Miles is tapping his leg.
He's shaking his leg so much that the van's kind of rocking back and forth, anxious about the time we're burning here.
It's like, guys, did we find out anything?
Was Rogers there?
Yeah, how much time do you think we've diverted from our 3 o'clock uh arrival ETA?
On account of I don't think we want to do more than a half hour.
How long are you spending with the kid in the ambulance?
a I suppose no more than 20 minutes total I think that's what we're shooting for
Yep, that sounds good.
When Mole walks in, he's like, the van's a-knockin', don't come a-rockin', huh, buddy?
And then he slaps you on the shoulder.
We should get going, man.
What happened?
well, looks like somebody got stabbed.
A couple people got stabbed and a lady got shot.
They got a name Amanda Reynolds for the lady.
I think Magpie was talking to some unstable looking young man.
He looked like shit with his shitty jacket and Morrison, unclear what happened with him.
I tried to sneak in the back and got immediately kicked out.
But, uh, yeah, Rogers, uh, was not in there inside either.
It was just bodies of people.
We don't know.
So.
Yeah.
Magpie, what'd you find out from your shitty man?
think before I left the vehicle, I was kind of just trying to keep him eh talking stream of consciousness like perhaps about anything he heard at the outset of the altercation,
really trying to understand why this amount of Reynolds might've gone berserk on a cashier.
And if perhaps there was just anything that kicked it off that he can remember.
Okay.
Well, what?
are any coincidences, so um this is strange that this thing is following us.
was the second person that died right in front of us.
give me a sand check, please?
Just for this just for the smart ones.
Yeah.
Yeah
anyone who's like, this is a little close.
fair.
I'm going be honest, Mole's not interested in that and he's like, whatever.
Did you not pick up on that?
We'll say no.
If that's okay.
69.
I got 42 and I'm thinking about a little too much.
should do it.
So do I lose one?
ah That is one point for helplessness.
We should be marking those, I forgot about
I...
um
Speaking which, hey, Morrison, do you think you were more upset by the violence or the helplessness from seeing those dead kids?
Okay, checker box for violence.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
I don't know, it could be either.
I'd be...
yeah, for sure.
Especially with like younger people, I feel like.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's.
to put a content warning on top of this, guess.
Oops.
is, uh Miles is thinking about his dad, thinking, his dad used to say something, meo chao he, which is there are no coincidences.
And that's been like streaming through his head as he's been kind of piecing this violence following us.
And he, yeah, you know, starts getting shaken up by it.
Let's get out of here.
Those cops murked that girl, huh?
And then we set off.
under the eye it sounds like, or looked like.
from like thinking about it.
Can we take off with that, I think?
All right, the rest of the drive is uneventful.
The next hour and a half are spent, in contemplative silence?
Or do you put, oh who did you put on the radio?
You put Sheryl Crow back on.
What's the vibe in this minivan?
Ummm...
Yeah, think it's slightly more contemplative.
Does anybody have a better preference?
Something more mood appropriate?
radio could be off.
Yeah Hey, Miles, just leave your police scanner on in case we hear something else
Okay, I'll keep it open.
up some info.
and the minute it starts playing, think it gets slapped down pretty quickly.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Well, I I appreciate the try, but honestly that hasn't matched the vibe since 2001.
So you're right out.
That's the Hot Chocolate speaking.
I'm on Nas right now and Sandstorm sounds perfect.
Yeah.
Might also just sit in silence.
All right.
So, yeah, you guys roll into Chelan.
Before we roll in, could I ask, do we have the equipment to look up Amanda Reynolds on like social media stuff or anything like that?
Is that something we could be doing on the way in?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anybody with a computer science above base can find her.
a Facebook of 40.
Does that work?
you
does, yeah.
You are not finding her on LinkedIn, I'll tell you that much.
Yeah, Miles would just be doing this nervously, like trying to find a connection between uh her and the guy, Mark Sandberg, who was hit by the F-150.
ah Give me a power check.
and I picked the wrong character I have an 8 in power for.
87 over 70.
Oh.
Yes.
No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah, what's up?
Yeah, I uh forgot how this uh mechanic worked um and have made a mistake.
And you're good, actually.
But I'm going to be ominous for another second or so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because you passed a power check earlier, right?
You did.
Yeah, you're good.
So.
I'm just gonna leave, my, Myles died.
Had a heart attack, cardiac arrest, so.
I'm just kidding.
I just look, yeah.
Hey, Miles, wake up.
Oh shit, Miles.
So yeah, you're looking her up and you look up the old man.
He does not have a Facebook profile or a LinkedIn.
uh She does have uh a public Facebook profile, but it is, you know, it's uh the public Facebook profile of a 20 year old young woman who was having difficulty
keeping up with her classes and didn't really want to show it.
Okay.
Yeah, just seeing signs of overwhelm and then performative bullshit and the college life.
Okay.
Yeah.
Burning hatred of hot chocolate.
Okay.
didn't really want to be there anyways.
Maybe she didn't.
Hard to tell.
Doesn't matter now.
completely normal person, gone psychotic, all right.
Yeah, it does seem that way.
Yeah, okay.
I'll keep this to myself.
won't.
okay, that's a secret.
I'll just say I found her nothing particularly comes up.
Yeah, I mean, I think we go meet, see if we can intercept Rogers.
But Morrison, what do you feel like we should do?
Yeah, I mean, I think there may be something going on, but at the end of the day, he's kind of the lead on all this, right?
Unless any of you all think, if your intuition's telling you that this is connected in some bigger way, but these might all be branches of the tree, but he's the trunk, so to
speak.
my intuition, every time we keep looking back at this thing or whatever's happening, things start to feel weird.
That's what my intuition tells me.
So when we're looking away from Rogers, things are getting shaky for me.
Hmm.
Okay.
Perhaps then it's best we keep the focus on him for now, even if it's just because he's the natural primary interest.
I don't know that...
think that's a sand check, Miles?
Yeah.
Nice.
Horrible.
Sorry to interrupt you, Jordan.
Yeah, you're good.
man, you're doing okay, bud.
Like, clap you on the shoulder.
No, I don't think this Amanda turns us from her course, but it's uh hard to understand if and how we ought to factor it in to what we're dealing with.
It seems right proper weird to be unrelated, but we done seen two deaths nigh in our path in the last, say what, eight hours.
Yeah, sure.
mean.
The last, how I got into this, we were looking at a strange compound, right?
And everybody had opinions and theories of it and it would change based on those theories and the observer from time to time.
And we were basically building it up with our theories.
So my worry here is that the more...
we pontificate about what's after or what's happening around us the worst it's getting.
Mmm.
Right, okay, I'll turn my brain off as Chief Investigator.
Already ahead of you, brother.
ahead of you.
I mean, the point is when I looked into this compound, there was no understanding it.
know is I ain't never pontificated once in my life so if you're doing that and bad things are happening you gotta fucking stop it.
I'll try right now, but what I'm saying is in the end it didn't matter.
Yeah, I mean we gotta keep moving.
sounds like you're saying that thinking about it's only gonna make it worse, so...
You know.
Get our feet on the ground and...
thinking about it.
You're doing okay.
You're doing all right.
So are we sticking with the plan?
We're dropping Morrison and Mull off and me and Magpie are hitting up the cabin or do you wanna stick together?
What'd you just, yeah.
off time wise, I say we hold to the original arrangement.
Yeah, there's time.
think that's the way to do it.
Morrison and Mull, do you have any gear you need to take with you out of the van that has all your stuff?
You're no longer going to have an easy repository of things.
I I think I'm probably just gonna take like my hiking pack that I had at the start, but I'm probably gonna leave anything too unwieldy.
Mainly, I don't feel great about it, but leave my rifle behind.
I don't think I can take that into the hospital with me or be standing out in the parking lot.
I can't really conceal a rifle, ah but I'm gonna have my pistols on me.
under a priest robe you can.
I'm just kidding.
Hey, uh...
Hey, uh, Mole, they got chaplains at hospitals, right?
You think you can pull that off?
Can I pull that off?
Yes.
would What do we think about me dressing up as a priest?
How's everyone feeling about that?
contact, I don't know if you're a chaplain as well.
I think you already have a pretty good in, is all I'm saying.
Yeah, that's true.
sure.
But check this out, people trust cops and they trust priests, right?
I think.
yeah, you know, why not both together, I always say.
Okay, all right.
Yeah, yeah, I would not be leaving my kid without one, I tell you that.
You
with priest.
That's a comic.
Yeah, I think he thinks hard about changing into the priest robes, but...
decides to stick with the story he gave the doctor?
Yeah, for now.
Yeah, yeah.
We'll go with yeah for now.
Oh, okay.
I think that he maybe wants to take like a small backpack he has.
em I am happy to have you have me roll whatever.
My only thought with him is that given the amount of money he has and his kind of uh lawyer-ish background, he may have like one or two fake like a badge or something like
that.
I don't know how you feel about that.
It's okay.
You can totally say no to that.
with a back pack is iconic.
I think you probably have a leather valise.
uh However, I think your dogshit disguise precludes you from just having uh fake IDs, so I'll let you roll luck.
You had points in it, you just have them.
But you don't.
So you don't.
No, that's a 95.
you
that's then nope.
Yeah, I don't think, I mean, he would probably have his like a pistol on him.
uh And that's, and then uh what else?
Yeah, I think so.
And then I think uh he has probably given his law background and his high bureaucracy and stuff, maybe some various like, you know, power of attorney paperwork, maybe like a will
paperwork, just like some.
kind of generalized paperwork that allows him to, um if that works.
don't, yeah, and his laptop too, because he has like a super expensive laptop.
The gun is under the lamp.
Yeah, the gun is the laptop.
Yeah, no, that sounds good.
Whoa, didn't think about that.
Welcome to being rich.
Yeah, I think that's probably it.
I don't think he carries anything super crazy, really.
I think it would just be some maybe legal documents he thinks he could forge some things with.
Yeah, sure.
Bunch of different kinds of pens.
Really nice pens.
Actually, I think Mole uses those pins that have the little click down that's different colors.
Yeah, and it's got like a little jiggly eyeball on the top too, and he's always like, I'm quirky.
Yeah, he's the Zooey Deschanel of Power Attorneys, so.
All right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sounds good.
You guys, uh barring, uh do you want to stop and get something to eat?
Hot chocolate's all I need.
roll any further?
All right.
Yeah.
You guys roll into Chelan.
It is not a huge town.
In 2020, the population was 4,222.
There's a skate park, a bowling alley, pizza place and an arcade.
There's a few large hotels and a handful of
shitty motels.
um
wealthy Seattleites.
It's the kind of place that wealthy Seattleites own a second home in.
Yeah, generally a uh fairly nice smallish, small to medium town.
You have no trouble ah moving north along the lake.
You have no trouble finding...
ah
Uhhhh
therapists.
ah Dr.
Irene Kramer's uh practice.
Thank you Christ.
m You find Dr.
Irene Kramer's uh workplace without any difficulty.
It is a uh two story red brick building with a nice glass front.
It has her name, Dr.
Irene Kramer, therapy services.
It's got those uh tilty blinds in the front that you could that like the vertical ones that sort of sway Let the light in but aren't too public
Okay.
Gentlemen, good luck.
Thanks.
Hey, uh, don't think too hard, okay?
trying not to.
You ready?
yeah, let's do it.
Can you uh just give us a call if anything goes down?
We're happy to abandon things.
We probably have some like walkie talkies.
The other thing is that I guess Miles probably would at least be able to do some sort of like encrypted messaging service if he wanted to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There we go.
You also all have earpiece like ah walkies.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
Yeah, I just have like a Bluetooth thing, you know.
yeah, yeah, you look like a douchebag.
Got it.
yeah, I am douche embodied.
Yeah, give us a call if something happens.
Let us know.
Happy to break from here.
If you guys need to make it here, we can do that.
Yep, will do.
And you guys hop out.
All right, Magpie and Miles, you're going to drive the...
uh
Couple of miles to...
to Roger's house.
I gave you the address.
Do you guys have that written down?
written down.
Yeah, written down.
Because you can plug this into Google Maps.
it's 428W150, Chelan, Washington.
Yeah, you can plug that into Google Maps if you want to get a sort of idea of the neighborhood.
Yeah, I sure do will.
So we're not looking for a neighborhood, we're just looking for a highway with a house off of it, it looks like, and a few places next to it.
Yeah, I mean, that's a little jank, but I try not to judge.
Wait, hold on.
on the water, right?
That's what I'm saying.
What's the address I gave you?
428 Washington 150, Chelan Washington.
Kind of downwind from Chelan Beauty, which I assume will be hitting up at some point.
This is a nice small neighborhood.
There's uh an orchard in the back.
It's across the street from an elementary school.
uh It's the local elementary school.
um There are neighbors to either side in similarly small houses.
It's a quiet, quiet neighborhood.
not at all like what I appear to have sent you, which is just the freeway.
Cool.
could have written it down wrong too, I don't know.
All right, whatever.
So you guys rock up.
Yeah, Magpie.
I mean, this isn't, I mean, I can stick behind you, but I'm just only good when we find some stuff to look at.
Well, I don't mean to be worrying you, but this isn't exactly my specialty either.
eh sneaking in where we expect there to be nobody to hide from.
Well, that's an easier prospect.
I like horrors.
Yeah, do you wanna just go in the front or should we try to peek around back?
Well shoot.
em Yeah, I imagine we give the place a once over.
Okay, drive by and then park a little bit away.
Yeah, sure.
Driving past, can see, yeah, there's like visible home security cameras under the eaves of the, under the gutters of the house.
There's...
Yeah, the blinds are drawn, doors are shut.
How many entrances and exits are we dealing with?
You can see a front entrance, if you drive around the block, you can't see far enough through the orchard to determine what the deal is back there.
Okay, well if we've parked, then I suppose we'll go skulking about for a back door peeking through windows before we go busting in proper.
Where are you parking?
I'm on the of the road, some quarter mile down, to be in Conspicius.
Yeah.
So, it is a quiet neighborhood, but that doesn't mean there's nobody here.
You pass somebody walking her dog.
um Are you doing anything to be less conspicuous?
Or are you just pretending you belong there?
Yeah.
walking on the side of the neighborhood road, I couldn't exactly suggest, but I think we just look as though we have as much right to be there as anybody else.
m
Yeah, for sure.
Miles will have his phone out too and snapping pictures of like trees and things like that.
Yeah, sounds good.
You guys get up to uh the house.
It's got a small front lawn.
There's uh a fence, white picket fence and uh a sort of gangway between the fence and the house that goes behind it.
uh Could both of you give me an alertness check?
you
Just real quick, no reason.
007 under my base.
at 37, super fucking good, under 70?
How did I forget I was good at this?
All right.
Yeah, no, I'm.
Yeah, there's something...
in the grass by the driveway.
It looks like it's small, it's made of plastic, it's about the size of your two fists together, it's black.
It looks like maybe a plastic speaker with a, like a, I don't know, like it's staked into the ground.
It looks like a consumer good.
but positioned in a way that it has no business being staked out.
Well, you're not sure what the hell it is.
Maybe it's supposed to be staked out.
but there's a speaker there.
eh Is it emitting anything?
No, but-
Yeah, no noise, no-
That thing has me worried about booby traps, Magpie.
Do you think we should go through the orchard or?
That's probably worse, I don't know.
feel so great about the forward approach and perhaps do we want to see if it's rigged up to anything in particular?
eh If you don't mind getting close to it, I don't, yeah.
I'll get close, but I gotta be honest, I won't know what I'm looking at if I'm looking at it.
do you wanna do a feed?
get a little closer.
You can get a little closer and it's got like, it looks like it's got a little lens on the front, sort of pointed towards the driveway.
It's maybe just a camera.
The lens is small, if it's a camera it's low resolution.
and the initial inclination was that it was a speaker.
Is there anything I can do to differentiate it more audio or visual?
Yeah, it's black and it's got those cuts in the side the way you would imagine like a plastic speaker would to let the sound out.
But it does have some sort of lens on it pointing towards the driveway.
Hmm.
When you get closer you do see it is staked into the ground.
As in the bottom part of it is a pointy spike that somebody has pressed into the dirt.
What, and we get up to it, is there some sort of uh transmitter that seems apparent or perhaps a wire that's connected?
No, are you moving in front of the lens?
Certainly not.
Okay.
Yeah, no wire, no transmitter.
Seems like an alarm or something.
we walk in like a, it's like a infrared lens rather than a regular lens or something.
eh I'm just going to point this like tip the stake over and point the lens straight to the ground
Okay, yeah, you do that and the sound of gunshots erupt from the speaker.
Yeah.
Bam, bam, bam.
Incredibly loud from the speaker.
and no wires on the speaker again.
No, it's its own self-contained unit.
And.
uh The you see and hear the door to the next door building open
Do you run or hang out?
eh I think it's somewhere in between.
eh I think I'm inclined to creep closer.
I think I tip down the speaker or the input as it were.
It starts making all manner of noise and I'm looking for a change of pace and I'm looking to get inside.
You're going to run to the front door.
heading that way, let's see what Myles says about it.
Yeah, Miles sees him taking off and then can I just try to stomp it to like stop it from, okay.
Yeah, that doesn't take anything.
You stomp it.
It's full of consumer-grade electronics.
It does, yeah.
I will quickly fall in behind Magpie as he's running, so.
Okay, yeah.
Are you guys going to run up the side of the house or just straight to the front door?
MagPy, should, let's take the back just in case that anybody comes out.
yeah, yeah.
And I pull my sidearm up.
I'm going around the back.
eh
all right.
Do you look back at the door that opened?
The front door opened.
No, no, no, sorry.
You watched the neighbor's door open, the neighbor's front door open as this was happening.
don't think I'm paying any particular mind to them.
Okie doke.
Okay, uh yeah, I'll stomp the thing and then I'll just stand there dumbfounded and looking around waiting for this neighbor to approach me.
Okay.
Yeah.
So Magpie is running around to the back.
Miles is standing in front of the residents.
A woman comes out of the out of the house.
Yeah, God.
It's that.
oh What what are you doing here?
Yeah, I mean, I was just admiring all the homes on here.
I was thinking about buying here.
My wife and I just had our first kid.
I'm so sorry.
Yeah, the guy who lives here, he's...
He's not doing great.
He installed these motion activated things three weeks ago.
They go off every time a fucking squirrel comes through here.
We've tried to get him to listen.
This is not like representative of the neighborhood.
I'm Linda.
It's a pleasure to meet you.
ah This is really a great place to have kids.
I'm really sorry that this is.
the introductions of the neighborhood.
accident.
was just like, I just kind of wandered into the driveway and was like, and.
can totally see how that...
Do you want to come in?
I've made apple cider cookies.
Yeah, sure.
um That's very kind of you.
Yeah, I'll definitely, I have about five minutes, but then after that, I just wanted to look at a few of the other blocks um and stroll around.
and we don't have to do the conversation unless you want to, but I'm just giving Magpie some time, so.
All right, cut to Magpie.
Magpie, you're dashing up the side of this house.
It is a single story bungalow.
You think there might be a basement judging by the uh low level uh light wells.
uh As you're running past the side of the house, you're running past a very odd collection of basically rusty scrap.
um Mostly stuff like smashed up old cast iron radiators and like disc brakes from cars.
like things that look like they've been uh amassed here like they didn't belong yeah
just tossed next to the side of the house.
Yeah, all right.
If there's any indication I can get about the perhaps the oldest fixture among them, just any idea of how long this has been standing.
No, it's all pretty rusty.
You do spot a sledgehammer there.
It looks as if somebody was smashing the radiators.
Okay, I mean, I'll make note of it, but it doesn't exactly seem pertinent at the moment.
I'm gonna take a look, at the back door and see what's to be determined.
So you get into this sort of backyard area.
There's a fence, a sort of fenced in area and then further orchard beyond that.
You know those thin red wood um wired together fence planks?
They're about one inch wide.
Yeah, it's one of those.
In this little backyard space, there is a cellar door, a back door, and
some sort of like welded steel structure uh maybe six and a half feet tall mostly tubular maybe uh
two and a half, three feet in diameter.
um It sort of stands on like tripod legs off the ground.
Maybe...
uh
maybe three feet off the ground at the bottom of this pill-shaped steel enclosure.
Okay, just trying to reckon with it.
If I were imagining it as something more than an artistic fixture, is there any purpose I might be able to ascribe to it?
Yeah, do you have any points in any art skills or heavy machinery?
uh Shoot, would surprise you to know that it's not either those.
I'll let you roll Heavy Machinery, I think you got a bass in it.
like the idea that and 000 that's the bad one.
Yeah.
that's a critical failure.
So check that box off for me while I think about what this thing is.
what could possibly go wrong with a failure a critical failure on heavy machinery i can't imagine any repercussions there
Yeah, what was your last job?
Well, I was in medical school.
Last job was private security.
Okay, yeah, you know-
In med school, you take any...
uh
X-ray tech classes, because uh this looks a lot like somebody tried to home make like a helium bottle.
This looks a lot like a gas bottle, like a pressurized gas canister, but on a really big scale.
But you don't know why it's got legs.
You don't know why it's off the ground like that.
It's really strange.
Really strange.
And helium in this quantity or if that's the gossip it is have I made that assertion is that like a Something that somebody could get and Without drawing suspicion or would
somebody need a special way to acquire something out of volume
No, it's kind of expensive, but it's consumer good.
ah I think you need it for cat scan imagery, perhaps.
Somebody just thinks you're having a lot of a lot of birthday parties and Okay
got a little uh flap door on the front.
It's the door on the front.
Okay.
a little, little, little hingy looking door thing.
know I'd be checking out any Hingy Door thing in my presents.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The inside, maybe it's not a gas cylinder, because it's lined inside with some sort of powdery, white, thick material.
Like three inches thick, three inches deep, sort of.
ceramic it's powdery it comes apart when you scrape at it with a fingernail
Um, okay.
So there's drugs and explosives in this sculpture back here that I'll tell Miles about as soon as he's finished having tea with the neighbours.
Yeah.
Soon as he gets here.
What this is, who gives a shit?
Where to?
and the back door I reckon.
Yeah, okay.
You give it a handshake.
It's locked.
I give it a harder handshake.
Alright, you gonna kick the door down?
Yeah, okay.
You want to give me strength or athletics or...
uh I'll take criminology.
yeah athletic sounds all right um yeah 18 we're surely through that
You, uh, you give it a hard shoulder and it pops open.
uh Did you want to go into the back door or down the cellar?
I suppose I hadn't realised there was an entrance to the basement.
I think the back door proper.
Okay, alright.
Yeah, you pop into a kitchen.
Kitchen area.
Looks like there's a long hallway going towards the front of the house with a couple of rooms branching off.
One of those is a door that probably goes down to the basement.
Hard to tell which.
It's dark in here.
All the blinds are shut.
Yeah.
You want to turn the lights on?
No, I don't think I will.
Yeah, I think that's alright.
And I think I'll probably stick to the ground floor for now.
I'll open any windows as I come across them.
I am, yeah.
Okay.
Just generally trying to get an idea of how much living goes on here I suppose.
A lot of living.
This house is a wreck.
There is just junk everywhere.
And the junk has a sort of...
it has a hoarder quality, but it also has a paper quality.
This man is collecting newspapers, books, clippings, just all sorts of just shit.
But there is something stranger, which is that the walls are
covered covered covered covered in Post-it notes.
um Tons and tons and tons of Post-it notes.
So we're gonna move back to Miles real quick.
ah Miles, get an earful, you managed to get out.
Where are you going?
Yeah, mean, Miles would be looking through the window as he walked by to see if Magpie was inside and presumably see the blinds open up around there or.
Yeah, I don't know that Magpie got all the way to the front.
What do you think, Magpie?
Did you, if you're seeing all this, you making it all the way to the very front room to open the blinds that face the main street?
I mean, I suppose my point was to broadcast a little bit of what I was doing.
On account of Miles isn't here.
Then yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
The front blinds open up and you sort of look at each other.
oh
be like, and then I'll just look around quickly and see, and then just go to the front door and just give it a few taps.
You see those security cameras?
That's a little done and gone, but
And then yeah, I guess I get in and I see this Post-It Note Haven.
Yep.
Just books and newspapers and shit everywhere.
I would just be pulling out my cell phone and just snapping pictures along the way just to show to Morrison and Mole.
um Then yeah, I would be Magpie.
uh Is this, this is it?
Just crazy guy stuff.
You're muted.
Can't hear you, can't hear you.
Yeah, I suppose this is all there is but We got a couple somethings here.
There was something met not to be forgotten to time and there's something to do with a cylinder what needs checking on and I'm not sure if that's what I seen in the back field
or if there's something else afoot
Okay, so a cylinder and you saw the cylinder.
Well I don't know, I saw a something.
I wouldn't necessarily call it a cylinder, but I ain't seen anything cylindrical that I would call a cylinder in the wake of this.
What's this about a cylinder?
Where are you getting what?
know.
uh Good question.
Some of the post-its in there just seemed a little insistent about checking on something.
It sounded like a cylinder.
Yeah, looks, it says check THCL in DR.
Under don't forget, yeah.
you guys are reading the post-it notes for our audio medium, ah could you read which ones you're looking at?
Yeah, I'm looking at one that says it's WTCHFRSGNS, which I'm assuming is watch for signs more ominously, which comes up to me too.
But um there's another strange one that.
is long and something seems like vampire, squads, symbology, myth, I don't know.
This one has a phone number on it though.
Yeah, you didn't see that one?
Which symbology?
No, I think I would remember that part.
What about VMPRS?
Does that not sound like vampires to you, Magpie?
I don't know.
I don't know nothing about vampires.
But I know there was something.
He was intent on not forgetting.
And this seems like he was meant to check a cylinder.
What cylinder?
I don't properly know.
This also says Teddy might still have some and there's this phone number on here.
That's what I'm picking up from it.
I don't know what it is before that, but I'm just grabbing this post-it and putting it in my pocket because it has a phone number on it.
done.
You did uh snap a picture of it, I think, or did Magpie snap a pic of it?
I'm taking pictures of everything too, so yeah.
Okay, where'd you find, show me the cylinder and I'll walk back with MagPy unless he's got more to say about these Post-its.
Yeah, and you guys approach the cylinder behind the...
the cylinder.
It looks more like a shitty sculpture.
um But, yeah, if that's how they call it, then I apologize.
It looks like a shitty sculpture.
looks like a three foot diameter steel pill on a tripod in the backyard.
You got any points in any art?
No, I don't.
any points in heavy machinery.
I have bass.
I have a...
super great for MagPy, so I guess you don't have to if you don't want to.
You know, I think that I would be less interested in the structure and just going for what's inside since there's a flap in thinking like what is in here, my chemical
engineering and chemical physics kind of, yeah.
Oops, dropped my dice.
All right, chemical engineering or chemical physics, sorry.
uh Chemical physics is a pass at 68.
Yeah, whatever this is, it's some sort of refractory material.
um It's a high temp resistant, it doesn't look like refractory cement to you, but this is the sort of thing you would find in kilns maybe, furnaces, um really high temp resistant
stuff.
Looks like he was heating something up in here.
um And I'll open the inside and just see if there's any remnant of things I could collect.
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of like-
dusty sooty gunk at the bottom.
grabbing some so yeah so okay checking the cylinder which I'm assuming is this thing since it's cylindrical but that's just an assumption and then
We have all these phone numbers, or this phone number, and vampire squids, or squad.
I don't think it's vampire squad though.
it'd be squads.
Yeah, squads.
What are we missing, Magpie?
I don't know.
eh I'm gonna go perhaps squirreling through his rooms, looking through his personal effects, looking for anything that looks like it wasn't meant to be distributed around his
house.
Yeah, absolutely.
Are the two of you taking the time to conduct a methodical search?
can happen in the order of an hour.
Do you have an hour?
Do you have more than an hour?
Do have less than an hour?
an hour.
And I would just be like, um do you wanna check this seller or do you want me to check it?
Where you go, I'm going to.
So I will let you guys roll search.
If you roll it, yeah, just roll search for me.
Leave it at that.
Yeah, just fine.
19.
19 on a
57 over a base of 20.
I have forensics, but...
That's not gonna do what you need it to do right now.
Yeah, Magpie, you're poking through.
all of these rooms and you find a couple of really interesting things on the first floor, the main floor.
You find these if you want to describe those.
Yeah, I suppose I do.
I find something, uh what looks like a makeshift surgery tray, perhaps, that has a piece of notebook paper with some sort of symbols or a cipher or something on it, I'm not
properly sure.
And something that looks intimidating, like an ice pick that'd be used for...
and lobotomizing somebody, suppose.
um
uh Upon closer inspection it is a chisel.
Yeah, all right.
It's still, yeah, it's still flatline.
Your IQ score pretty quick, I reckon.
And yeah, there's a uh fair number of strange symbols and foreign hand on this piece of paper.
And when I get to being real personal with it, I do notice there's a swatch of blood on there as well.
Yeah.
You also find a, in the bedroom, you find a laptop.
boy.
You can believe I'm not keeping that to myself for long.
That's my business, not mine.
Yeah, I mean, I would collect the laptop.
I'm not necessarily gonna search it right now, so.
Sure.
um Give me alertness at a plus 20.
No, just, just, miles.
That's...
Unless MagPy, do you have computer science above base?
No?
Okay.
That's at 90 above base 20 or 40, I guess.
well yeah you have a laptop.
Good job.
Oh shit, okay.
Sweet.
um Would I, would, I'm assuming you would show me that piece of paper, Magpie.
Like, did we get a description of the, what is it, monotic, the manuscript?
I mean, think the most we have to go on is just the falsehoods that the historian was professing.
We don't know nothing about the proper contents.
Okay, all right.
Okay, well, should we keep all this in mind and in hand and go down to the seller?
Yeah, I reckon so.
Yeah, down you go.
I'll let you roll another search down here in the cellar.
merciful of you and hey that's a 30 zero that's under 40
32 over bass.
well.
Nick, you...
Nick, Miles finds...
Yeah, you find a big sack of rocks.
Black bituminous rocks.
Big sack of them.
Like an 80 pound sack.
Okay.
Magpie, you find tucked away, down here in the cellar, it's an unfinished basement.
So there's two rows of shelves, garden tools.
On the shelves is all sorts of, again, more junk.
um On one of them, you do find like a shoe box full of uh photos.
And the photos seem to...
Mostly be of ah Roger Douglas as a kid.
Childhood family photos.
But one of them really stands out to you because it is not a photo of Roger Douglas as a child.
um Yeah, what do I have the good fortune to be looking upon here?
Is that a uh lesion or something else?
Are you asking me?
suppose I am.
I'm looking at the photograph.
I see that it's an exhibit.
see a mark on what looks to be flesh and I'm not sure if it is oh a a malady that I can place or not.
you have like great medicine, don't you?
good medicine, yeah.
What's your medicine?
It's a six.
And what's your law?
can't imagine why that would be important.
It's 0%.
Oops.
well.
uh Yeah.
This is a weird uh wound.
It appears to be through the dermis and the epidermis, straight to the muscular tissue below, um but it's round.
It's very round, very clean at the edges.
There doesn't appear to be...
tearing, there doesn't appear to be the sort of slicing you would see if like an angled cut were to go through flesh.
It's very hard to tell just from this photo what part of the body this is.
and
So it's a little hard to tell what the size would be, but you think it's maybe like the size of your fist.
I I certainly wouldn't want an impact crater that size on me.
Does it seem, uh compared to the other photos, that it is obviously a part of Douglas?
Or is that hard to tell?
That's, you can't even tell what body part this is.
Can you?
Can you, you, Magpie?
necessarily.
I mean, I'd take a medicine check at it, but I suppose I'm trying to ascertain compared to the other photos in the stack, if it seems to be of the same skin tint, pigmentation,
flesh coloration, all that.
very, very hard to tell.
It is somebody Caucasian.
Douglas is Caucasian.
but there's no obvious difference between like the coarseness of the hair on the photos or the tint of the skin, anything like that.
No.
All right.
m Alright, is there any inclination that I have in my em medical emergency past that tells me what might have induced a wound such as this?
Some normal type of physical trauma?
No.
Yeah, all right.
I think more than anything that's perhaps what I take away from it rather than drawing specific conclusions.
It's the fact that I don't quite have a frame of reference for what might have done this manner of damage.
You could do this potentially with a scalpel if you were to cut a circle without cutting any of the musculature below it and then ripping the little patch that you have just
created off.
like a reasonable and fair conclusion or just something that might work?
Yeah, all right.
Well, I'll mention it to Miles simply based on the barbaric premise of how one might be treated.
um Certainly, yeah, absolutely.
And consulting with him on any idea of if he has frame of reference for if he thinks this is...
um
Douglas or another victim yet to be determined.
Yeah, I would look at it.
uh There's nothing I could probably glean more than you from it.
m Zero percent.
oh
Cool.
Just checking.
Thanks.
yeah, do, hmm, do, is there anything I can do to reference the date four years ago plus?
Is that, I don't know.
I suppose it doesn't carry any, any specific significance, but if there's anything.
uh that gives me the inclination based on timing of the other photographs in the stack with it perhaps
The other photographs are from when Roger Douglas was a child.
80s, 90s, they're uh disposable camera photos.
This is glossy and moderately large.
Yeah.
Well, I think the last piece of mind I pay it is that it seems to have uh a sticker or some sort of emblem on it that looks as though it was processed as part of perhaps a crime
scene investigation or something like that, as though it has already been uh through the system.
And I'll just kind of took that away, I suppose, you know, floated over to Miles that...
Well, it doesn't seem to be a fresh wound and it's not clear who suffered the wound or perhaps who has induced it but why on earth might you consider keeping a record of a flesh
wound you suffered some half a decade ago?
I don't know.
I mean, I guess the only thing I could think of is if it's like a key or uh something that is uh pointing, was pointing Rogers to something else or like some sort of key is all I
can think of.
Not like that opens a door, but like a guide, something that's like.
showing him something.
but I don't know what more to make of this.
Do you suppose there's anything else more to be guarded while he's out of home?
I mean, I found this bag of rocks, so as far as I know, doesn't.
behind.
Do you have a reason to keep it with you?
I'll grab one and put it in my pocket.
Vampire squid.
I was Googling that on my phone a little bit.
Seems like a big old name for something that's not actually very scary.
But they have bioluminescent organs.
And they like parts of the ocean that have a very low
oxygen level so just keep that in your head when you're
Yeah, looking around.
I'm not sure about the ink though.
Yeah, well, hey, it does occur to me as you suggest that there's some deep sea bent to all this, perhaps.
I will go around and reclose the blinds and simply to reinstill the darkness and the state of being before I disrupted it.
But I'm curious to sit in that silence and that darkness and that stillness and see if perhaps there is anything that speaks.
uh
you
surprise you to learn that I have a fat zero?
No, but it does disappoint me a little bit.
you can feel free to give me those points whenever you like.
I don't think I will.
ah No, it's dark and weird in here.
Yeah.
We have some leads though.
Right, sorry, go ahead.
didn't have your luck, you'd get it now.
like your inspiration point.
Like it's a good character moment.
Oh, you find, you know what you do find?
Yeah.
So the living room and what appears to be Douglas's office, it's where you found that laptop.
They're covered in folders and files and newspapers and books.
And he's got shit taped to the walls and like papers, reports and maps.
on the living room table and the coffee tables are covered in paperbacks and hardbacks.
Like, just, it would take you way longer than you have to sort this information.
But with your successes...
You find...
The general contents of these two rooms include crime statistics, a lot of crime statistics across Washington state, printed out web page stories about various mass
shootings in the Seattle area.
There's 11 of these seem to be printed over and over.
uh You find some brain scans, uh the actual printed film.
and uh what appears to be like
notebooks and notebooks and notebooks, spiral bound notebooks of just a madman's writing.
Copious notes.
Is there perhaps anything we can determine from the brain scans if Miles and I put our heads together?
Yeah, sure.
um If you're looking at the films, they say Roger Douglas on them.
Yeah.
seems like a clean sign.
I think these are Roger Douglas's.
I was gonna ask.
Um, yeah, they-
Role Medicine.
gladly.
Yeah, 53.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They look...
fine.
Not dementia.
No, they look fine.
Like I've looked at these things two times through and I'm confident that they're Roger Douglas's scans and they are recent.
They have Roger Douglas's name on them and they do say 2024.
You would not be able to say for certain that this is in fact the inside of Roger Douglas's head, but it's got his name on it for sure.
I see it firsthand.
Okay.
So as he's looking at that, I'm Googling like the squid stuff and these posts that they're starting to make more sense to me now that I've had time, right?
The vampire squid, something about their phos gene or like, and I realized that this is like some sort of liquid they secrete or gas.
Um, but more concerning is realizing that all the vowels are taken out of this.
And one of the things is mother Hydra is making.
Forget, or maybe it's you.
I don't know what the Y is, but, and then something about San Juan Island being important.
But they got that halve algae bloom going on at the moment, don't they?
H-A-B, yep.