Ethereal Pages


Bandit
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Chapter One
I am a private investigator, my work isn't exactly legal, but I never really get in the way of the "real" detectives so I'm never really hassled. Sometimes I solve some crimes, sometimes I don't. When I do I make an "anonymous" phone call to the local police station. They usually know it's me, well, not... "me" per se, but they know where to send the money anyway.

So if I never get any credit, what's the point, right? Well, the police force here is on the lazy side. There are several firms just like this one that do the same thing, they are our competition. If we solve something and let somebody else take the credit, we are usually given a nice sum of money from that person. This sort of thing leaves a paper trail, so you need somebody who's good with the money and documents to cover it up. The police don't provide us with this service.

I have a partner, his name is Darien Brunsk, officially he is the owner of the firm, I guess, but once again, the firm isn't exactly legal. He does all the paper work, whenever a name is needed his name is given. I am a phantom, I work behind the scenes. Nobody knows about me, they only know Darien. I intend to keep it that way. If something ever happens, I don't get in trouble, only Darien does. Which is fine, because he is incompetent. He does next to nothing. I don't need him. I never tell him this because I enjoy being the man who doesn't exist. It gives me comfort.

Why do I do it though? Well, I get to live here, and I get something to do. Something to make me feel like I have a purpose. Darien takes the credit, Darien takes the money... But that doesn't bother me, what would I buy with money? More shit that I don't need?

Since the accident my life lost most of it's meaning, this is the only reason I still have for living. Well, legally I'm dead. I guess you could say I faked my death, but I didn't exactly do it on purpose... I'm just going with it now. It works well for me being the man who doesn't exist.

Chapter Two
Seven years ago I lived in a small rural community, I was driving home from work when I became one of the twenty victims involved in an eleven car pile up. My body was thrown clear through the windshield. Everything for about an hour after that was just a blur, I was able to walk, and I just... Wandered away. My body was obviously never found, and because my car had become a blob of melted metal along with all the other cars in the pile, they assumed I burned up, and declared me dead. Along with fourteen other people involved in the accident. I hitchhiked into the city, to the airport, and then ended up here. If you asked me why I did that now I wouldn't have an answer. My head hurt, I wasn't thinking straight, just acting. To this day my head hurts, on and off, but it's still pretty annoying. I would go to a hospital, but the real Darien Brunsk has a picture on file, and he looks nothing like me.

Darien is pretty short, about 5"4, with brown hair and a face with no noticeable features. I'm... Well, I don't really remember. I don't look in a mirror much. My day consists of waking up, eating something, investigating something, going to bed. If I have nothing to investigate I just stay in bed. I live in my office, Darien lives in the building but not in his office, he has most of the house to himself... I just have this room. Not that I want anything else, it's a pretty crappy house anyway. Darien keeps me hidden, this sort of thing is all he's good at, besides being an asshole. Nobody but me and him know I exist. I can only imagine how much of a mess it would be if I were ever found out.

For the past year I have been investigating one thing in particular, a series of bank robberies. It's a very different way of doing it, this person doesn't go for the vault. What they do is lock the doors to the bank, kill everybody, take the money behind the counter and anything the customers have on them. He'll usually time it for when somebody rich looking is using the ATM machine, after the person punches in the password he goes to work. He's hit seven banks and ninety eight people in this area, in one year. All the banks are under massive security, it's a big mystery how it's pulled off. One would think it takes a group of people, but any witnesses there have ever been state that it's only one man. He moves quick, and he moves quiet. I suppose it's easier when you don't have to deal with hostages... but... That still doesn't justify his way of doing this in my mind, and this sort of thing usually doesn't bother me, but, I've never seen anybody this cold blooded in all my life... You know, I don't care how skilled he is. With that much security on the buildings... It's a god damned conspiracy.

As sick as this may sound, I was pretty thankful when this new case opened a year ago. Before then it was pretty quiet... Simple cases, things the police could solve themselves, and they were few and far between. This lasted for two years, I had nothing to do, and Darien had no money, it was a pretty hopeless situation, I was almost going to get into another line of work. It's getting out of hand now however. I need to stop him before more people die.

Chapter Three
Eight. He struck again this morning, I'm going to investigate. When I arrived, it was his classic scene. Lots of bodies, and lots of chaos. The count is now up to one hundred and twenty five. There's always one bullet hole per person, he must use some kind of smoke to create confusion, gets close enough and takes the person out. Security can't just shoot randomly, they might hit other customers. Or at least... That's how I'm thinking he does it, maybe there's another way. I don't care, it's damn amazing. The police always know who to let behind the tape. "Darien" is one of those people. So I always get to see this first hand... I've never really found too much that would ever help me though. Except today.

I picked up the gun and examined it. For some reason a familiar thought came over me, I don't really know why, but the gun just seemed familiar... fuh... ah.. my head.. I hate this. Well anyway, It seems to have a primitive silencer. Most of the noise a gun makes comes from the gasses that expand after the shot is fired. By drilling several holes in the barrel of the gun you make the gun a lot quieter, though it also takes the speed of the bullet down quite considerably. Either that, or it blows half your arm off. But he seemed to know what he was doing, he appears to know quite a bit about this stuff.

The gun was placed rather obviously, as if he's toying with us now. But whatever, I got it, and I am now one step ahead of everybody else. I can't really do much for fingerprints myself, sure, I have the files of pretty much everybody in the city... I can thank Darien for that. But even if I find a perfect match, it's not like I'm the police. If I find the perfect match for the fingerprints, I can't just call the person up and tell them to come over. To the police they have no choice, but to me they can just say "fuck off" and hang up. This is my dilemma. Sure, I could call the police and say I need them to do a fingerprint check, but if they get it then they're one step closer to solving the mystery themselves, and that shouldn't happen. What I have to do is make it seem like I'm the police. It isn't hard to do, Darien and I dress like detectives, use fake identification, and use this to get a room at the station, you would be surprised how easily they fall for it, the police and those being questioned.

Well, four different people came up. Five, but I don't count, I should have put gloves on before picking it up, oh well, it's not like this is a professionally done job. I have the names, addresses and phone numbers of three of them, but one is missing. This is going to add difficulty, but maybe I can get enough information out of the other three to prove use full.

Chapter Four
All went according to plan, we have the room, we have people convinced... Once again. Mr. Abercrombie was a big man, broad shoulders, his head looked too small for his body. I opened the first interview with your basic starting line,"Hello Mr. Abercrombie." He replied with a not so smooth line, but at least he was to the point, "Yeah, hi, so what's going on?" he said. So if this is how it was going to be, I'll get to the point too... "Have you ever seen this gun?" "...I see a lot of guns, nothing makes this one stand out, so I don't remember." replied Abercrombie. "You see lot's of guns?" "Yes, I own a gun store." "Do you? So you might know who you sold this to?" "I don't think so, I sell a lot of guns." "Do you not have any way of tracking who you sold it to?" "Well, if they pay extra I let them remain anonymous, most people do that." I sighed, for somebody who owns a crooked gun store he sure doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut "...Why would you offer a service like that?" "..Err... ...Well, even if I had took down his information he could have used a fake name anyway." "Do you not have to run a background check before even letting them have the gun?" "Uh, well, yeah, probably." "...Uh huh..." "Well, shit." This Abercrombie guy wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even if I wanted I couldn't do anything about it, so I made it look like I only didn't do anything because I have more important things to attend to. "You can leave now." That was useless.

Ms. Reinard was a small lady, she looked middle aged, and she just seemed too... innocent. I was very curious as to why she would have ever had her hands on this gun. "Hello Ms. Reinard, how are you?" "I'm fine thank you, yourself?" "Well, I'm ok, but I'll be a lot better once I find this person. Anyway, have you ever seen this gun?" I slid the gun across the table towards her, she looked at it and gave me the first positive response yet. "Yes, I think I have." "Ok, would you mind explaining to me the situation?" "Well, I clean rooms at the main street hotel, I was cleaning a room one day and I found a gun on a dresser, I picked it up and looked at it, I couldn't imagine why somebody would just leave it out like that for somebody to find. Then I realized that it wouldn't have been a good idea to pick it up, I put it back on the dresser and finished cleaning the room." "The hotel would have records of this person, would they not?" "Yes, they should." "Do you remember what room it was?" "Yes, 401. And it was two mondays ago." "Ok, thank you, you've been a big help. You may leave now." "Ok, thank you." This one went well, one more to go.

Mr. Levy stepped in and sat down, smiled, and said "Hello." I think he thought he was in trouble, so he made it look like he had nothing to be in trouble for. He wasn't very good at it, he exaggerated it too much. "Hello." I said back, then, as you could probably guess, I followed with "Have you seen this gun?" His eyes widened, but then he quickly tried to calm down and said "No, no I haven't." "Are you sure? Your facial expression says otherwise." "What? No. I haven't ever seen it. Can I go now?" "No. You can't." "Ok." "So if you've never seen it, could you explain why your fingerprints would be on it?" "My fingerprints? No, there has to be some mistake." "There isn't a mistake, with the fingerprints anyway. Lying to me is most definitely a mistake." "I'm not lying! I have never seen that gun before in my life!" "You arren't making this very easy for me. All you're going to do is hold us up, because I'm going to get something out of you eventually." "... I haven't, though." He moved back a little bit in his chair. "Look me right in the eyes and tell me that you have never seen this gun before." He stared right at me, but his facial expression soon changed, he started to breathe heavily... Is my face that frightening? Or is he just now realizing that he's not a very good liar? "Ok... Fine... I've seen it. But I didn't do anything." "Why did you lie about it for this long?" "I... I don't know." I sighed, and asked him where he had seen it. he said that somebody mugged him on the street, and he tried to push the gun away. He was probably lying, but I didn't want to spend any more time with him at the moment, if I still need to talk to him after checking out the hotel... Then I'll call him up again. I dismissed him. Wasn't very use full, but at least we got something.

Chapter Five
As usual, Darien did nothing. Useless. I guess I shouldn't say that... He has his uses, but when it comes to the actual investigation I do everything. I'll just go to the hotel by myself, Darien isn't going to help any anyway.

I walked into the hotel lobby and talked to the man at the front desk, showed him my... "Identification" and he printed it all off for me, I also got Ms. Reinard in crap for not reporting the gun in the first place, but that was her own fault... And probably better for me, and ultimately the case that she didn't.

So now I had a name and a credit card number. I looked up all I could with the name, but got nothing... It's as if he doesn't exist. Though the same name was on the credit card, so it couldn't have been fake... Unless the credit card was fake... But... don't they have ways of checking for that? Wouldn't it be hard to make a fake credit card that's still valid?

Damn... Nine.

I walked accross the street and noticed three FBI vans. FBI? It's gotten this big? Well I continued on, until I noticed three of my rivals, and two policemen being handcuffed. What the hell? Was this a setup? Well it doesn't matter now, if I get out of here and three of my rivals go down, then I've just gained another advantage. Hopefully they don't get all the cops.

When I came home one more was parked outside the house, along with three police cars... I just kept driving. I'm sure they knew Darien was in there, and as far as they know he's the only one.

Apparently the crooked police at the station didn't go as quietly as those who I saw being arrested. Some already existing tension between the officers, plus the FBI happening to come in at a bad time led to a classic Mexican standoff. Two police and an FBI officer were killed, the other officers were all arrested.

This... this was a disaster. No Darien to balance the books. No home to work and sleep in. No money to keep me going. What now? Do I get a real job? I can't get a real job, to get a real job I would have to be... legally alive. To be legally alive I would have to come clean, or at least make up some story as to why I remained dead all this time. That would be a tough one to think up.

I need to keep investigating this, I just have a... feeling about it. A feeling that that gun was left there for me, that he has this all planned out. A feeling that this is something personal now. I also need to find somewhere to live. I don't have to eat much, and I'm sure the few dollars I have will feed me for a few weeks. I don't have to worry about after that, because by then I'll have found this bastard and I would no longer have any purpose. Then I can just end my life, it should have already ended seven years ago, I'm just lucky to have these extra seven years.

I guess I'll be competing with the FBI now, and no longer have any of those little advantages I once had. So this is going to be quite a bit trickier.

Chapter Six
There was this place on 21st avenue, I've gone by it quite a few times and it looks abandoned. If I live in the basement and keep the rest of the lights off in the house, then nobody would ever know I was there. It's perfect. I would have to ditch my car, and sneak in and out of the place, but that's fine. I don't really need to leave much anyway.

What a nice place. I saw two broken windows and I didn't even look. What if this house belonged to some old widow that nobody knew who died in her sleep? What if she's still here for some robber or squatter to find? And kids are throwing rocks through the windows? I've heard of more respectable things then that. The basement, however, was perfect. More then I could ask for. It was a mess, but there was an old cot and an old table, that's all I would ever need.

It's been a long day, so I went to bed right away. It must have been around six in the morning when I was awoken with one of my terrible headaches, and somebody standing over me. "Good morning." he said. Shit, this house is still occupied? He followed with "You're a hobo now I see." "I... what?" "You have no job, no money, no legal records of you being alive... You're squatting in an abandoned house for God's sake." Well... At least I know this man isn't the owner... But... who is he? "Who are you?" "Who am I? I think you have some idea. We've been looking for each other for quite some time now." There's only one person I've been looking for, and I'm pretty sure he hasn't been looking for me... Why would he have been looking for me? "Why were you looking for me?" "Well from that question I guess you've figured out who I am." "Yeah. I guess I have. Why have you been looking for me?" "Well, I guess I haven't really been looking. I've known where you were all this time. I was just waiting for a good time to confront you. I figured now is the right time." "You didn't answer me." "Yes I did. I changed my mind, I said I haven't been looking for you." "...That doesn't help me put this together." "Well if that doesn't, why don't you come outside with me?" "...Sure."

I opened the front door and I was confronted by an FBI agent. "Mr. Brunsk, you are under arrest for one hundred and twenty six murder charges, money laundering, and eight armed robbery charges. You have the right to re-" Well now this was an interesting predicament. I... I don't know what's going on, so, naturally, I run. I heard a few gun shots, but none of them hit me before I darted out the back door. This was not good. They had me surrounded, so I ran into the cellar door which led to the basement. The man who woke me up was there "Look, I know you probably want to get out of this. And I know you didn't really study the place for good escapes. Well, you didn't, I mean, you didn't do it consciously. But I know a way. It isn't pretty." I didn't care, and I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but I followed him anyway. He led me to a big pipe sticking out of the wall. "Just break this and crawl through. It's old and weak so you should have no problem. You'll end up in a septic tank, but it's better then ending up in prison." Either we worked fast, or the FBI worked slow. But I got in just in time, the other guy wasn't so lucky however. I don't know what happened to him.

I ended up in the septic tank a few yards behind the house. Most of the people in the backyard had gone into the basement, so I managed to get a good run. Luckily enough the tank didn't seem to be used in decades.

After running for awhile I met up with the bandit again, I don't know how he got out of there, how he got ahead of me, and why he was there, but that didn't matter. "Why do they think I'm Darien, why are they giving me your charges, why are you following me, how did you get out of that basement, and whose this extra person they're charging me for murdering?" "You are; you deserve them; it isn't possible for me to not follow you, or for you to not follow me; I didn't have to; Donald Levy." "....I..." "Yes." ".....What?"

But then, just as everything was starting to make sense, I was tackled, handcuffed, and thrown in the back of a van.

Chapter Seven
He wouldn't leave me alone, he was sitting beside me in the van ride to prison or wherever we were going. "Why do you think I let me catch me?" "...What?" "Why do you think I made it so easy for you to catch me?" "I assume part of me felt guilty." "Ha. Unlikely." "Then why?" "I can't reach my full potential until you come to grips with yourself. Too much of my time was being wasted on investigating myself." "...Do you have any idea how stupid you, er, I sound?" "Listen, if you keep doing this all your going to do is confuse yourself. Just shut up and accept it." "....Accept what?" "That you are me, I am you, and I'm not done yet. So with that said, you're not done yet." "...I'm being arrested. I don t think it would be too easy to escape." "Just wait. You know what you're going to do." "...I do?" "If I know you know." "....Yeah. I guess."

"...I'm Darien?" "Well, not exactly. You arren't Darien, but Darien is you." "I don't quite follow." "Darien is your invention, your phoney personality. You gave him all the proper identification, he has all the documents, birth certificate, social security number, bank account, everything. Why do you think Darien was never of any use? Darien was never there." "...How many of these personalities do I have?" "You don't know." "You've seemed to answer a lot of things I don't know so far." "You knew the answers, you just needed to think about them a little." "...Uh huh..."

"...So... How do I pull the robberies off?" "Gas." "...Oh."

"Why did I murder Donald Levy?" "A few reasons." "Such as?" "He knew our face, for one, something you don't even know." "...I do so." "What do you look like?" "Uh..." "Yeah. He was the man I laundered my money through, he knew where I got it, he knew who I was, but he would never identify me because, well, the whole business is dealing with criminals, and I was business. He didn't know my face anyway, I always had it covered. Time went by and I came to realize I didn't need him, we had quite a few arguments, and exchanged a few threats. Despite the protection he had he was getting pretty worried, he knew I was a man who knew how to get through things. We had a little struggle once, that's how his prints came to be on my gun. You pulled a stupid mistake in the interrogation room, when he noticed who it was he thought you brought him there to kill him, but then he realized you were just insane. So you see we had no choice." "Well, fine, that's great, but why do you kill everybody else?" "You can't take any chances." "So? Increase the amount of gas, wouldn't that cost less then all the bullets?" "Probably, we just like doing it this way. It screws with the feds, and makes people paranoid and scared. This is what we want." "Why!?" "It's easier to get what you want from people if they're scared for their life." "Wouldn't they just stay away from the bank?" "I don't mean those people. That just means we have to rob more banks." "...Oh."

So... What about the credit card? How did I pull that off?" "You didn't. All the records are yours, and are therefor mine. I know I wanted you to figure it out, but that wasn't a good time. It was just after I made the anonymous tip to the feds about this whole private investigation thing. I figured I would wait until after that to let you come to grips with this, it would otherwise just complicate things." "...You did this?" "Yes." "Why?" "There were too many people going after me, belive it or not you werrent the person with the most information. I had to get rid of them." "Ok, but, the name on the credit card wasnt mine." "It was a stolen credit card, I just removed the person from your records to confuse you a little."

"...I don't want to do this." "Yes you do." "No, I really don't." "Why do you think you still have the gun?" "Evidence." "Yeah, right, then why do you have it on you now?" "I... W-What!? How did it slip past the feds?" "Why do you think you're so uncomfortable right now?" "....Oh... Shit...." "Shit? Yeah, exactly." "It wouldn't have been very hard to get another gun." "Well we're going to need it now."

"Aim it through the bars, it may be difficult, but you can do it. Pick off the one in the passenger seat first. The driver seat second. Do it quick, before they know what's going on. And grab the wheel quick, before we crash." "...I wish I could just tell you to do it." "You're good at this sort of thing, belive me." "...Maybe. But I don't think I could kill somebody." "I can." "That's different." "Well, unless you want to go to prison, you'll do it." "Maybe it's better that I do go to prison." "I won't let you. If you don't do it I'll find a way to make you do it. I own as much of our mind as you do. So just make it easier on yourself." "....Fine. But, wait, can't they hear us talking?" "What, you think we're talking? Why would we need to?" "...I guess so." "Hurry up, we're almost there." "...Wait... How do I grab the wheel through the bars?" "You're going to have to go around." "...Dear God." "Stand on the rim off the back, swing with this side window, and into the drivers door." "...That's easy for you to say." "Hey, I've gotta do it with you."

Chapter Eight
One hundred and twenty eight now. I'm surprised I pulled it off. I guess it was inevitable that the police behind me figured out what was going on, and there was no way I was going to out speed them in a prison van, so I guess it all comes down to how good of a driver I am. "I wouldn't." "I would." "Well now that's just contradictory." "Yeah, well, whatever. We have no choice." "Maybe not."

The only chance I have is to confuse them, so I did a lot of short turns and took a lot of routes they wouldn't expect. This led me to a freeway... No good. Whenever you watch a cop show, what happens when the driver can't go anymore? Well, they get out and run. It never seems to be successful, but maybe they just don't air the ones that get away. So I got out and ran, climbed the wire fence and hopped over. I think I cut my hands up a bit, but... oh well. I didn't look back, but I knew I was obviously being chased. I dashed through some trees, and ended up at another fence. I hopped that one, ran through some traffic, climbed the fence at the other side, and ran some more. I don't know, but at one point I just stopped thinking. It all became a blur. My head started to hurt, that's the only part I remember clearly.

I woke up on a hardwood floor, in what appeared to be an abandoned office building. My not so better half sitting in a chair, as if he were waiting for me to get up... But I guess he wasn't. "Where are we?" "185 92nd street." "...186 92nd street is the biggest bank in the city." "Yes." "...They know our face now." "Yes." "We should leave the city after this one." "Maybe. But we'll worry about that after." He took some gas bombs out of my pocket and put them on the floor. "Where the hell did these come from?" I got the- ...You got them in your sleep, I guess." "Oh. You still do things without consulting me?" "You consult yourself. But it will take awhile before we become one." "...I see." "Well, get up. We're going."

Chapter Nine
It wont be as easy to simply walk in, as I usually do, as people know my face. So I just smashed the side window and threw them in, waited a few seconds and jumped through. ...Uh-oh. The doors are locked. The gas did not go off. What the hell happened? Twelve security officers are pointing guns at me, so what do I do? I grab the nearest person to me and hold a gun to their head. I saw myself doing quite a few things in the future, but never holding somebody hostage.

People were screaming, police were coming, I was screwed. I yelled for everybody to shut up, and for the guards to drop their guns and slide them to me. It worked. I suppose they know from past occurrences that I mean business. It didn't take long for the police to surround the building, they had something going on over the megaphone. I don't know what it was, probably the usual dribble they always say. I moved into a corner, trying to get away from any windows. They asked me if I had any demands. Demands? I don't even know what the hell I'm doing, as if I could think of any demands.

So what was this going to lead to? Well, nothing good. But I suppose if I were going to be able to get... anywhere... I would need to make some demands.. but... what would I demand? A car with enough gas to get to the border? I don't know if that would work very well. And I don't think they would accept freedom as a demand... I'll just put my hands up, hopefully they don't shoot me as soon as I let go of the hostage.

Chapter Ten
"You shouldn't have done that." "I could have used you back at 185 92nd." "I was there." "You weren't any help." "Just like Darien?" "....Right..." "Where the hell did you get those gas bombs?" "The same place I usually do." "They didn't help." "I noticed." "So what now?" "I would imagine we get in a lot of trouble." "Right. ...By the way... Who did the fourth set of prints on the gun belong to?" "Probably the person who manufactured it, and probably somebody from another country." "Well... That would explain it."

We were in a little white room with a table, much like the one I used to interrogate people earlier. A large man walked in and sat down. "Good evening Mr. Brunsk, I am your appointed attorney. Well then, it appears you're in quite a bit of trouble." I suppose there really wasn't any security in creating that false identity... Why did I do it then? I guess just to appease myself. "Yes, it appears I am." "There may be a fraud charge added as well, the picture and stats on your drivers license don't look anything like you. That would make one hundred and twenty eight murder charges, eight armed robbery charges, fraud, and money laundering, they're going to drop the armed robbery charge that wasn't successful." "Ok." "How are you going to plead?" "Innocent for reasons of insanity." "Yes... Good idea." "We're going to have to work on getting a psychiatrist then. The rest should pretty much take care of itself. Assuming you are in fact insane."

"I know you aren't Darien Brunsk." "You... how?" "I knew Darien." "...I thought I conjured him from thin air." "You really are insane then. The picture matches him." "...How would I... have..." "Found him?" Yeah... And what are the odds of..." "Of me being appointed to you?" "....Yeah..." "To be honest I requested this case when I saw the name and the picture. I knew it wasn't him, he's been dead for seven years... But... I just wanted the case anyway." "Seven years ago... How... How did he die?" "A car accident. A pile up actually. Fifteen people died... He was one of them." "...Oh....Ok." What... Was this? If I stole Darien's identity to turn into somebody else, then why did I steal the reason Darien died...? And where the hell was I seven years ago?

"So with all that behind us. What's your real name?" ...What... was... my real name? I don't even think I know... Who am I? "...I... don't know." "You don't know your name? Well this isn't going to help. I can't continue calling you Darien." "...No... I guess not." "Well I'll leave you alone for now, but you better have all your thoughts gathered by tomorrow." "...Ok..."

I guess it made sense. They wouldn't just declare me dead at the scene, there would still have been traces of my body. There was a big mirror beside me, probably the place they watch me from... I've seen lots of mirrors in the past seven years... Why did I never look in one? It's right... It's right there. Why won't I look in it? Was I scared I wouldn't see who I think I am? Well you know what? I'm going to die not knowing. I'm going to die as the phantom. "What are you doing?" "Making a rope with my clothes, I'm going to hang myself." "Yeah, sure, have fun." "One last question..." "What?" "Do you know who I am?" "Sorry. I've already told you. I don't know anything more than you do."