Hey, it's Nick here, dropping at the beginning of the episode, and I just wanted to thank the casting crew for this great season.
Uh, we only have a few episodes left, and Patrick has done an amazing job running and helping write Demnotio Memore with Hank Bellinger.
I really respect both of them and have loved playing through this scenario, and hopefully they're both back on the show in some way.
I also want to thank Sam and Jimmy from Hand on the Door.
They were very generous with their time.
Sam helped make all the music for this season as well.
And they're just all around great dudes.
So if you can follow Hand on the Door, if you haven't already, you should follow them on whatever podcast platform you listen on.
And on that note, if you are listening on Spotify, Apple Music, or whatever other platform, give Dead Letter Bureau a quick rating.
It really helps us reach.
a wider audience and I think that especially with season two we wanna get as many people listening as possible because we think that what we do is really fun and great
storytelling.
So thank you finally to all the listeners.
Appreciate you guys.
It is about five AM when you get to your first destination, which was Anthony Hayden's apartment.
Morrison, all of a sudden you crash.
You're exhausted.
This has been too much for one day.
Um you're you're gonna take the penalties for being exhausted until you get some rest.
Sure.
Or until you do some harder drugs.
Take your pick.
This app.
Hm.
I think I'm probably angry enough that I d I'm tired, but I'm like, we're here, we need to do stuff and I just wanna keep moving.
hey magpie, you got any modafinil in there?
Which modafinil's like meth methamphetamine light.
it's used for people who have like hypersomnolence, which is like excessive sleep.
Yeah, sure.
Got a little pharmacy to be sure, or do I just hand it over?
you've got like a fifty pharmacy, right?
Fifty And this is your going to do crimes bag?
Crimes.
Yeah, you've got some modafinil.
Big what is it?
You got it, Medaffinil.
Alright, yeah.
No, you've got it.
Does Morrison need to take a con check as he pops these?
I think they're schedule three, which means like they are controlled substances, so I'm gonna say yes.
Let me check.
I'm curious now.
It doesn't matter, but let's say yes.
Okay.
Give me a contract, please.
Uh which direction?
uh success.
Sixty six under eighty five.
Your heart does not stop.
Yeah, give me a two D six.
Six total.
Okay.
Very good.
Yeah, you have that crazy feeling.
You are more alert, but have you ever you you've I'm sure pulled an all-nighter.
You know that feeling of having drunk maybe a a uh quart of coffee and the sun is coming up and your guts are turning over and you're like, this is not what a human should feel
like.
That's you.
Yeah, just running on pure hate and like jitteriness.
Like I've keep feeling like I need to clinch my jaw.
But you you do focus in uh basically right as you all pull up to uh the apartment complex.
It's sort of an older building, it's blocky and in pretty obvious disrepair.
There are the cars in the neighborhood are beaters, some of them have boots on some of them have busted out windows with like plastic bags taped in, that sort of thing.
It's a shitty neighborhood.
You can the the building is shaped like a horseshoe, so there's a small inner courtyard and uh basically three front doors that lead to each apartment block.
You have his address, so there shouldn't be any trouble finding the place.
For as shitty as it is, are there people who are like out milling about, you know?
There are, yeah.
Not even milling about.
Uh there's people sitting on stairs, there's people there's a couple of people on a balcony and they are just nakedly looking at you.
Not really with hostility but with interest.
walk in like we own the place, they're not gonna remember shit anyway, so
Yeah, I think um maybe we all come out, right?
I think we pull up, we hear Miles say that, and then I think we all file out with the utmost amount of purpose that we can muster at, you know, three whatever it is, four in
the morning, three in the morning, um, hopped up on stuff.
and I I'm imagining us as like a group, right?
Like form together, move and just go straight for it.
I don't think that there's any reason to
fuck around with anyone, uh a around all of us.
So um I think Mole probably takes front if that's okay with everybody to just front like get ready to go knock on the door.
Sure, yeah.
You enter the the you know, the apartment block on the left and like you have to sort of step around a group of like just kids.
Like, you know, just just like maybe fifteen hanging out.
They've been out all night.
They they sort of watch you as you go in and they look at you and they look at your shitty van and they look back at you and you go in.
Can I while we're doing that, can I roll a human for to get a a sense of w what I'm looking for is is this a normal amount of watching?
Is this are we just being taken in because we're coming into this area, it's their turf, or is this something outside of that?
Sixty five on a sixty.
So nope.
Whatever it is, you don't like it.
Fair enough.
Is there mailboxes outside of the units on the way?
There are, yeah, for sure.
Um and you do spot a mailbox associated with Anthony Hayden's apartment number.
It is jammed, jammed full of shit.
Like the other it's it's you know, those rows of letter boxes and the others are, you know, sort of worn out worn out, dinged up.
But there are like flyers and letters and
All sorts of shit like just crammed in the little vents of this thing.
Uh th there's a couple of like just d was that just your Miles Yanking stuff?
I'm gonna pull whatever I can out of that and start flipping through it on our walk.
Yeah, for sure.
some of it, you know, flyers, whatever.
Um, you know, pizza coupons and shit.
but some of them are pay stubs.
Can I open those and look at the dates?
Yeah, sure.
We'll get to that in a minute.
Okay.
So that's what you're dealing with on your way up to the apartment.
Mul you get to the door.
Yeah, I think and again from you guys standpoint, if you don't stop Mole, Mole's just going to do things.
I think you have realized that.
I mean, that's just where he's at.
so I think we pull up.
I think that I'm in a state of mind enough where I give a pause to make sure every nobody's going to stop me on something, and then I just fucking knock rap on the door.
Just pop, pop, pop.
Yeah.
You knock on the door and um about a minute goes by.
Another minute goes by.
How long are you gonna stand out here in this hallway?
I would give it probably two minutes before he turn uh Mole turns around, looks at the three of you and is like, Uh, do we just fucking bust it down?
Out of the four of us, who is the door buster?
'Cause I don't think quite honestly that that would be Mole.
I think it's Mike.
Yeah.
Yeah, what I'm gonna shoulder try to shoulder the door open and see if I can just like do it quieter than charging it or doing something dumb.
So
Yeah, to do it quietly I would take um either a stealth or even a criminology.
Oh well that's not what Miles will do then.
Miles kick it.
Tell me about your strength then.
I've sixteen or an eighty, so
Okay.
yeah, you don't have to roll at all because this door was not locked at all.
There we go.
This is slowly becoming a hand on the door game.
You know, I love the idea that Mole's like, all right, what do we fucking do?
Turns around, just kind of steps out of the way, and then we just see Miles kick the fucking door in.
It's like a practice thing for us to some degree, but like was not needed.
Yeah.
I also
Mind the idea that that Mole asserted that the door was locked and sent sent you at it, right?
And and now he he's like whoopsie.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Okay, well mm let's see what we can find quickly I guess 'cause I made a lot of noise.
Yeah, in you go.
this apartment smells weird.
And not just musty, although it does smell musty, and not just damp, although it it does smell damp.
Um, it doesn't smell of rot per se, but there is a sharp, almost acidic, acrid odor in the air.
It seems as though someone has uh pasted newspapers over the windows behind the blinds, or underneath the blinds.
the the light of the sunrise w is weak anyhow, but is uh barely filtering through.
the yeah, i it's it's not really light enough to get a great view in here.
What are you guys flashlights?
Try the switch.
You try the switch and it does not turn on.
Yeah, I imagine that Morrison definitely has like flashlights.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah, you get your flashlight out and the the first thing you I assume you look at is the the bulb in the fixture on the ceiling and it's smashed.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, I probably get my flashlight out and also pull out one of my pistols, do the little like tactical grip.
Sure, yeah, tact grip.
And kinda look around the room.
Any of you can have flashlights or even your phone light.
The room is moldy.
There is black mold on the walls and sort of damp and other sort of y you know how uh cheap furniture, like particle board, chipboard furniture with uh like laminate plastic on
it?
If you get that too wet it swells and cracks.
like all the tables and all the chairs are swollen and cracked and a little moldy and and it's humid in here and you do actually hear like a an occasional dripping from further in
the apartment.
Those does it look so I'm imagining this.
I can I can picture the the mold, I can picture the the destroyed kind of shitty furniture.
Does it still look like lived in though, or does it look like t like sealed time has forgotten kind of you know what I mean?
I have fuck, I have no forensics, I only have green knowledge.
to it.
Miles would be looking at that as well, um, be after you looked at the mail and yeah, his forensics is at sixty.
Yeah, so the mail the mail is pay stubs from as as recently as two weeks ago.
From the it was like a a coffee.
Coffee at 300 Pine Street.
Let's go.
I know exactly where that's at.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like where most of the drugs like pass hands in Seattle, so
It's the old Bon Marche building.
Yep.
There's a reason that it's the old Bon Marchais building.
Yeah.
Well.
Yeah, you look at the at them and there's four paychecks here.
Two weeks ago, two weeks before that, two weeks before that, back to eight weeks ago.
Jesus.
And they're all for zero dollars and zero cents.
And so the two pieces of information we've gotten about him is this address and that he worked at this coffee shop.
And he's still getting pay stubs from them?
that the last time that he paid his taxes was twenty twenty.
don't love doing this, so say no if it's if you don't want it.
I do have an accounting of seventy.
Um and so I guess is there something is there anything that would come to Mole's business accounting mind for why he would get those pay stubs.
Yeah.
For sure.
Also again, you could say no 'cause you know, if it's like a puzzle oh
Totally, that's fine.
What's the uh what's your unnatural at?
Thirteen.
Yeah.
I'll let you roll accounting or unnatural, and that'll that'll decide what sort of information you get off this.
If you choose to roll unnatural and you fail, we had this conversation previously, uh there are consequences.
Take your pick.
Just the way your eyes lit up when he said you can roll accounting are a natural was pretty accurate.
Yeah, I mean I'm not gonna not roll roll on that when I have a
You have a seventy account.
It seems wild to me though that I would not re
Oh.
Something about this seems wild.
I think you're right about that.
um
This is
Like rolling this over in his mind and he's like, Hey, but do the practical thing.
It's not just you here, Lord.
You need to serve your flock.
if you say that, I think actually that is a reasonable kind of play into the delusions that Mole has.
I think that's actually a reasonable way to go about doing that.
Um that's fine.
I ruined one thing already.
Let's not ruin two things.
but what are you feeling there?
Like I mean, I get doing the practical thing, but if there's something that you feel like
Ooh, yeah, do I get any sense of any sense of what the unnatural
Will let you roll
Go with your gut mole.
Okay, my gut is unnatural unfortunately for everyone involved here.
If I critically fail this, I think I'm kicked off.
Holy shit, I got a fucking seven.
Are you kidding me?
Yes!
Yes.
uh
Seven.
Let's fucking go.
All that luck at once.
Ooh.
That's great.
Mull, these are automated pay stubs.
This is from a payroll system being generated automatically.
And yeah, whatever this is, it makes people forget.
If the people have forgotten, but the software knows how many hours are worked, then why wouldn't more pay sh pay stubs be issued?
So the people at the coffee shop.
I'll forget.
I'll also let Mo ask with everyone else's headphones off, you can ask me a question.
Okay, now I need to think though for a second.
Off the top of my demo pay stuff that are Okay, here's my question.
Um, fuck, do we already know this though?
It I guess it doesn't tell me.
Okay.
Yeah.
I I guess thinking putting that together, that like people forget to put in things, but the auto pay stuff is putting stuff in, then I start thinking about the route of like
technologically, how can we
get to him?
How can we see his history?
How can we understand something about him?
Because it sounds like, right, it's not the it's technology that's allowing this to for us to do that.
So I think my question would be is how can we delve further into understanding him but using the kind of technological aspect of things because that doesn't forget unlike human
memory.
Because this seems like very much a human
So uh I'll just let you ask that later and like rul a bureaucracy or a computer science or whatever.
I meant ask me something about the unnatural, about the threat you're facing.
Oh, sick.
Okay.
Um
I didn't actually say it, but that is what I meant.
No, I love that.
That's great.
obviously feel free to k like cut down to whatever you think.
I think that Mole, because the worms, because of this delusional p parasitosis he has, he has really been thinking over and over that you can't die.
This is you you know, this is almost like a Christ like figure in his head that that the kid who we couldn't kill.
So I think the question in his head is, how would you actually go about sacrificing
Killing or in killing's maybe even not the right word, but kind of how do you get at this thing that, you know, in his mind is maybe an outcropping of God?
And he obviously has taken it in and said, I have this in myself.
even whether he does or does not.
His question really is do we have this inside of us and can we get this put inside of us?
Ooh.
That's that's his fucking question.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, you you have a moment of clarity, a very brief moment of clarity for Mul.
And you know that the woman whose head you saw explode, she had to work pretty hard to memorize the chant, and she had to work pretty hard to memorize the shapes and the forms,
and to the extent that after two weeks of practice, she didn't even do it right the first time.
And and it failed right then and there.
So it might be a little harder to accidentally trigger than you guys are imagining it to be.
Right.
It it's
isn't to say that it's not dangerous.
Right.
But you may be you obviously are infected, but they might be clear.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I think that he gets that that moment of clarity does not involve himself, right?
No.
It does not involve himself.
Because that is core to his identity now is that he is Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
He's taking on that uh Christ like feeling.
Okay.
So
Alright, I'm gonna get everyone back in.
Yep.
Mull, you have all those insights.
Feel free to express them or don't.
Yeah, you're in a moldy apartment, guys.
Forensics wise.
Well I don't know if mole expresses a whole lot to you guys as it stands right now.
He may be moling things over a little bit.
You can give don't forget, you have two pieces of information here.
The first being about the pay stubs.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
Um, I guess uh looking at the the pay stuff stuff, he is he so looks like these are automatic payments.
Okay, so I mean looking at this place, looking at the black mold, this looks like a dead end, but we can let's keep searching it.
Can I get that forensics to see it gleam sixty.
Yeah, I'm gonna say you don't even need to roll you've got some sciences too, right?
Yeah.
Biochemistry, chemical engineering and chemical physics.
Yeah.
one, this is black mold, uh, heads up.
yeah, you put on a like an you get an N ninety five out of your bag and put it on.
yeah, two, no, this is a serious amount of mold, but somebody was living here uh with the mold.
Um this is a lived in space.
how far into the apartment are you going?
You enter into the living room.
There's a probably a bathroom and a
Maybe a small bedroom further in?
I imagine that I just hand the pay stubs over to Mole and just start walking through after I tell him to trust his gut and am just going deeper and deeper.
Morson.
pass the bathroom, you glance into the bathroom and the the tub is full.
It's at the overflow.
The chromed overflow is rusted almost all the way through.
Some lot of water damage here and decay from the water and moisture.
That is where the dripping is coming from, is the bathtub tap occasionally drips into the tub.
Magpie, do you think let's say he's living here?
Like I mean, what shape could he be in if he's like in this environment?
I know black mold is extremely deadly over time and it looks like he's been here for years.
Now that isn't to say that it looks like anyone has been here recently.
it's pretty hard to tell.
Uh okay, actually do give me that forensics.
Can I Yeah, please, both of you.
Fifty nine under sixty.
Hell yeah.
Forty three over forty over.
Not quite.
with your success, yeah, uh the mold has been here for a while.
This is this is like uh ruin a building levels of mold.
This has spread, it's in the walls, it's in the ducts.
This is like a huge problem.
Um, but it's been here for a while, and it doesn't seem like anyone has been here in at the very least a couple of months, possibly longer.
It's it's a little hard to tell about that.
Yeah, guys, I mean, the way I can see it, it looks like somebody hasn't been here for a few months.
I think maybe we can pick up a trail from here, but we're not gonna find him right now.
but the pay stubs I mean it's the only other place we got on him is the coffee shop, so if we're feeling thirsty later, I think we hit that before we talk to our handler.
While they're doing that, can Mole be searching for anything that may give him any idea of where, you know I mean, I know this is too obvious, but like, you know, like the brochure
for an apartment somewhere else or something like that.
But just anything that may tell you, you know, maybe he left for something else.
No.
But you do find his laptop.
It's in his bedroom.
It's under his bed.
Okay.
Uh does it look like it is it look like it hasn't been used in a long time?
It does look like it has not been used in a long time.
You'll probably have to plug it in.
Uh I found the the the the kid's computer.
You find a charger too, no problem.
from you mall and say, let me see.
And I'm not gonna plug anything in this apartment though guys.
Like I don't wanna get electrocuted, so
Yeah, it's all wet.
Makes sense.
I think Agent Morrison looks for like a a broom or something long and he wants to poke the water in the tub.
Kinda poke around with the broom.
He doesn't want to, but he's like
Yeah.
Yeah, you find a you find a broom, maybe it's the same broom that they use to s smash out the light bulbs, but you dip it in the water and sort of part the the sort of fatty scum
layer on the top.
Mm-hmm.
And there's nothing in there.
Okay.
Like corpse paste fatty?
No, this is now corpse wax.
Thank you.
I'm sorry for giving a description that made it sound like it was.
I was really hoping.
You found Anthony.
He's dead.
Aye, that would be pretty cool, but that is not what we're doing here.
I mean, I guess w we we should definitely power up the laptop, take a look at things.
it would probably be good to my concern with going to the coffee shop is nobody's gonna remember him.
Um but maybe we could get camera footage or something like that, and see if we see anybody that resemble well, we do do do we know what he looks like for yes, we
We've seen do Yeah, we burned them alive.
Burned him alive in a boat.
It's also possible that there are more extensive electronic records within their system, right?
Something else that might give us another clue.
And
oh Just staking it out a little bit and seeing.
So yeah.
okay.
Yeah, I'll go see if there's a haul plug.
If not, I might have a power inverter I can use in the van to plug this thing in.
There's a there's an outlet in the hallway.
Yeah.
I'll plug it in, boot it up, sit down cross legged, have my pistol under the laptop just in case n one of these people comes around to fuck with us.
Who's joining Miles in the hallway?
I'm probably standing at the front door like waiting for the cops or to see if anyone else comes.
think I am just loosely turning over debris uh in an unsearched room.
Sure.
Mole is on his phone trying to look up more information about the coffee shop itself.
Yeah.
See if he can find like an owner or a manager or some name that maybe he could once we go there, if we wanted to go in there, he could drop
Yeah, absolutely.
Miles, you can give me a computer science with a plus twenty.
Be an eighty one and I got seventy-six.
So thank you for that plus twenty.
Alright.
Yeah.
You find a a a couple of files that you think might be interesting.
Um they're the two most recently accessed files.
You know when you open up the file browser and it's like, look at your recent shit.
these are the these are the two most recent files.
They're from twenty twenty two.
They're both videos.
And they Yep.
They're both videos and they're both dated twenty twenty two.
you can either watch them now or you can like watch them with everyone else so I don't have to describe it twice.
Yeah, I mean I would pull everybody around and show them.
Guys, check this out and I'm gonna play the most recent file.
Whatever makes sense for you, like.
No.
Take your pick.
First or second.
The first Okay.
You you you're able to see the stills of both of them, the previews, you know.
And they both look like they are in the bathroom.
You open up the video and it is uh a shot of Anthony Hayden.
It looks like he's put the laptop sort of on a maybe on a low table or something, so that uh
He can see it in the mirror, but he's got it set up so that it's recording him looking directly into the camera with the mirror behind him.
And he he doesn't look good.
He's kind of he's gray-ish, but in an unwell way, not in like an alien way.
He's he's ashen, he looks sweaty,
He looks like he has not slept.
He's got those enormous circles under his eyes.
He looks he looks cadaverous, frankly.
And he looks into the camera, and he pauses for a second, and he takes a Phillips head screwdriver, pulls his eyelid down, and slams it through his eye socket and screams.
He screams and screams, and as he screams, he takes the screwdriver and wrenches it towards his nasal bone in a way that that would shatter the temporal bone of his skull.
Instead of watching bone splinter, you see his skin distend as the screwdriver presses on it from the inside before.
Of the screwdriver sort of slides and slips out, allowing him to s pull the entire screwdriver sideways out of his head with a sort of squelching noise, and wrapped around
that screwdriver are dozens hundreds of thin, filamentious, wriggling tendrils.
Anthony screams and grabs at them with both hands and pulls and yanks.
But they they slip out of his fingers and slap back into his head like a like a like a measuring tape almost.
That's video one.
Okay guys.
We we found him, definitely.
Uh
you hear mole mutter under his breath, not all crosses are wood again.
Yeah.
Okay, mull we'll see what this next cross bears and I'll play the other file.
Yeah.
It's Anthony again, and he is trembling.
Um he's got his laptop at a much lower angle now, so that you can uh get a get a good angle sort of behind his head.
And he's got a an X sort of an inch and a half behind his ear marked with a Sharpie.
And there's n there's no sound in this one.
Um like maybe the mic is broken.
But uh briefly you can see something wriggling.
under his skull.
You can see the fresh the flesh rise.
Um from out of frame, he pulls out a uh bright yellow corded electric drill with shaking fingers, and he fastens a half inch bit into the chuck.
he has to use both hands and turn his head all the way to the right to position the drill the way he wants it.
and about two inches behind his left ear, the bit
digs into the skin and he pulls the trigger and you watch him scream silently.
Briefly before the entire drill plunges uh deep into his head.
Uh and it looks like Anthony is able to keep it there for a few seconds, before he he sort of seizes up, um, begins to shake and falls out of frame.
Uh and the the the frame is empty for about a minute before he very shakily pulls himself back up and turns to check.
He gingerly checks behind his ear and there is no blood, no mark, no hole.
And uh you watch him uh scream again silently into the recording and sort of slam the laptop.
And that would be consistent when with what we dealt with before and that when we caused him harm, it seemed to heal immediately, right?
I just want to make sure there's not been a change in that at all.
Yeah.
Okay.
I don't know that I would call it healing, but yeah.
Yeah.
Sure.
Was like there was just no damage.
Y yeah.
Yeah, fair, fair.
But in the the body is influenzable.
Yeah, no, that makes sense to me.
That they're it it I I I know what you mean.
Um and so that's not that doesn't look like that's become more intense, worsened or something like that.
Like
It doesn't look good.
Yeah.
I don't know about more intense.
Sort of up to you.
I would like a sand check.
Yeah.
Just
From everyone, I'm assuming.
Yes.
What about those of us that believe the worms are good?
Do y No, I don't.
This is the well, I mean, I am forced to assume what freaks you out about this is the unnatural, rather than the violence.
I dunno.
I think that would get me a bit more.
Maybe it doesn't do Miles quite like that.
Fail.
Fail twenty four on a twenty.
Past.
Twenty one, Agent Morrison.
We'll get you to that breaking point someday.
Uh I'd like a D six from everyone else for witnessing a violent supernatural act.
One for Magpie.
Two for Mull.
Three for Miles.
Alrighty.
Miles, do you have any disorders?
Can you give me that uh follow up sand check?
Hey, Mull.
Give me a follow up sand Pass.
Yep.
Well you can
Continue to be in the throes of your acute episode.
Not that you've stopped role playing that yet.
Yeah, I think the biggest thing for that though for us is that Mole can no longer um do some of his persuasion stuff 'cause we had allowed that, right?
Because we were back like outside of the megalomania instant.
Now we're kind of back into that.
I do think that you guys would at least notice that glint in his eye that is like he's, you know, t getting further back into the religious bent.
Uh
And so I I wouldn't say that you guys would not know that he maybe can't be trusted for the social skills that you're used to.
As long as you're cool with that, Patrick.
Yeah, totally.
And they should not have eaten that really, really crunchy cookie just now.
No, you're good.
Um, okay, so that was weird.
And I mean, we kinda witnessed this already, two thousand nineteen, but I mean it doesn't get us any closer to him.
This was this bathroom and it's been a little bit since he's been here.
Again, we only have the coffee shop.
Like we need to figure out something and get it exposed to this gas.
Was there a timestamp on those videos, or like a date on the files?
Yes.
mid twenty twenty two.
twenty two, that's right, yeah.
So years after we first saw him, so
And he did reconstitute into a human after he turned into a mass of worms and dispersed into the water, which is interesting.
Isn't that what happened at the end or no?
Did he just burn and I thought he was all like wormy and like No?
Okay we
he didn't that was just a yeah, that was just a people.
Okay.
I thought that like the worms like came out of his skin and like swam off.
I misunderstood the end.
that's horrendous.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know.
That's how you remember it now.
So Yeah.
I think that's a good assumption to operate under.
No, um somebody spotted one wriggling out from under his eyelid and then he turned to dive overboard.
Okay.
That's when you tackled him and doused the ship in gasoline.
Yeah.
So that is you saw a worm, but you didn't like see them evacuate or anything.
Okay.
I guess I misunderstood that.
Got it.
Cool.
Mole good.
Magpie, go ahead.
I just hate that that's the word you do.
I really like that.
He evacuated his worms.
I apologize.
Who has the highest medicine and the highest unnatural?
I think I have the highest unnatural at thirteen, but my medicine is zero.
I have sixty medicine and twelve on natural, so not too far behind.
Jesus
I would let you roll either of those for some information uh from these videos.
Yeah, all right.
I guess you know what we're doing.
Yeah.
Wait, I what are we doing?
Okay.
That is not any good.
we'll get back to that.
Can I roll in a natural?
Oh, it's not good.
Zero?
Alright, then really no.
Okay.
S I mean th I mean, we only have the coffee shop, right?
Or unless I'm missing something.
Yeah.
Who's gotta navigate?
Morrison, fifty-three.
Although feels weird to be doing that when there are two people who actually know these locations.
Help ya.
Yeah, if you're looking at the map and you're looking at the Bon Marche and you check out that map I gave you guys, yeah that spiral?
Yeah.
Is that the metal?
Is yeah.
Huh golly
And I'll you know, I'm a therapist and pick up on language stuff.
I notice that you don't say the coffee shop name, you consistently say the Bonmarche, so
Because I'm a fool.
Okay.
But so besides the point.
Valerie's coffee is Valerie.
Damn, damn.
Magpie.
These are both bizarre and fairly unsuccessful um examples of trepanation, which can be used to uh either ritually, uh it has been anthropologically people think it was used to
let the gods in, but it can also legitimately be used to reduce swelling on the brain, or uh if there's a potential brain bleed.
you might survive it if you crack the skull instead.
what the function of this is is hard to say, but you think that maybe if you can expose Hayden's brain, it might give you more access to the thing inside him.
And metagame wise, that is a consequence for a failed unnatural.
What?
How did that not come into my fucking head?
That's wild to me that I have not had the idea to just cut this guy's dome off and look inside his brain.
Uh, metagame wise, that is the consequence of a failed unnatural check.
So that may be either incorrect or dangerously misleading or completely correct based on uh how things are going to go.
There you go.
You have a meeting at ten.
Valerie's coffee is fairly nearby.
Bainbridge Island is not.
Yeah, I mean, we can't be everywhere at once, right?
Like, do I mean I don't want to split up and go to Bainbridge and we don't even know like if these threats are real.
You got the phone call magpie with a threat to do you think I mean maybe she's still in contact with El Cell, right?
Agent Liam?
Like maybe she can send El Cell or something like that.
Or we have to like, I don't know, figure out a way to prioritize this.
So
Coffee is right proper nearby.
We've got at least an hour or two before we gotta shove off for Bainbridge, right?
I say we go over, get the lay of the land, see what we're dealing with at the centre of this thing, and if it's not the right time, we come on back.
Yeah, agreed completely.
I wanna see what's inside Anthony's head.
He had that unnatural insight, not you.
I still think with the worm pick coming like out of his head.
enough.
Okay.
I Magpie, has Magpie told anybody about his revelation?
Yeah, I think that's why Mole's on it.
Yeah too.
Okay.
It just it g it lat he latches onto that like, Oh, well why didn't I think of that kind of a thing?
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah, I I do think actually Mole in his kind of like this delusional parasitosis, you know, megalomania stuff is just like I don't even think he's like, Why didn't I think of
that?
He's like, huh, of course.
Thanks for pointing that out.
I was just there.
Um, we need to get inside that man's head.
In fact, I did think of this.
Right.
Came to it at the same time.
It's almost my idea, even.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.
A second magpie.
Let's get on it.
No time like the present.
But how do you guys want to approach it, I guess?
Do we wanna stake out the coffee shop?
I've looked up a couple um people that I could try to throw around their names to get access to records.
I mean what are what are we thinking about doing if we we should optimize our time here?
I mean, one of us goes in to get coffee and just gets a vibe check, I think.
And then like maybe somebody else like spills coffee and asks for a manager or whatever, right?
And then somebody else works the phone.
I don't know.
Or is that too complicated?
Like
Sounds like it.
Wanna say that we got ripped off by Anthony and we'd like to see him.
Yeah.
Go for it.
In the instance where the people that we're talking to aren't as much hope ha aren't as much help as we wish they were, do we need somebody kinda taking agency into our own hands
if there's a distraction?
Is there somebody who could go back and access the records on their own?
Uh do you think you'd be up for it?
From a player standpoint, I am a in my fit, so I'm probably not gonna be great at doing things with human beings.
Excuse you, you're a megalomaniac, you can be great at this.
Correct.
So from a PC standpoint, I am the one.
Yeah, I'll go ahead and talk with them, uh, if you guys wanna sneak back there.
Yeah, I think that sounds like a great idea.
And I kinda wink at the other two and mouth.
Yeah, could I could I roll a humid to see how well Mole seems like he's carrying himself?
No, you may not, uh in that you do not have to.
he is he's doing that thing again.
He's uh diving back in on his old habits.
I think you see Mole um picking at himself quite a bit when this starts to to pick up.
It's like the religious fervor dips and you notice he's not scratching at himself, he's not pulling out hair, he's not doing stuff.
And then now the religious shit's coming back and the physical tell is him picking at himself.
He's picking at his, you know, the hairs that are the
five o'clock shadow, he's picking at his head hairs, he's kind of grabbing at stuff.
I mean he looks I think he looks pretty unstable at a sanity of eighteen, so
Probably watching the video didn't help much.
I think that Mo I I'm going to try and convince Mo that he doesn't want to be recognized because there is something um of of additional s significance uh being on these people's
radar in particular.
And I'm going to posit that using his diset disheveled nature to make him appear as though he really does belong on Third Avenue.
Um, and we're gonna try and find him.
An outfit that would make him look like a raving lunatic.
Just a just a regular old person looking for a cup of coffee on Third Act.
How's Mull's suit doing?
He's already bled through the f back?
How dirty is this suit?
I mean, we're getting there.
I honestly think that if we took you know, if we go back to the van, um, montage obviously
We see you guys ruffle rifling through the van for like, you know, soy sauce packets from Panda Express and like mustards, you know, from the like from various like from Sonic or
something.
His suit is already fucked because he's bled through everything.
It's ruffled.
It he's been sleeping in it.
It looks like trash.
I think you could get him there very easily.
Combined with the mannerisms, not gonna be a problem.
Wasn't there stale or no, it just smelled like stale milk, never mind.
Cheese box.
I imagine we all vaguely do now.
Sort of scent that really seeps in.
Does it lives with you?
Okay, so so I think there is like a little bit of an attempt to convince Mo that he's really putting on a show, and we're not just kind of kicking regular bedraggled himself
out there, that maybe he goes in not putting himself on display and he's he's trying to play a character a little.
Sure, yeah.
You and your goal is to get him to go in there and do you want him to be a distraction or not, I guess to be clear.
We you think that you are acting like a normal person of the street and we think that's not gonna hold for very long.
I have a question for Sam.
You're playing a local millionaire?
How famous are you?
It's a c
question.
I think we kind of we we brushed on it, but I'm not sure we fully talked about it.
Famous do I think?
Honestly, I kinda want him to be at least a little bit like um I I wouldn't say like you would know his name, um, Leon Tusk, but you may potentially have seen his face somewhere.
It's not billboard level, right?
It's but it's like maybe in magazine level, I would say.
You know how cities of decent size have like their own little like commerce magazines that are like for their metropolitan area?
So like if you magazines you'll be like, yeah, this guy
People occasionally protest outside his house.
That sort of thing.
Yeah, there's there I got I had a shoot last year that had me smiling, turning around from my computer desk and it just had eBay on there and there was just all of my chotch keys
like lined along my little basement.
Little.
It's a fucking hanger.
It is a hanger.
Yeah.
Yeah, right, exactly.
Would I like it bigger?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
you guys can drive to the location of Valerie's coffee.
Are you gonna like drive around the block or something?
No.
ah I don't see a need.
No, I mean to like scope out the to do recon, not to like lose a tail or anything.
Is it
Yeah.
So get to the three hundred block and then start looking around.
Yeah.
so Valerie's Coffee is sort of tucked inside the Bon Marchais building, which is an old, uh defunct flagship like Macy's store.
Or it didn't used to be a Macy's, it was like a uh a department store that was converted to a Macy's and then uh went broke and uh eventually was essentially abandoned.
Valerie's Coffee is still limping along at this location.
They are uh on the corner of the building, so you can access it from the outside.
Uh as you drive around the whole building, you are able to see one Valerie's coffee, two, an entrance on every side of the block, three on the easternmost side of the block is a
loading dock with what looks to be a loading elevator, maybe.
Uh
You also uh if you can all give me alertness.
Teen success.
Eighteen as well.
Sixty three over twenty, so
twenty five under twenty eight.
Hell yeah.
Well, three of you are able to spot a light on in the Bon Marche, uh, which is probably indicative of a security guard, although it doesn't appear to be a flashlight doing a
patrol, so who's to say?
Okay.
Weird.
Building's supposed to be condemned, like or shut down.
Um, it's funny there's a light on.
Can I use the scope of my rifle to look up at that building and see if I see anything?
Yeah, sure, you could use your binoculars too if you wanted.
Yeah, sure that sounds great.
My gun's just so beautiful.
Wha what are you looking for?
I just I mean, there's a light on.
It is there anything happening there?
Yeah, um there's a light on.
Uh you can't make out any people in the room, but there's yeah, there's a there's a flickering, uh like a like a television.
Possibly multiple televisions going on.
Alright.
And it's just a regular light on.
It is what, five thirty AM?
So Valerie's is open for business.
Do you wanna stagger our entrance?
Maybe uh somebody go in first, buy coffee, sit down, someone else comes in five minutes later.
Like that, you think it's gonna take five minutes.
Yeah.
Mind I don't mind being in there before mull.
To to get eyes.
so I I'll gladly volunteer if you want me to be the first customer.
Okay.
Maybe you and Miles go in together that way, uh w whenever things happen kinda nah and mull, I'm like you're you're already in position to sneak back.
Yeah, magpie can definitely do that.
But yeah, I'll go and hold hands, Magpie.
Yeah, sure.
Um, I think, you know, there's a little bit of like, well what do I need in order like just if things are really going sideways and I think there is a a sedative in a syringe
just in case mole can't be calmed by normal means.
Um and there's a pistol, but I think that's about it.
Okay.
where are you leaving your SMG?
Pose it's in the divan and
Yeah.
Um, I will just go in without my gun.
I mean, maybe I still have my knife, but that's it.
So, yeah.
Uh