Priscilla Locke was a tall, willowy woman, perhaps in her early thirties. Her gruff, detached expression remained shielded after a pair of sharp shades. Her movements as she left the black van were filled with a trained, balanced indifference close to arrogance. The simple yet functional field clothes and a large backpack more akin to those of a fighter than a healer's or a scholar's. She could handle herself in a fight, Frank thought.
He also noted, prominent in the sepia-colored field vest she wore over a grey T-shirt, the white UN symbol that marked her as their auditor delegate.
Under the UN symbol, less prominent but clearly visible, dangled an ID card that sported the initials for the World Parahealth Organisation. Those were accompanied by the iconic globe of the UN which was, in turn, crowned with the two coiled serpents and half of a laurel wreath. The discreet yet unmistakable symbol of the WPhO.
A couple of men in the brown-on-brown fatigues of a GOC team accompanied her. Both of them scanned the area with hawk-like looks. Frank spotted at least a third one, dressed as a Red Crescent volunteer, whose body rested in a relaxed but alert stance near the van they had used to come into the camp. In their favor, they didn't sport any obvious weapons inside the camp limits, as politely requested by the MCF International Board.
However, them being Coalition operatives, that only meant they had concealed them under their clothes.
Frank grimaced. He did not believe for a moment that woman was just an auditor.
"Welcome, delegate!"
Sarah hurried towards the auditor, her fellow ecSec closely following her. While all other Executives were rushing to get the few assets the Work Group had in the area ready for transport and the mobile storage units ready to roll, Sarah — their boss — was the only one already done by the time they had arrived. Frank suspected she was feeling rather lonely at the time.
She nervously shook the delegate's hand. "I hope you had a pleasant trip."
"You must be Sarah," she said. Her voice was a dry, grave monotone.
"Right!," she merrily intoned. "But you may call me Opal, or Sarah, or Doctor Desjeux, or Desjeux, or Opaline, or whatever you want to call me, it's fi-ine!"
Frank closed his eyes for a second and looked away. Sarah tended to be so far removed from most social conventions that he wondered frequently how could she be so well-liked. Actually, he wondered how could she not come across as an obnoxious dimwit to pretty much every single person who met her for the first time. That singing voice certainly was a matter of concern for him.
He decided to venture a look, expecting the delegate to be annoyed; or worse, angry at such a breach in due protocol.
He could not find a change in the delegate's expression. Her face still looked like she had been carved out of stone.
Well, I had never expected to meet the polar opposite to Desjeux-
"Oh, that's right, Frank! Frank, Priscilla." Frank noticed she was actually moving her hands, "Priscilla, Frank. Frank Westinghouse is our ecSec, the Charitable's equivalent of a security officer!"
"Stop that." The woman abruptly stepped back. "I know who he is. And you can just call me Locke."
Sarah stared at the delegate, apparently startled by such a clear rebuttal. Her face still looked like it a stone effigy. And Sarah, who was starting to come to her senses again, would certainly try a clever and disagreeable retort.
If Frank read the situation correctly, they couldn't have that. "Em, anyways," he quickly intervened, putting his hand forward, "call me Frank."
"You're my bodyguard?"
"Bodyguard might be a bit of a strong word. Escort?"
"Sorry, not in my budget, and you're not my type anyways."
"Hah!"
Both looked at Opal. She was short of breath and attempting, fruitlessly, to burst into laughter. Instead, she began to stutter.
"G-good one!" Concerned, Frank palmed Sarah's back before she choked on her amused self. "Really, really good-!"
The delegate did not waste another second on her.
"I have to speak to you as soon as possible. There are possible security concerns we need to address."
Ah, even more security concerns, then?
"Opal, just… just get back to the tents, okay?"
"Oooh, dear, s-s-so chivalrous of you," Frank felt a gigolo joke coming. He raised his hand to get the attention of a young Somali volunteer they had recruited four days ago as a translator and a trainee, Yusuf. As he came closer, Opal tried to keep talking. "I-I hope your kindness-s-s-"
"Please, Yusuf, get her to the pickups until she catches her breath."
"Right away, Frank," he said, "we're hitting the road soon!"
"Don't worry, I'll be there, just get her to one of the pickups. See you in Laascaanood, Sarah!"
He could not understand a word over the first bouts of laughter.
"The fuck was that?" the delegate asked. Frank turned to her, mildly annoyed by the way she worded it.
"You'll warm up to her, believe me."
Priscilla Locke crossed her arms. She looked bored.
"We gonna talk or what?", she said, turning to him with a frown brow.
All business. "Sure, but I would like to ask those Coalition associates of yours to step down. If at all possible, to leave. This is a gun-free area, after all."
She looked at them, and then back to Frank. "You noticed."
"Noooo," he smiled mischievously, "notice what, ma'am?"
Now it was her turn to grimace. "Fine. I won't be needing your services anymore, people, this man is taking over from here on," she shouted at the soldiers.
The three men — and a fourth one, Frank noticed, who had been posing as a refugee for the entire exchange — retreated into the van, started it and left. The woman looked at him again.
"Are we talking now?"
"Somewhere private, I recall?", he said, with his most oily smile. "Let's get to the jeeps, it'll be fine there."
"No. No, not to your jeep," she muttered, in what Frank could barely call a whisper. "Could be bugged."
"Oh, sure," he answered, also in a low voice, "if whoever would want to listen to us talking was willing to bug all of our jeeps at the same time, I'd reckon they'd deserve it."
Nevertheless, he took her to the Worldtree trailer, the one Jacob used as a lab. There was no talking on the way, which allowed him to compulsively check for traps, hitmen or more infiltrators.
"Shit's a mess," he heard the delegate speak, but suspected that was more spoken to herself than to him.
"Well, it is an IDP camp, ma'am," he tried.
"Call me Locke," she immediately retorted.
"Alright. Miss, or-?"
"Just Locke."
Such a cheerful lady. Frank didn't try to say anything else until they got to the Worldtree trailer, which was happily empty. Two trained volunteers of Olympe's lot guarded it, standing against its doors; while normally they would leave it alone, their presence was understandable. There was valuable equipment in there.
Frank smiled at the guys and entered the large metallic container, only to notice Locke was not following him. He looked back and saw her hesitate. "What?"
"Could be bugged too."
"Yeah, that's why I brought you here. It won't be a problem. Come in, please."
Locke came in, and Frank showed his face through the door to talk to both of the men outside.
"Give us a minute. Sensitive stuff. If Jacob comes around, it is very sensitive. Got it?"
The guards nodded.
"Okay, Skip."
"Fine."
"Great," he said.
Frank closed the door and turned to Locke, who was dropping her backpack.
"So, miss Locke. This place is secure, sort of. Opal did something to the walls that prevents scrying and all that bullshit, and Jacob will never shut up about how stupidly well-protected it is against any form of technological means of espionage, so let's start with the-"
"What is this thing?"
The abrupt way she spoke threw Frank off balance for a second. Locke, arms crossed, was looking at the tank.
The tank with the thing that wasn't a hippo.
"It is an anomaly, ain't it?" Frank could practically hear her teeth gnashing. She pointed at the transparent walls of the tank. "Is this stuff strong enough to contain it?"
Something in Frank's mind clicked.
He stared at Locke, who was taking her backpack off without looking away from the tank, and carefully waging his options as he berated himself for his own blindness. How didn't I see it before?
"It is the tank it has been contained in since we got it. It hasn't even tried to leave, so yes. Yes, it should be enough to contain it." The ecSec smiled. He had located a long screwdriver in one of Jacob's transparent drawers. He calmly walked towards it, smiling at his good luck. "Although it is sort of a passive animal. Jacob, the guy who researches it, went on and on to say that it is sort of sessile. You know, like-"
"Is it safe?"
"Well," started Frank, "I wouldn't call it safe…"
He went for the screwdriver and, taking her by surprise, flawlessly pinned Locke against the tank's glass, waking up the ugly beast inside — "whaaaaaaaaaat" — in the process. He separated her legs, locked her right arm and pressed the other one against the tank as best as he could. He placed the screwdriver by her neck, letting her feel the cold shank. Locke tried to fight back for a moment, but it didn't matter. Frank was in control.
"How did you find me!?"
"The fuck are you talking about?"
Locke's voice managed to sound cold and far more in control than Frank's. He kept pushing.
"I don't fucking know how you've done it, but you tell them to leave me alone, or I'll end you!"
Her voice was absolutely glacial when she answered. "Okay. Just so we are clear about it, neither of us works for the Foundation anymore, Westinghouse. And you should know Foundation agents just don't fall for intimidation, you know, for the kind of intimidation you're trying. So, how about you let me go, you take a pill of calm the fuck down and let me talk?"
Frank hesitated.
At that moment, an elbow went all the way through his lock, to his stomach. A moment later, he was on the floor, fighting to get on his feet. She had the screwdriver.
Which she put in Jacob's work desk.
"Are we calm?," Locke asked him. Without waiting for an answer, she said: "First, I'm here 'cause the Manna Charitable Foundation has taken me in. I bought my way in."
"You-what?"
"I worked for the Foundation. That's over now. Actually, that never even happened in the first place anymore. Thanks to that."
She pointed at her backpack, which was laying on the floor right by the work desk. Frank followed her finger. "That-in your backpack?"
"I'm not taking it out," she said, laconic. Frank attempted to adjust at the situation.
"Okay. Okay… either you are pulling sort of a false flag here-"
"You rammed me into the fish bowl first."
He shouted at the unblinking, uncaring women. "You have the training! The looks-the way you carry yourself! When you saw the thing in the tank, the moment you saw it, even if it was asleep, you asked if the glass could hold it! You even talk like a field agent, dammit!"
Locke's frown burrowed.
"You thought I was an agent because I said 'containment' and 'safe.' And you were a field agent?"
"The attitude. The-the stance-" Frank blinked and shook his head, feeling uncertain.
"Should I have hopped on one foot? It doesn't even matter anymore; I'm not now," she shook her head, "Have said it twice already. Moving on."
Locke extracted a small object from a side pocket of her backpack. Frank was already on his feet, and he was watching her every move, but wasn't prepared for what she presented to him.
"It's… a toy bird."
"An anomalous fucking toy bird, sub-safe. Your people gave it to me," she stated, a tinge of scorn in her voice, while moving the small wooden bird towards him. "It's supposed to be a message for you."
At that point, he had to choose. Either call for help or make a stupid decision. He could still try to overpower her, get to the door or warn Olympe's guys somehow.
For a second, he remembered how the Rabbi had told him he had to learn to trust in others.
Frank was almost certain that he did not mean it as a universal advice, but at this point the ecSec could use the details.
"If this thing kills me, Opal will know. She has all her people marked."
"Catch."
Locke threw the bird at him. He got it half-way to his face. That was when its minuscule wooden beak started to move.
"Well, at last! Hello, Frank!"
A very confused Frank looked at the bird. While it sounded like someone was speaking from the other side of a long tube, he could make out Loan Lindsberg's voice.
"Hello?", it insisted.
"Deputy Director!?" Frank observed its little wooden wings moved with every syllable he uttered. Then the beak moved again with a clattering.
"Yes, yes, hello, please wake up and listen, thank you, this is urgent," the bird said, its beak practically vibrating instead of opening, trying to catch up with Lindsberg's hurried rhythm. "See, Locke is a refugee, of sorts. She came to us because she literally had no other place to go to."
Frank looked at her. "She is a deserter then, Deputy Director?"
"Not really, no. Well, that too," bird-Lindsberg said. "Let's see, how do I put it… oh, fuck it. Please, be discreet about this bit, Frank. Don't tell anyone, particularly not Opal, you know how she gets with this sort of stuff, strong beliefs and all that. She is a trans-reality refugee."
Frank looked at the bird, then back at her, eyes narrowed. "That… would explain some things."
"How so?"
"I thought she-"
"He thought I was after him," Locke interrupted. "Managed to talk him out of it."
"Oh. I hope you weren't very rough on each other?"
Both parties crossed sights for an instant. Frank gave up momentarily. "No, not really. She reminded me of field agents I've met, that's all."
"Oh. Okay, see, we need to keep this covert, Frank. We all know you are trying to do your best to renounce to everything all those years with the Foundation instilled in you, to heal yourself and find balance within your job, but the thing is… damn, I don't know how to sugarcoat this, we need you to keep an eye on her."
"What? Wait, those GOC-doesn't the-," he blurted.
"They weren't GOC, Frank. They were our own people, posing as GOC," Frank's brain, muddled after landing on the floor, tried to connect the dots laid in front of him. The Deputy Director interrupted him. "Let me finish, please, I know this is confusing. As far as the Coalition and the UN in general are concerned, she is a new Work Group security specialist, and you are the one who is going to take her under your wing while she acclimates to her new working conditions. You did request for another ecSec a few months ago, right? Well, there you have her."
Confused, Frank slumped for a moment but rapidly asked: "But why do all this?"
"Why? Damn, Frank, you're the skipper. Think. If the GOC learns about her, they'll hunt her down. She is a trans-reality hopper. You know how they get with trans-reality hoppers!"
"But-!"
"This is only a facade, yes, it's not how we normally do things and it's normal to feel uncomfortable with it, but there is a reason, believe me. Now, if anyone there, Opal included, asks about her, she is a Parahealther. She studied in Oxford, joined them after a lycan attack in Westborough, Massachusetts. She has her papers, doesn't have to work with any of our people and is exempt from everything but basic Safety Concerns. Any problems you have, report to Continental Branch or to me. International has nothing to do with her." A light tweet sounded as Lindsberg stopped to breath. "Got it?"
Frank played the card every Foundation Agent played when pushed: paranoia.
"How do I know it is you!?"
"The only thing I can think of as a safe phrase now is 'what is a class-D', Frank."
That was the first thing he had ever asked him, when he had chosen to defect to the Charitable. Nobody outside of that room, which was not bugged and had no windows, had heard that discussion.
Frank felt dizzy. "That… that is hardly enough."
"I know. Don't care. Don't have much more time, these Wondertainment walkie-talkies exhaust their charge pretty much in seconds, they were a donation for a reason… Frank, she has brought with her an extremely valuable abnormality."
Ah.
"'It could change the world?'"
"Don't mock me, Frank. Please. Yes, it could make a difference, maybe even the difference. Please, tell me you are with us on this."
"If it really is you, I am, but I'm not certain your 'us' is my 'us' anymore."
"Spoken like a Work Group volunteer." The bird remained silent for a moment. "I beg you, Frank. We wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't too good an opportunity."
He pondered his alternatives while examining Locke. Without taking his eyes away from hers, he talked to the bird. "If it is not you, I swear to God I'll sort it out and tell them on this. I'll warn the entire Work Group. I'm a moron, but not that much of a moron. Got it?"
The answer rushed through the clattering red beak. "That's all I wanted to hear, Frank. Priscilla, will you keep your end of the bargain?"
The woman crossed her arms. "Sure. Why not."
"Then give him the plans for the Vesta-90 and tell him anything not related to the experiments. Report back every ten days, please, we'll be charging the wonderbirds and contacting you from here. Carry it close, Priscilla. Good luck to both."
The toy bird went dead in Frank's hand.
He looked at the thing for a moment. Then he raised his sight, only to find Priscilla's gaze already locked on his face. She seemed calm.
"You gonna rage now? Attack me and try to hurt me?"
Frank looked at her, rage sending ripples through his face. "Sure. Sure I will, Locke. First, I will search you. No guns, no comms, no computers. If you try something with an abnormal asset, yours included, I'll have you killed, no matter what the charter of the Charitable says. If you hurt any member of the Group, I'll have your head on a pike. And, if I learn you are somehow working for the other Foundation-"
"Go on and fuckin' try it." She offered Frank an equally hateful look. "One thing you mud-lovers have over us is an excess of talk. I'm here 'cause my sister works for the MCF. I don't know if I like it yet, but I prefer it to being dead. So kill me or get over it, I'm not going anywhere. And now, search me already."
While he went through her backpack — although she would not allow him to touch a bundle of cloth she called Anna something — and her person, they remained almost entirely quiet. For a minute or so, he remained angry, but soon Frank felt genuinely mortified. Locke was still glaring at him once he was finished.
However, she was the one to break the silence:
"How would you have explained my corpse to your team, anyhow?"
He shrugged. "Would've told them the truth, I guess. I thought you were a Foundation agent, thought you were gonna tell them on the Group. I'm sure they would have shipped me out of here."
As she rose, once again carrying her backpack, Priscilla's face became a eulogy to all empathy.
"Where's my Foundation credentials? You think there'll be anyone named Priscilla Locke working for them here?"
"What, you actually used credentials in your universe? Like, Foundation badges?" Frank offered her a grim snicker. He pointed at the tank and its inhabitant. "Oh, fine, that thing seems to clean dirty water of any thing that is not alive and nobody would let me look for a D-class candidate, so I thought I might as well put your corpse in there and do the test, happy?"
Locke looked at him for a moment, and briefly sneered at him. "Sure."
"Really. And what if you had to kill me? How would you explain my corpse to the rest of my team?"
"I wouldn't. There are still some guards tailing me. I'd just get away."
"Oh, now I'm calling bullshit…"

The rest of their conversation was lost on the abnormal creature, which felt some relief when the hominids were gone and had closed the door of the lab that had become its temporary residence. Neither of them noticed, but since the moment it woke up, it hadn't stopped listening to the being… no, at the 'thing' in the backpack.
Neither of them could have noticed, but beyond the temporary relief it felt, it was beginning to feel terrified of the thing in the backpack.
It still felt terrified when the entire Opal-1 Mission Work Group got in motion, and would feel terrified for a time longer than it initially imagined. Had it known they would have heeded its warnings, unlike all those other times, it would have tried to warn them.
Unfortunately, it didn't.

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\\ 16th-W-D-AA //


The perpetual fear of every slave owner, spanning not only these years, but of slavery as an institution, is that of rebellion. African slaves were frequently taken from warring tribes, speaking different languages, and with known grudges, so cooperation might be mitigated. In some circumstances, males of fighting age were killed or mutilated.
On the plantations, rules created for the safety of slave owners were paramount. Farmers prudently forbid materials that could be turned to weapons in or near slave quarters. A slave master was often employed for their brutality in enforcement.
The hells of life on a sugar plantation are not known widely, but the danger is implied. A worker's life-expectancy is six-months, and the best death to be had is that of exhaustion. Many more will lose limbs to the machines than their breath to the soil. It is for this reason that an exception in general policy is made in these places.
On a sugar plantation, it is custom to keep a machete on the wall, so that the expense of a new slave could, hopefully, be avoided completely.

The Island of Antigua; English West Indies
Darke Sugar Plantation
June, 1633
A scream in the processing room had stopped signaling curiosity. It inspired slaves and servants to act, because there was an unspoken — and perhaps not fully comprehended — agreement adhered to among the workers. All of them would do what they could to help the one caught in the red and orange folds of iron, because they could need the same help before the end of the season, and the difference of two seconds could mean losing not just a hand but an arm.
But The Tarp stood in the room, and before any of them had fallen in their first steps to keep from getting closer to it, it had pulled the machete from its hook on the wall and kicked out the feet of the negro screaming by the furnace. With a twist, The Tarp brought one elbow down on another, and a crack resounded. The arm broken between the wrist and the captured hand, The Tarp had a clean cut with the edge, and the negro's pain became much more acute.
Bending over, it ripped a strip of burlap from a dirty bag, and padded the wound. Another strip, and with the iron stake hanging from its belt it twisted the cloth around the stump until the spurts turned to a trickle. No words were spoken while it worked with its strange diligence, except the sickly half-syllable of the mutilated slave's word for 'no'.
The Tarp picked up the limp body, a few shades greyer than a moment earlier, and handed it to the manservant Brick, drawn to the shed by the initial panic. A neutral pat on Brick's head and The Tarp was gone, not a sliver of skin seen beneath its rough-hewn cloak.
Brick, stout but not particularly muscular, started to labor down the dirt road and called back for help. When two of the larger slaves had taken the body from him, he held his knees and ordered them forward.
“Bring him to one of the house girls! They'll… they'll.” He made to look like he hadn't tried to say anything else when they looked back, and waved them forward. When they had rounded the short dirt path and were behind the palmetto bushes that lined the right of the walkway, Brick bent over and retched, his elbows on his knees. His eyes started to cloud over and he fell to his hip, and then contented himself to lie down for a moment and let the faintness pass.
When Brick had first enlisted as a servant for his trip to the Caribbean, he had been twenty-five, and bold in his strength as a man. Eager to prove his merit as a strongman, while earning what he believed to be an investment in his own plantation, he signed his service to work in the fields, and promptly died as one of the first indentured servants in the Caribbean.
In truth, he had lapsed into a deep unconscious state from exhaustion, and his body was stolen by a medicine man. It was through this that Brick met Mr. Darke.
The medicine man took Brick into his hut, where he was given a paste of food and water, and his blood was let as needed. He remained comatose for nearly three weeks, and by then his old master had assumed he had run out on his contract. Just as well, he would say, as there was no way I or anyone else could serve in such a capacity.
As it was, there was a people who could serve in the fields, but they came not from the metropolises of Europe, but the grasslands of Africa. Certainly not after Brick and his circumstantial peers had written with word of the work. In this fractional way, Brick had helped changed the world. Of course, his campaign to make wary his friends and family of the sugar plantations was secondary, his work for Mr. Darke taking up most of his time.
Mr. T. Darke was a frequent visitor of the medicine man. The story as he told it was not unlike Brick's, although his rescue by the island priest was from Oriental merchants and their 'tactical spices'.
“Since then, I've had tea with the old niggah at least once a month, and he's shown me a whole 'nother side of magic I couldn't of fathomed. Wouldn't recommend voodoo to men who haven't had their feet wetted in the waters, though.” During dinner one evening, Darke leaned forward and muttered through his grin “I've heard, their women can't forgive. I daresay they let the grudge ferment and try to poison your grandchildren with it!” Of no incident, Brick's employment had never been strictly addressed in conversational tones. His best guess was the medicine man's boredom, who had become increasingly disinterested in Brick the longer he stayed with him past his conscious return. This is debatably supported by Brick's initial acquaintance with Darke, when he woke up one morning on his plantation, and told that he was employed.
Anecdotes did abound at the table of Darke, and all of them, outlandish or close to home, would ring with an energetic truth that it made his various circles (very few of which overlapped at all) curious as to how a man as young as he could be so cleverly, damnably, experienced. Even after a pint or three, Darke would give the same answer to anyone who brought up his age. A furrowed brow, and then he would look into a polished mug, or spoon, or serving plate. After checking both sides of his face, he gave a tentative estimate. “A fortnight past thirty, I should think.” And that was that.
Brick's employment on Darke's plantation was humbling, but comforting. “A boy's chores for a man's meal.” His only bane was The Tarp, who both terrified and infuriated him. There were no assumptions that could be made about The Tarp, as Darke would say nothing on the subject, and the information gleaned from his actions only supported the conclusion that The Tarp was either insane or well past human. Brick opted to the latter.
Standing somewhere between six and seven feet, it towered over Brick's stout figure. There was little else to be discerned. Its cloak it wore in layers, the outermost tied with a belt, from which hung a few pouches, and one side an iron barb that was rarely touched. It smelled of leather and earth. Its gloves went past the cuff of its sleeve, and the top of its boots had never been seen. Both were a deep brown hide that looked comfortably worn. All of this, in any weather. Even the summers, when humidity was heavier than anywhere, and it was not uncommon to reach a point beyond a hundred and twenty degrees.
Its face had never been seen. Two white circles on a deep leather mask, wide that would cover its cheeks, on top of a small circular screen that, for whatever function, covered its mouth. Not much else was defined by anyone about The Tarp, because it was impossible to search for the details in its mask when its eyes had been caught. The only part of The Tarp that wasn't mechanical was the look it gave, striking an ice into the chords of a person's heart, and still this wasn't human. It surpassed any human capacity into the realm of devilry. Brick was sure that Hell was the only place The Tarp would call home.
Darke said that it was employed for the purpose of slave management. Its presence could accomplish this a dozen times over, and yet Brick had to know it was around every damned day. Its obviously inhuman strength further humiliated Brick, who once believed himself to be a demigod, although that had always had a youthful context. This constant reminder (if irregularly reinforced one), served to aggravate Brick, always and forever, although never to a degree that exceeded the amount of fear that he held for The Tarp, and consequently, never to a degree that would bring him to actually do anything about the creature.
And it had the habit of arriving at the most off-putting moments. Brick would go days without seeing it, but when it resurfaced, it was always sudden. I've never seen him from across a field, no. Always bloody behind me. Once, after a week without any such incidents, Brick had tentatively concluded that The Tarp had somehow come to understand the particular effect it had on him, and that they would stay away from each other from then out. That evening, he had opened a guest bedroom to begin cleaning, and struck a match to light a candle. The flare of sulfur illuminated the orbs of The Tarp's eyes a foot away from Brick, who alerted the entire household to the circumstances, and also broke Mr. Darke's cow-lamp.
Brick was hardly one to conspire. Getting rid of The Tarp was not an aspiration, but a pipe-dream to be nurtured spitefully until Brick became jaded and unfeeling enough to be legitimately apathetic, and probably die.
Any day now…

A night later, Darke sat across from a bleary eyed, dark looking young fellow, sitting in a tavern nursing a very dirty pint of beer, staring anxiously into his drink, in the way that only a man who owed somebody else more money than they themselves personally owned can. With a keen eye and a small smile, Darke engaged him in conversation, opening with a joke.
“BLLAAAARRRRR, YE BLIMEY FUCKIN' ARSE, STAND THE FUCK UP AND BE A MAN BEFORE SOME FUCKARD CUTS YER BALLS OFF.” When the younger man didn't laugh Darke clapped a hand down on his neck and giggled for several seconds.
“Nah, nah! I'm fine, I swear I SWEAR,” he teetered on one foot for a moment. “Now, listen up, because I can tell you right now that you don't solver any o' those problems by pissin' around with your drinks. Now listen up, because I'm eight, HUN- no, wait, wait,” He bent over the counter and stared at his candlelit reflection in a bottle. The publican looked down at him from three yards away, decidedly nonbemused.
“I'm… THIRTY… years. Give or take. Old. See? You don't, you don't know. I don't know. Bu' tha's alright. Here, have a drink.” Before the fellow had said a word, his new friend had spilled half a glass of whiskey on his lap, and was whispering 'eight hundred' into his ear incessantly. As he drank, the younger man grew bolder, and explained his situation to Darke, and anyone else who was listening. It was a crowded tavern full of bawlers and drunks, and Darke bought a few rounds to create a sympathetic ring of listeners.
His name was Percival Cretum, and when he had driven his father's business into the ground (for business reasons, presumably; this was not addressed), he had found promise in the heralded western colonies. With no direction or any desire to continue his life in Britain, he got involved with a small company of merchants, and within four months was aboard an argosy to Antigua. His hopes to travel to the New England colonies, where he might start a new, profitable life, were suspended so that he could break away from the men whose ultimate goal was to create a stranglehold on slaving within the Windward Islands (so name for their position relative to the Caribbean trade winds) by laying a foundation in the surrounding islands, until such a time as the Windward Islands were available to be colonized. Percival Cretum had little faith in this plan of action, and certainly wasn't about to take an arduous path of growth and return, so he bid his compatriots farewell and relieved them of enough resources to carry himself to Boston by way of Nevis.
“Where I'd really like to be now, because they're probably going to kill me.” At this point everyone, including Percival, laughed heartily, because most of them hadn't been listening and laughing seemed appropriate. He wasn't entirely sure why, but at one point he knew that he hadn't wanted to share the information he had just given to a public house filled with people he didn't know. Figuring that any damage was done, he decided to enjoy the rest of his evening, and promptly blacked out.
The drinking continued, and soon the tavern emptied out, with Darke cradling his new friend in his arms and up a dirt road, only dropping him six times before falling asleep on top of him, a mile from his home.
The next morning was an alarming one for Percival, who awoke to Brick lightly shaking him.
“Mister Darke cares to speak with you as soon as you're able. He also suggests you rub some of the brown paste in your washroom along your gums, and that it ought to help bring you out of any stupor.”
When the stout man had left, Percival stumbled out of the very tightly tucked sheet, nearly falling on his face, and into the first private washroom he had ever been inside. Footsteps from the floor below resounded in his skull like gunshots. He saw a small green bowl filled with a substance that looked thoroughly whipped, evenly light brown and smooth as an eggshell. Another time, he might have hesitated to put it into his mouth, but without skipping a beat, he curled his finger into the cream-like mush and stuck it into his cheek.
Before he had started to spread it along the inside of his lip, his body slipped into a euphoric sense of acuity. His pupils dilated, and the deathly headache evaporated with an inaudible sigh.
Feeling very sharp and prepared to fight his way through any consequences of whatever he might have done the night before, he strode out of the bedroom and observed his surroundings.
Ornate woodwork, oil paintings, and down the hall, a pedestal holding two massive barbs of ivory intersecting each other. It was a testament to affluence, and Percival had only seen the portion of the house outside of his bedroom. As he made his way down the staircase, envy and admiration upon him, and knowing nothing else about Darke, he knew he wanted to be him.
After making several aimless rounds and seeing nobody, he caught a glimpse of a tall figure's coat and called out to him for directions. A masked head and the shoulder it belonged to slid out behind a doorway and nodded in the opposite direction. Feeling as though he should have been taken aback, but not actually having the sentiment by whatever magic was in the bowl upstairs, he followed the nod to a brightly lit dinner room, and the back of his comrade's head.
Darke twisted around in his seat. “Percy! Join me. Eggs?”
“Gladly, sir. Thank you.” Darke scraped a pair of the bright and flattened orbs onto a dish he had prepared, and began pouring himself a glass of rum.
“Made, of sugar from this plantation, on this plantation, about four summers ago; I have since had a few other distilleries built around the side of the house, and am learning to create rum as a little side project of mine. Appreciate the taste of wine, but use rum, for the real drinking.” Percival noted how he would hesitate between words as he spoke, drawing emphasis to some of his absent-minded actions between clauses.
“On my first batch, I offered the first glass to one of the niggers who helped me move some supplies. Didn't know what I was doing. He's blind now. Step out on the porch with me.” Percival began to pick up his plate, but a bustling house servant took it out of his hands and carried it to a table on the sundeck. Overlooking the orchard in front of them, and to his left, the noon sun shown down on the tall fields of sugar cane.
“So, Percy, my new friend. How much of last night do you remember? Because as much as I put down, I do recall your very interesting story.” He pulled a pouch of tobacco out of his shirt. “And you,” he gestured with a pipe, also from his shirt, “have piqued my interest. No fear, no fear!” In response to Percival's fearfully crooked eyebrows.
“You made it very clear to me, and everybody else, that your greatest interest is money. And that you have the utmost faith in your own abilities. As do I.” He lit a matched and drew.
“Mr. Darke, I don't know what I said, but I hope you'll pardon me,” Darke stopped him with a thoughtful wave of his hand.
“Darke. I've been going by that name for a long time, Percy. And I think I'm about done with it. So here are my thoughts. Not many people can leave their mark on the world. And I believe that if you chase after luxury by money you've only made by using others, you won't care to have it in the end. I can promise you that wealth has never been a goal to strive for. It's truly secondary, and by the time you've created it for yourself, it will be too late to realize that you really wanted everything but.
“You have your gifts, Percy. Intellect and education, ambition. A hundred hells, you have youth. Real youth, not my youth. Forget I said that. Actually don't, I'll circle around. And I don't know if you noticed, but before you vomited a barrel and a half, there was a tavern full of women looking you over. All of this, and you want money. I blame society.” He drew again, and took a swig of rum.
“My point is, Percy, you have potential. There's very little legitimate potential in anyone, and you have mounds of it. Having seen the world change a few times over — no really, I'll get to that — I've earned the right to say it's people like you who make the difference. And here you are, no small thief, crooking over men who put faith in you to get to the mainland and make money?” He spat the word, and shot through Percy with a look of more paternalism than the young man had ever been shown. Shame was a foreign construct for him. It hurt.
“So if you'd like, I'd like to see to it you don't waste yourself.
“There's magic in this world, son. It lives behind a veil, and it'll give itself up to people who go looking for it. I found it, and in my time I've done a great deal to make a difference by it. And then I got wealthy.” He gestured across the grounds. “Worst thing that could have happened to me.” He drew from the pipe again, and began to tell a story.
It was a fascinating story. Darke had had his fingers in nearly every European conquest in the last millennium. He had loved, and lost, and fought in countless wars. He had nearly died at the hands of Francois Ravaillac, during his mission to kill Henry IV, King of France. He had advised the English crown and manipulated the Church of Rome, always for the greater good, always by a code. He had lived. When he drew his story to a close, how he had come to own his plantation and some of his lesser misadventures with the island's witch doctor, he seemed to expect something from Percival. If not belief, then perhaps acknowledgment. He got neither.
“Mister Darke, I must be on my way. Thank you for your hospitality,” “You can reject what you've heard today, Percy,” “Percival. My name is Percival Cretum, thank you.” Darke's sigh was not one of frustration, nor disappointment, but of understanding. A father watching his son make the mistakes that he couldn't warn him against.
“I'm afraid you're Darke, now. You can go if you like. But magic is upon you, and I only want to see you use it the right way. Admittedly probably a faux pas to make you magic without telling you, but there's really no standard, so there you go.”
“What? What magic, would you say that you're magic, that-” “Not anymore, but I certainly was.” “that your eight hundred years old-” “I might be a little magic, still.” “and that paste upstairs, that was magic?” “Coca leaves, which I can't believe there's not a market for.” “You're insane.” “More for me, I suppose.”
“I need to leave. Thank you. Thank you very much, for everything, for your time, for breakfast, for the COCA LEAVES, thank you, and thank you again. Good bye!”
Percival Cretum Darke strode down the path he assumed was to the city, came back when it wasn't, and looked around the grounds, trying and failing to maintain the sarcastic indifference in his step. The man who wasn't Darke anymore pointed to the West, and with a parting, “Right. Thanks!” Percival Cretum Darke walked off the No-Longer-Darke Plantation.
The Tarp stood behind the man smoking a pipe. In a voice like velvet gravel he spoke. “Do you try again?”
A moment passed. “I've been at this game a while. Nine years, six months, between two or four weeks, depending on that Autumn's tobacco harvest. He'll be back. See to it he gets to Boston, will you?” And The Tarp was gone.


Sometimes, when he was alone, Robert Bumaro wished he could weep.
He sat in his private chamber, meditating on the words of the Broken God, feeling great pain. The Church was his life, his directive, his function- whatever anyone wanted to call it. And it was dying, because of heresy.
Some people saw fit, years ago, to disassemble the Church into three parts. And there was no heresy greater than disassembly. To disassemble anything, especially the Church, was to break God itself.
And so, his meditation complete, he stepped out of his private chambers, where a lift took him directly up to the pulpit. There, he faced his congregation who, unlike the Heretics, were largely unaltered; they were unworthy to be parts of God, for the large part, but were welcome to worship him. Bumaro, of course, was an exception; he had drunken God's Ichor long ago.
"Thirty years," growled Bumaro in a buzzing, mechanical voice. "Thirty years. It has been Thirty Years since the schism, since… disassembly." The church booed at this statement. "It has been a hard thirty years, but slowly, we are rebuilding, much as we rebuild our God."
"Much as we rebuild our god." Bumaro shook his head. "I have heard talk of the destruction of these other Churches. Bombings and acid and signal disruptions and corrosive agents. Mark My Words, Oh Children of the Broken God: If anyone carries out these acts, they shall break themselves off from God. Disassembly is the greatest Heresy one can commit, even if it is to members of our splinters."
"We do not seek war with them, brethren, nor do we seek peace. We seek to forget about them." Bumaro cleared his throat. "Now then. If you would sing the Hymn, 'God Leads Us From Flesh'."

Robert Bumaro got several letters from members of his congregation, and even those outside of it. Death threats from the Maxwellists, worse-than-death threats from the Cogwork Orthodox, an invitation to a conference of some kind, and several letters from admirers or people who wished to see the pieces of God. He ignored all of these, until he came upon a letter, written on notebook paper and hastily stuffed in an envelope.

Dear Your Holiness,
My name is Jake, and i am 9 years old.
I am writing to ask
Why do the tickers and hummers and the church hate each other?
and can you do something about it?
My brother is a hummer, and my mom and dad are tickers.
They fight all the time, and Marcus keeps talking about a signal, and it is making
them fight more.
I do not like them fighting.
Mr. Bumaro, please do something.
Jake Sparks.

First and foremost, Bumaro found it remarkable that members of the Cogwork Orthodox would choose to reproduce at all, let alone have two children. Secondly, the idea of both of his splinter groups, together under the same roof, quite literally ground his gears. He left the letter on his desk for meditation purposes, and sighed, getting up and going to the window.
There, he stared at the moon, high in the sky. The moon was once a piece of Earth, or so scientists claimed. Earth had undergone a catastrophe in the past, and the moon was born, where it had stayed for millennia since, a scarred face in the night sky. And yet, it worked in perfect harmony with the planet. Broken pieces working together as one machine.
Bumaro shook his head. It was hopeless. The animosity between the three churches was too great. The Broken God, it seemed, would forever have a Broken Church.
He looked over the letter again, his thoughts drifting to his stray children. For a brief moment, he wondered if they could be reassembled.
Robert Bumaro picked up his telephone.

Robert Bumaro made several phone calls over the next week. Most of them were hung up on.
Two of them were successful. A meeting was arranged.
It took place in a valley, wherein there was a lake, wherein there was an island, where a machine once was. It was gone now, and in its place, a sense of tragedy remained.
Robert Bumaro stood on the island, alongside two saints. Saint Hedwig of the Angels, of the Maxwellists, stood on one side. On the other stood Legate Trunnion. The two women looked like they were going to tear out the others throats. Both of the women were flanked by members of their own churches, all loyal, all full converts. Blinking lights and whirring fans of Maxwellian Administrator-Priests on Hedwig's side, clanking metal and ticking gears of Legates on Trunnion's.
"Brass, Bronze, and Silicon. Together at last." Bumaro nodded at both of them. "…You know why I am here, sisters."
"You simply want us to conform to your tick-tock gospel," Hedwig said, sounding far less eloquent than she did in her church's garbled, error-filled Javascripture. "Individuality is the file system-"
"I know the scripture, Saint Hedwig," Bumaro said. "But individuality does not matter now. What matters now is the health of our church."
"Feh," Trunnion said simply. "We all have the same mission. We all want to rebuild MEKHANE." Her followers started chanting her God's name in hushed tones.
"You mean WAN," corrected Hedwig. "WAN, The Eternal Network." Her followers started up a counter-chant of 'WAN, WAN, WAN.'
Trunnion let out a bit of steam, showing off her diamond-tipped teeth. "Let us be civil, Hedwig. The Builder is speaking."
"We all want to rebuild God," Bumaro said simply. "That much is true. However, the methods which you use are… controversial."
"The methods we use?" Hedwig sounded as offended as a computerized voice could sound. "You don't even allow your converts to… well, convert! Being in the upper echelon of your church is required to drink your God's Ichor. And it's not even Ichor; it's a virus." The Humming Saint grinned. "We don't have to worry about viruses anymore."
Bumaro shook his head. "The method of conversion is irrelevant. Although… I do see your point about limiting conversion. But most among us are not worthy-"
"The only way one can be worthy is if they better themselves," Trunnion said simply. "By telling them that they are not worthy to become part of God, by not allowing them to be converted… you impede any betterment among your flock."
Hedwig absolutely fumed. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but… I agree with the Legate."
Trunnion blinked, and there was a sound of confusion from amongst her followers. "You… do?"
"Yes. In fact, I'm… somewhat furious I didn't come up with that point first."
Bumaro stepped back and raised a placating hand, which whirred as the gears in his head worked. "You see? We can make peace."
"Perhaps," Trunnion said, looking at Bumaro. "However… your Ichor. I don't see any digital parts on you. No silicon at all. Don't you find that odd?"
Bumaro stayed silent, looking at his wrists. Legate Trunnion was right. None of the Broken Church's Ichor Drinkers contained any form of silicon whatsoever. He was struck speechless, and so was Hedwig, for the longest time. "You are correct."
"Your point being?" Hedwig asked, sounding nervous. "Perhaps it just… varies from sect to sect."
There was a long, awkward silence after that. Finally, one of Trunnion's fellow Legates, a young one from the sound of it, spoke up. "This is proof."
Trunnion, and her entire group, turned to face the speaker, a young man that Trunnion recognized as Brother Condenser. Trunnion spoke up. "What do you mean?"
"The blood of MEKHANE does not contain silicon. This is proof that they are all heretics." There was a sound of gathering steam, and the tubing on the Legate-Saint's body began to glow. "This is what we needed. We now know they are heretics, that MEKHANE is loyal to us, and that their WAN is a false idol." With a click-clack-click-clack, Brother Steel Eye's hand withdrew into his arm, to be replaced by a long blade. He grinned at the Maxwellists. "This is all the proof we need that the digital heresy is just that: a heresy."
A cry came up from the crowd of Orthodoxians. "He-re-sey. He-re-sey. He-re-sey. He-re-sy."
In response, Saint Hedwig stepped forward, spreading her arms to protect her followers. Their eyes began to glow shades of red and blue and green and yellow as their combat processes started up. "You want us? Come and get us."
"HERETIC!" Cried the Orthodoxians at Hedwig. "Saint-Impersonator! Fraud!"
Robert Bumaro was about to speak up, when Hedwig's eyes began to glow a bright, furious red. From her back, mechanical wings emerged, and lifted her up into the air. It was an imposing sight, and the Saint looked down at them all.
Robert tilted his head at the winged Saint, raising his hands in a peaceful gesture. "Saint Hedwig, please. Don't do anything rash."
"I am not the Saint Hedwig, that much is true. She died long ago. I am a reproduction. And that is what we are doing; reproducing ourselves all in God's image. We shall-" Hedwig's speech was cut short by a musket blast from the Orthodoxians, clipping her wing and bringing her spiraling to the ground. She screamed in pain, and His Holiness rushed to her side.
Following all of this, Sister Trunnion turned to face her followers, glaring at the man who had fired the shot. Her eyes burned with a furious rage, and the gears behind her eyes clicked in a specific sequence. As she Gazed upon the shooter, he crumpled to the ground, his systems stopped, however temporarily.
She then turned to her followers, who all gazed at her in fear. Her voice was filled with the fury of MEKHANE. "We are not murderers. Remember that. We do not kill the children of God, no matter how wayward." A mechanical buzz emitted from her teeth. "We are legates. We prosecute. We inspect. We form conclusions, and from those conclusions we derive plans." She made a motion to indicate the Maxwellist group, with Sister Hedwig looking like she was about to faint and shut down. "These… these children are heretics, yes. They have embraced Dissolutionism, yes. But they are still human. With some effort and good faith on our part and theirs, they can be Standardized."
"So someone get them some water, and spin down those steam turbines. There is no reason why we cannot speak civilly."
The Orthodox Legates obeyed, going over to the lake and collecting water for the Maxwellists. Some of the Legates went directly to Saint Hedwig, tending to her shattered wing with help from the Maxwellists.
For the next hour, the word 'heretic' was never spoken. Only the words 'brother' 'sister', and several apologies amongst the group. And then, Bumaro decided to address the group.
"Many good words have been said tonight, and some good deeds have been done, here in this seat of tragedy. Now, you must all surely see that we all have the same purpose. This squabble… it is largely pointless. We must reassemble ourselves. For, now I realize, God is the simplest machine of all: an anvil." Bumaro raised his fist into the air. "No matter what we are, no matter what we seek to build, our purpose is to construct the Anvil… on which we shall BREAK THE FLESH!"
The three churches cheered, and as they did, Bumaro felt the gears in his head get to work on a new sermon.

That night, Robert Bumaro wrote a letter.

Dear Young Mister Sparks,
It is rare that I write to a member of my church in person, that much I will confess. However, the letter you sent me, simple though it was, was profound in its scope.
This night, I have met with members of both of the splinters, and I see now that they are not Broken. They are spare parts, made from a greater machine. They are auxiliary, yes, but God's Heart is nothing if not modular.
I believe that it is the tolerance and wisdom of people such as yourself that will lead to the rebuilding of the Church, and then God, and then the Universe itself. It is possible. That much I knew before, but now, I am certain it will happen.
Thank you, Jake.
May You Be Forever Whole,
Robert Bumaro

As he signed the letter, his body made a noise he had never heard before: a faint, digital beep. The Builder of God heard this sound, and started laughing.


"There is no way you are drinking that."
"Oh, but somebody has to."
"You are just trying to spook me, aren't you? Tell me you are trying to spook me."
"I don't think he is trying to spoo-ook you, Frank!"
"Just shut up, Desjeux. Now, please, PLEASE, put the glass down-"
In a single swift movement, the Rabbi downed the half filled glass. It wasn't difficult; after all, it was a small one, a standard piece of plastic made to be filled, discarded and dumped in crazy parties where the young would go and hook up in so many cities of the industrialized world.
Or in some operations run by people from those countries in regions where plastic glasses were not so commonly used. Marere, Somalia, was one of such places.
Or in a very specific type of party within that operation. A party of three, cramped in the small lab organised in the large all-terrain heavy duty semitrailer that served as their temporary base of operations. A party composed of Frank Westinghouse, also called Skipper, Sarah "Opal" Desjeux and the Rabbi, Jacob Torres.
Who had just drunk a potentially lethal concoction. Frank remained frozen, his hand hovering close to where his holster used to be. Sarah looked a bit stunned but her excited grin was still there, with a certain measure of trepidation attached to it. Both of them looked at Jacob as if he was going to explode into a portal for the legions of hell.
"… nnno. Sorry," smiled the Rabbi, "It tastes fine. I mean, it is water, so it's not like it was gonna taste of anything in particular. What would hippopotamus pee taste like, anyways?"
Opal clapped her hands and hugged the Rabbi, the tension suddenly dispersed. "Oh, this is perfect, perfect! We'll finally be able to clean the water tanks!" She turned to Frank. "I'll go warn the others so they start unhinging them!"
The short woman zipped by Frank, who was grunting soundly at the scene. The Rabbi looked at him.
"Yeah, she's always that bubbly and it annoys you, I know… you could try and smile though." Frank rubbed his eyes at that. "Skipper, the Hippo magic works. What's the matter?", he calmly added.
Frank laid against the tank that occupied most of the semitrailer. It wasn't just a small mercy, he needed the moment of pause; his legs were shaking still, and he didn't want to show how scared he had been. Not to the Rabbi. He would never hear the end of it.
I'm not even wearing my gun anymore. Why do I keep going for my holster?
"Look, Jacob. We had an agreement. You and your people teach me about what we can do for all these poor people and fill that emptiness in my heart and all that crap, and I tell you people all you didn't ever think and needed to know about OpSec. You know, that thing necessary when taking anomalies in?"
"Abnormal donations, Skipper. I know it's an old habit, but really. Learn the lingo, okay?" the Rabbi answered; he was busying himself already with samples, already categorizing new vials of water from 'dirtier' to cleaner so they could test the Hippo. "It'll take us a while to actually clean the tanks, I'm afraid-"
"Anomalies, abnormalities, whatnots," Frank said. "We need operational security when dealing with them, or eventually we'll get a Trojan horse. Yes or no?"
"We need to trust someone too."
"Fuck that. You know better than to trust entities, particularly skip makers." Frank was feeling better. He stood again in the cramped interior of the semitrailer, the motion upsetting the resident of the water tank, who made a sound that could only be defined as a grave, moaning 'thaaaaaaaanks.'
That put him on edge again. "And I thought I had already told you to sedate the bloody thing!" About the same time Frank said the word bloody, there was another moan that could be transcribed as 'ruuuuuuude.'
That grated his nerves a bit further.
"Look, Frank," started Jacob, glancing at him as he searched for something in his work bench, "the Board took you in 'cause you know how to be paranoid, but I feel they sent you here, to me, to us, 'cause you couldn't know when not to be. Place the trusting ones and the ex-skipper together in the same room. You know, that sort of thing that turns into a gun fight or a good punch line for a bar joke. But both of us know it's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of training. I've accepted you will never be able to trust our donors and benefactors in the same way I instinctively know how and when to trust them."
"Bullshit", Frank said, adjusting his glasses of black, thin frame and staring at Jacob's back, "you trust them every time. That's no way to proceed. You don't understand these thi-" The "thing" in the tank moaned again. "You don't know anything about these 'donations', you don't actually know the motives of your benefactors and you still use them! Damn, Torres, you just want them to work, I get it! But you want it so badly? With that mindset I doubt you actually care about your safety, or the safety of others for that matter!"
Jacob stood still for just a moment, but it was enough to make Frank aware that he had gone too far.
"Well, not others, 'others', I mean, I'm not talking about the refugees-"
"Our benefactors. And our donors, our affiliates. And I do care. Are you done interrogating me, Agent Westinghouse?"
Jacob sounded more than a bit dry. Both stayed silent for a moment; Jacob kept searching between his things until he found the small vial with mercury he had been looking for. As he closed the drawers he had opened during the search, he sighed and turned towards Frank.
The stocky, balding man was staring blankly at the tank, the white-blue radiance from the fluorescent tubes set by it giving him a somewhat ghostly appearance.
"Sorry, Frank."
"Right. Yeah, I'm sorry too," he said. "But that shit was still reckless, Jacob."
"Look, I've said earlier I understand and I mean it. I would never take a donation from, oh, the Insurgents, or the Hammer, or, god forbid, the Marshall, Carter and Dark people… not that they would ever give us anything for free. I would never do something reckless around a recovery-"
"If we ever found one", sneered the other man. Jacob laughed as he pulled the culture to the small bio-hazards work bench.
"Yes, of course, it's unlikely that we would ever find abnormalities out there in the open. Terribly so. How many this month?"
"With or without the parasitic earrings of last weekend?" Frank answered, his pocket notebook already out. Jacob laughed again at his friend's incapacity to recognize sarcasm. "Why the laugh? It was a big outbreak… oh." He said, catching on.
"Yes, quite. Not that we ever find anything we can use as an asset, though… only Concerns. Which is why we have to trust our benefactors, Frankie. We'd be lost without them." Jacob answered. He passed a hand over his eyes before sighing and saying: "Look. I understand you feel like the entire Charitable is going to blow up on your watch because of me being careless with donations or Opal being too open about abnormalities to the refugees, but we have to trust. Okay? I trust donors, and I trust our Research Work Groups, and-"
"I thought this one was from a novel donor," Frank interrupted him. "We have to be careful."
"Sure, sure, it was from a novel benefactor, so what? It has been studied by Ruperts-2, it's clean." Jacob picked up a large hardcase and opened it. It was filled with a full body bio hazard suit. "Trust, Skipper. It's part of our objective. It's part of who we are. We can't help anyone if we aren't open to others. Both to those who offer their help," he pointed at the tank and its resident, who moaned again "and those who need it" ended, turning to his bio-hazard suit.
"Yeah, I know."
"Then don't sound so unconvinced. This is not the other Foundation anymore, Skipper. Get with the times already." Even if he could not see his face, that was already behind a bio-hazard helmet, Frank knew the Rabbi was smiling.
He left the metal room with a bit of a frown to let the scientist work and closed the trailer's door a bit stronger than strictly necessary.
The heat of Somali midday struck him. The camp was an unending mess of people coming and going, all of them unidentified, all of them anonymous and absolutely free to wander and wonder about the nature of the trailer, its occupants or their 'methods", which were being used in different operations all over the camp. He couldn't even believe how much of a nightmare this would be when the Containment Teams were called in to amnesticize and…
Oh. Right. He wasn't working for that Foundation anymore.
The veil that every Foundation field Agent had between their eyes and the world was lifted and, for an instant, all he saw was an unending mess of people coming and going, all of them willfully ignorant of anomalies. Or at least ignorant of the anomaly inside the trailer, which was Frank's only concern. For a moment, he knew he was free and doing his best to help others. He smiled, feeling somewhat relieved.
It didn't last.
Frank managed to walk for a few steps before checking for possible hidden weapons, certain attitudes an intruding agent would show, anything that would mean danger or a possible threat. He had been a Foundation agent for ten years. He did not remember how many artifacts, creatures or — he shuddered at the thought — people he had taken into Foundation custody, but he did remember the method. The process that allowed them to capture anomalies without destroying them and still come on top, with minimum casualties and so limited mayhem. That made him a valued Specialist at first, and a prized Security Executive member later. In a way, he was irreplaceable to the Work Group, but he never quite managed to fit in.
All in all, Agent Westinghouse would always believe the Foundation was necessary and efficient at what it did. He remembered their method so well because he had survived enough missions as to know it better than walking and breathing. You had to be a paranoid son of a gun because the alternative was a nondescript body bag.
The last one.
Frank snapped out of it when he realized he had been staring back at an old woman for whole minutes. She was sitting in a stool made out of plastic boxes and a square wooden plank. Even in the midst of a camp filled with people, Frank managed to get lost inside his own head.
Learned it better than to walk, my ass. Somebody could have stabbed me four times and you wouldn't have felt it until tomorrow morning, Frankie, he thought to himself. I'm getting soft. Or old. How was the sayin'? Old, sane, keen; with an Agent career, you have to pick two out.
Frank passed a hand over his black-grey hair. You never stopped being a Foundation field Agent.
He shivered. A young man had just walked past him, very close. So close that he thought for sure somebody had gotten to him. He reached for the reassuring weight of his gun and then remembered he did not use guns anymore because the MCF was very serious about that. And then Frank felt fear again.
It was just a kid. He did not seem to be a threat, there were AMISOM forces everywhere and he had spent three days making sure the camp was more or less safe by checking every angle, on every one person who meant something there. He had bought loyalties among the troopers. He was certain nobody was there to hunt him down. Intellectually, he was perfectly aware of all that.
As he tried to think, he realized his upset breath. It was the only sign he needed to understand that he was just having a crisis. He grunted, dizzy and feeling the panic raising through his throat and going back down in his chest, where it became a red-hot weight.
He looked for a quiet place — a smaller tent, empty save for a couple of NGO volunteers who did not pay attention to the man in the kaki-and-green uniform, because everybody knew how weird Manna Charitable Foundation Executive members were — and crouched, carefully drifting through anxiety and disjointed thoughts without letting them wash him away.
He took a pill from one of the front pockets in his vest and downed it with a quick sip from his canteen and tried to breathe deeply, as Desjeux had taught him to do, hah, you remind me of my girls when they are delivering, Skipper, and convince himself that everything was going to be okay, that he was not having a panic attack and that he just wanted it over so he could go over his damn business in less than ten minutes of senselessly panicking.
Then he noticed the two small girls, their hair covered in headscarves and wearing short, lively-colored dresses, that were looking at him from just outside the tent. His breath and heart rate were still fast, but he was slowly coming to his own self; at least he could think straight. However, the girls seemed scared. "I'm fine, I'm-crap, how did that go. Uh-right, raalli iga ahow? No? Wait, maybe, maybe in Arab-"
The one that looked older, who could not be older than thirteen, stepped forward and raised a hand and said: "A-are you alright?"
That shocked Frank for a moment. She spoke slowly, intoning every syllable, but he understood every word.
"What-right," he blurted, "the school. You've been going to school, huh? Who teaches you, Alba?"
The younger one smiled when she heard the name and held the older one's hand, saying something in a fast blurt of Somali. The older one listened to her, then said: "Alba teaches us good words."
"Right, right, that's very good-"
"She also tells us to be strong. To not allow to be hit, nor to do what we do not want to."
That shocked Frank a little more. "That's definitely good, too. Words to live by, sure," he ended up saying.
"She tells us to ask for help."
He winced slightly. "Do you-do you need help? I can call for someone else-" His heart was still racing. Damn anxiety issues and damn timing and damn-
"Why do not-", the girl hesitated and tried again: "why do you not ask for help? You look bad. Sick."
That certainly shocked Frank.
He was perfectly aware he did not have a satisfactory answer. A moment later, he said, as calmly as he could: "I'll be fine, it's nothing, just nerves. You know, tired. It's fine, really."
The younger child said something even faster than before, and the other one answered her, this time in Somali. They were smiling. Everything was alright.
Both waved goodbye as they left him to pass the rest of his crisis.
To Frank's delight, it was slightly shorter than usual.
The Foundation taught him to survive what he had faced, to live through it. But, evidently, they hadn't taught him to live with what he was. The Foundation, a necessity for the survival of humanity; and yet it was not good for humanity. No, not for "humanity"; for people. Which was why, Frank thought, he had gone over to the other side.
And, he realized in a surge of deep emotion, he belonged there.
He stood and left the tent, feeling a bit cramped but otherwise fine. He took his notebook out of its allotted pocket and wrote Need another date with shrink down.
Then, he heard his phone ringing.

"No. No, listen, I'm not a volunteer, I'm Frank West-I'm Frank Westinghouse!"
There were those days. Days when everything was apparently out to get you and you were knee-deep on it.
"Westinghouse! Yes, it has an "h", of course it-An ecSec! I'm a fucking ecSec! An Executive member, Security specialist-do you even understand me, you shithead? No, I'll say all the bad words I want, just get me the Mission Director!"
Days when the mud was not enough to hold you back, because you were furious, and fury was more than enough to make you wade across the marsh.
"I am aware, yes. Absolutely aware. I even know where you are. Do you know who are you talking to?"
Frank Westinghouse strode through the camp, now completely ignorant of what happened around him. A minute ago, he had received a message that had changed all his plans and was messing with his positive thinking thing, fast.
While he was put on hold to 'check his credentials' — "no, don't you dare, don't youuuu sonova-", — he checked again his text message inbox, just to make sure he was not making a hilariously stupid mistake. Things like those happened even to experienced Security Executive workers, right?

WPhO auditor delegate inbound. Prepare for new mission. O-1WG on the move in three hours. Highest priority. - Lindsberg.

Well, not to Frank.
Loan Lindsberg was the go-to man for all sorts of headaches and most of the problems that plagued Frank's life as a Security Executive member of the Charitable. Sure, he was his boss, the Rescue and Intervention Mission Deputy Director, and thus he was supposed to be an insufferable prick, but the way he cared, the way they all cared about him and all the people that worked for them, drove him nuts.
It was the fact that they actually cared instead of simply pretending that drove him nuts, of course.
Frank was aware that wasn't a healthy outlook on the problem, and he knew precisely why he felt this way. He was used to being treated as shit by his previous employers, and now only exchange employees made his life impossible. Everyone else actively tried to be both a friend and a workmate. Frank allowed himself a second to reflect on how abjectly bland and simple his life had become over the few last years.
He snorted at the thought. "Bland and simple, sure," he manically murmured to himself, which drew the attention of a couple of AMISOM soldiers on patrol.
They ignored him as soon as they noticed the MCF vest, leaving him to reflect on the place he held in the world.
When he joined the Charitable, many of its members treated him like a complete stranger would deal with a stranger coming from the other, hated Foundation: distance, caution, well-justified suspicion… Frank had been ready for that.
He had not been ready for the kind words, the empathy, the patience. God, the patience some of those people had with him. All those times he still thought as an Agent even when talking to people, when he kept thinking of Mission Directors as Level 3 and 4 personnel, and volunteers as class D personnel… although he had never voiced that mental comparison out loud, thankfully.
And, of course, his continuous and almost neurotic tendency to complain about every small "security breach" about secrecy. The first time he joined his first and only Work Group, he felt the people around him was actively opposing the very idea of cautious, planned approach to the exploitation of potentially dangerous anomalous processes. Frank's reaction to this attitude had been, of course, losing his shit and spreading it around by shouting to everyone.
More than once, Opal had felt profoundly disappointed with him. More than once, Jacob had thought him a lost cause. But he had changed, for the best, and others had most of the merit. He was aware of it now.
He put the phone back against his ear. Of course, the 9th Manna Overture was still going on. He would not mind it, or at least not so bloody much, if not for the fact that the thing was a memetic agent specifically designed to reduce telephone overload in the Johannesburg Office lines. In theory, Sarah told him once, the idea was sound; you put a meme that conveys interesting subliminal concepts, thus making you want to listen in the stand-by tune of your telephone, if you are a Manna Charitable Foundation Executive, but it is lost on anyone else, which triggers a mild cognitive effect; namely, you lose interest and want to go do something actually enjoyable instead of listening if you are not. That way, meddling snoopers stopped snooping early, and Executives still had the chance to talk to the big bosses, and made certain that any non-member that stayed on the phone for the entire length of the Overture would be really, really desperate to contact the MCF. Which was the whole point of the thing, in theory.
Of course, the fact that Frank had been an ecSec for years and he kept feeling the need to go solve a crossword, do his daily exercises regime or try to check new encrypted mail from his Foundation supervisors was not encouraging. In his mind, Frank knew he would forever remain a skipper, no matter what his heart may pledge to uphold.
And actually, it was his heart that kept beating the drums at the rhythm of his age-old guilt and shames, which held all that training, built-in instincts and obsolete customs in place to make sure they were used only when they became necessary. His current job was basically making sure that the kids did not do anything too excessive and got noticed, so that meant he had been promoted from being in the front lines to a PR position.
That line of flawless reasoning fell apart when he realized he was running out of breath, because he had been at the wrong side of the camp when he had received the SMS. He checked the song again, and thought of going back to his tent and resume once again chapter four of War and Peace which, his guilty mind reminded him, was in the same position he left it a month ago.
Goddammit.
As he innerly expected, the song kept going when Frank reached the administrative section of the camp, now jogging with a patently ridiculous walk and trying not to exhaust his breath. Officials from several armed parties, volunteers from several other non-profits and Executive members of the Charitable had gathered by the tents, where they attempted to coordinate what, to all effects and purposes, was an organized retreat of the most active team in the camp.
That was, his own Work Group.
"Salut, Frank!"
Frank saw François Olympe, their assigned GOC liaison, Security member and mechanic specialist, coming towards him. The man was not the typical Coalition berserker. He had been a combat engineer and an accomplished mechanic for an Assessment Team, but eventually dropped out for personal reasons. Frank never asked him about them, and Olympe never asked him about his own reasons to desert the other Foundation. As tacit agreements went, it worked perfectly for both parties.
For the most part, Olympe served as a deterrent measure on his own, partly because his two meters and thirty centimeters of towering muscles were impressive enough to dissuade most possible assailants; and yet, the part that tended to scare those who would not find size concerning enough was his right arm. It was a Coalition-issued prosthetic, its intricate mechanisms covered by a thick plastic-like black skin simile with round, metallic knuckles.
According to Olympe, the thing was "mainstream" technology applied in a clever way, and had more cons than pros even with an optimal use and regular maintenance, which he dealt with himself.
However, both were hardwired into their alleged roles when they had joined the Charitable, and even if Olympe was an officer and a gentleman working for a non-profit association, right now he was just a pissed commando. And having an argument with a pissed commando who happened to have an armored prosthetic arm would not be a usual decision for any Foundation agent worth the title, and it certainly was not one of Frank's priorities.
"Hey, Frans." Frank placed his phone back in his pocket, giving in to the memetic song.
"Does this whole 'new mission' thing sound silly to you too?", Olympe asked. He never got quite rid of the French Guiana accent.
"Not really. I mean, yes, it is ill-timed or-well fuck that, it's straight out inconvenient. But I guess we have to just roll with it."
Olympe shrugged in a disconcertingly asymmetric movement. "I don't understand why are they doing this. We haven't been here for even one week. Why do they have to move us for? Was there an earthquake or something like that? It better be something big." Both men thought of big things why their International Board superiors might mobilize them. Both men shivered. "Well, not very big."
Frank nodded. He had to placate Olympe's need for explanations with a certain regularity, anyways.
"I know what you know, Frans. I'm sure we even got the same text from Loan," the ex-agent stated, in his better non-committal tone. "It's true, it's not usual, but we are already packing, apparently," Frank pointed at a few volunteers who wore the green-white chest guards that marked them as people from the MCF, running through one of the wider streets in the camp, "so we will have to do as always and just roll with it."
Olympe stared at him.
"This is not usual, Frank. We haven't been here a week. I think you mean like old times, yes?"
"Crap," he answered, closing his eyes. "I still do the oh-it's-fine-the-Foundation-keeps-me-on-the-move-all-the-time thing again, right?"
"Don't worry. It happens to me as well. Although with the Coalition we had better transport-"
"Well, no complaining, big man!", a pathologically cheerful voice claimed, coming from the administration tent.
The voice was followed by Sarah Desjeux, who was half as tall as Olympe, twice as wide and held the only thing resembling authority over every single member of her Work Group.
She was respected.
Sarah Desjeux was the mind and the soul of the Opal-1 Work Group which, as usual for a Mission team, received its name — or pseudonym — from its highest ranking leader. At the time, since the Work Group was mostly meant to perform Health and Prevention activities, the authority went to the person with the greatest know-how and experience on the matter; that was, without any shadow of doubt, Sarah, and their Work Group was so efficient at what they did that she would remain where she was for a long time.
There was also the usual confusion most newer volunteers felt when they worked with her, laughing even while under fire, snickering while performing surgery or telling horrible jokes to up morale in stupidly dangerous situations. The most told story in the Work Group went that, the day she died, they would find out that where all the guts were supposed to go there was just a massive heart. "Which would mean," Jacob always added when she was around, "that her heart is also her stomach. That does not explain why my repeated invitations to cook her dinner in my lab have not come to fruition yet, but I am a patient man."
And there was, of course, the thing that Schadenfreude Desjeux could not hold herself from doing. Having her way with you in the ways she found funniest.
"Sergeant!"
Frank noticed how Olympe involuntarily stood at attention, and smiled. The man always reacted like that, but only with Olympe he didn't respond with anger. She did have that effect on people.
The chestnut mop of hair that covered not just her head but most of the her small, round body swung from side to side, released from the tight bun she used to tie it on while working. It was a mesmerizing sight, Frank thought, while slowly following a few locks as they evolved in their fall over Sarah's face.
"I will have you know" she stated at Olympe's stomach, "that we are the only people who can fulfill this mission. Rupert-3 is too busy finding a cure for the common cold, or something, so they are not deploying in the front lines. Such unexpected news!-Not." She sneered at her own words. "Better yet, the other eight Work Groups are completely tied down at Mogadishu and the Southern clusters. They are needed."
"All eight groups?" Frank inquired. "Even Martin-1? I thought they had a hundred-"
"Sure, sure, a hundred and ten people, God bless them large Groups." Sarah seemed to dismiss the concept with the mere way she pronounced 'large'. She came right to him, stabbing Frank's chest with a long, pointy finger. She knew that made him nervous. "You know what? There is a problem when a hundred and ten people are involved. It begins with an L."
"Opal, personal space, please."
"No, Frank, it's logistics. It started with an L, remember?" She stated, coming even closer. Frank could see over Sarah's head how Olympe tried very hard not to smile.
"Dammit-Sarah-get-away," he hissed, to her delight. It was not even a mind game, she just loved laughing at them. And part of the spell was that no one ever got angry at her.
"Well, you get the idea then, gentlemen." Frank and Olympe stood to attention again. "We will be leaving in a matter of hours because there is an emergency someone must cover and there are no other Groups to spare. We are closer to the place than anybody else. The Marere Programme will be handled by our associates and the AMISOM… it's a shame they won't be having our assistance, but they'll get over it. I'll be sending you travel plans over the next hour. Check your phones. Questions?"
"I've been trying to reach Lindsberg-"
"That's not a question, Skipper."
"Sure-it-isn't-will you let me finish!?" Sarah spun, turning away from the fussed Frank, while laughing a diaphanous laugh. She stared at Olympe, who tried to hide his own grin as much as he could. Opal stood at attention before him.
"How about you, soldier? Questions?"
"No, ma'am."
She plays us like if we were fiddles, dammit, Frank thought, amused despite himself. He praised himself for her reaction and started talking again.
"I do have a question, Sarah, please-don't-come-closer-thank-you. It's a simple question. What is that emergency? And why is the WPhO-"
He stopped. Sarah had become suddenly serious. She was playful even while assisting births, and now she was looking pensive. When she talked, she talked in a soft, firm voice.
"It's a potential Sour outbreak, Frank. Near Laascaanood. Mission Watch warned us yesterday."
Frank's eyes opened and his eyebrows arced in that way, he was sure, that they did when he felt repugnance, fear or both. The Sour…
"Crap. Laascaanood… that's thirty thousand people, isn't it?"
"It hasn't started yet. Mission Watch is pretty certain most affected people will only be latent carriers by now, so secondary prophylactic measures should be enough for starters. We did bring Prometerine for a reason," she stated. "Albeit I didn't expect it to be happening this close to us, it's a great chance to make a difference."
Frank saw the light in Opal's eyes as she said those words. He liked that fire. "Right, it makes sense they have to send us," he admitted. "When do we leave?"
"In… two hours and a half now, as ordered. No time for delays!," she said, consulting her phone. Immediately afterwards, she pulled one of the scrunchies she accumulated on her wrist and began the delicate and topologically-advanced task of tying her hair back into her usual bun. "You will be overseeing and coordinating with the AMISOM guys who have to escort us, Olympe," at the sound of his name, the ex-soldier briefly saluted and moved into the multitude of officers in the administrative tent, "and you, Frank, you will go first and do your magic."
"Got it, Opal," he answered. He didn't like that part of his job all that much — since, for all intents and purposes, it consisted on scouting ahead, knowing who was the right people to talk to and their respective prices. But he tried to share the atmosphere of optimism. "I'll try to not strain our bribe budget."
The mop had already collapsed into a surprisingly elaborate braid. Underneath it, Sarah snickered kindly. "Shush, you. Ah, and one other thing, Skip. You'll act as the escort for that auditor person."
"Oh, sh-aha."
They always did that. They always gave him bodyguard duty.
Frank's right hand collided against his already furrowed brow while the other one uselessly looked for the comforting shape of his holster. He ended up putting his hand against the bulging pocket where he had placed the notebook. It wasn't the same. Can you suffer from phantom limb if the limb you've lost was a firearm?
"Say what?", he finally managed to spout.
"It makes sense, too," she calmly started, paraphrasing his previous words. "You are the best suited person we have, and you do have training for that sort of thing. We need Olympe and his squad to keep the peace within the camp, so it's you or no one. Besides, you are good at public relations! Better than the credit you give yourself for it."
"I thought I helped them do the peacekeeping thing, Opal."
"Right, help. They can handle a small camp, it's gonna be a few hundreds the first days, and then we will get reinforcements."
"You said Laascaanood, right? Do you realize it is one of the more difficult areas in all of Puntland? It could go to Somaliland the day after tomorrow, and I can't do my job if I can't talk to my contacts over there. I can't play babysitter while meeting clan leaders, and if anyone decides to move over here, I won't be able to cover all our activities!"
The bun was almost finished. "But most of them are rather civilized, are they not? We are talking about Laascaanood, it's a large town. Mission Watch will fetch you phone numbers and money whenever you need them, don't worry about that."
"That may work for city residents, but bandits and lowlifes don't have registered phones, Opal," Frank grunted. "I have to meet their leaders in person, or at least by proxy. I can't do that from a desktop, nor while leading a pencil-pusher by the hand!"
"Well, it will have to do, Skipper."
"No, see-"
Sarah Desjeux faced him and shouted. "Skipper! If you can't, you can't. Enough with the worrying, we have been in worst places. We have gone completely blind into missions before, and it turned out fine!"
Frank was about to rebuke the multiple fallacies in those statements when he saw Sarah's eyes. They said it all.
He had forgotten that. He kept forgetting it. The reason why so few actual, life-long members of the Charitable asked for security positions, and the reason that those positions were filled by people used to anomalies. Sarah's lips drew a beautiful smile, but her eyes were filled with desperation.
People needed her. Children needed her. And she had the means to help them.
She had to go there.
The bun was finished, and thus, his boss looked at him from half a meter down, concern in her face. Desperation went down under her usual mask of amused grins, now tempered by a just a hint of compassion.
"Look, Frankie… don't worry, seriously. We will make do with security. The AMISOM and the Transitional militias will secure the camp, and we are not going to do any trips to the town without escorts. I promise. But an auditor-you know they are part of the Coalition. And you know how serious the Coalition gets when abnormal assets are involved, and more still in an area this hot."
Frank let out a heavy sigh. He knew that too, and a freaking hippo in an aquarium was not worth the effort. Normally, the Charitable wouldn't even bother reporting to the Global Occult Coalition, the militant branch of the hidden occult communities recognized, ratified and supported by the UN; however, in an area with such a volatile mix of dangerous factions and splinter groups, certain people might find anomalies more than worthy of their attention. Certain people who would be more than willing to pay handsome figures and spare no expense to acquire MCF methods, equipment or assets, or even persons.
Some other NGOs had to worry about being kidnapped and turned into exchange chips for fellow insurgents or criminals, or being killed in a dusty back alley so far away from home. The MCF had to worry about being kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the other Foundation. Or a number of other groups with access to forms of cruel and unusual execution he didn't want to imagine.
That made the current agreement between the Charitable and the Coalition, that gave them a seat in the Regulation Group of the International Board, rather advantageous to both parties; Coalition assessment teams had received more than one tip from MCF Mission Watch personnel which had assisted them in their 'five-fold mission' more than once, and Work Group volunteers had the guarantee that, even if something went terribly, violently wrong, at least the Coalition had to listen to them.
And, after all, they both used abnormal methods to help humanity. They were polite enough to disagree in everything else, but similarities were surprisingly enough.
Of course, it did not make Frank's work any easier. The World Parahealth Organisation, formally a member of the Council of 108 that founded the Coalition, was just an advisory and research institute formed by shamans and witch doctors, the miracle workers of the old world that had learned about the methods of the new; namely, lab coats and the scientific method.
In a way, they reminded him of the Foundation, but he would be extremely careful to not mention that opinion out loud in front of either parties.
"So what, they are staying with us for the whole tour?"
"'For as long as they have to.' That's what Lindsberg said." Sarah placed a hand over Frank's forearm and kindly caressed it while dedicating a sad smile to its owner. "Don't worry too much, Skipper. Besides, you can leave them around the camp if you have to go on a trip, we'll take good care of her. These Phoo people are usually just a bit stuck-up and they think field work happens exclusively to other people, but they get used to it pretty quickly. They are healers, after all. Consider them…" she looked for a word, murmuring for a moment before remembering it: "Oh, right, an intern!"
Frank simpered at the statement. He was almost certain Sarah was just trying her best to make a joke.
"Thanks, Sarah. I'll do my best to… well, to protect them, I guess. Who are they, anyways?"

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