There Ricter was trying to save it but here, it wasn't ever a nice place,  but it's not fallen from law and order and run by the Sons of Salem. There's still plenty of homeless people to help,  but it's no longer in a state of anarchy. Maybe that way I can focus on ending homelessness instead of protecting the homeless. My stuff was all here as promised,  Borker was waiting as usual.  He had been well fed. I need a Harbinger who will dog sit more often. There's something different about this place though,  the supernatural isn't well known here like it was where I came from.  There's no Sons of Salem,  or OWL, or Offr, it's very different here. The Harbinger,  The Talent,  said I was going to be big here, even alluded to old friends being here. I called Dr. Starter, Lawrence, and Krissy Furbelow, there all here but seem to think they always were... something nags at me though.

I keep them ready, though—same as the mask, the coat. Habit, I guess. They say when you let go of something long enough, it stops feeling like a part of you. That hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it never will. Maybe I don’t want it to.

I should be out there. Someone’s always dying in the dark, and I used to be the one to stop it. But I go alone now, and that’s not how it’s supposed to be. We were a team. I was never meant to hunt alone.

I walked past a missing person flyer today. Didn’t stop to read it. Didn’t want to know.

Still, I wonder. If I take another job—another Contract—will I find a reason to hunt again? Or will it just be another ghost I can’t save?

There's still the old touchstones; Borker, Laurence, Dr. Starter, even Kitt. It's been months since the surgery they funded to help me breath, yet I still have the old mask, sometimes I even put it on when I'm at home with Borker. The home they helped me find in that poor town of Goshen.

I feel more at home in this one, safer and more able to make a difference. The old one was too far gone, but it felt like it needed me more.

Maybe I need this one, this world. In that old one I kept wondering what happened to you, but here I'll never find out if something awful happened to you.

...

Maybe that's better...

The first Slasher’s blood felt like justice. The Contract’s payouts just feel like… numbers. Have I stopped caring? The Contract’s Harbingers upgraded me greatly since it began. My fists crack concrete. My skin stops bullets. But last night, I woke up and my teeth were bleeding black. Is this what she went through before she disappeared? Or is this unique to me? Maybe this is why she sought her grandfather's medical company and his aid? I found her old coat in a pawn shop. Left it there. She’d hate what I’ve become. Sure, it wasn't literally hers, somehow I could smell the difference, but it was the same style, same brand, even the same size. I know I'm nowhere near Darien Connecticut where she lives now, if she exists in this new world at all, but the resemblance was otherwise uncanny. That last Contract, it's left me wondering just who I've become, and how far it will go...