The Cave [Feburary 17, 1964, 10:30 pm - continued from Night Search for Corpus 2]

[capt-kasya.livejournal.com]

They were still for a moment, in the wake of Major Liadov's query.

Then everyone looked at Imanov.

Isaev had told Kassian that Imanov had gone to a university and studied psychology. That made him the obvious choice in Kassian's book. Kassian hadn't even completed his secondary education before he'd have to leave in order to work at the factory.

Kassian wondered if there was anything in Imanov's psychology books that talked about this, murders committed out of some deep-seated need, fueled by this cycle of escalation that Liadov had talked about.

Probably. It sounded like it happened often enough that experts had coined terms for it, after all, some deeper explanation than merely knowing the difference between having to kill, and wanting to kill.

Comments

[ilya-imanov.livejournal.com]

Ilya remained behind to keep the entrance of the cave, along with Ocelot and the American.

He had to contain a serpent-like desire to strike the sniper, hard, when he volunteered to go off with Andrei. What fucking use would a sniper be in a dark passage with next to no distance? None whatsoever, he thought savagely, not liking what immediately sprang to mind.

He could've volunteered to go, but Major Ocelot had opted to stick to Snake, who didn't seem the slightest bit alarmed at a gun in his face.

He might fool around at the other brass' expense - he had a few trophies from Krauss' office, for instance, as well as a few well-penned comments on his dossier - but Ocelot he had nothing but the utmost respect for.

He wasn't about to leave the Major alone with someone who looked like a wild man, and was apparantly not scared of his commander.

He was regretting it now. It was stupid, given his friend's specialty, but he had felt hurt Andrei hadn't opted to remain behind, with him.

What good would it have done to follow, though, other than making the swelling desire to punch something eventually burst?

Water; bridge. His spirits rose to hear Ocelot report that something had been found - not because he had no pity for the man that had died, but because it meant they were closer to the end of it.

... And, the back of his mind suggested, this meant the pair that had gone off together couldn't have got up to much.

He was given a nod from Ocelot, and he followed dutifully, keeping a wary eye out, for both the American and any signs of the killer still nearby - although he doubted he would be.

Too incautious of this kind of killer, to actually watch people find his twisted artwork - he probably got more of a kick out of imagining the horror on his faces, fantasizing over them stumbling around playing his little treasure hunt game, with pretty, dead prizes at the end.