<em>Listen well, best beloved, while I tell you a story.  It is not a happy one.<br/><br/>Once there was a humble man, unimportant and boring.  In almost every way, he was so banal as to be dull: he had no ambitions beyond earning a small raise and a Christmas bonus every year, loved his wife and two children, and was content to live in a small house with a white picket fence and keep to himself.  His job was boring--he was an accountant for a small company,  Nothing exciting ever happened to him.<br/><br/>Until one year, one horrible year, when everything came undone.  He found an error in the books that would have cost the company almost everything.  He corrected it...and was fired by a corrupt manager who had been siphoning off money for years.  Packing his meager belongings and cleaning his desk for the last time, he got a call: his wife and children had just died in an accident, and his house had burned down.  All he had left were the clothes on his back and the box of non-essentials--the company's policy on personal effects had been quite strict.<br/><br/>He went down to his car, placed the box in the back seat, and sat there for an hour, staring blankly into space.  Then he drove away in his modest little white hatchback, never to be seen again.<br/><br/>They found the car two weeks later.  It had been left at a scenic overlook outside a little town called Silent Hill.   It had four flat tires, a dry radiator, no gas in the tank, and no sign of the owner, save for one thing: a single Tarot card from the Major Arcana had been stuck under one windshield wiper.  The card was Justice.   Now what do you make of that?</em><br/><br/>+++<br/><br/><strong>First, we must place all the pieces on the board, like so.</strong><br/><br/>+++<br/><br/>Alexander wakes in a run-down motel room with a horrible headache.  It's mostly centered in his right temple, as if he slept wrong and really tweaked his neck.<br/><br/>+++<br/><br/>Zach Smith finds himself in a deserted and closed bar, shot glass in hand, with a hangover that would choke even a Norse god...<br/><br/>+++<br/><br/>Scott and Deacon are being given a 'special treat' by their therapist, Doctor Amee Munigant...a grandmotherly woman of such overwhelming optimism and good cheer that even her most ridiculous ideas meet with little resistance.  It would be like kicking a puppy.  And, sadly, ineffective: her usual approach to the least sign of a patient trying to balk is to nod sympathetically and then go right ahead with whatever it is she has planned.<br/><br/>Today's brilliant idea has been a long ride in one of the Center's vans to a pleasant and scenic outlook just outside a small resort town.  The plan, of course, had been to drive into town and do some sightseeing, but the tunnel is closed due to some major construction...so while Doctor Mungant checks the map to find an alternate route, hiding her frustration by an even greater show of sagely serenity, the three are free to look around.<br/><br/>There are a number of other cars here, but no other people.  There's a trail leading down into a pine forest, so perhaps there's a beach or a picnic area down there or something.<br/><br/>