[ WP ] Secure your own mask first before helping others .

It had been weeks, months, years. I did not know anymore. I had been searching for so long. As I strode around the ruins of New York City, where the last Masks where supposed to be buried under the rubbles, I could not help but look back on the tiresome journey I had accomplished so far. Many encounters, many losses, more losses even. After what we Bare Faces like to call The Beginning, humanity suddenly became individualistic. The rare troups of BFs I had crossed path with during my epic journey were bound to dissolve, the process often occurring before my very eyes. The power of attraction of the Masks does not go well with groups of people. In the end, there is only one person who can have it. The others fated to begin the cycle again, or disband. 
 
 I had followed the rumors, from Boston to Chicago, from Chicago to Philly, from Philly to New York, and back, so many times. Everybody knows that the quest in long but not vain, at least for a few of us, the lucky ones. But there are n't many BFs left now, at least not active. Most of them have taken to the Undergroud, this restricted facility the guys at CERN were secretely working on. Its size unfathomable, its magnetic properties making it a safe haven for BFs everywhere. I knew the access points to join it, but I also knew I still had Mask fever. I could not give up. 
 
 With the disappearance of most of the competition after all these years, the hunt had become easier, but somehow even more dreadful. Walking around the wastelands, searching for the magnetic signature of the Masks with the detector, exhausted all day, lonely all night. The Masked Ones still roam certain regions ( but nobody can confirm it ), but they have mostly deserted the wastelands. Most of them now rule over empty areas all over the world, their power unlimited, their subjects inexistant. For some reason they're alone. 
 
 I was going along Madison Avenue, one of the few streets still manageable on foot. I knew my detector would not last long, but I did not care anymore. A rumor had started, not only the usual one about a peak of magnetic activity in this or that region of the world, causing all BFs still active to gather there. I had heard from someone that the detector was useless. That we did not pick up any of the Masks' signatures. No, it was something else, something that could change the whole hunt for ever if I could prove it, for myself. 
 
 It's said that the Masked Ones are not all devoid of interest for the BFs. It's said that the ones that did not become omnipotent and power-crazed chose to stay attached to the places they lived in before they ascended to another state of conscience, before the symbiotic Mask turned them into selfish, immortal, mostly harmless Gods on this earth -harmless as long as you did n't live in an area they ruled over. Someone said only a Masked One can find a Mask and grant it to a BF, and that the transitivity of it all first began when they excavated the first Mask inside the Mojave Desert. Our first God, a woman, was said to have started the first lineage of Masked Ones. How this information had remained unknown to the rest of humanity so far was baffling, and I did not put all my remaining eggs in this crazy basket. But the Mask historian I had talked it out with was pretty convinced. Before the fall of all civilizations, before the Mojave black hole, the disappearance of Japan and the complete destruction of all electronic apparatus, this man had tried to follow the pattern of the Gods' appearances. He had cross-referenced all Ground Zero events, even the most ridiculous ones, to the background checks on the people known to have become Masked Ones. He found pairs, sometimes triplets of Gods originating from roughly the same areas. Masked Ones created Masked Ones, according to him. I had nothing to lose, and I had heard crazier theories. 
 
 My coming back to New York, my hometown, had not been uneventful. One of the last troups of BFs had sheltered me for a while, before going mad and ripping itself appart, its members succombing to the awful paranoia the newly imposed world order ( or disorder ) and surperimposed crazy magnetic fields inevitably triggered amongst groups of two and more human beings. The Masks completely screw the brain's chemistry, and the initial instinct of grouping ourselves for survival is sure to slowly transform into a greed-infused paranoia over the remaing Masks, even if the group had swore to never take part in the quest. Poor bastards were probably contaminated by my mere presence. Nobody really knows how it works, which is why people still try to form troups. Guess I ca n't blame them. Now I was walking along the path I used to take to go to work, unsure of what I was going to find. I knew there were other lone BFs in the area, New York is never really deserted, even if the magnetic fields are supposed to overlap even more near important Ground Zeros. And New York had its share, between the tsunami and the asteroids rain. But it was my last chance, I did not care anymore that the fields could make me even crazier, greedier. I wanted to know, or I'd die trying. 
 
 I had been watching my detector closely for about a mile, the readings becoming more and more erratic as I pressed on down Madison Avenue. The street was eerily soundless, which is not that surprising, but I could feel the tension in the air. Night was falling fast, so I decided to give my detector a rest, and find a shelter for the night. After a few minutes looking around, I found a relatively intact bookshop: a good find, books were n't pillaged, and they made good fuel for a much needed fire. It did not take long before I was able to fashion a rudimentary chimney inside the bookshop by tearing a hole in the ceiling, my camouflage fabric extended onto the window case, so as not to attract any unwanted BFs in the area. There are n't a lot of aggressions between us, but even though I have been hunting a Mask for years, I somehow managed to remain more sane than the others. I was just about to throw a best-seller into my improvised bonfire when a voice suddenly rose from the darkness surrounding the poorly lit area around me.
