Titan

Who Are You?

If you're Jim McNulty on the night of his fight with Titan, you are rage personified. But you are trapped inside of yourself because your body is so beaten and bloodied that you cannot unleash that fury physically. On the inside, you are thrashing through the rooms of your mind, knocking over tables, breaking windows, smashing bookshelves, and tearing down doors.

You go to places that were once happy, where good memories lived. But these memories only infuriate you because they remind you of what you used to be: weak, small, and without control. And they remind you that you were once whole, with a family, friends, and a body that didn't shed its skin like a snake.

No matter how much you destroy, everything remains. You still used to be Jim McNulty: son, friend, and student. But now you're Bone, a hideous experiment designed by people who hide in the dark. They won't go into the light, so they send you. And with all the strength and power that you have, you still failed. Your old friend still lives. You hit him as hard as the hate in your heart would allow, but deep down you know... You have been friends too long to not know if he was dead or not. And besides, you share his gift with him. The faint humming that speaks to your friend speaks to you, too, but yours is corrupted and violent. You know your friend is alive because every place he hit you burns with an unquenchable fire. His death would extinguish it, but the agony still plagues you. Eric lives and you suffer.

You fear what Beth will do when she sees you. You're covered in clotted, dark blood and chunks of your skin are missing. You're not stupid—you know that you'll never be healed again. All of the pain that drives you into yourself is focused by the single goal of saving your sister. Your life doesn't matter because it never did. Your parents washed their hands of you when they sent you away. You've always only had yourself. But Beth is not part of that. She never spurned you or treated you badly. She is the one person who looked up to you. Who loved you. And now she needs your help. For defense. For salvation. She'll understand.

Eric said that these people hurt his sister, Sarah. You don't know if that's true, but there is a part of you that wonders. Something in you remembers a time when that information would have mattered. It doesn't seem to now, though. No. All that matters is killing Eric.

Yes. Killing him.

Trying to take him alive was your first mistake. You held back. You remembered what was and not what is. Eric does not care what happens to you. That is what you tell yourself as you assail the walls in your mind, enraged that they will not fall before you. You remember hearing these things somewhere... in the dark... at night... like a voice had whispered them into your ear for hours. But that's not important. The part of you that resisted believing is now weary. It is tired and wants to rest. What remains is sure that it's true, so you believe it. That's all that's important.

If you're Jim McNulty, you think about all of this and more as you fade in and out of consciousness while surrounded by evil men in the back of a van.

* * *

The Steele's front door swung open with a twist of the knob and a little push. It had been unlocked. Something stank like dead fish. The floor was slippery and the mens' shoes squeaked. No one inside seemed to notice.

A bundle of blankets on the couch cloaked the target. The two men crept further into the house and peered around the corner down the hallway. A muzzle flash erupted and the first man's head rocked back in a spray of red drizzle. Someone had noticed.

The dead man's partner fell back, dodging the crumpling body, and fired a few rounds down the hallway to cover. The surviving gunman climbed back to his feet and angled to get a shot down the hall.