thing he knows he finds himself at the glass doors of Dr. Schilling's clinic, seeing through the glass how a naked and bloodied Peter breaks down in there. But in his disoriented state Kurt rather locates an entrance to the underground and soon falls on his bedstead, exhausted and half-mad.

Peter is released from hospital soon after he awakes and also finds his way back. Both of them still have their burn marks and Kurt still has that line on his thigh. They learn that Josef Bern was found dead, some say because of a sickness or old age, some say murdered by the Management.

Actually the previous events had been no dream. Josef's fever has opened a gateway to his personal purgatory which had been waiting for him to die. The PCs were trapped within it along with him. His death has set the PCs free but Josef is now trapped in his personal hell. At least for the time being...