Mayday Plays - Doomed to Repeat Ep. 16 - "Homeward Bound"

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

After a stressful few weeks together, the agents of Operation PERENNIAL decide to take a break. Each of them returns to their normal lives with varying degrees of success. Samael slips further into his obsession with hypergeometry while Tuck gets honest with her wife, Ruhi. Boomer does a favor for Mr. Pleasant and gets more than she bargained for. Warp tries to learn more about Galworthy farms and their connection to her past while Hyde heads back to nature to find herself. Finally, Merit is made an offer he can’t refuse. None of the agents are ready for what or who is coming next. This episode features elements from the scenario “A Victim of the Art” by Dennis Detwiller. TRIGGER AND CONTENT WARNINGS: Violence, blood and gore, death, specifically of a child, body horror, mental illness, cults and religious trauma, PTSD, manipulation, panic attacks, the topic of Covid-19, drug and alcohol use, mentions of a break-in, screaming sound effects, mentions of stalking, gore-y sound effects Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this podcast are © Mayday Roleplay, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property. CAST OF CHARACTERS • Aaron - Agent Samael • Allegra - Agent Tuck • Amanda - Agent Boomer • Caleb - Agent Merit • Eli - Agent Hyde • Zakiya - Agent Warp • Sergio - The Handler • Vince of Black Project Gaming - ??? MUSIC & SOUND EFFECTS • Post Sound Supervision: Sergio Crego, Eli Hauschel • Mixed: Eli Hauschel • Original Music: Aaron A. Pabst, Joe Sanders • Soundstripe (soundstripe.com) • Glitch Machines (glitchmachines.com/) • Soundly (getsoundly.com/) DELTA GREEN LINKS • Delta Green (http://deltagreen.com/) • A Victim of the Art (drivethrurpg.com/product/278578/Delta-Green-A-Victim-of-the-Art) MAY DAY ROLEPLAY LINKS • Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/maydayrp/) • Patreon (https://patreon.com/maydayrp) • Twitter (https://twitter.com/maydayroleplay7) • Mayday website (https://www.maydayroleplay.com/) • Twitch (https://twitch.tv/maydayroleplay)

Doom to Repeat is a Delta Green actual play podcast with violent themes in adult language. For a full list of trigger and content warnings, please check our show notes before each episode. Listener discretion is advised. Hello and welcome to Episode 16 of Doom to Repeat. I'm Sergio, your handler. I'm Erin A. Papps, and I'm Agent Samuel. I'm Allegra. I'm Agent Tuck.

I'm Amanda Dominic, and I'm Agent Boomer. I'm Caleb, and I'll be playing Agent Merritt. I'm Eli, and I'll be playing Agent Hyde. I'm Zakiya, and I'll be playing Agent Warp. It's a new year, and we here at Mayday are looking forward to bringing you a lot more content in 2022. If you've enjoyed Doom to Repeat, Orpheus, or any of our campaigns, consider subscribing to our Patreon, where $2 gets you access to our Discord server.

$5.00 and up offers lots of behind-the-screen content, including artwork, exclusive one-shots, and scenario outlines that allow you to run our original Delta Green and Orpheus scenarios at your table. Your contributions help keep Mayday alive and growing, so thank you to our patrons, both present and future. This episode contains elements from the scenario A Victim of the Art by Dennis Detweller. Now, let's begin. I can say with all the pride that a perennial agent can muster that it wasn't us this time.

We did not cause and exorbitant amount of violence, or property damage, or put anyone in harm's way, at least not directly, this time. That credit belongs to Dr. Thornbill, Dr. Hooks, and, by association, Marsh Industries. Thornbill acts to dose Samael with reverb, again, to solve a case we have nothing to do with, and Samael, the ever-present help, agreed. I'm not someone who enjoys confrontation, but it's very clear he takes inspiration from the book he shaped his life around, and I have to wonder if he ever found out what happened to the main character halfway through the book, because he agreed to risk the return

of the Preda for what really came down to a hunch. Fuck, a hunch, I'm sorry for cursing. I just worry about how confidently they can coerce people into whatever they decide is a priority. They got ahold of Mallory so quickly. In what instance has this kind of experimentation yielded any kind of sustainable results? Sure, we gave them the answer they were looking for. It worked.

He saw something. But when an entire organization is more desperate for answers to cover their own tales instead of the people they work for, maybe it's residue from being raised in a commune ran by radicals, but if this company were not absolutely vital to my plans, I'm getting ahead of myself. When Tuck told us her interests in California with the dark man and finally closing the loop of what exactly is going on between her and Hooks, despite the fact that Hooks doesn't seem to remember anything, I will keep a healthy amount of suspicion. And I believe Tuck.

I haven't spoken to Dr. Hooks personally beyond a high. I don't think that we would have much in common, except I know that look of moving one step closer to a conclusion. It looks like hunger and Hooks looked hungry, but so did Tuck. All of them have things to lose. I mean, Tuck has a home, a real home that's warm and full and... Rue and Boomer has a whole fiance that she is honestly correctly keeping us from knowing much about.

And Sam has his congregation and Hyde wouldn't tell us if we asked her, but I know she has something, someone, and Merritt has a dog, I don't know, I don't know, and I don't really have anything, but I think his suggestion of taking a month off is a wonderful idea. Some peace and quiet would do, would do well. And hey, I have an unfinished mural in my kitchen and potentially have to find a new therapist because they have been compromised in some way. Last night, you all came to the collective decision that perhaps it was time for a break. Only a week has passed since you all first met each other in Michigan, but in that time

you have collectively experienced enough trauma to last someone a lifetime. You say your goodbyes to one another, and you put perennial on hold for the next month. While the operation has claimed at least a little bit of sanity from all of you, most of you are returning home with little to no bond loss. For now, you have saved off the inevitable, and your time at home will be largely beneficial. If any of you have put check marks in adaptations either violence or helplessness, and you are not already adapted to those things, you may clear those check marks. But now that you are home with your loved ones, living your lives outside of the program,

things feel different. Your awareness has shifted, and with it, the world seems like a little bit less of a trustworthy place. You see this distrust extend into online communities, things like Black Lives Matter and QAnon. Then, at the end of April, you all notice on the news, or read on the web, that the Pentagon has formally released three videos of unidentified aerial phenomena, encountered by US Navy pilots a few years prior.

While it's not definitive proof, it is the government's acknowledgement. For a moment, you wonder if this isn't some kind of program scheme. You half expect to get a call to help in a cover-up, but days and weeks pass, and barely anyone in the public really pays it any mind. Then again, the world is still quite distracted as the COVID pandemic worsens, and by May, over a million cases of infection have been confirmed in the US. This sensitivity you have all gained extends to all parts of your life. Every bit of news makes you do a double take, every interaction with government and corporate

entities makes you second guess, and at the end of the month, a man by the name of George Floyd is murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin. And when the country erupts into protests of anger and frustration, you are all silently haunted by a notion that perhaps the unnatural that you have committed to fight against is somehow seeping its way into the world, corrupting it, making things worse by its mere existence. Even with all of this, and honestly the end of the year still so far away, you all manage to press on. Now, before we begin our individual home scenes, I need one question resolved.

What is done with the items that were left on the Challenger 605? There is the gun case, the reel-to-reel, and the bone-handled knife. Well, my thought is that since Semi-L and myself are staying in New York, perhaps before we go to our respective home scenes, we could stop by a nearby green box in New York and keep it there until we decide to reconvene in California. I can take the books with me. And I believe you said you were taking the bone-handled knife, right, Warp? Yes, I still have the knife.

Okay, so the gun case and the reel-to-reel is being put in a green box or a storage unit. Mary, you find a place to store these for now. Let's start with Semi-L. Senator Jones, you have lost the most in your bond scores, so I think it's appropriate that we start with you. What is Semi-L's month like? Well, I imagine that I will have no interaction with my daughter based on what happened the other day, the day before, whenever that was.

As far as bond interactions go, really, I intend on spending my time at the church with the congregation, taking care of people in quarantine. The bond loss with your congregation needs to be quantified in some way, unless you have a better idea. Maybe something that would obviously happen is the director of the parish or of parish operations would probably pull you aside and not really scold you, but kind of mention that they were concerned when you had disappeared a week or so ago, and he kind of infers that if you're going to leave again, you need to let them know and kind of schedule it.

How much bond loss did you lose with your congregation for our points? So how much is left now? Ten. I think that it would be reasonable that you just get the impression that they are tightening the leash a little bit in terms of you just being able to leave whenever you like. As for Ruth, certainly not calling her is a part of this loss of the bond. I honestly think that Ruth's foster mother would probably have called foster care, and maybe they don't call you, but they're now aware that you kind of have reached out when

there was not really any discussion about you being interested in that and before that kind of stuff. The hive, the strip club. Do you interact with any of them at all? I don't think so. I think especially after the shit that went down with Dr. Thornebill and those grizzly murders and everything, I think Samuel is, I think he's a little nervous to get involved with that in any way.

You probably feel a little bit more nervous as well because you do see on the news that next day a piece about a nice mansion in Long Island where they were hosting an illegal party that was shut down by the police. You even see footage of Tony, the owner of the restaurant kind of being placed into a cop car. I think that one day during this time off, you would get a call, probably on your personal cell phone, from Tony. I think Tony would probably as casually as he can ask where you were that night.

What were you up to? Yeah, I also sent him like a weird text message or voicemail or something the other day that said, hey, your party's canceled before any of that happened. All the more reason that he contacts you and says, well, what do you mean by that? What was that about? I just heard something from a local cop, something about them being on the lookout for parties and stuff, and I didn't want you to take any extra heat. Go ahead and give me a persuasion roll just to see how he takes this, 10 out of 20.

He sounds not completely convinced, but he is sort of lets you off and says, well, you know, keep those tips coming, keep letting me know maybe a little more detail next time. That way I don't get arrested. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Do you interact with Scarlett? Do you reach out to her?

I don't think so. I think the reason being is, I think, Sam El talked to his kid yesterday, and I think that just the weird combination of everything, I think he just feels a little gross about everything and he's not quite there right now. Me trying to be in the mind of Scarlett, I would probably be a little offended that you haven't reached out, especially after finding a mangled body at the scene. She's probably a little bit distraught, and this probably symbolizes some of this bond loss to the hive as well.

You pay attention to the news and you do see that there is a resolution to this issue on Long Island. A few days after you're interacting with March and the experiment, you read that there is a shootout on Long Island resulting in the death of a man named Mark Dangler. Seems to be just kind of a regular Joe. The news mentions that he leaves behind his wife Eloise and son Thomas Dangler. But the news eventually mentions that these murders have stopped. They seem to have gone away and by the end of the month they are focusing on other things.

And you get the sense that although you weren't intimately involved with it, you did help and it seems like it was resolved. And for that reason, I will allow you to regain one sanity. So generous, so generous of you. Had you been more intimately involved with the case, you could have maybe regained more, but you did your part. What do you want to do as a home pursuit during this month off? As far as the listings in the book go, I would, I don't know if we'd call it like study the

unnatural, but I specifically want to take everything that I learned about the elder sign from the 1984 files. And I want to see if I can spiraling off from that, you know, through the collection of books that I have or other libraries, colleagues that I have access to, um, try to do some research and see if I can dig up anything else that is similar to the elder sign, specifically looking for terms like, you know, hyper geometry and any associated terms. The most logical thing is for you to make either an occult or a natural role. All I got to do is get less than an 80 and to 79.

79 out of 80. Wow. Very good. Very good. Good. So first we have to reduce one of your bonds by a D4, symbolizing the amount of time that you are spending studying the unnatural. So here's the thing, it's going to be my daughter, okay, should probably burn that

bridge anyway. So one, uh, one of out of four. All right. So it just goes down by one to nine, dad of the year, happy father's day. So you start doing your research and there is research online about symbols of power, runes of power. And now that you have studied the elder sign, you kind of know what to look for. You know the trappings of a ritual, the trappings of hyper geometry, and most of it is useless.

And that's when you come across a kind of announcement in one of your biblical communities, one of your biblical scholar communities. There is an organization called the Library of St. John the Beheaded. It is a library based in England, but apparently it is doing a tour of the U.S. with some of the very old tomes and stuff that it has. And they happen to be outside of New York and you suspect that you could go and speak to somebody there and possibly get a look at some of the things they have. Hell yeah.

If I can, if I can do that, you know, I'm not sure what their protocol with COVID and whatnot is, but yeah, I would love to do that. If you speak to somebody, you're able to get access to what they have. You find out that they're probably going to be there for most of the month, which means you have most of the month to visit them and kind of go over what they have. And you look at some of the books they have, most of it is just kind of random occult stuff, nothing that really you haven't already seen before. But you eventually come across something called the narcotic manuscripts.

It's called P N A K O T I C. And what this is is a kind of a wide range of strange lore that has been gleaned from the wisdom of what the book explains as ancient masters who exist beyond time. The people that work at the library explain that the narcotic manuscripts have been broken up into three sections. They have one of them somewhere in the world is another part and the book itself explains that the other third is found in a place called the dreamlands, but it doesn't really go into details to what that is.

You take the time to study this book to go over it. It is very unusual. It covers the history of things that seem to have a mastery of time that isn't quite easy to digest. It has a history of creatures that are apparently human, but live underground and worship strange gods. But that's when you finally start to notice trappings of ritual hyper geometry. And you come across two things that stand out to you.

One of them is a ritual known as the vorish sign whose origin lies with this ancient subterranean culture that calls themselves the vormive. And this sign is supposed to be able to pierce the veil for a moment and to see the world as it truly is beyond the facade and to see things hidden that are not usually seen. Finally, there is one other ritual that is said to have been used by the wise ones out of time to keep their secrets, to obscure memory. When it takes a month, because of the study time, you need to make two D4 sanity rolls and that is how much sanity you will lose for studying this text.

So roll one D4 first and you tell me if you want to project it and then roll the other one. Hmm. My sanity is getting low, so I roll a one, but I would like to project it if I can. Okay, so I lose four willpower. The willpower is reduced to four and one of the bonds is reduced by four. Okay, I'll project onto the hive and now let's roll another D4. Okay, that one is a two.

Again, I would like to project. Okay, go ahead and tell me the results of the second die. Two. All right, so that much from your willpower and two from another bond. That one's going against Ruth. I think that is all that we need to do for studying the unnatural. The only other thing that if I had time, Samel would, since he has been having trouble sleeping, he would like to go through the process of trying to acquire some ambient or something

similar. Okay, it would make sense to me that you could get a prescription. Is that how you, the route you'd like to go? If I can get, yeah, if I can get, yeah, if I want to try that first, I think I'm just a little skeptical that a doctor is going to prescribe a 35 year old man more than three or four ambient. Right, right. I think this is a standard expense.

Either make an accounting or intelligence times five roll to see if you can kind of do this. 33 out of 80 is a success. Okay, so explain to me what it looks like to get a consistent amount of ambient, but it's a somewhat legitimate source. Yeah, so I mean, I imagine Samel will go to his general practitioner and explain that he's been experiencing some severe insomnia. And I think that in order to get the amount that he's looking for of having, you know, a consistent supply of a narcotic, I imagine Samel is going to have to get a little tricky

and manipulate the doctor to a degree. Maybe even like saying that you'll find a psychiatrist and you find like just the shittiest psychiatrist who just gives you the pills without even really asking you much about it. Yeah, right. You have a disorder which is insomnia and I think regularly taking sleeping pills to do this will add an addiction to these sleeping pills. So you at the end of every night, we will assume that you have to take these pills or else you will not be able to sleep.

Makes sense. Towards the end of the month, your church is because it's mostly empty, you know, during this time, they decide to do some not renovations, but some like deep cleaning. And one day while you're having a meeting with the parish, they mentioned that the cleaners found within the rafters a thumb drive and they hold it up and it is the thumb drive that you have been looking for. Yeah. So then during the meeting, I'll just raise my hand and say, actually, yeah, I've been

looking for that. Okay, you take it back and you now have it and you now are able to use your computer to its full extent. I think with this amount of bond loss, one other thing happens. You are just doing your thing at the church and a big burly looking Italian man just kind of walks in and before you can even think about it, he just clocks you. What the hell? And I think that the parish at large probably starts freaking out and they call the cops

and by the time anybody knows what's happening, he's gone. But I think you've got the message from Tony that he was not happy with you regardless. Geez, man. You will probably have like a really bad black eye the next time you see the agents. So just keep that in mind. No one's going to no one's going to pay it any I'm sure no one will notice. I'm sure no one's going to bring it up. So good fun time with Samuel during that month.

Let's go over to Tuck, Special Agent Haley Moore. Haley, you have experienced at Cicada. I think sufficient trauma that it warrants a sanity role. I believe you've already made that role to determine whether you gain a bond with Merritt and Warp. I have the bonds now. So I think that I think I failed the sanity, but I got the bonds. Right.

So the only other thing that we did not do is that because you have gained these bonds, you need to roll a D4 and subtract that from a current bond. Oh, no, that's mean. Fuck. All right. One. OK, you lose one and you have to reduce it from one of your bonds. Probably my dad makes sense.

I think you you reduced his by one last time. Yeah, he's he's been the only one I've touched. Sorry, dad. So talk to me about your month off. And I guess specifically, let's start with what does it look like losing to bond loss with your father? You know, when you've been away from home for a really long time and you like you've got your whole like life and your career

and like your life away from your family and then you come back to them and you low key revert to being a child or like a teenager. I think it's a little bit of that, but I also think going back to Mia's case and the fact that her dad never really believed her on what actually happened. I think that's just like very fresh and brewing. And she's pushed those feelings down for a really long time. I think she tries to call him because she knows he's alone and they just end up like bickering and sniping.

And it's not like an all out verbal brawl, but I think it's their like clipped and then she feels guilty. So she tries not to be clipped and then it just like builds and builds and builds to just like really stilted, awkward conversations that neither of them really knows how to handle. Now, now, technically, I do want to say at the very beginning of the first arc, you did lose one point to Boomer. I did. I did. I did lose one point to Boomer.

We do have to address that. Yeah, because we I was I was kind of like trying to play it in like tension that we had during the first arc and a little bit at the beginning of this one. And then when we came back from being at Cicada, I think I was trying to like mend that a little bit when we had our like conversation. Oh, did you can you accidentally leak my name to somebody? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did do that. I did say Max once he did.

And then I'm like, yeah, that got that that gripe me a little bit. I'll say, yeah, yeah, maybe you know, like when we talk in the car, maybe it's that of like, hey, you fuck yeah. Yeah, maybe by the time you drop her off, you don't feel any closer with her. It's kind of like, damn, we kind of just left it on a professional level again. Yeah. But the rest of the month is relatively nice with with Ruhi. She's certainly very happy to have you back.

Yeah, I think it's a lot of just like wife time, spending time together, however, the big thing I wanted to, which might be insane. I think there's one day that Tuck wakes up and she rolls over and she says, hey, let's go on a hike. OK. And that's very for Tuck to say, because Tuck doesn't go out in nature if she can help it. And I think she packs them both up with like a picnic lunch and they go to Scots Run, which is a waterfall like half an hour outside of D.C.

And she's going to like take both of their cell phones when they get to the waterfall, turn them both off, stick them in the backpack, put the backpack within eyesight, but not close enough that audio would pick up anything kind of close to the waterfall. So it's noisy. Yeah, like or like we're close to the waterfall and the backpack is like away from us. But I, oh, man, this is this is scary. I think she's like, I think she's like this, just like nervous

and like just kind of fidgeting. And you know, Ruhi, she she's like, calm down. What is it? You can tell me anything. You know that. OK. I really hate lying to you. And I want to give you the option of knowing what I actually do before you answer. I need you to know that this is dangerous for you and for me, not just because the people I work for are dangerous,

but also because the knowledge of what I do and what I deal with at work is literally enough to drive people insane. And if I hadn't known about it from when I was a kid, I I don't know what I would be now. I think Ruhi oscillates between you can tell me anything. And if it's really that dangerous, should I be hearing it? But I mean, you've got her interest, you know,

when you bring something like this to someone, they I think Ruhi would feel that it knowing what you want to tell her would strengthen your relationship. And maybe it is for the best that she is aware of what it is. I I I'm tired of lying to you. And I think maybe knowing this might keep you safe. But there's a chance that knowing this might put you in more danger. And I I'm not going to make that choice for you. I tried to make that choice for you once before and I came back anyway,

because I want one good thing and you are the best. You are the best thing. And I I'm selfish. I am an inherently selfish creature. It would be the responsible and the selfless thing to let you hate me and leave. And I I can't I can't. She calms you down. She puts her hand on you and she just starts kind of probing little by little.

Haley, do you tell her about the program? Yeah, I think so. Damn it. Do you tell her about Meadowbrook? Yeah, I mean, if she asks about it, that's that's the time. Like because what happened after Meadowbrook was I I we'd been separated for months. And then I had a full fucking breakdown and went back to her. And she and we were together for like two weeks until she was like,

hey, I can't help you with this. If you can't tell me what it is, I don't know how to help you. And so we went our separate ways. And there was a while that we were really tense and like not together again. These questions lead to questions about your current situation. She says, are what you currently on part of this is Alan's broken leg related to this. And she and she kind of she's kind of known about this. Like the the weird shit in the world before, because when I was 16,

after my mom left, I went and like talk to her because I you know, I was a kid and like she knew she knew that I had a sister and she was gone. And she knew that my mom was in the hospital. But I think she kind of references that too. And she's like, do you remember when I told you what really happened to Mia? There's a difference between childhood stories and your wife as an adult telling you these things. I'm going to ask you to make a sanity check for Ruhi.

We'll say that it's 50 50. OK, that's valid. Oh, what are my rude eyes? What are my rude eyes? OK, OK, this is my studies. Thirty four. Wait, hold on. I'm sorry, this is a seven and not a three. It was a seventy seventy three, not a thirty three or a seventy four, not a thirty four. Ruhi is shaken. I mean, never mind the fact that she is processing,

you know, you have ostensibly lied to her in one way or another. But she's able to get past that. It's it's the fear of knowing that you're involved in something she doesn't understand, you don't completely understand. I mean, she failed that sanity role. She's going to lose a little bit of sanity. She recovers from it. But there's something a little bit different.

Every phone call you get every time you're alone, you just kind of notice her being a little bit more present, a little more paying attention to what you're up to. And you're not aware of it. But one day, Merit, you get a call. Orson, when you when you pick up the phone, you hear on the other line, Ruhi, who says, Hi, Alex, it's Ruhi with Haley.

You remember me? Oh, of course I do. Hello, how are you, Ruhi? I'm OK. She is like very awkwardly like checking in on you. But you can tell with such a high human intelligence, there's something bothering her. Ruhi, while I love hearing from you and I want you to know I've been doing my best to keep

what could to keep Haley safe, I have a feeling you called me for another reason other than checking up on our fantastic friend. You're right, Alex. Look, I'll just cut to the chase. That offer of taking care of Haley, I I need you to if something happens to her or if there's something where you feel that she's unsafe,

please just just tell her to go home. Just just tell her to walk away. I know her and I know that she likes to see things through the end. But just tell her it's not worth it and just tell her to come home to me. Can you do that? Brew, I can do that for you and I can make sure that that happens. It's in my best interest to make sure that Haley is safe at all times.

But can I ask you something? Sure, yeah. What prompted this call? Make a make a persuasion roll. OK, a persuasion roll. I should have told her not to tell anyone. I should have told her not to tell anyone. Oh, this is why we don't do it. I succeed with a twenty one under fifty.

Ruhi, you know, it's it's almost as if she has this incredible weight on her shoulders. And when you ask that question, she kind of breaks into a quiet sob. And she does her best to hide the details. But you get the gist. She has been told by Tuck, something she probably should not have. And she is struggling with this knowledge. And she just says, please, please, Alex, you can't tell her that I told you this.

She she trusts me. I don't want to break her trust, but I just didn't know who else to go to. Listen, Ruhi, you did the right thing in coming to me and letting me know this. I really appreciate your candor and your honesty. I want you to know that this is a high stress situation. This is the job that takes its toll and little bites that amount to something greater and it can eat away at a person. It did the same thing to my father.

I have to tell you, Ruhi, whatever this is, it's something that we can fix. Maybe with therapy, maybe with this time off that we're taking now. I'm going to speak with Haley and see what I can do to assist her. But, Ruhi, in the future, just regard any sort of outburst like this as exactly that. Haley is under an extreme amount of stress during one of the worst pandemics the world has ever seen, and she she can say some things in response to that stress.

Do you understand? Ruhi does seem kind of calmed. It's nice to speak to another person about this. It's nice to know that there is, you know, I guess an organization that that is kind of working on this as much as she doesn't understand it. And you do put her at ease and she, you know, she politely, you know, hangs up and says her goodbyes. I'm going to send a text to Tuck that just says, we should talk in person.

OK, so, Agent Tuck, you do get that text before we address it. You are welcome to, if you have a home pursuit that you would like to roll for, you can certainly do that. Yeah, I think I think having noticed all of those things and like knowing that I've I've given her the option and she has taken this choice and that it's it's a lot to know. I think I'm trying to. I think I'm trying to.

Make this time that we do have together like very special and very like. And honestly, from your perspective, it's probably quite relieving to finally say something. I mean, you had this this discussion with Mallory at Cicada. You know, you saw the the the publicness of March now, you know, opening up to this person you love and then seemingly being able to handle it is probably got to be somewhat of a relief. It sounds like you are trying to fulfill your responsibilities at home.

You are going to roll a sanity test and a success improves the bond of your choice, but probably with Ruhi, specifically by a D6. I've used dice that have clearer numbers on them this time. Fuck me. Sideways off a bridge. Eighty nine. I fail. This reduces the bond by a D4 and your sanity by one. I don't want to. I know you don't want to, but that's the mechanics of the game.

Sergio, I don't want. Oh, but it's a one, so that's OK. Reduced by one, your sanity is reduced by one. And although you spend time with her and it's nice at first, describe how it kind of turns sour. I think it's I think it comes back to guilt a little bit for Tuck, too, of like knowing that she's told her this and she's trying to make it good, but also very like Ruhi knows her, but she knows Ruhi. And like knowing that this is weighing on her

and like second guessing herself and her choice that she made. And just trying not to go back down the path that it was before Meadowbrook, where they didn't talk and it was just bad. And so she's trying to like find how to thread that needle, but she's not doing it very effectively. Is there anything else you'd like to do during your month off? I mean, I'll probably go talk to Merritt because he texted me. OK, yeah, let's feel free to play that out.

Where do you guys meet? Um, I can come to you. OK. You have you have the broken leg. I'll come to you. So I guess you're coming out to my apartment in Ithaca. I'll drive up to Ithaca one day when Ruh has to like do actual work, so I'm not bugging her. I don't think we do it at the actual apartment.

This is probably a conversation that has to be done a lot like the waterfalls drive to a park or something, leave the cell phones at home as much as we can. And then I think we find a very public bench, you know, with plenty of people around. I sit down and I offer you the seat next to me. How's the leg? It's feeling better.

I believe by the time we're out of this month, I'll only be walking on a cane, so that will be an improvement. I should be able to operate in the field after that. Maybe we can get you on with a sword in it. Oh, that would be operational. I could see that. I I've never done anything with the sword, but maybe I could put that in in a month. Got time.

Listen, Haley, you know me as someone who gets to the chase very quickly. So I'll stop with the small talk. I received a phone call. Do you know who that phone call was from? Mallory. Someone much more important and much more in charge of the two of us. Your wife called.

Shut the fuck up. She didn't. She did. That's on me. I should have told her better. I'm in a phase that I would like to call assessment, information gathering. You and I are going to have a conversation now that is very sensitive, sensitive in information, in relationship and in decision making.

Talk, Haley, decision making. I think you're familiar with Haley. You have to tell me why I received that phone call. The program can't keep going like this. We are meant to keep people safe. We're meant to protect. And yet we do that by killing people. That's not how that's that's how you become villains.

And yeah, maybe we're maybe we're doing the right thing, keeping monsters and magic and. Whatever else at bay, but it's it's not. We can't keep going like this. People are going to keep getting hurt, and we're going to be the ones that have to do it. Say I agree with you, Tuck.

Say that I believe that we should be doing the right thing with the least amount of loss of life is possible. Say that I agree with everything that you just presented. How does any of that keep them away from Rue? How does that keep them from calling me? They don't need to know that, you know. Tell me it was for a good reason. It was.

Tell me I don't have to do it. You don't. Anything comes of this. I mean, anything. You understand what they're going to make me do, right? You don't always have to listen to them. I think that's what I'm doing right now, not listening. I think that I'll see you in a month,

and I think that if anything happens like this again, if you think you have to make this call again, call me first. Let's talk. She's the only person that needs to know. And now she does. Yeah, or she thinks she does. Let's make sure that that does not mean

what we know it could mean. As long as you keep your mouth shut, it won't. Hayley. I'm not threatening you. I didn't word that well. I just. I just want to tell you, you're still alive, so I'm keeping my mouth shut.

I'll see you in a month. See you in a month. You go your separate ways. Agent Boomer. Oh God, yeah, sure. Listen. Maxine Parker. Hello there.

You get home and you see your fiance, and she just throws her arms around you and gives you kisses. Likewise. Talk to me about, you didn't lose any bond loss with anyone, huh? No, no, no, no, I did not. So your month is relatively pleasant.

Talk to me about what it looks like, who of your bonds you interact with, and what does that look like? Okay, so I would say for, especially coming home, I am not leaving the apartment the whole day. That's just, I will let all the fan fiction writers deal with what happens there. I will say on top of that,

you have a lot of mail left over. I don't care at that point. Just the next day, but that first day. I understand that. I understand that. That next day, you go through your mail and you do see a letter from the COVID testing, and they point out that your blood type

is very susceptible to COVID, and you realize that's what that critical failure in arc one represents. Shit, and probably I wouldn't have been, I would have said son of a bitch out loud if the fiance was there, which she probably is, she would have found out, and that would have been an interesting conversation.

She, I think one of the days she's with you, she's just like, honey, this pandemic is crazy. I just, I don't know. In the last week or so I've been thinking since you've been away, I think we should get married sooner than later, like as soon as possible, right? Like, what are we waiting for?

Like, you know, with this disease, I just, I don't know. Something's telling me I want to get it done like in a year or so as opposed to like any longer. I, okay. I did not prepare for that, Sergio. Okay. That would have, okay, yeah.

Boomer is gonna go ahead and take that in, because that is gonna be a little bit shocked, but not really, it's, I think it's more of like the scare of everything else. She's gonna take it in, and then especially with what's been happening, and I know she's thinking really rapidly. Okay.

Yeah. You're right. Okay, we don't know how much time we have left here, so let's do it. Okay. Yes. It's May, or it's the end of May, by the time we're done with all this.

What would be a reasonable date to hold a wedding? A little bit of a shotgun wedding? Let's go, let's, let's, fuck it, we're going in. We're at, let's say three months. So at the end of August, maybe beginning of September, you would potentially have a wedding. Do you want, do you want to just fuck off, go to Vegas, or do you want to just-

No, no, no, I want, I want the family there, I just, I just want to do it now. It doesn't have to be big and fancy, it just has to be sooner. Okay. Well, with everything, because it's restrictions, that's my only skin on that, so.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So, this is what we'll do. We can get married as soon as you want. We can just have a ceremony for everybody else later. I think she says, if you're ready to go to the courthouse, let's go this week and get officially married, and then we'll have a ceremony or something. Yes, yes.

I will pull out the car keys, and I will be like, I mean, traffic's light right now. And she just showers you with kisses the whole way there, and you guys, you know, go to the courthouse, and the deed is done. Yeah, on the way, can I text my sister? Sure. So she doesn't, I'm going to text my sister

and my good friend, Evans, but I'm going to text Melanie, and I know she is dealing with a lot of Zoom classes, so she better log off and get her ass down to the courthouse. So we know that you get married to your fiance, Liz. What do you do for the rest of the month with Melanie and Evans, your business partner? With Melanie, because she's doing, she's in college,

so she's doing a lot of Zoom classes. I would say we're going to go around her schedule, so if she wants like a late dinner, we'll all just go to her apartment. If not, it's just going to be like video games, that's our thing, we like to do that together, and just kind of just hang out a couple times, probably get drunk a couple, like a celebratory,

since I didn't have a headnight, so bachelor, sister, night of drunken debauchery, and we just pass out on her couch. Evans, I will go ahead and mainly, I will give him a very kind of vague recap of what I was doing the last couple of weeks, which is government contract. It's actually looking pretty promising.

I'm working with a small team, and it's a little bit on COVID tracking, but it could also possibly advance other tracking. The main thing I'm really emphasizing is, because we are competing with a couple other agencies, we, I may have to go back out periodically, so I can at least try to secure this contract as much as possible, so we can get,

because if we get this, we can literally just kind of ride out for a very nice, comfortable walk. Evans is excited by this news, and he certainly trusts you. If anything, he's actually a little disappointed in himself, and he kind of reveals to you that that client that he thought he had ended up just kind of being a crazy person who was pumping him for information. Fucking, and telling you,

people are always these fucking assholes wasting our damn time. Yeah, he mentions this weird person was asking about you, et cetera, and he just eventually hung up on them, so nothing really came of it. Because I will be, I would say like, because it's right now used for COVID, I know a lot of other companies,

I don't even mention, like Microsoft, Apple, these A-holes are really trying to win up on us, so just be careful, because some of these guys are literally trying to get info on what we have, because what we have is amazing in theirs, it's trash. One evening, you are hanging out with Liz, and your burner phone rings, more like buzzes, like it has a message on it.

It's like probably coming, you know, you probably keep it somewhere other than, you know, in the living room, so you hear it going off. I would have, yeah, like I have like a little workstation, so I would probably keep it near the workstation. You check it? Yep. There's a message on it that says, check the server.

Okay, I'll go ahead and check the server. You use your laptop with the fob, you go online, and just as before as you're kind of in the server, there's a glitch and a little command prompt opens, and something begins to type out. It says, I need a favor, download the following encrypted file and deliver it to these coordinates in Harrisburg.

Do not attempt to read the contents, and there's a little file for you to download. I'll download it. It's just like a file that is recognized by the computer, but it doesn't seem to have any obvious way of opening. You are given coordinates that lead to somewhere in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the message is delivered as soon as possible,

and it's like 7 p.m. right now. I gotta back up my ass. All right, so on, because I do have a separate side computer, I'm going to make sure it is off-network for sure, and I will go ahead and I'm gonna duplicate it and put it on a third hard drive. So basically, I will do what was asked.

I did do it, but I'm gonna create another copy. I will say that as soon as you download it, you check a moment later, and that file's gone off the server. Okay, so you have a copy of the file on a drive. What are you delivering it in, a hard drive? Yeah, because you just got me last minute. All I had was, I have a couple of these,

so I take a simple thumb drive. It just had a bunch of early 2000s music on it. I'm gonna wipe it off, wipe it off, put that on there, and then the other, I'm gonna take a secondary one that has 90s music on it, and I'm gonna go ahead and put the one that I'm keeping, not that it worked the first time. I'm gonna tape it behind the desk drawer end this way.

Does that make sense? So when I pull the drawer out, I'm gonna tape a copy there, but I'm gonna go ahead and I'll say, I have to go and drive something to Harrisburg. I think Liz is certainly perplexed by it, but she's not going to question it. She knows your business is a little off the wall.

I'm gonna say it's to the Capitol building, because Harrisburg is Pennsylvania's capital. I'm gonna be like, it's regarding what I had. My dumb, they just need this stupid thing that I have to go fix. It's a reprogram. I'm gonna go drive it back. It's about, I believe, a two hour or something.

Drive with traffic's a little less. I'm gonna swing by Hershey. Would you like some fudge? That's when you win her over, and you're able to get going. So you leave immediately. It's about a two hour drive from Philadelphia, and you get to Harrisburg,

and the coordinates take you to what appears to be an abandoned mall of some kind. Run down all of the windows boarded, all of the entrances boarded, but you get the gist that the coordinate is in the center of that mall. Okay, I'm going to, I'm gonna call, nope, nope, not calling.

I'm just gonna go ahead and do it. I'm just gonna do it. You find your way, you look around the building, and you do find that there's kind of like a half broken door that you can get into the building with. It's about 10 p.m., so it's pitch black. I'm gonna turn on my iPhone and use the flashlight.

Using the iPhone also to kind of track this coordinate, you eventually come to just kind of the open mall court area, and there is kind of out of place, like a mailbox, like some kind of post box, and you get the feeling that that's probably where you need to leave this thing. Is my face covered up, by the way? Is my identity?

I don't know, is it? I would have hoped so. I would have put like a hat on. I'm not that dumb, like going into an abandoned place by myself and getting ID'd by cameras. Hell, fuck no. I would at least have, I would have put on a beanie hat and like a scarf.

It's not that good, but if that's the spot of the location, I'll just go ahead, quickly drop it, wait a minute, to make sure like no one's sneaking up behind me, and then I'm just gonna try to get the F out of there. Okay, so let's have Vince take over from here. Oh God, I fucked up! I fucked up! Yeah!

I fucked up! Mother fucker! Shit! I knew it! I got married in five minutes! Boomer's gone, guys! Hi, hi, Vince. Hello.

As you take stock of your surroundings, you find yourself blinded by the agonizingly bright beam of a flashlight. The cold grip of panic chills your nerves and creeps down your spine as you realize you've been caught. By who remains to be seen? As all you can see is the faintest outline of a person

on the other end of that flashlight. Someone big. Without warning, the flashlight turns off. You drown in darkness as your eyes are forced to readjust to the sudden absence of light. You can practically feel your pupils as they expand to soak in any available source of illumination.

Dim moonlight streams in through a broken skylight above and you begin to make out the faintest details of a man. This giant of a man before you. You see a battered pair of work boots, jeans on the wrong side of tattered, a camouflaged jacket, a faded John Deere cap, and an unruly mop of white hair running out from beneath it. You can't make out much of his face,

but your eyes are drawn to what looks like a jagged scar running down the left side and along an unkempt beard. He has to be what, 70, 75? It's hard to tell in the darkness, but there's no way you can overlook how intimidatingly large this man is. He stands well over six feet, his neck a granite column of corded muscle.

If you had to guess, you'd place his weight somewhere around 300 pounds, and even that might be on the low side. Age has clearly been unkind to him. The ears battering his back and shoulders in an attempt to break him, but only managing to give him a tired hunch. You suddenly remember to look for his hands

to see what he's holding, to see how much of a threat he could be. Those hands are gargantuan, and you have no doubt that could kill you as easily as the black steel Beretta he clutches in the right one. The suppressor threaded onto the barrel makes it appear longer than you'd expect,

but it still looks comically small in his massive weathered grin. You can't help but think he could have killed you seven times over by now, and at least a dozen times before he made his presence known. Despite his size, his apparent age, the hunched arc of his back, you can't shake the feeling that you're only seeing him

because he wants you to. So, your Pleasant Slate is pet project. Yeah, you got that, boy, you're big. I just wanted to get a look at someone they actually trust, the kind of person who would risk double crossing the program. Well, the way I see it is I am just getting yanked around. I'm just a cog in the piece, so trying to just stay alive as long as possible.

You? Me? Trying to fight the good fight. I can respect that. You know, Pleasant thinks she can keep the peace between us, but one of these days people are going to have to make some hard decisions, and when that happens, we're going to war, and you better be goddamn sure

you're fighting on the right side before the bullets start flying in your direction, because by then, it'll be too late to turn back. Okay, no. It's just, you keep saying like there's, like you said, there's a war going on, but you're asking someone who doesn't even know the players. Who do you?

Where do you stand on this? I work for Delta Green. And you say you guys are fighting the good fight. What am I involved in, then? Let me ask you this. What in Pleasant's not setting you to run their errands? Who do you think you're working for? Kind of just like, I'm kind of taking in,

but I'm also making sure there's no one else coming up. I feel like I'm, like, this is not, I don't want to piss them off, because I know there's no coming back from this. So I just... He holsters the Beretta at this point. Appreciate that. All I know is the program, and Mr. Pleasant.

And to be honest, I didn't even know there was more than one until... More than one what? I don't know, you supernatural sci-fi assassin motherfuckers. You think you work for Delta Green? Well, who do I work for, then? Majestic. Really?

I'm gonna be pissed! I'm gonna, I'm gonna pace for a second. Motherfuckers! Goddamn, you really have no idea how deep you are, are you? Does it look like I know how far? Apparently not! I don't know what it is you fucking do. What does it do for a living?

Like, the commel sector technologies, like, we're literally gonna be the next, like, startup that's gonna kick Apple's ass? How do you not know that? Okay, so Pleasant sent a fucking techie to load a dead drop. That's un-phenomenal. First of all, I am not no genius bar, bitch, okay? What kind of amateur hour bullshit is she pulling me into?

You know what, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Scary? You can call me Charlie. You look like Charlie. Look, Charlie, we all have skills and all that. My skills rely in, let's just say, yes, computer-based, but I'm not a repair guy from Best Buy, okay? Let's give some respect.

Just give it some thought before things get worse. Apparently, I don't even know who side I'm fighting for when really you're right. I'm just the computer person. Well, you do now, and it's on you to determine what you're gonna do with that information. Oh, God, no question, if I have any more questions on Majestic or anything like that,

how would I ever get to meet you again, Charlie? Get ahold of pleasant, do some homework. You're studying green boxes, right? Yep, I could say that for sure. When are you going to Pendleton? We're going soon, soon enough. Start digging, look for Majestic, Magic, Steering Committees, Roswell, all of it.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on Majestic for me, please? There's not enough time to go over everything, but let me put it this way. Majestic are the assholes who thinks they can use this shit. They think they know better, they think they know enough to be able to use it, to harness it, to employ it.

And what's your connection to Delta Green? My connection? No, their connection. Well, I mean, that's, the program is Majestic. Majestic is a program. You guys are just in, so they're private, at least Delta's government. We were government, some of us still are.

Listen, what do you know about March? But what I know about March, it is a tech company that also likes to dabble in that kind of shit. Majestic burned to the ground, March picked up the torch and carried it on, and the program is working for fucking March. If there's one lesson, one thing you walk away from,

understanding, and you better be crystal, goddamn clear on this point, the mission is never over. You don't pass the torch. They just recover it from your corpse. Yeah, I've come to that realization not that long ago. Sorry, it's just a little frustrating finding out that I'm literally a bitch's bitch's bitch.

You think you're the only one? No, I know I'm not the only one. That's the problem. How unpleasant, they were with Delta Green, and now they're with Majestic. I'll let Pleasant handle that. I'm not gonna spill their secrets, but when you've given us some thought,

when you've looked into this some more, this war that's eaten up, you could find a home on our side, you and whoever else you have working for you, and we'll burn them the fuck to the ground. I'll say this, I'm gonna go ahead and I'll take your advice under heavy advisement. Charlie, I don't see why we can't at least be

kind of like Quaintin's frenemies. I think this could be the start of a nice, interesting friendship. Well, you want to be a gopher forever? Hell, you know I don't. If you already know a little bit about me, you know this is pissing me off already. Yeah.

Here, I need to hand you a Manila envelope. Okay. Sealed, let's say. Bring this to Pleasant. Don't fucking read it. Oh, God. Consider this a test. I'll give you my word on that.

I will not read it, and I will deliver it. I just want you to be clear on one last thing. I know there's been a lot coming at you, but I don't want you walking away thinking that this is about good guys and bad guys and we're the good guys, we're the knights in shining armor here to save the world. We kill just like they do, we burn just like they do.

The only difference between us is they think that they can use these things to their advantage, and we know the truth, that this is just going to consume each and every one of us before they're done. So, we fucking destroy it. I think that is something that you're going to find out that we're in agreement on. I'd say I'm surprised, but you probably know that I'm not.

Yeah. Star in the region. BC and you, Boomer. Sarcasticly say later, Charlie, and I walk out in backwards and walk away and breathe very silently, like. Oh. So, Boomer, you leave the mall, you go home,

you open the middle envelope. I am not reading that shit. That motherfucker's following me. I am hella convinced he's following me like a sniper on my ass. What are you doing with that? Because now I'm so paranoid that I'm being followed, especially by this guy.

I'm going to actually put in the glove compartment of my car, and I'm going to... Oh, wait, it's late. By the time it gets back, things are closed. I'm going to stop by a wah-wah or sheets. I will go ahead and still pick up some candies. But there's some stuff you can still pick up. Some shitty candies, not from her sheet.

No, no, no. Well, if anything's still open at that time, yeah, because I'm trying to think, if anything is open late, I'm definitely going to grab some food, but not... How are you resolving this thing with Pleasant? How are you getting her this information? Secondarily, Boomer, you are perfectly aware

that without much effort, you could probably read what this thing actually says. Not yet. Not yet. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead, create another copy on a flash drive using the computer at my office. I'm going to go ahead and go to a security box

that I have at my bank, and I will go ahead, and I'm going to leave it in the security deposit box. And then within that time of the month of... By the time I'm there, I would have eventually taken the second hard drive that was at the house. And I would have put that also in the security deposit box.

And... No matter what you're at, it's fine, it's fine. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we have not rolled for any... Any rolls yet, right? Like, is there... No! No!

So what personal pursuit would you like to pursue in this month? After that, I would love... I would say try to get a little bit back to the swing and things catch up on work stuff, that tedious stuff. Get back to working out maybe a little bit harder because trying to work out aggression, but also in the meantime,

I am going to be looking through VPNs and all that, the information on the children that were unfortunately orphaned from the situation between me and Merritts and try to read up on where they are. I can give that to you for free. It sounds like you're fulfilling responsibilities mostly, spending time with your loved ones, et cetera.

Roll a sanity test. Oh, 13. Nice. That is a success. You can roll a D6 and you will add that to one of your bonds. Oh, a four! Nice.

Yeah, okay. Me and the fiance are good. Wife now. That's probably a good way to legitimize why this is happening. You can also add one sanity to your current sanity. Yes, awesome sauce. Gun.

So we'll say that this whole situation that occurred in Harrisburg is closer to the end of the month, but you had a relatively positive month with your wife and your loved ones. Is there anything else you'd like to do? Can we go back to the children really quick as I did? Yeah, you look them up.

You look them up and they are with loved family members, probably an aunt and uncle of some kind. Otherwise, they're pretty young children so there's not a lot of information about them, but they are still living in the Messick area of Michigan. So I'm going to go ahead and make up like a church group in Harrisburg. That is going to go ahead and make an anonymous donation.

Okay. How much are you donating? I'm going to donate... I'm going to actually liquidate some stocks that I have personally, and I'm going to the equivalent of $25,000 per kid that is going for a trust for education. You are going to donate $50,000

anonymously to these two children, is that what you're saying? Yep. And it's an emotional thing, guys. It doesn't make sense. This is a charity thing that they saw and all that, and it's obvious, but it is going to...

It's kind of like a trust-built stocks for them, for school. This is a major expense, and I'm going to ask you to make an accounting role. Oh, okay, my accounting's not total shit. Yes! 46 out of 50 suckas! You ain't taking my donation away?

It's not the donation I'm worried about. No, it's not the donation you should be worried about. No, it's the fucking NSA! It's the NSA looking for whoever killed it. That's it! Well, we're in deep whatever territory. Oh, boy. Jesus.

So, Agent Boomer, this was a success. However, the stress of giving $50,000 away is going to reduce each of your non-delta green bonds by one. So Liz, Melanie, and Evans must be reduced by one. Okay. Okay, that's fair. You know, probably have to juggle some things around and tell a couple of white lies,

and, you know, the expense of the wedding is now kind of heating you up a little bit more. Oh, I totally blame the add-on. So we're going to start with Warp Next. Joyful Gaze, you return home, and the only real loss that you experienced in the first arc was three points with your therapist, Dr. Byrne.

Yes. Otherwise, things seemed to be okay with everyone else. Could you talk to me about what that bond loss looks like and what kind of it looks like with the rest of your bonds? I think because of the weird call that she received from Gratitude about Byrne calling around, she doesn't believe that Byrne is everything that she says she is.

So it's a lot of, like, really shitty therapy. It's like, how are you? Fine, how are you? And nothing really gets done. She's flipping every question back. And I think she'd probably point that out to you. I mean, she'd be confrontational in a therapeutic way about it. Yeah, I don't know how much...

She probably doesn't tell her anything. I think up to this point, she's been really honest, but now she starts, like, using fake names and sort of, yeah, like dancing around stuff some more. Yeah, and I think that you continue kind of just out of tradition going to these therapy sessions, but more and more Dr. Byrne can tell you're just kind of holding back.

And do you eventually kind of confront her about this, or is it just always just stone walled without a request, you know, an explanation? I think at one point she does get sort of tired of not, like, picking at it or Byrne saying anything about it and is just outright. I think she just starts questioning why she's even her therapist in the first place.

Like, what keeps you coming back to these sessions? Because I know why I'm coming back, but what's in it for you other than money, I guess? Yeah, I think Dr. Byrne would, as genuinely as she can, explain that she does care about you. She, you know, finds it important to help you work through some of your childhood and, you know, trauma. You were, you know, an exceptional case

of somebody experiencing something that very few people do. And she tries to come across as friendly and welcoming and as much as possible, you know, saying you are a patient that I care about. I think she insists on saying, you know, joyful, please, tell me what it is that's bothering you, please. Someone's been calling around to the very few people that I know and love asking them about me.

And I already asked if it was you and you said, no, I'm not a threatening person. I don't fight or really become physical at all, but I'm starting to lose my patience. Dr. Byrne, you know, comes to realize that this is something that has been bothering you. And as genuinely as she's seen she can, she implores you to believe her that she did not reach out

to your sister and she mentions if, you know, she starts asking you if you have any detractors or anyone that may have been falsifying information to try to get information about you, you know, she seems a little worried about you if this is real. I think that that probably makes her laugh because at this point there's a handful of people that could come after her because of what we're doing

and it doesn't even make to try to narrow it down. There's the people that survived. There's people that heard about it on the news that are feeling some kind of way about it. There's the people we've been messing with for the past week. It's a growing list of people, but I don't know. Is this something that you tell her in therapy? Are you being honest about your situation

or are you kind of obscuring what you're really talking about here? She's been honest about everything up until Cicada. I think that was like the last thing. Gotcha. So your therapist is relatively aware that you are a part of something relatively clandestine. Yeah.

I think we should just kind of retroactively make a role to determine kind of how Dr. Byrne is handling this information. This is kind of a free role that I'll give you. Typically you can go to therapy. If you aren't telling her the truth, make a luck roll. That's oh, it's a 66. You are going to lose one sanity, which if you'd like, you can project, but you're

going to lose one sanity as you reach a block, you know, you reach a wall with Dr. Byrne. And it's just not as effective anymore, because now you're starting to hold things back. And Dr. Byrne, you know, believes you. However, I'm going to make a sanity check for the therapist. In fact, I'll ask you to do it. You want to roll under a 50.

OK. That's a 27. She believes your story that you're part of something probably, you know, maybe doesn't completely understand the full scope of it. But we'll say that the most of it is that you've just kind of hit a wall with Dr. Byrne. And that kind of explains the loss in your points with her

as well. What do you do with the rest of your time with your other bonds? Oh, actually, yeah. Can I project the one sanity that I lost on Joel? On Joel. OK, roll a d4. OK.

Two. OK, you are not going to lose any sanity. You are going to lose two willpower, which by the end of this will be restored back to full, and remove two points to Joel. Could you explain to me how that manifests? What does it look like to lose a little bit of a bond to Joel?

I think the only reason why she even talks to Joel is because of his farm and his sheep. So maybe at one point, it would have been him like putting things on the side for her because he has some understanding like this woman just really needs it. Maybe that stops like because she comes back with wool that she did not buy from him.

So I think there might be a little bit of beef there. Either way, her supply is limited now. Joel is still up on, but you're right. Maybe he calls to check in and you're a little short with him one day or something. And what kind of personal pursuit would you like to explore during the month? I'm going to try to get a leg up on this gal-worthy stuff

without actually going to Kansas. So I want to use connections at the NCTC to find out. Find out any of the survivors from the original Church of Answers raid to see what they're doing. If any of them have moved to Kansas or if they're involved with what's going on, oh yeah, try to see where any evidence or findings from that, if that has made its way to Kansas.

And then call Mallory to see if the, I can't remember the name of the doctor that gave her the original pamphlet to gal-worthy, to see if they've progressed at all. Sure, gotcha. Please make a bureaucracy role for me as you try to use your resources at the NCTC to get some names. OK.

That's a four. That is a success. You go to the NCTC, probably more the server, the place where you get information with. And the NCTC is very good at collecting information on folks. And after 2001 in the Patriot Act, it has even more power and access to information than against the better knowledge of,

of, you know, whoever is your superior at the NCTC. You use its resources to start looking up names, names of folks that were associated with the Church of Answers. Most of them appear to be in jail, including your friend, Gratitude Heart. But there is a family that were involved with the church for a short time, but kind of left to do their own thing.

And that is the Galworthies. There is James Galworthy, Stacey Galworthy, and they have a daughter named Meredith. And they have moved to Kansas and they have associated themselves with this harmonic bliss. You start digging deeper into harmonic bliss and kind of the Galworthies and people they're associated with. And you find that harmonic bliss is a new age style set

established in 1992 by a man named Armstrong Knox. Knox died about eight years ago, but harmonic bliss was taken up by his daughter named Estelle Knox. Using the NCTC's records, you find that there is no criminal record for Estelle Knox. In fact, it looks like Estelle barely kind of exists in the public record, a very little social media,

the little that you do find mostly through the little blurbs online about harmonic bliss is that she spent a good portion of her 20s in Mexico, but she eventually returned closer her father's death and kind of took over harmonic bliss has no website or email. It only seems to distribute through these pamphlets and on places like Facebook and social media sites. There are former members that have their opinions,

some of them positive, some of them negative. But it seems that Estelle Knox and members of harmonic bliss now reside on a farm about 30 minutes from Leavenworth, Kansas, Northwest of Kansas City. And the farm seems to be now owned by harmonic bliss. But it wasn't always that way because six months ago, the Galwerdys went missing. Friends and family reported the disappearance.

The police opened an investigation. But since then, the Galwerdys have not used credit cards. They haven't done any banking. They haven't made a phone call, paid any bills or interacted with social media at all. They've disappeared. And Estelle Knox claims that the Galwerdys went on a long vacation and road trip and asked her to watch the farm.

There appears to be no evidence of wrongdoing, according to the local police, and the case has largely gone cold. You see an addendum in like a news article that explains that there is a FBI special agent named Odette Jackson, who works in Kansas City and who seems to be the lead investigator for the FBI and was of note because they were kind of adamant about pursuing Estelle Knox, even though for the most part she has no support,

you know, with with the FBI and with the local police. If you wanted, you could look up information about Stacy Galworthy, who is a graduate student of the University of Missouri in biological sciences. And James Galworthy was a retired construction contractor for decades in Leavenworth. And their 18 year old daughter, Meredith Galworthy, was probably getting ready to go to school. Interesting. OK.

And you said I found the number for or contact for Odette Jackson. I will say yes. You could probably find her number online. OK. Let me think for a minute. OK, this is a lot. I think I want to call. Yeah, I want to call her as someone under the the NCTC and try to, I don't know how that would work, but get her to maybe share what she's found. Maybe I can assist.

Oh, and I will say that I was a part of part of the Church of Answers, which is why I'm interested. Make a persuasion roll because I think that she would be a little dubious knowing that you are part of a of the Church of Answers. Even if I told her I was formally was was but not formally, you know, I'll give you a plus 20 because, you know, you have the credentials of the NCTC, et cetera. But this is a hard sell for someone who is is, you know,

kind of the lead investigator against what appears to be a cult. Yeah, that's a 46 out of 40. I think that, you know, you're able to kind of start a conversation with her. You know, she explains that she convinced the office, the offices and, you know, special agent in charge to assert federal jurisdiction over the Gal worthy case to pursue it as a suspected multiple kidnapping. But it was a very hard sell. And although their disappearance grows more suspicious as time goes on,

she just can't really seem to get anybody's support. And once you start going into the fact of revealing that you are part of the Church of Answers, she starts to stonewall you as she becomes suspicious that you might have ulterior motives. And at a certain point, she probably just kind of end the conversation with you. But, you know, she probably leaves it in a way where, like, if you have something real for me, contact me. Otherwise, don't come fishing for information is, you know, kind of her gist.

Cool. There is there is the matter of the symbol as well. You know, the symbol that they use. Yeah. Is there any way I can do, like, research on that? I don't have, like, a huge occult library or anything. But I'll give you a plus 20 to an occult role. And let's just see what happens. OK. No, that's a 71 out of 40. You do find on the web that there is someone named Dr.

Deep, who is a black magic rune expert. At least that's what he tells himself to be. And you kind of get around about way of how to contact Dr. Deep. But when you message him, he doesn't respond. But you have a way. You know that if you wanted to, you could attempt to contact him again. Is there anything else warped that you would like to do? I can't think of anything else, particularly pressing other than

the the mural in her kitchen that she left behind. That starts again. I think that's it. Right. Warp, where are you keeping the bonehandled knife during this time? I think she keeps it probably like in her bedroom on like the large bookshelf. There's like a shelf of just like random cool stuff. It's almost kind of like a displayed.

Yeah, you are asleep one evening and you hear noises in your apartment and you look and you can tell that there is someone in your apartment. You are being broken into and you look back. And the only thing you see to defend yourself is that knife. Of course, she's going to take it. You take it and as soon as you whip around this figure who is in a hoodie, just kind of enters the room and is inches away from you.

And there is this moment where you lock eyes in the dark. What is going through your head? What are you doing? She's trying to learn everything she can about their face, but also in the like split second, trying to think obviously to stab this person, but in a place that's non lethal. So she can figure out what the hell is going on. The moment your intention shifts to I have to defend myself, something very strange happens.

The blade moves, it moves with you holding it, but it feels more like it's moving and you're just kind of being propelled by it. And it very quickly goes right at the man aiming straight for his heart as if it is aiming itself. I need you to make a plus 20 attack. Oh, what's the number for fighting? It's a melee weapon roll. Plus 20 would make it 50.

That's a 71. The man is able to dodge out of the way. This man is going to attempt to attack you. Are you going to dodge? No, she's going to fight. He is going to go for an attack to try to kind of grapple you and take the knife from your hand. He rolls a seven.

So he is going to succeed unless you attempt to dodge. Or if you want, you can make an attack against him right now. Then I will attack him. OK, rolling another attack at plus 20, which is 50. That's a 80. He is going to grab you and he is going to. He's basically trying to kind of have a control over you. I think he would probably bring you to the floor.

He's got one hand over your mouth, one hand holding your other hand. You have one free hand if you wanted to take an action and try to strike at him. Do you have anything over his eyes? No. Can I put my knife in there? Yeah, I think with such close proximity, you will roll at plus 40. That's a 58. The man was quick, but he's not as quick as the blade.

And when you finally get him close enough by this time, you're used to the feeling of it just moving almost of its own accord, but you're always holding on to it. For the purposes of this blade mechanically, you are going to roll to the eight as it is a critical hit. That's an eight. The blade goes into his eye, into his head, and his entire body goes limp over you.

The insanity of the moment calms down, only for you to realize you now have a dead body in your apartment. And now I need you to make a sanity test. All right. Whoa, whoa, that's a 12. I think you are not going to lose any sanity. But how do you handle this? Do you contact the police?

What do you do? No. Oh, hell. He is bleeding into your carpet. Shit. Occasionally spasming. Shit. Shit. She's going to roll him up in the carpet

just so it doesn't get anywhere and just sort of tuck him in the middle for now. And. Call who? Who's who's good with murder on my team? I mean, you know that Tuck and Merritt are special agents of the FBI. They know their way around a crime scene. Tuck, she's going to call Tuck. Shit.

Tuck, you learn of what warp is going through. Do you help her? I don't know what to do. I didn't want the floor to be stained, so I rolled him up in the rug. But now the rug is stained. Do not let the police know that you used anything but the kitchen life. OK. OK, then she goes to go get the knife.

How are how are you? Oh, I'm I'm good. And then there's the sound of her snatching the knife out and putting the new one in there. Yeah, yeah, it's fine. That's not I just I kind of just needed to be distracted while I did that. It's done and I have it. I have the knife. I'm going to clean the knife and then I'm going to call the police.

Hides a bone knife before you call the police. And if you need a person in your corner, you can call me. I ostensibly work for the FBI. So if you need a I don't know a character witness or I don't know, just a person who. They're back. I appreciate that. Because Tuck has your back warp, you can make either a criminology or a law role at plus 20 percent.

Let's see how it fares with the police. That's a 36. It goes by the numbers seems pretty open and shut. And unfortunately, you know, the last couple of weeks of your time off is involved with speaking to the police and then speaking to, you know, investigators. Eventually, things die down. Did they it was truly like a random man? Like, did they identify?

Yes, yes, no, it was a man who had a criminal record who was breaking into your home. OK, well, how's that for liability? Do you keep the bleed on you any, you know, from this point on? Yes, she she cleans it and tucks it in her her bag of like in the pile of wool inside. Gotcha. Let's move on to hide Kona Morales. I want to start with you, Kona, all the way in that next that morning

after where you guys had decided to take the break. Walk me through getting home after that morning. Hyde would probably have stayed, would have probably slept in later than she is normally accustomed to. But when she kind of does wake up, she's going to actually kind of wake up with a start and she's going to kind of also have the knife, the army knife that she has. She's going to also kind of have that in her hand, which is kind of odd for her

because she doesn't she's it's been a while since she's done something like that before. She doesn't usually go to sleep these days with a weapon. She's got like a really terrible headache and she's a little confused. But once people start mentioning that they're going to start making their way home for a month, she just kind of rolls with it and she ends up taking I believe we established warp was going to fly with her. And then she was going to take the plane back all the way back to Hawaii.

You you do that, you get to Hawaii, I'm sure by that point you would notify Mallory or Coral Nomad about where the plane is. You have not you have not lost any bonds so far. So talk to me about what your time back home is like with your bonds. Hyde came back home, but she didn't go and see people right away. She kind of went just back to her her place. I think she probably waits maybe like two or three days

and she just is kind of on her own before she actually Texas pops and Mica and let them know that she just came back to the island. I think they both would want to see you. But what is the personal pursuit that you are going to pursue? Hyde is going to kind of go is going to do back to nature. Hyde is going to spend a lot of alone time over the month. She's going to go and surf and catch Don patrol. She's going to kind of go because the south side is this time of year.

The south side is really good for waves. She's probably going to go like spearfishing and just kind of just do her own thing. She might just kind of go around the island and like beach hop from beach to beach up on the north side, since it's kind of calm this time of year and she's just kind of be alone. Yeah, that's the main stuff she's going to do when you go back to nature. This reduces one bond by one.

Who is the bond that you're going to reduce by one? It's it's going to be pops. Go ahead and roll a sanity test and we'll see if this going back to nature helps you. Ah, barely forty two. OK, so that's a success. Roll a D for and you are going to gain that much sanity back. Oh, three.

So your time in nature is healing. It helps and it helps to kind of be away from everyone. You're a little more introverted than most folks. And it's helpful to have some time to think on your own. Hyde is going to spend maybe one of the last days before she travels back out. She's going to kind of get up in the early part of the morning and she's going to take the small truck that she has and she's going to kind of put this plastic bucket in the back.

And it's got it's got shears in it. It's got a couple of things. She's going to stop by a floral stand on the way. But she's on her way up to she's going up to Punchville Crater, which is housing the National Seminary of the Pacific. It's kind of quiet up there a little bit. They've done some recent construction towards the opening. So now there's this kind of like visitor center right before you enter this gate.

And as you kind of enter the gate, there's just this roundabout that kind of leads right across to a giant white mausoleum. Hyde is going to kind of go through one of the roundabouts and she's going to kind of go to one of the plot areas of this cemetery. It's a really it's really green. They've just done some maintenance work and just repatched a lot of places. But there aren't like really like stone heads that are kind of uprise. They're all like flat stone heads.

So there's just a bunch of like square plots that kind of just stretch around a bunch of mounds. She's going to kind of walk gently across the way, just kind of in between the plots. As respectful as you can to this kind of area where there's like a banyan tree. There's a little bit of a cliff face so you can kind of see a little bit of Honolulu. You can see Rose about High School, which is right down below in the valley area of this area. But then you can see kind of the beach that just kind of stretches for miles

into the horizon is this nice blue. It's kind of a clear day. And eventually she is going to come up to a plot. On that plot are two names on it. One is Miriam Morales. And it also says loving mother and wife. And then right below that is going to be another name that says Liam E. Morales, loving son and brother.

Hyde is going to take that bucket. She's going to take the shears and kind of cut around the plot and just kind of tend to it because it's kind of overgrown. She's going to go to a spigot, fill the bucket with water, kind of clean the stone head up. She's going to there's a small little vase that kind of is in the earth. So she kind of turns the thing, picks it up, walks it in place. She trims the flowers, places it down really nicely. And then eventually, once she's kind of done all of that,

she's going to sit down next to the stone, next to this plot. And she's just going to kind of just talk story for a little bit. She's going to try to catch up both her mother and her brother on things that are going on in her life. She's going to mention that like the last couple of days, she just kind of doesn't know what's really going on. Everything's kind of a little brrr. She's a little scared and she's just kind of kind of let everything go

to the one people that she could probably be honest with in her life right now. She does that for a couple of hours. And then she eventually packs up, heads back home and leaves it at that. There is a point where you eventually would have to come home and Micah certainly would be hitting you up to see you. Pops would certainly be asking about you. And you'd eventually see them and interact with them. One of the days that you are home, Pops is not home.

Maybe you go to visit him or something kind of in the morning and he's not home. And you just kind of hang around and, you know, clean up a little bit, etc. And then around like one thirty, Pops comes home and he's all frustrated. He kind of throws his keys down and he's just kind of huffing and puffing to himself. Hey, Pops. Oh, shit. You scared me. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. You too. What's up? What's up? I don't know.

I think somebody pranked me or something. I got this call the other day from someone from the CDC that said they thought that I interacted with somebody that had COVID and I had to get tested. So they give me this address and a time I go this morning. It's in the middle of town, but it's nothing. It's a it's a it's a parking lot. And I I walk around, I ask around, but nothing. There's no CDC testing facility or anything there.

So I don't know. I just I just came back here. Weird, huh? Yeah, that is weird. Did they give you a name? No, they gave me it was a woman. I can't remember the name. I was kind of a little freaked out. I just wrote I just wrote down the time and where they wanted me to go. They sounded pretty official.

I guess I should have gotten a name, huh? Yeah, that probably would have been good pops. But, you know, I people might be scamming. You know how shit goes around this time with all that stuff. Yeah, well, I mean, whatever. I mean, I got my daughter back. Huh? How you been? And he kind of starts checking in on I'm kind of reluctant,

but I just kind of tell him that I'm doing all right and hanging in there. He's happy to have you as difficult as he is to live with. Anything special you want to do or say with Micah? No, I just probably would spend some quality time with him. Maybe go to the beach, kind of hang out with him, kind of face to face. I might have taken like a week or so just to make sure I wasn't sick with covid, just to be a little respectful. All right.

Agent Merritt, you experience, like Tuck, a kind of traumatic situation at Cicada. And I asked you to make a sanity test and you also failed at that, gaining a bond with Tuck and Warp. But I need you to roll a D4 and you're going to need to subtract that from a non-delta green bond. Don't you mean majestic? Oh, I rolled it too.

OK. And who are you reducing a bond with? I'm going to remove that from my father or I'm sorry, my brother, my brother. You have a neck that is still healing and a leg that is still healing. Talk to me about what your month of recovery is like. So I think that when he first comes home, he is, despite himself on how injured he is, he's one of those people who cannot admit that he actually has to slow down. So he still goes through the process of deep cleaning his apartment

and getting things ready, but it's in that process that he finds immediately how much pain he really is in, even that the neck is still hurting him in that effect. And so he finally caves after the first few days of trying to get his apartment ready and he calls Miranda, explains the situation, tells her that he got hurt in the field and that he doesn't think he can take care of himself for at least a few weeks here and asks if it's OK if he stays with them for a time.

So a lot of it is trying to work, you know, the physical therapy that he can to keep his leg healing to make sure he heals correctly, to prop it up and all those different things. He's desperately trying to find a version of himself that is OK, sitting down and doing nothing. It's not very good at it. So for a short time, you're living with Miranda? Yes, at least for probably three weeks out of the month, if she'll have.

I think without a doubt, she will. You know, after a month, your leg is probably no longer in a cast, but there's a good chance you're probably still walking with a stick for a while, right? Yeah, I think the full length is like a six to eight week period of kind of healing a broken leg. So you're over the hump of the halfway mark, but you're still not as agile as you once were. We'll say mechanically. The only thing is that you're kind of at half speed here.

So if you can normally move, I believe it's three meters in a round. We'll just reduce that to half. OK, so like one and a half meters. Otherwise, nothing else is affected. You can shoot and deduce just as you could. You could before. OK. Let's go over your bond loss with your brother. What does that look like?

So I did tell him that I was going away on an operation, you know, at the start of perennial a week ago. But I think that he's a little remiss that no one's checked in on him. I mean, we lost contact with my mother. My father obviously can't. And I was usually the one that would check in. And since I haven't, I think that when I show up to the five points, correctional facilities,

video call in service when I have my video call with him, he's upset. He's asking, you know, all sorts of questions about when I'm going to put money back into his accounts and buy things again. He's upset with me on an emotional level that I abandoned him for a week. And we'll say, you know, there's obviously a a fight over it and, you know, maybe things aren't left resolved in that regard. What else are you doing with your time?

I think that a lot of my time is is spent with Miranda and Gordon catching up, you know, trying to get back to a sense of normalcy with them, spending time with Samson, my dog. I'm trying to do anything that will keep me from what I really want to be doing, which is work. So it's a lot of time that and in the back of my head, I just keep thinking about the cases I could be looking at the things I could be looking into.

And eventually my conversation with Tuck and everything that happens with Rue. And, you know, it's all starting to compound, but I'm trying to act like I can be someone who sits at home. Well, nonetheless, Miranda is happy to have you. Gordon is happy to have you. You guys have dinners together. You watch things together. You know, in a funny way, it kind of feels like a family.

And I think that there would be a point where maybe after a dinner or something, Miranda would be talking with you and she'd probably put her hand on your hand and just say, Orson, I just I want you to know that Gordy and I we've enjoyed our time with you, not not just now, not just during the pandemic. I'm saying you've been there for us since Alec died. And I just I want you to know that you're welcome here anytime. And I'd be happy with having you here all the time,

if that's something you'd be interested in. Of course, you know, it has been very good to come back to some sort of normalcy. You know, I didn't really grow up in it. This is I would love that. I would love that. And there is a part of me that loves this, too, as much as I do get a hankering to go and work and accomplish something and do all those things that would be here, regardless.

But you know that you know that I can't say yes, right? What do you you can't say yes to this? And she kind of gestures between the two of you. Well, what's I mean? Who who cares if people know that Alec was your partner? I mean, people find a way to be happy. And it it has nothing to do with the perception of whatever whatever they think it has nothing to do with the FBI.

It has nothing to do with you and I. It it has everything to do with what I would do. And as a person, I cannot submit you and Gordon to something like that. She's kind of frustrated at this point. She wasn't really expecting such a stone wall from you. And if you have nothing else to say, she kind of changes the subject and gets up and goes to do the dishes. Listen, no, I get it.

I get it. Just let's we can keep it platonic. You know, it's fine when I knew Alec, it was everything in my life to get him to shut up about you and Gordon and everything that you had. It was everything that I could to not think that this is something that I've always wanted. And this is absolutely something I would love to say yes to. But there are things that I have to be a part of that I cannot submit you to.

I understand, Orson, you don't have to bring it up again. I'm going to go check on on Gordy. OK. She walks out of the room and your burner phone rings. I'm going to pick it up and take the call outside on the porch. You answer the phone before you can even say anything you hear. It's Oaks. Can you get to Louisville in the next 12 hours? What? Yes, I'll be there. Louisville. OK. OK.

Backlight. You won't be here for long. And she hangs up. Understood. And I think I'd probably keep a go bag at Miranda's. And so I'll grab that and I'll make for Louisville. Miranda is taking it back. But you are your own man. You are certainly not in a relationship with her. And she says goodbye and says she'll see you soon.

You head on your way to Louisville, Kentucky. You happen to make it in about 12 hours. You land and when you step outside, Oaks is waiting for you in a black crown Vic. I'm going to get into the passenger side seat and set my go bag in the back. As soon as you get in, she peels out like a bat out of hell. As she's driving, she tosses you a Manila envelope,

a kind of dossier. Looks like there's papers inside. I start, you know, rifling through and trying to catch myself up. But what's the situation, operative Oaks? What can I do for you? You're doing two things at once. You're kind of listening to her as she starts talking to you and you're kind of looking at the document.

So the first thing you hear is her voice. And she's explaining as she wears these kind of heavy aviator glasses that kind of hide her eyes. She says, I'm bringing you into an ongoing operation called Somersault. It's led by the director himself. Our directive is to track down individuals within the American population who have specific, how does he put it, anomalous genetic markers that need to be wiped from our gene pool.

And as she's saying that, you're looking at the files. And what you see is a kind of dossier on a individual that lives in this city, their routine, what they do every day, their stats, their vitals, their height, their age. This dossier is about a person named Jason Olmsted, who is a 10 year old boy. And Oaks goes on to say he's got class, which he's done in about a few hours. He frequents the corner store and we also have his address. So you can decide how you'd like to do it.

But she pops open the glove box and there's a snub nose revolver. She explains that it has no license on it, untraceable. All you have to do, Agent Mayor, is two in the chest, one in the head, walk away. I'll have you back at the airport in no time. You've been tracking this boy? I've been doing the legwork of this operation, which is getting to know the routine. Yes. And what's wrong with him? Didn't you hear me the first time?

There's there's something wrong with his genetics. He's he's not human. He's not human. This goes all the way to the beginning. OK, of all of this, whatever the fuck you want to call it, the program or whatever. This kid is a part of some kind of thing that is not human. And the director believes that we need to eradicate this genetic anomaly. We have been doing it.

We are going to continue to do it. And we need your help to do this one. What did he do? What did he do? He didn't do anything. He's a fucking kid, but he is not human. If he reaches age, if he reaches maturity, something happens. He becomes something else and we cannot let his genes pass on. I think that Merrick's rifling through those papers again, trying to find some good reason

he should really do this under. Look, if you're not going to do this, I can turn around right now and I can let the director know that you are not. No, it's just drop me off. Drop me off. She pulls off to the side. Are you getting out? Are you quitting or what are you doing?

I'm getting out. He grabs the revolver. He puts it in his suit jacket. He opens the door and he gets out. So are you going through with it? Yeah, yeah. Just tell me where to go. It's like halfway across the city.

I was going to drive you and then you can get out then. OK, OK, take. Take me there. Take me. Sure. He gets back in the car. It is a quiet drive. What you glean from this dossier is that the boy gets to school

every day around eight, gets out around three, goes to a corner store where he spends 10 or 15 minutes and then goes home. You have all the addresses and what you need to do. It's getting close to three o'clock. How would you like to approach this? I think that I'm going to post up at the convenience store that he frequents after school. I'm going to wait until I identify him

coming out of the convenience store and walking home and then I'll become trailing him. Oaks eventually pulls off to the side. She points out at the convenience store says I'll be close. If you start moving, I'll start moving, but keep an eye out for me. Jump in. We'll get you back to the airport and this will be over. Walk me through the next couple of minutes. I think I post up on the side of the convenience store.

I don't go in, you know, I lean against the side. I make sure that there's no cameras before I post up wherever it is. And I'm trying to get a good peripheral vision on where the kid would enter and where he would leave, you know, looking at the files, understanding what route he takes to get home and I would just wait. Sure enough, about 15 minutes later, you see the boy, Jason, and he is with some friends and you start kind of sweating a little bit, but he says goodbye to those friends and they start heading off

in one direction and Jason, not really paying you any mind, goes into the convenience store, takes 10, 15 minutes. I mean, like a noticeable amount of time considering, do you peek in at all? Do you just kind of wait outside? I think Merritt does peek against his better judgment because he's still very nervous that he's even thinking of doing this. He wants some indication that he's evil inside,

that he's going to steal something, do anything to end the game. You look through the glass pane of the convenience store and you see a woman behind the counter, lean over and give Jason a kiss, says something to him, I'll see you in a couple hours. And he begins making his way out of the store and starts walking in the direction of where you know his home is. I think that there's a loose tail. I let him have a lot of distance, but kids don't really think about these things.

So I don't let him go too far, maybe five or 10 feet. And I let him get halfway between the convenience store before I do anything else by just watching his movements. As you walk with him and it's a couple blocks, as you walk with him, you do check once in a while and every once in a while, you can see the Black Vic just another 15, 20 feet up the road, you know, moving up a little bit and then stopping, moving, stopping, moving, stopping, kind of tailing you.

You eventually get to Jason's home. OK, I'm going to wait and see if he goes inside. Check out the location, see if he's a latchkey kid, see if there's neighbors. You know, he is definitely a latchkey kid. He goes up to the door, unlocks it, goes inside. There is no car in the driveway. If you go so far as to kind of inspect and snoop around the house, there doesn't appear to be the presence of any adults.

And you can hear that the TV is on inside. OK, I'm going to go around to the back of the house the best I can and then try and find a window for entry. But I'll give a signal to Oaks when I'm in the front of the house so that she knows to park there or at least be around. She does she does pull up closer as close as she can without being conspicuous. I think it's easy enough for a special agent to find their way around the house. We'll say that you you find a window that seems to be unlocked.

OK, yeah, I'll proceed through the window, you know, being very careful not to leave any prints. I'll even put on some latex gloves I keep in my work coats and from my go bag, make sure that nothing I touch leaves any sort of indication. Go ahead and make a stealth role for me. OK. I have a success with an eight. Holy shit, you come in quiet as a mouse. You are in this home.

It's a modest home, the home of a single mother with a kid. And you creep your way and you can see that in the living room with his back to you is Jason watching some very loud cartoon. I think that for a moment, Mary hesitates in the threshold of the door and he's just staring at the back of his kid's head and what he's watching. He's trying to make sure it's nothing he's ever seen. He's trying to make sure that none of this is going to be anything he's going to remember, but he's caught himself long enough that he knows he's waiting too long.

He's going to look for like a throw pillow on a nearby piece of furniture or something like that to put in front of the snub nose. And I think he's going to as quietly as he can try and step into the boys' view in front of the TV. I think that he would immediately, you know, kind of out of the corner of his eye, see you and just he probably at least had the reaction of like standing up and he's just staring at you. Don't scream.

I just want to talk to you because you're in some danger. I think he would run from you. That's fair. He just starts booking it towards the front of the house. If he's going to run, then I'm going to fire. Go ahead and make an attack against him. Sixty seven succeeds on my firearm shot. You hit him. Go ahead and roll your damage. There is a Yelp and he collapses to the floor.

And when you come over to him, he's thrown himself over and he's just barely breathing, but he's just barely conscious as well. I think that I'm going to pradle him for just a moment and sort of prop him up in my arms and I'm trying to look him in the face. I'm trying to get him to look at me. I think he is with his last bit of energy kind of trying to fight you off. You are the man who was trying to kill him. Listen, listen, listen, listen, you have to listen to me.

Listen to me. Do you know what you are? I think he's coughing up blood and crying and you can hear him mouthing the words of mom. Please, please, you know what you are. You have to know what you are. Do you know what you are? I think he would eventually go limp in your arms. Merritt drops him and is frozen for a second over him. And he's looking. Let's have you make a sanity test.

It's a failure. Roll a D6 for me. Before you can project that, if you'd like, I would. A two, you're going to reduce your willpower and one bond by two. Which bond are you going to reduce? Miranda. So you still have lost to sanity, but you have not completely, you know, had a panic attack or anything. I think that I'm sitting there cradling him for a moment, frozen.

And I'm looking around the room at what I've done. And I'm just trying to make sure that I haven't left anything. I haven't done anything to be traced back to me. I mean, the echoes of what Oaks said the first time when I fucked up. I'm trying to make sure none of that is here. A gunshot went off in a residential neighborhood. I think that as you are walking around, you are hearing the honking of a car from outside.

Short, but consistent. OK, then I'm going to get out of here before anything else happens and get back in the crown of it. Go ahead and make. I think we need to make an opposed role here. Make a dexterity times five role at minus 20. I succeed with a 27 under 40. You succeed.

And any neighbors that might be in the area fail to react quick enough. You rush out, stumbling the, you know, along the way as you are kind of hobbling on a leg, you jump into the black Vic and it peels off and a couple of neighbors probably eventually come out to see what the commotion was. But you get the sense that nobody immediately noticed. Why? Why did you pick me? Why did I pick you?

Because you're eager, Agent Merritt. That's why we need eager beavers like you to do the work that some of us have done and need a break from doing. It's just what it means to be a part of this program. Oaks, how do you? How do you know? How can you? How can we know? How can we know that what I just did? How do you know I did the right thing?

Look, get yourself together, OK? Get myself together. What the fuck do you want from me? I just killed a kid. How do I fucking know? Oaks, the director has told me that he has access to genetic information about individuals in this country. It's very reliable. He tells me and he tells me we have to do it. And I follow my orders.

It's something we have to do. And it's just something you have to make amends with. I know it doesn't make sense. I know it's bad, but I'm telling you it's for a good cause. OK, OK, look, this is this is big time. OK, this is not just nothing. I'm going to let the director know you're in good with us. OK, like things are going to get better from this point on.

You you show aptitude. You show like you're willing to do whatever it takes. That's that's that's leadership material. That's that's upper management material. You know what I mean? So I did a good job then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We were in and out of there in no time.

You know, take some time off, however long it takes. Don't listen to Mallory. I'm above Mallory. If you need extra time, just take it, OK? Can you take me home now? Without much left to be said, she drops you off at the airport. I think I put in a call to Miranda and this can also be where we reflect the bond loss, because I think I'm calling from this state.

And what do you say to her, Miranda? Are you there? Yeah, yeah, I'm here. What's up? Yeah, I'm coming back. I've been thinking about a lot of things. I've been, you know me, I like I like to think and I've been thinking. And I think you were right. And I think I was nervous and I think I was making some decisions that I did not give myself enough time on.

And I think I'm ready if you're ready. Are you OK? What's going on? Yeah, oh, I'm fine. It's just the nerves, right? The nerves, you know me, I'm not the type of person. So I'm going to I'm going to come home and we can talk about this. But let's try and make this work, OK? Oh, oh, you want to make us work?

Yeah, yeah, you know me. I like making things work and I we should work. This makes sense. You were right. And I was hesitant. And I was I shouldn't have done that to you. And I'm sorry. God, Orson, you made my day. I'm so happy to hear from you. Really happy. You're happy, too.

You're happy. I'll see you soon, OK? OK, OK. All right. You know me, the work. I've got to I've got to come home and make some accommodations. And you know, Samson, he needs a good place to sleep. So we'll have to prepare everything for. Yeah, yeah, listen, Orson, it's fine. Just come home. We're both going to be excited to see you, OK?

Good. Agent Merritt Orson, you have not pursued any personal pursuits. What would you like to do with the remaining time that is left? I personally would like to look into the the case from 1984, the cleanup agent, Nancy and agent Fluke, all those files that I prepared with Mallory and the connection with 1984 that goes into that cleanup, because I think that Merritt again is thinking, how is he any different from Fluke?

How, indeed, we are going to stay on the case. This is going to reduce one bond by one. So go ahead and tell me which bond you are reducing by one. I'm going to reduce my bond with Alvin again. So he goes down to a twelve. And just once again, it's it's the it's the files that that agent Mallory uploaded to the server for you is what you're interested in. Right. Right.

Everything because I asked her about the cleanup to 1984 Devil's Night and Nancy's make a criminology or a cult role. OK, I'm going to do criminology. I have a thirty three, which I think is a critical success. And I think I've just locked myself in Alex's old office and made sure I told Miranda and Gordon not to bother me at all. And what? Roll a D six minus three.

A two. That is how much sanity you are going to gain. OK. I think we could probably justify it in a few ways, but one of them is it's probably comforting to be back in the routine of studying and investigating and, you know, kind of putting away these much more difficult, you know, personal matters. You learn everything that you need to learn about Agent Fluke. He was in Vietnam. He had obvious mental issues that got worse as he went on.

It was very obvious that it was his participation in Delta Green that is what kind of broke him more than anything. When it comes to 1984, the cleanup is done by an agent. Nancy, is there anything in particular about the 1984 cleanup you're trying to find? I guess the most information would probably be directed at Constance because I've realized now that she worked with Mallory and is probably the closest to what I'm trying to do today with perennial. So any information I can find in that direction,

anything that I think would pertain to what we've been doing. Constance was part of the FBI until the late 90s and then went missing and then was presumed dead and then was just kind of called dead, you know, officially by the FBI. And Mallory sends you a private message that kind of summarizes what is known about Nancy, which was that she joined Delta Green not very long after 1984, worked in the FBI with Delta Green and then came upon a unnatural tone,

which after reading it, turned her into a ghoul. It literally transformed her into a ghoul. She continued to work for Delta Green as a ghoul. She, as a ghoul, has the unique ability to eat someone's brain and gain much of their knowledge, much of their personality. And there was a situation in New Orleans after Katrina, where Agent Nancy reached a breaking point with her fellow agents. The point is, is that two of the agents that were alongside with her basically

went crazy and it was deemed that Agent Nancy was no longer safe and needed to be kept. This was kind of after Katrina in the 2000s. And since that point had been kept at Cicada. Now, in this personal message she's sending me, is she referring to Nancy's affiliation with Delta Green directly? Is DG the word or is it the program? Nancy would refer to Delta Green up until a certain year,

until maybe the early 2000s, 2001, 2002. And then after that, she starts using the program. And does she reference the New Orleans case with any sort of name to it or something I could search down myself to find information on? No, she does not go into that kind of detail. You know, and she doesn't even use the name Nancy. She's using kind of pseudonyms, code names, things like that to explain the story to you.

Do I get a sense that Mallory is being more personal with me than she is professional in this personal message? Yes, you get the sense that as she explained to you at Cicada, she has a connection with Nancy in terms of a history with her. So this is almost she's almost just kind of saying it out of personal experience, as opposed to pulling this from a case file or something. Additionally, there is Meadowbrook and the only thing that you glean from Meadowbrook is that Hook signed the book and disappeared.

This Nearlathotep is somehow connected. You know that Dr. Bauer, which was given by Samuel to Tuck, you were given his information. You reach out to him, and this is because you had a critical success and he sends you back a lot of information about Nearlathotep. He explains that this is a deity that exists across religions throughout time. He has many names and the main thing is that there is this theme of Nearlathotep having many names and many faces.

And sometimes these faces are considered avatars of Nearlathotep and his his plans are inscrutable, but he acts through these avatars. And these avatars are independent of each other, basically. They are independent and human. Oh, and that's when you put two and two together that Hook signed the book, disappeared with the dark man, has reappeared. There is a very good chance that she is an avatar of Nearlathotep. Oh, my God.

There is one bond you have not contacted, which is. Yeah, Alice, I actually wanted to go see her in person at Quantico, if I could set up a meeting because I wanted to talk to her about that old case for the Amelia Moore disappearance. You make an appointment and you meet up with her in her office, and she is very happy to see you, Special Agent Orson Bradham. How are you?

And she gives you a hug. It's been an entirely too long, son. How are you? I'm very well, Instructor Sawyer. It's very good to see you again. I mean, it feels like it's been. Please call me Alice, Orson. Oh, I don't know if I could.

You used to give me such a hard time about that. OK, Alice, it's good to see you, Alice. What can I help you with? Listen, besides catching up, I thought that maybe we could get some lunch if you're not too much of a hard ass to join me on it. But first, you know, I wanted to get the dirty business out of the way, as I usually do. I actually have some case work that involves you coming from special operations.

Oh, I saw this name and I thought, I know this human being. This human being hates my guts. I should go see her. Oh, come on. What case was that? Well, there was a disappearance in California, I think 97. Yes, 1997 was the year in the Hetchie Hetchie Reservoir of Yosemite National Park, and none other than yourself was given the cleanup after the case went cold. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Wow, you're bringing back memories. That was a while ago. Yeah, the the girls, right? Two of them went missing. One of them got found. Yeah, that kind of a sad story. Yes. Well, the cold case came up and something we're working in S.O.

And I thought that, you know, why not speak to the the devil directly, right? Well, I mean, I'm happy to share the file with you. I mean, my job was basically to put it to sleep. It was a sad story in the fact that there wasn't really much to go on. They combed Yosemite. They certainly spoke to everyone that lived in the area, but the girl disappeared. There really wasn't much more to be done, unfortunately. There was nothing about that case that rang to you as pinky or off off the cuff.

I mean, what stood out to me in the little research I did was that this wasn't the first time a child was abducted in that area. In fact, the area has kind of a history of child abductions leading all the way back to the beginning of the country. Similar to the circumstances seen in the Moore case. Yeah, similar. Mostly child abductions disappearing in the night, not coming back.

There were mentions of, well, I can show you the information, but there's a few kind of more esoteric occult type of, you know. Yeah, yeah. Some splinter groups that are saying some things that we really didn't pay any lip service to the point is that there's this kind of folklore about giant people in the area stealing children in the night and that kind of stuff. I honestly think it was just white people afraid of the Native Americans. But yeah, that that seems to be the gist of it.

But I can share this with you. I got files somewhere. I would love that. Absolutely. If you could give me any information, even the more out there stuff, it helps to have names, even if we could pick something together. We're trying to put some some things to rest later on. So you have no trouble getting that from her.

And I will share those documents with you. However, she kind of says to you, I have to admit, Orson, I'm a little I was kind of expecting you to well, to mention the the magazine. I, you know, congratulations, FBI leader. It's a big deal. I'm sorry. Orson, you know, she says the word FBI leader. FBI leader is a magazine that is independent of the FBI, but often does pieces on different parts of the organization.

And Alice explains that a journalist from FBI leader called her and said that they were doing a piece on the the hot new agents coming up in the FBI, and they wanted to ask her a couple questions about you. Did they? Yeah, it was it was a reporter. She said her name was Marlene Baumann said you would know the name. It's at that moment that Agent Hyde, you are home and the telephone rings. I will pick up the phone.

You hear a raspy voice on the other line. Give me a human intelligence role. That's a five. That's a success. You can tell that although it is a very raspy voice, it is female. It is a female voice. It is a female voice and it says hello, Kona. I wanted you to know that little incident with Pops.

It was me. It doesn't matter where you go. You can't hide from me unless you want to come visit and say hi. Agent Warp, you are home going about your business. You receive a message. It's an email from a undisclosed anonymous address. And all it says in the body is remember that night at the cabin. I sure do.

I could have helped you joyful, but instead I'm going to break you. Excuse me, Boomer, you're watching the news and there is a breaking story on the news that chills you to the bone. There is a janitor at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan who has been murdered and it was all caught on tape. The footage shows a naked woman walking down the hall of the hospital. Her body is blurred by the news, but she approaches Hector Sandovar and strangles him to death.

She stands up and smiles directly at the camera and you can't help but feel that you've seen that smile before. Agent Tuck, you check the mail at your mailbox and there's a letter. You open it up and could you read to me what it says on it? It says, oh, I hate you. It says, come play with me or else I can ask Rohe. Finally, Semi-L, you are home when there is a knock at the door. Could you make a dexterity check, please?

No, don't open the door. There can't be more. How is there more? Me, me make a dexterity check. Fail with the 67. You open the door and there is a package on the floor in front of your door. And when you look, you can't help as this person is turning the corner. It's that man that has been following you. Fuck, I'll pick up the package carefully and I'll immediately.

Actually, you know what? I'm not going to touch it. I'm going to call Merit and tell him someone might have just left a bomb on my doorstep. You called Merit and there is no way to determine whether it truly is or is not a bomb. It sounds like it's very light and it does sound like there's something shuffling around and from Merit's point of view, it does not indicate like there's definitely a bomb. OK, so if we determine it, say for me to open it, then I will open it.

If you don't mind, just keep me on the line when you open it. Sure thing. You cut the box open and inside is a lighter. You're lighter. The lighter you used to ignite the body of Marlene Bauman. I need all of you to make sanity tests. Please. Oh, my God. It keeps getting worse. I keep getting worse.

Fuck. I failed. I succeed. I succeed with a 47. I succeeded, too. Yes. I failed with a 99 warp. Oh, no. Warp. Thank you, Vince. Please.

Anyone that failed, you're going to lose one. However, warp, you're going to lose two because it was a critical failure. On on the line with Merit, Samael just moans for a little bit and says. We got a big problem. You all know what this means. What do you do? Do you contact each other?

What happens as we contact each other? Exactly. I send out a group message that says, please tell me everyone else got something. I just send back a text that says, yes, that's it. I'm going to take a picture of like of what I see on screen and sent to the chat. Yep. Yeah. Screenshot of the email. Samael lights a joint with the lighter in the package.

Eventually, Mallory contacts you guys and she says, you need to get your asses to Lansing, Michigan right now. A situation is developing right now that we need to kibosh. And there is no way it is not involving you. Oh, my God. Let's go to Michigan. I'm I'm guessing Mara that I waste no time in licking up and getting on a plane. Yeah, absolutely.

I can intercept warp and take warp with me to Lansing. I kiss my wife on the face and I. I'm sorry. I have to go. I'm sorry. I love you. And I get on a plane. Have I'm going to go ahead, grab my to go bag that I've kept ready. And I will text my wife who's at the hospital. My trip has been pushed forward.

I will reconvene very soon. Love her, love her and take off. And we'll find out how you guys solve this problem next session. You're a bastard. You're an absolute. Yeah, I hate you. You don't realize we're we're going to see you physically. Tomorrow, we're going to come to your house

and beat your ass inside the weirdest fucking energy to drink together on.