October 28th
The former house of Richard Gideon had been left abandoned in the middle of a wild apple orchard. Sloth's Pit had three different orchards in it, all of which were said to have been planted by John Chapman himself. This was the only one that saw no use, and as Squad 25 went through the orchard, they saw why.
Seren Pryce stopped to inspect an apple dangling off of a low-hanging branch. It was solid black, but not rotten, and smelled sweeter than any apple that she had ever seen. It smelled like caramel, and the end of summer. "What the hell?" She muttered.
"These things are freaky." Nicholas Ewell agreed, walking past her.
"Does Partridge know about this?" She asked, pulling herself away from the tree. "Black apples. Kinda wonder what they taste like."
"Probably nothin' good," Ewell walked alongside her through the rows of trees. Behind them was Raymond February, bundled up against the chill. The weather had gone from unnaturally warm to bitter, borderline wintry cold, and it seemed to be getting colder the closer they got to the house.
February shivered, "Detecting a one degree Celsius temperature drop since we r-reached the perimeter of the property."
"Possible spectral activity?" Ruby frowned. "Wouldn't surprise me."
Robert Gideon's house was what came to mind when one thought of "haunted house". A three-story Victorian mansion with a large, peaked roof, bay windows, fading grey paint. In front of it, a single oak tree grew, its branches looming over the roof. "A ton of places in town are haunted. This is bound to be one of them."
"Spectral, or… hmm." Pryce frowned. "What other kind of anomalies produce temperature drops?"
"Some kind of wormhole?" Ewell hazarded. "I've been in Multi-U a couple of times when they were doing tests. Swear to god, it drops twenty degrees every time they fire up that damn thing. You see the produce?"
"Yeah. Fucking freaky." Blake shuddered. "I've seen Arkansas black apples before, but those were just a… really dark red. This is something different."
"Like something out of Snow White," Raymond agreed. He looked in through the windows of the house, his eyes going wide. "What the—"
"What is it?" Blake looked in with him. "Holy—"
The inside of the house was bustling with life. Kids were running about in badly-made masks, the kind of quality that a Peanuts character would wear circa 1970. A figure in a long, black robe stood over the children, before following them out of the room. Then, the scene flickered, and repeated.
"Holy crow," Pryce swallowed. "Temporal anomaly?"
Ewell looked into the front door, and frowned. "If it is, it might be confined to the window. I'm not seeing anything in here."
"Hold on." Seren removed her rifle from her back and carefully detached the scope from it, looking through the glass. Through it, she saw the house transformed from dilapidation to grandeur, with Halloween decorations covering the outside. She whistled, and shook her head. "Yeah, shit. There's some kind of temporal effect going on." She turned around 360 degrees, and saw that the area of effect ended at the front doorstep. "I'm going to radio the Site and see if we can get Delta-t to come out here."
Blake nodded, looking into his bag and removing a magnification visor from it. Ruby did the same, and found themselves looking into the past. Blake felt something tug at the back of his mind, and winced. "What the fuck?"
"I felt it too," his sister groaned, rubbing her skull. The view through her visor flickered between the house decorated for Halloween, and the house as it stood today, dilapidated. "Oh shit."
Blake winced, falling to the ground. "Guys!" He looked back at his squad mates. February tried to reach out to him. "Don't! I think— shit, I think we might be getting dragged back!"
From the outside, the view was horrific. Layer by layer, the twins seemed to be disappearing, starting with their skin, then their muscles. They would occasionally flicker back into their time, before vanishing once more. "Just— get a time sink out here!" Ruby yelled. "We-we're gonna try to find—"
With that, the Wonder Twins were gone from 2017, and found themselves elsewhen.

October 28th, 1969
Ruby and Blake hid below the front windows, their hearts racing. They talked to each other, silently, in a language only they could comprehend. A twitch of a brow, a quirk of the mouth, a certain pattern of blinking; they reasoned that it was just them being able to read each other's body language so well that they could talk without speaking.
It was something a bit more complicated than that.
Ruby? Blake looked at his sister.
Yeah?
I think we're a little screwed. He took out his pocket knife, and looked at the house behind him. The stone foundations were relatively soft, easy to carve something into. What should I say?
Our initials, an-and maybe the date? It's uh. She looked around. October, obviously. If I had to guess, '69, because of course it is.
We could see the past through some of the glass here. Ruby looked through her visor, and saw her squadmates pacing about. February looked especially concerned, and seemed to be praying, while Pryce was on the radio. I think they're waiting for a Time Sink. 87 has one in storage, right?
Yeah. At least one. May be an older model, though. Blake creeped around to the side of the house. Let's try to do some recon.
Yeah. We're gonna be stuck here for a bit. Might as well… find out what we can.

The Time Sink arrived, carried in a pickup truck. It was an older model, developed by Xyank and co. some time ago, but it would serve its purpose well enough.
Driving the truck was Alexander Carracos, whose head was still bandaged from his encounter with a certain vampire. He had a tablet with him, trying to work out how to operate the sink. "Okay, uh… I gotta be honest." He looked at what was left of Squad-25. "I have no idea how this works."
"I've seen one of these before." Ewell climbed into the bed of the truck. "Halloween 2015. You remember, the whole thing with the time ghosts caused by some kids jumping into that dumb well over and over?" He inspected the sink, and fiddled with a few knobs on it, before flipping a switch.
A soft, pulsing hum echoed through the orchard. Pryce, warily, stepped onto the front stone steps of Gideon's former abode, and upon finding that she wasn't sucked into the past, gave a thumbs-up to Ewell and February. "We're good. Now we just…" She swallowed. "Shit, what do we do?"
February looked into the window. "The scene's not repeating anymore. Put your scope up, see what you can see."
"Right." Pryce brought her detatched scope to her eyes, and gasped, her jaw dropping open. "Oh. Oh my fucking god."

Ruby and Blake looked through a window into what they thought was the house's parlor. Within, almost twenty children giggled and ran around, all in costumes. At a table in the center was a bowl filled with a black liquid; the smell was powerful enough that Blake could smell it through the closed window.
Cider, he frowned. Black apple cider.
So, we have a bunch of kids running around a house of a person associated with two child killers and a possible Sarkic cultist? Ruby shivered. I don't like this.
That makes two of us. Ruby craned her neck to look further in, and saw… someone, in a hooded red robe, with a symbol of a black apple blossom embroidered on the chest. They were standing by a young girl, whose mask was off at the moment. Ruby's eyes went wide. That's Hubble's kid.
What?
His daughter, Eliza. I recognize it from the picture Mattings got. Blake looked uneasy. Are they… are…
What a nice conversation you're having.
A third party joined in. The twins' hearts went cold. They turned around, and found themselves facing the inside of the house. Standing before them was a woman in a black veil, with rotten skin and eyes the color of the last light of summer. Standing by her was Richard Gideon, unhooded, a shotgun aimed at the pair of them.
"Shit." Blake swallowed.
"Uh." Ruby put her hands in the air. "I suppose it's too late to say 'trick-or-treat'?"
"I'm afraid so." Gideon glowered at them. Something was wrong with him, and it took too long for either of them to realize: he was old. Almost impossibly old. The photograph Hastings had recovered was from maybe four days ago, and Gideon looked about sixty in it. Now, he looked closer to 300 years old. He coughed, and kept his shotgun trained on them. "I can't have you interrupting this. Clive, Zachary."
Two pairs of arms wrapped themselves around the twins, putting them into chokeholds. There was something wrong with them, as well; their skin was wrinkled, old, dying. Ruby gasped for air. "What the hell are you?"
"Old," Gideon coughed again. "And getting older. Mavra!"
"Yes, lord?" The Black Equinox had a hint of venom in her voice. Blake got the distinct feeling she didn't like being ordered around.
"Begin the feast."
"As you command." The Black Autumn flew through Ruby and Blake.
They felt their souls scream as the sheer wrongness of whatever it was passed through their bodies. Ruby vomited on the floor, and looked over her shoulder. She realized she was looking into the parlor, where all the children had gathered. When she saw what was being done…
She let out a scream of pure, eldritch horror.

Seren Pryce had seen horrible things in her tenure as a Foundation agent. She'd shot a zombified Josef Stalin in the head. She'd had her arm broken by a tentacle of spaghetti summoned by a pissed-off Horizon Initiative agent. She'd grazed a werewolf in the back and watched it impale itself on a totem pole.
None of that compared to what she was seeing now. The parlor was cloaked in darkness, and standing at the center was the Black Equinox. She had dozens of black, oily tendrils coming from her body, and each one pierced the body of a child. All nineteen of them fell to the floor, limp, as Mavra Isimeria began, for lack of a better term, feeding on them.
Their bodies withered and rotted, and from their forms emerged snakes and centipedes and all other manner of horrifying things. One child was conscious enough to pull away his mask, revealing that his head was swelling and becoming bright orange. His eyes swelled up, and one of them started to pop—
Seren couldn't take it anymore. She turned away and covered her eyes, sick to her stomach. She squeezed her scope hard enough the glass began to crack. Meanwhile, February and Ewell watched through their own scopes, completely horrified.
Seren, eventually, looked through the glass again. On the other side, forty-eight years ago, three robed men entered the room and dug knives into bright orange, misshapen pumpkins, before reaching in and eating the raw pulp and seeds. Seren swore she saw blood among the pulp, and teeth mixed in with the seeds.
"What the FUCK?!" Raymond February dropped the piece of glass he had been observing this horror though. "WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK?!"
"That… that's what she does? That's what the Black Autumn does?" Ewell backed away. "She-she turned those kids into f-fucking pumpkins." He leaned over, and started to retch. "Oh. Oh god. I'm gonna be sick."
"It started in… 1969. Allen's books… forced sleepwalking, and make them go to a-a particular place. Pumpkins everywhere. Those four in charge of a county fair… and she's taking child sacrifices. Holy shit." Seren put her hand over her face. "Holy shit. I know what this is."
She turned her eye to the scope once more, and watched the three in there; as the men ate, their skin lost its wrinkles, and their hair seemed to grow a new luster to them. Pryce felt sick. "They're… eating kids to… to…"

"Youth is truly wasted on the young, isn't it, Mavra?" Gideon asked the malevolent force this as if she were a butler.
"Yes, my lord."
Ruby ran forward, towards the one figure who hadn't partaken in any off the eating. Jeffery Hubble, she assumed. The agent's fist almost made contact with his body— but then a hole seemed to form in the middle of his stomach, and it went straight through his form. "What the hell?"
"Jeffery's a bit… of a special case." Carter shrugged. "He's just here to observe. Our errand boy, essentially. Lord knows he doesn't need this."
Allen grinned. "And we're automating the whole process, soon! The Uncle Zadok books are going to be bestsellers throughout the state, and bring so many children to the fairgrounds— where they'll feed us."
"So, what?" Ruby gasped. "This is some kind of fucked-up immortality ritual?"
"We tried several things," Gideon explained. "Faulty philosopher's stones, an expedition to the fabled fountain of youth. This is the only thing that works. We've done this for decades."
"Bullshit!" Blake exclaimed. "The Foundation would have heard about you! We would have stopped you!"
"What happens in Sloth's Pit doesn't leave Sloth's Pit." Jeffery Hubble intoned from beneath his robe. "It's one of the reasons we love it so here so much. We could summon Yaldabaoth and the Foundation would be none the wiser."
"Of course, it means that the Black Equinox can't get out either." Carter looked at the form by Gideon, which let out a loud growl. "She's getting testy about that. Wants to see the world. We've bound her here, and here she shall stay."
"So, what? You're just going to keep feeding it kids until the end of time?" Ruby snapped.
"Or until we get bored," Hubble shrugged. He raised his hand, and a tendril of raw flesh extended from beneath his robe, slashing at Ruby's holster. Her revolver fell out of it and into the flesh's grasp.
"Granola Sarkic," Blake gasped. "Holy shit."
"It's called Nälkä!" Hubble snapped. "This is why I hate the Foundation. Theophobic pricks." The back of his robes split open, and revealed a dozen more tendrils extending from beneath. "I'll deal with them. Carter, I know you get squeamish. Why don't you go to the Black Garden?"
"You heard the man," Mayor Clive Carter grinned, barely concealing his disgust at Hubble. "Gideon, Allen, what do you say?"
"I'm more than happy to let the flesh-crafter do his work alone." Gideon began to depart. "Mavra, return to your place of binding."
"Yes, lord." The Black Autumn hissed, and vanished in a cold, autumn breeze.
Hubble looked at the pair of them, and lowered his hood, revealing a single, gigantic eye in the middle of his forehead.
Ruby and Blake drew their combat knives, and took low stances before the monstrosity.

Seren Pryce had heard of it before, during her time at Site-36, before a crazed HI agent had torn through the place in an attempt to save his wife and child. Kid survived, wife had been given a medal. That's all she needed to know.
A few people at 36 had told stories about a fairground in the Midwest, overgrown by pumpkins, where horrible things happened every fall. Children walked in, never left. People's heads were replaced by gourds. Agents disappeared into cornstalks. The site director had once cut himself and started bleeding pumpkin pulp until he died.
It was in town. It had always been in town, and because the Foundation was a broken bureaucratic machine, they hadn't known about it until now. It was—
"Pryce!" February jostled her. "C'mon! T-the… the basement. You gotta— come on!"
"Wha— basement? What about it?" She looked at her fellow agent like he was crazy.
"Just— c'mon!" He dragged her down. She dropped her scope and let it roll along the ground.

The two Foundation agents would die before they were even born. Hubble bore down on them, with Ruby and Blake pinned to opposite walls by fleshy tendrils coming from what had once been arms. Blake realized that this was all they were: pinned. Not suffocating, not constricted. Just pinned, immobile.
Soon, the sound of a car's engine faded away. Hubble sighed, and the tendrils relaxed, and then retreated into the body of the cultist. The monster groaned, and looked at the twins. "Let me begin by saying that immortality is grossly overrated."
Ruby responded by slashing at his throat with her combat knife, letting out a scream of uncontained rage.
The cultist's singular eye rolled, and he quickly re-placed his head on his neck. "As are these various… mutations." He stood up, catching Blake's knife between his fingers as the brother swung. "I found Ion's word when I was dying of lung cancer. I left Ion for Mavra, and… I've been in a state of waffling for some time." He let his tendrils drop, bending Blake's knife in two. "I still graft myself from time to time with new… appendages. But they ache." He shook his head. "I met my wife here. I have two children. And I… I don't want this anymore."
"ONE!" Ruby yelled. "You fucking sacrificed your daughter!"
"I am a carnomancer!" Hubble snapped. "I can make a homunculus that can memorize Hamlet out of steaks from Woolworths! I…" He rubbed his face with a normal looking hand. "Gideon. He demanded Eliza. My daughter. I couldn't. He's been crossing so many lines, and this was the ultimate one. I… I made one to look like her, sound like her. That's what Mavra killed. That's what they ate."
"…you're a Sarkic cultist with two kids." Blake frowned. "Somehow, I don't buy it."
"We may look odd to you, but I assure you, we're human, and our… physical faculties are intact." He sighed. "My wife. She knows about my oddities, thinks I'm going to get them removed soon. And I am. With some help."
"From who?" Ruby frowned.
"I'm afraid my benefactors prefer to remain anonymous. But before you ask: no. They're not your Foundation, nor are they the splinter Insurgency." Hubble extended his tendrils. "My benefactors and I will bind Mavra in two parts. What passes for her physical form has been contained in—"
"A giant pumpkin?" Ruby hazarded.
"Indeed. We're binding her mind in a Masonic seal in the Pyramid Inn. If both are sealed, and left intact, then neither can break free."
"Well, she did!" Blake snapped. "How do you explain that?"
"That may be a failing on my part. Gourdon is resilient, but even then, it is simply a plant. A blight of crops, a puncture in the shell… it could be anything." The Carnomancer slithered over to a door and opened it, revealing a set of stairs leading down. "Please, if you would."
The twins felt they didn't have much choice, and began descending into the basement. It was a dark place, empty, wet. Ruby drew her knife again. "So, your pumpkin died, and now we have to clean it up forty-eight years from now?"
"I'm afraid it seems that way." Hubble sighed. "As part of my agreement with my benefactors, I'm to… well, deal with you. They told me to look for a pair of time-traveling twins at this place, on this date. Once this is done… my healing can begin."
"Hell no!" Ruby took her sparring pose again. "If you're gonna kill us, I'm going to make sure you can't have any more kids before you do."
"Hold it, hold it. Nobody's dying. You're just going to take the long route home." Hubble's tendrils shook and began oozing a golden sap, which fell at the twin's feet. "You were taken here by a simple wrinkle in time; your souls interacted with the reality here, and you were brought into the fold by a cosmic mistake. You deserve… well, you deserve to go home."
"Sarkic Amber? Seriously?" the Williams brother's lip twisted, and he pulled his feet away from it. "I— hold on. The Foundation still shows up at the Fairgrounds on the 31st. We have photographic evidence."
"Yeah," Ruby agreed. "We need a phone."
"No. If your organization needs any information that will prevent a paradox, my benefactors will see to it."
"Okay, who the fuck are these benefactors?" Ruby demanded, her shoes becoming stuck in the amber as it creeped up her body. "There aren't any major players that deal with temporal paradoxes or timelines or any of that shit."
"Not yet," Hubble replied, as if it was obvious. The twins tried to object, but the sap covered their mouths. They couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. After a while, they just stopped thinking.

Seren sighed as she looked over the pillars of amber that contained her squadmates. "Ruby once told me that she and her brother watched Jurassic Park religiously when they were kids. Dressed up as the annoying brats from the film."
"And now, they're playing the most important characters. The mosquitos." Ewell frowned and approached the amber that contained Ruby. "Now, how do we get these—"
The amber began to melt as Ewell approached, like a sculpture made of ice cream on the summer solstice. The pillar disgorged the Williams sister, who fell to the floor, gasping. "Nhhh. Nnnnhhh. Mhhhh."
"Ruby?" February took out a flashlight and turned it on. He shined it into her eyes, and when her pupils contracted—
"MOTHERFUCKER!" She suddenly sat upright, clutching her eyes. "Shit, sorry. Can't see anything, now."
"Hibernation sickness. You're okay, hold on." Seren had approached Blake's pod in the meantime, and was slowly pulling him out of the goop.
"I suppose them taking a shower is out of the question?" Blake asked.
"Yes, it is. The Foundation's been looking for samples of this stuff for decades." February scooped some off of Ruby and into a jar.
Blake sat up, and gagged as he swallowed some of the sap. "Oh fucking god. That tastes like rotten honey."
"Honey can't rot." Ewell frowned.
"That… really doesn't make me feel better." Blake stood up. "Fuck. Is this gonna harden again?"
"Hard to say with Sarkic magic." February sighed. "There are going to be a lot of questions. For everyone."
"…Hubble said that there were… benefactors he was working with." Ruby started to stand. "They'd make him normal again. And they had foreknowledge enough to know we'd be coming."
"That…" Ewell shuddered. "This town's freaky enough right now. Let's leave that to Delta-t or whoever the hell handles temporal anomalies nowadays."
"We know what it is," Ruby, Seren, and Blake all spoke at the same time.
Seren spoke alone, "097. The fairgrounds with the giant pumpkin in the center. It lures children in, eats them, centered around Halloween…"
"It fits," February agreed. "Partridge came to the same conclusion a while ago. I'm… gonna go radio for pickup."
"You do that," Blake winced, blinking his eyes. "Hey."
"What?" Ruby asked.
"It is the Great Pumpkin, Ruby Brown."
"…if I weren't covered in eldritch drool, I'd strangle you right now." She shook her head, and sat there with her brother, silently speaking, waiting for the containment team to pick them up.

« Chapter 8 | Black Autumn Hub | Chapter 10 »


Thorne held their breath as the lava started to break apart again, offering a clear line of sight on the anartist. 'And by the way, it's Agent Thorne.' They raised the gun and fired.

« A Farewell To Kings || HUB ||
March 22nd, 2017
???
There is a burning cold that lurks beyond reality. An encompassing void that devours the real and unreal alike, giving birth to the surreal. It is a realm of unbound concepts, devoid of mind to conceive them or matter to contain them. It is, in the most absolute sense, eternity.
It is through this vast fullness that the Ways travel, flickering threads of reality crisscrossing the void to connect the disparate pocket universes that compose the multiverse. In a sea of abstractness, they form concrete ties that bind the worlds together.
Kenneth Spencer was no stranger to Ways. He'd felt the cold of the Outside before, and it hadn't fazed him. But the Way he traveled now was a far cry from the familiar Ways of Three Portlands, which were made strong and steadfast against the void by decades of use. This Way was barely more than a sliver, a tattered tunnel that could barely hold back the encroaching emptiness. Spencer could feel the endless cold grasping for his soul, and he shivered.
The moment lasted less than an instant before he was dumped out of the Way and onto the smooth marble floor of another place.
He picked himself up off his knees and slowly scanned the room, which he immediately realized was an art gallery. The walls were covered in paintings, each one demonstrating a different mix of impossible colors. Infrablack and deep white, true stygians, dichromes, and dozens of others that defied description. It was an astonishing display of anart. There were many curators in Three Portlands who would likely — and quite literally — kill to have even a fraction of the collection.
However, what Spencer didn't see — and which was quite conspicuous by its absence — was either of the two agents who had entered the Way with him.
He tried his earpiece, but got only static. Whatever had separated them had also taken out their comms.
Cursing under his breath, he picked a direction at random and started walking. It was just about the worst possible strategy when lost in an unknown pocket dimension, but he didn't have any other options. If he wanted to get out of here, he needed to find Thorne and Green — at the very least, he needed to find Thorne. And he needed to do it before Dustin got the drop on any of them.

Agent Green rolled as he exited the Way, coming up into a kneeling position on his uninjured leg. The stun gun which had been his only permitted weapon in Backdoor SoHo was held firmly with both hands, sweeping back and forth for hostiles.
When nothing immediately attempted to kill him, Green lowered the stun gun slightly and allowed his attention to focus on the statues that filled the room. He couldn't see anything overtly anomalous about them, but there was still something off-putting that he couldn't quite place.
Rising to his feet, he cautiously approached the nearest statue — a piece of marble carved in the representation of something with too many tentacles and far too many eyes. As he did so, something moved in his peripheral vision. He swiveled to look at it, but saw nothing but statues, all of which were still in their same places.
Frowning, he squinted at the statue directly across the room from him. Even though it was facing forwards, the eyes were turned away from him. As were the eyes on the one next to it. And the one next to that.
Green turned back to look at the nearest statue again, and just caught a glimpse of its marble eyes turning to look the other way.
He laughed. "Clever."
Shaking his head in bemusement, Green leaned his back against the wall between two of the statues and shoved the stun gun back into his holster. Then — pausing to look up and scan the room occasionally — he removed his wristwatch and began disassembling it.
The UIU's jurisdiction was accepted in Backdoor SoHo, largely out of convenience. Someone had to do basic policing, and nobody particularly trusted the city's anartists to do it. The Foundation, on the other hand, was barred from the pocket dimension — legally by the Hoover Mandate, and physically by the Doorman. It had taken significant negotiation on the part of Thorne before Charlie had agreed to let Green enter the city, on the condition that he only carried a stun gun.
Green had agreed to these terms immediately, and had broken them almost as quickly.
He laid the pieces of his watch out on the ground, revealing that it contained a large number of very unwatchlike components. Components like a telescoping magnetic accelerator.
It took him the work of only a minute to reassemble the pieces into a small but functional coilgun. He pulled out his carton of cigarettes and removed the last one, unwrapping the paper to reveal that it wasn't a cigarette at all, but rather a carefully disguised flechette, which he loaded into the accelerator tube. He would only get one shot with it, but that wasn't an issue. It was a weapon intended for killing reality benders and wizards; if he missed the first shot, he probably wouldn't get a second one anyways.
Green hefted the tiny gun in his hand and set off deeper into the museum. He was going to find Dustin, and when he did, he wouldn't miss.

Robin Thorne stepped out of the Way and found themself in a darkened atrium. The only source of light was a large amorphous glob of what appeared to be molten lava floating in the center of the room.
Thorne put a hand into their jacket and slid one of the defensive charms within over their wrist. With the other hand they drew their gun. Keeping the weapon pointed at the ground, they cautiously approached the floating lava.
As they approached, the glob of molten rock broke apart, sending several glowing blobs drifting upwards. Thorne watched as they bounced off the ceiling and started to descend again, only to be reabsorbed into the central mass.
"It's a lava lamp," someone said.
Startled, Thorne raised their gun to point at the source of the voice and spotted Sierra Dustin standing on the opposite side of the lava. Gossamer strands of liquid rock partially obscured the view, but they easily recognized the anartist.
"I picked it up from an exhibition in Reykjavik," Sierra said. She started walking around the lava, but Thorne matched her movements, keeping the molten rock between them. "The Foundation were going to destroy it, so I took the liberty of liberating it from their custody."
Thorne remembered something that Green had said earlier. Last time this happened, it was a duck sculpture in Reykjavík.
"Is that why you planted the duck bomb? So you could steal some artwork?"
"Well, yes," she said. "What, did you think I was doing it for fun?" She stared at Thorne for a moment, watching their face for a reaction. "You did, didn't you. That's so fucking typical of you Suits."
Thorne kept their gun pointed at the anartist as they continued walking, but the lava blocked any clear shots. "So that's it? You go around putting lives in jeopardy, all so you can add to your personal museum?"
Sierra pursed her lips and clicked her tongue disapprovingly. "You make it sound so gauche that way. Tell me, do you realize what this place is?"
"Poorly lit?"
She smiled and spread her arms, gesturing at the works of art scattered around the atrium. "Miss Thorne, this is the single largest collection of illegal art outside the Library. And not just anart — politically motivated works outlawed by repressive regimes, grossly offensive pieces banned under obscenity laws, blasphemous and heretical religious iconography — anything you jackbooted thugs and your ilk seek to suppress. You name it, it's here. I rescue these works from destruction because they're the works that most need preserving."
Thorne lowered the gun slightly and stopped walking. "What about Three Ports?"
The anartist stopped and tilted her head in confusion. "What about it?"
"Why plant the memetic bomb there? What were you planning to steal?"
Sierra gave a cheshire grin. "Tell me, do you know what the nearest Foundation site to Three Portlands is?"
Thorne looked at her cautiously. "Do you?"
"Oh, fine, don't play along," she said, frowning petulantly. "We both know it's 64. Which just so happens to be the largest Foundation anart repository in the Western hemisphere."
Thorne stared at her in disbelief. "Holy shit. You really are crazy if you think you could have pulled off a heist from a Foundation site."
She shrugged. "Maybe. But I bet with all their task forces occupied containing the situation in Three Portlands, I would have had a decent shot at it. Sadly, Miss Thorne, because of you and your partner, we'll never know." The artist raised her hands, clearly preparing to cast an evocation or perform an exploit.
"I hope you aren't expecting an apology." Thorne held their breath as the lava started to break apart again, offering a clear line of sight on the anartist. "And by the way, it's Agent Thorne."
They raised the gun and fired.

Spencer had been walking for several minutes now — following the right-hand rule the whole time — and he was starting to suspect that the museum might be non-Euclidean. Usually, taking four right turns would bring you back to somewhere you'd already been, and he'd managed to take seven right turns so far without revisiting any rooms.
His suspicions were confirmed when he turned right for the eighth time, entering yet another new room full of unfamiliar displays, and noticed Agent Green walking along the ceiling — which was actually the floor of another gallery.
He waved at the Foundation agent. "Hey skipper, what are you doing on the ceiling?"
Green looked up and frowned. "God dammit, I hate unusual topographies."
"That makes two of us then," Spencer said. "You haven't seen Thorne anywhere, have you?"
Green shook his head. "Nope, just you so far. This place is huge."
"Yeah, well, hopefully that means Dustin's having as hard a time finding them as we are." Spencer took his eyes off Green and started scanning the room for a way to get up to the other agent.
"Thorne's a wizard though, surely they can handle her."
"Maybe. But Dustin has home field advantage, and Thorne's no combat thaumaturge. I'd rather not chance it." Spencer spotted a hyperspatial statue that seemed particularly suitable for climbing and started walking towards it.
"Maybe we should split up then to increase our odds of finding them."
Spencer shook his head and started climbing up the side of the statue. "No way. With the way this place is laid out, that will just make it harder for us to find each other again. And personally, I'd rather not risk running into a crazy anart witch by myself."
He pulled himself up onto the flat top of the statue and gauged the remaining distance. If the gravity changed directions in the exact middle of the room, then he could probably get past the switching point by making a running leap.
Green watched his progress skeptically. "Are you really going to try to jump that?"
Spencer looked back up at him and shrugged. "Do you have any better ideas?"
Green sighed and shook his head. "Just try not to break your neck."
"Will do." And with that, he leapt off the edge of the statue and threw himself at the ground above.
Fortunately, he had judged things just right. As he neared the top of his jump, he felt the gravity suddenly invert and begin pulling him down towards what had been the ceiling. Tucking his head in, he angled his shoulder forwards and landed with a roll.
Pulling himself to his feet, he winced and started rubbing his shoulder. "I think I sprained something doing that."
"You did just fall ten feet," Green said unsympathetically. "Maybe try landing on your head next time, it might knock some sense into you."
Spencer opened his mouth to retort, but was interrupted by the sound of gunshots from elsewhere in the museum.
Green swiveled to look towards the source of the noise. "Sounds like your partner found trouble."
"Or trouble found them," Spencer said. He started running as more gunshots echoed down the halls. "Come on, this way!"

The bullet stopped midair in front of Sierra and stayed there.
"Did you really—"
Thorne pulled the trigger again, and kept firing until the magazine was empty.
Sierra stared at them scornfully through the cloud of bullets now floating in front of her. "Really?"
Thorne ejected the magazine and started backpedaling away from the anartist. "I figured it was worth a shot."
Sierra waved her hand lazily, causing the bullet cloud to rearrange itself into a helix spiraling around her. Slowly, she started walking towards Thorne.
"You know, you really surprised me when you showed up in the Backdoor looking for me. I figured you must have been using some high-class thaumaturgy to find me there, and I didn't want to risk a duel out in the open. If I'd known you were just a featherweight sorcerer with a gun, I wouldn't have bothered coming here."
She flicked a finger, sending one of the bullets whizzing towards Thorne, but the defensive charm on their wrist glowed brightly as it intercepted the projectile and absorbed its speed. The lump of lead bounced harmlessly off their suit and landed on the marble with a clink.
"Still think I'm a featherweight?" Thorne asked, moving to place one of the displays between themself and Sierra as they reloaded their gun.
"I'm not impressed by your enchanted baubles, if that's what you're asking." She flicked her finger again, sending another bullet towards Thorne, which shattered the glass display case they were hiding behind before being stopped by their defensive ward. "Although I must admit that I'm quite curious how you managed to find me in the first place. Obviously it wasn't thaumaturgy, unless you found a better wizard to help you."
"It would hardly take a wizard to find you," Thorne said, retreating behind a stone column. They reached into their pocket and slid on another warding charm. The first one could probably hold out indefinitely if Sierra continued flicking bullets at them one at a time, but if she launched them all at once, the accumulated kinetic energy would make the charm glow hot enough to burn Thorne's wrist. Adding another charm just provided another sink for the absorbed energy.
"Is that so?" The dancing helix of bullets came to a stop as Sierra paused her assault, curiosity getting the better of her.
"Yeah, it is." Thorne took the momentary reprieve to eject the unfired bullet they had just chambered, catching it out of the air with their left hand. "You know those flickering messages you kept leaving as a calling card? Well, we did a little chemical analysis of the paints you used, identified the supplier as Iris Arts. The Foundation hadn't been able to do that before we got involved. Iris only operates in areas under the Hoover Mandate, so the Foundation didn't have any composition samples from them."
Sierra frowned. "Iris has thousands of customers. You couldn't possibly have identified me based on that alone."
"You're right," Thorne said. They closed their eyes and focused on the bullet they were holding while they continued talking. "We talked to an anart expert too. Quinton Wright, you've probably heard of him, he's a pretty big name in Three Ports critique circles. He knows the styles of just about every anartist worth knowing. Another lead the Foundation wouldn't have been able to follow without our help."
"And what did Quinton tell you?" Sierra asked, an impatient tone tinging their voice.
Thorne needed to keep the anartist distracted a little bit longer so that they could finish their spell. "Wright gave us a list of anartists who used that kind of exploit in their signatures. And what would you know, when we cross-referenced the two lists, there you were. Sierra Dustin, small-time anartist with an outspoken hatred for the restrictions on public anart displays. Foundation scooped you up for questioning and a stern warning back in '07, and then you dropped off the map after that. Seemed like a pretty obvious suspect. After that, it was just a matter of canvassing past associates until one of them told us where you were."
Sierra had been listening intently this whole time, and nodded now in understanding. "I underestimated you Suits. If I'd known you were so resourceful, I would have been more careful in Portlands." The swarm of bullets began to rotate again as she prepared to resume her attack.
Thorne opened their eyes as they finally finished the spell. "You know what the hardest part was though?"
"What's that?"
"Stalling you long enough to do this," Thorne said, diving out of cover and unloading their gun in Sierra's direction.
The anartist didn't even blink as the bullets stopped mere inches in front of her. "Again? You disappoint me, Agent Thorne." She raised her hands to hurl the entire cloud back at Thorne.
Thorne grinned. "Actually, I was talking about this." They opened their clenched fist, releasing the single bullet they had ejected earlier. As it fell towards the ground, it emitted a soft blue glow.
The part affects the whole…
The magic bullet hit the floor and shattered.
The cloud of recently-fired bullets in front of Sierra exploded.

Spencer exited the hall onto the third-floor gallery overlooking the atrium, followed at a short distance by Agent Green. On the floor of the atrium below, Sierra and Thorne could be seen engaging in their duel. Neither one of them seemed to notice the two agents enter.
"Looks like Thorne's holding their own," Green said, crouching down behind the railing to avoid being seen by Dustin.
"For now," Spencer said. He crouched down next to Green. "We need to get down there and help."
"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not get caught in the crossfire of a wizard duel."
Spencer frowned. "It doesn't look too bad."
There was the sound of gunshots from below, followed by an explosion.
Green looked at Spencer. "You were saying?"
"Okay, maybe you have a point." He peered over the railing to check on the duel. "Whatever just happened, Dustin's still standing. I can't see Thorne though… no, wait, I see them now."
"Well, as long as we're up here and unseen, why don't we just shoot the artist while we have the element of surprise?" Green gestured to his coilgun.
Spencer turned to look back at him. "Where did you get that?"
"Does it matter?"
Spencer opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it, and just shook his head. "I don't think it would work anyways. Dustin's got some kind of spiral of bullets circling her, probably from Thorne shooting at her. For all we know, our shots would get caught in it too."
Green peeked over the railing to see for himself. "Yeah, looks like you're right." He paused, studying the scene. "Aha, there! Notice how she keeps moving the fingers on her left hand? Same gesture repeating every five seconds. That's exploiting if I ever saw it."
There was a flash of light and sound from below, and for a moment Green thought he could taste the color blue.
They both looked down to see Thorne rapidly backpedaling from Sierra, who was attempting to hit them with blasts of magic. Thorne, for their part, was managing to deflect or divert the incoming energy, but wherever the blasts hit, ice quickly formed in a wide radius.
"There's no way Thorne can defend against something like that for long," Spencer said, concern creeping into his voice. "Whatever we're going to do, we need to do it now."
"We need to take out her hands first." Green said. "Stop her from using exploits so we can get a clear shot." He started looking around the gallery to see if there was anything that could help in that goal. His eyes alighted on a piece of anart — a globe made from sculpted water — on the other side of the room. "And I think I just found a way to do just that."

Thorne didn't wait for the explosion to dissipate before diving behind cover again. They had perhaps a few seconds before Sierra recovered and came after them again, and they needed to make it count.
"Is that the best you can do?" Sierra shouted, blinking rapidly to try and clear her vision. Her face and arms were covered with tiny scratches where fragments of bullet had hit her, but she was otherwise unharmed.
Thorne pulled the first aid kit out of their jacket and dumped the contents out on the ground. They grabbed the epipen and jammed it into their leg without hesitating.
What they were doing was dangerous in the extreme. Thaumaturgy requires energy like anything else, and for evocation that energy comes from the body's calorie reserves. It was why Thorne carried around energy bars, to use as a quick source of fuel for heavy-duty casting. But they didn't have time to eat right now. Instead, the rush of adrenaline from the epipen would boost their thaumaturgy for a time, but the energy it provided wasn't real — it only served to let them overdraft from their normal reserves. When the adrenaline wore off, there was a good chance they'd collapse outright.
Thorne shoved their hand back into their pocket one last time and slipped on their remaining defensive charms, then stood up and turned to face Sierra. If they were going to go down, they were going to go down fighting.
Calling up what power they could, and without even bothering to try to contain the backlash that would inevitably result, Thorne pointed a finger at Sierra and said a single word.
"Burn."
Flames sprang forth from their hand and rushed towards the anartist, intent on engulfing and consuming her. Backlash from the unconstrained working reverberated around the atrium, sparking and booming in an array of colors and sounds as reality itself shuddered under the force of Thorne's thaumaturgy. Three lemons materialized in the air behind Sierra, and then just as quickly vanished. Somewhere back on Earth, a vole gained the ability to understand Welsh.
Sierra raised her hand and caught the fireball in her palm.
"Strike three," she said, extinguishing the flames by clenching her fist. "You're out."
Thorne stared in disbelief as Sierra thrust her hand forwards, sending a bolt of pure magical energy directly towards them. They barely recovered in time to catch the energy on their wards, redirecting it harmlessly into the ground. Ice spread across the marble tile where the bolt struck.
"I'm going to turn you into an ice sculpture," the artist said, throwing another freezing blast at Thorne. "I'll put it up in the entrance hall, to remind me of the UIU pest who thought they could take on a real wizard."
She sped up her attacks, flinging blast after blast of magic at Thorne, driving them backwards and causing their defensive charms to glow furiously. It wouldn't be long before they started to overload.
One of the charms disintegrated, a minute flaw in its enchantments causing it to fail under the strain. The remaining charms burned red hot as they suddenly took up the extra load, causing Thorne to cry out in pain. They fell to their knees and scrabbled to remove the burning jewelry.
Sierra stepped forwards, a look of pure hate on her face and a ball of freezing magic conjured in each hand.
"End of the line, Agent." She raised her hands, preparing to cast the final spell.
A giant globe of water fell on her from above, freezing her hands solid as the liquid connected with the ice spells. The bullets that had still been orbiting her fell to the ground as the exploit that had been propelling them was cut off.
Sierra shrieked — either in pain or fury — and looked up to see Kenneth Spencer looking back down at her.
"You!" She shouted.
"Yes, me," he replied. "Green, now!"
Sierra started to turn to find who Spencer was talking to, but was stopped by a flechette slamming into her shoulder at supersonic velocity. Blood splattered across the floor and Sierra stumbled backwards, but managed to remain standing.
The artist lowered her hands, the ice around them shattering as she willed occult flames into existence. There was an inhuman rage in her eyes as she looked between Green and Spencer, trying to decide which one to smite first.
"It's over!" She shouted. "I'll kill you. I'll kill you both. I'll —"
Whatever she was about to say next was cut-off as her nervous system was overloaded by the occult equivalent of a million volts of electricity. She fell to the floor, instantly unconscious.
Thorne was kneeling some distance away, the anartist's blood smeared across their hands, which were trembling from thaumatic exhaustion. Staring at the defeated Dustin, they said a single word.
"Featherweight."
And then they collapsed too, the accumulated expense of their thaumaturgy finally claiming its toll.

An Epilogue

March 31st, 2017
United States Penitentiary, Paranormal ADX (Paramax)
In the void, there floats an isolated pocket dimension, entirely cut-off from the mainline universe for all but the briefest of moments. It holds itself together against the encroaching darkness through a series of unfathomably complex enchantments layered over a set of gargantuan reality anchors.
This place is a prison. Paramax — an occult Alcatraz for the worst paracriminals in North America, built by Prometheus Labs and the Foundation, and operated by the Unusual Incidents Unit. It is one of the most secure facilities in the multiverse.
Robin Thorne and Kenneth Spencer watched on a CCTV feed as Sierra Dustin was escorted into the cell where she would spend the rest of her life. The reality enforced by the prison's anchors would make it difficult for her to perform any exploits, but the nerves in her hands had been damaged as an extra precaution. She still had the use of her fingers, but she would never again have the fine motor control needed to work the exploits that could rearrange reality. As for thaumaturgy, Thorne had personally double-checked every anti-occult sigil in the cell to ensure that they would keep the former anartist from using her powers.
As the cell door clanged shut, sealing Sierra Dustin away, Spencer's earpiece chimed to signal an incoming call.
"Go for Spencer," he said.
"Sir, we've finished preparing the demolition ritual. We're waiting for your signal to execute."
Spencer turned to look at Thorne. "SoHo team just reported in. They're ready to collapse the Way any time now."
Thorne smiled grimly. "Do it."
Spencer nodded and pressed his finger against his earpiece again. "You have a go. Send that place back to the void."
"Copy that, sir." The channel clicked shut.
In Backdoor SoHo, a team of UIU thaumaturgy specialists cast the working they had been preparing, which was designed to destroy the Way connecting to the Museum of Illegal Art, casting it adrift into the Outside. Without any means of anchoring its reality, it would dissipate back into its abstract concepts.
Unseen and unheard, the Museum and all its collection exited reality.

Fin

« A Farewell To Kings || HUB ||


Cassandra Pike woke up in a hotel room, her head throbbing. She sat up and surveyed the room; it had two beds and a pull-out couch, all with purple sheets on them. The lighting was a dull shade of yellow, and a flat-screen TV was up against the opposite wall. Above the TV was a triangular mirror.
She didn't recognize her surroundings, but she did recognize those with her. Dr. Juliette Hobb, a thirty-something well-built woman was on the pull-out, and on the other bed was Frederick Engelhardt, a man in his sixties with grey hair, wrinkles indicating his face spent most of its time scowling.
"Fred?" Cassandra hissed. "Jules? You there?"
"Mnnn…" Hobb was the first to rouse, yawning. "Uh. Cass? Where are we?"
"I don't know," she swallowed. "But I don't like it." She rose from her bed, and looked at the desk, searching the drawer. Her heart sank when she saw the stationery within; an eye enclosed in a purple triangle, with the words 'The Pyramid Inn' printed beneath it. "Oh, fuck."
Fred jerked awake. "W-where are we? What the hell?"
"We're in the Pyramid Inn." Cassandra replied. "Anyone have a watch?"
Fred pulled out his iPhone, and frowned. "1/1/1969. That…" he rubbed his face. "That's impossible. iPhones can't be set to that date."
"We got whammied," Jules swallowed. "Bad."
"Let's recap," Fred looked at Juliette. "You dragged us out to Equinox Ridge…"

October 24th
Wisconsin was not known for its mountainous features, but every now and then, a cliff did stick out of the ground. Before this particular cliff was a rotted sign proclaiming "EQUINOX CAMPGROUNDS", which Juliette Hobb nearly ran over in her haste to make her way past it.
"Christ, Jules!" Pike rubbed at her shoulder, where the seatbelt was scraping at her skin. "What's gotten into you?"
"The name, Isimeria?" Juliette threw her phone back to Cassandra. "It's Greek. I recognize it from Krys's birthday party last month. It means Equinox."
"Okay, so?" Engelhardt frowned. "It's an odd name, but it can't have much association with…" He looked out the window at the cliff as they passed it. "That eyesore."
"It's Sloth's Pit, Fred." Juliette turned onto the road that led up the ridge. "There is no such thing as a coincidence within city limits."
"This thing's been around for literally eons! It didn't pop out of the ground during the sixties!" Engelhardt protested.
"I… gotta agree with Fred here," Cassandra frowned. "It's a huge stretch, Jules."
"Just… humor me on this, okay?" She turned up the road, and soon, they were at the summit of the cliff. She killed the engine, and alighted from the vehicle, looking towards the horizon.
Cassandra looked with her, towards the ever-present twilight, frowning. "We're up here. What did you think was going to happen?"
"Just… look for something? Some kind of clue?" Juliette sighed. "I… one of us nearly got their leg torn off. We need to find something that might help."
Fred put a hand over his eyes to shield from a non-existent glare and looked into the distance, towards the north. He frowned, and tapped Cassandra on the shoulder. "What do you see over there?"
"Huh?" Pike squinted in the distance, barely making out the specter of a Ferris wheel, about two miles off. "What the hell?"
"Is that the fairgrounds?" Juliette took out her phone and started zooming in as far as her camera would go. "Dammit. Resolution on this sucks. But…" she took a picture and presented it to them. "What do you see there?"
"Looks like something criss-crossing the wheel's spokes." Engelhardt adjusted his glasses. "Ivy, maybe? It looks organic."
"Hold on." Cassandra got low on the ground and started digging a pit in it, scoring the earth around it with various arcane symbols. Into the hole, she poured water from a bottle at her side.
"What are you doing?" Engelhardt titled his head.
"I've attended a few cross-disciplinary seminars Sinclair has held. She taught us how to scry, so maybe I can get a better view of it from here?"
"Not everyone can do magic, Cass," Jules pointed out. "And… well, no offense, but don't you need some… willpower for that?"
The parazoologist looked at her colleague, brow quirking. "Sorry, what are you saying?"
"I'm just…" Jules coughed. "You're not exactly the most sound out of all of us."
"What she's trying to say is that you scored the lowest out of the entire department on every mental anomaly resistance test."
"FRED!" Jules gaped.
"I get it, I get it." Cassie sighed. "I'm not the most… well. But I've been learning. And coping. And getting therapy." She knelt by the circle, and focused, breathing some Will into the circle. It wasn't much, but it was enough.
The water in the pool shimmered, and brought forth an image of the fairgrounds; it flickered, as if viewed through a satellite TV connection in a storm. Still, she could make out a large, orange mass among the fairgrounds.
"Holy shit, you got it to work." Juliette knelt by her, and looked in the pool. "What's that orange thing?"
"It looks like a pum—" Cassie was interrupted by a hand reaching forth from the scrying pool and grabbing Juliette by the neck, strangling her and trying to drag her in. Juliette Hobb screamed.
Cassandra retreated, her movement scuffing the markings of the scrying spell, and severing the arm of whatever had grabbed her colleague.
Juliette got up and ran back to the van. Engelhardt and Pike followed suit, not even bothering to buckle up before the vehicle rumbled to life and went down the hill.
Something landed on the hood of the van with a loud thud. A figure, clad completely in black, with rotten-leaf teeth and eyes the color of the last light of summer, clung to the hood. Juliette swerved and knocked it off, while Cassandra dialed her phone.
"Claude? I need— I need help. Call the task force."

"And now, we're in the same place where six members of Sigma-10 went missing." Fred sighed. "Great."
"Went missing. We're not sure they're dead," Juliette reminded him. "Last we saw, their vitals were still strong."
"We need to find a way out." Cassandra ran to the door, opening it— only to find a large, black space where the hallway should be. She quickly slammed the door. "Okay then."
The television turned itself on. All three of them stared at it, frozen, as the static spoke in a dark voice, whose gender could not be determined. "Hello."
"Jesus Christ what the fuck?" Cassandra stared at the screen.
"You're with Nina, aren't you? Her snack was most appreciated, but I'm still hungry, and this town… I've been stuck here for too long." The lights flickered. "Let's play a game. Three people have come in. In three hours, two of you will leave." The television screen became a digital countdown clock. "One will die. Don't attempt to cheat me."
"Are you Martha?" Cassandra asked.
"Martha? Oh, yes, Nina must have misheard my name. The phones in this hotel are awful." The voice laughed, and the room shook. "My name is Mavra."
The voice subsided.

02:51
The three sat in a room, contemplating what might have been their last moments. Dr. Pike had her head in her hands, and Dr. Hobb had curled up on her bed. Engelhardt had raided the mini-fridge and taken a can of Vanilla Coke out of it. "My favorite," he mused. "Service is good in the hotel, at least."
Cassandra sat up. "I… we need to look at this pragmatically." She rubbed her face. "You've got more valuable research. I took half a year off, and I've barely gotten back on my old projects since then."
"That's not a good measure." Engelhardt shook his head. "I'm turning seventy in a year. You know what I've accomplished in that time?" He knocked back the soda. "Scientifically, my research means dick. Same goes for everyone."
"You don't mean that," Hobb frowned.
"Let's face it!" Engelhardt slammed his soda on the dresser by the TV. "Who is going to read our papers? Other members of the Foundation. Who's going to improve on our work? Other members of the Foundation. Who's going to give two shits about us after we die?" He leaned against the dresser. "Short of a miracle, we're all going to die in anonymity, and the autopsy report won't even say how we really died. Heart attack for you, aneurysm for you, broken neck for him, your father got hit by a car coming home from work, she inhaled fumes in the lab, your son died because of an IED planted by a militia group in Michigan, I've heard it all, explained to grieving parents and children who don't know that their mother or father or son or daughter or niece or nephew died protecting them from something they can never know about!" He knocked the can to the floor.
"Fred," Cassie stood up. "You need to calm the fuck down. And this is me saying this."
He rubbed his face, and sighed. "It's true, though. When I first started this job, in the seventies, they had a form that you could fill out if you wanted a plausible cause of death. 'Suicide' was the most popular option."
"On the form?" Hobb asked.
"On the form, and also as a retirement policy. Jump off a roof, walk outside the capsule without a suit, shoot yourself in the head, didn't matter. Your family got benefits, you got to stop existing, and we were responsible for picking up your mess." He sighed. "Juliette. Have you filled out the family declaration forms yet?"
She shook her head. "As far as Krys knows, I'm working at the EPA. Though that's becoming less and less plausible by the day."
"Tell her the truth. Survive this, and tell her."
Cassandra rubbed her face. "Don't go being a white knight, Fred. None of us want to die."
"Well, one of us is going to!" Engelhardt glared at the time. "One of us is going to die. It should be me. I'm old, I have no family other than my cat!"
Juliette rubbed her forehead. "I… it's my fault that we're here. Rationally, I should be the one to get us out."
"Hell with that." Cassandra pulled at her hair. "That thing. It attacked you first. It could have gone after me, but it reached for you first. Why?" She paced around the room, and the clock ticked down behind them.

02:21
"You're wearing a hole in the carpet." Engelhardt looked at Pike as she paced. He'd found a pack of cards in the room, and was in the process of playing Solitaire.
"Why did she want you dead?" She had muttered this question to herself several times over the past half-hour. She frowned at Engelhardt. "You could help!"
Juliette scratched her hair. "It was probably just because I was the first thing we saw. But…"
"You were the one who brought us out there in the first place," Pike pointed out. "I… Mavra. Is that a Greek word, by any chance?"
Juliette blinked, and palmed her forehead, reaching into her pocket with her other hand and retrieving a list of names, the same ones that Hastings had sent them. "I'm an idiot! M. Isimeria! Mavra Isimeria! Black Equinox!"
"The Autumn Equinox." Cassandra's eyes widened, and she looked at her colleagues.
"The Black Autumn!" Fred forgot his game of Solitaire, and grinned. "We know its name!" He frowned. "Fat lot of good that'll do us."
"More than you would think." Cassandra looked in the minifridge, taking out a bottle of root beer and taking a swig from it. "Look in the drawers, find me some kind of writing utensil, and remind me to thank Dr. Sinclair when we get back."

01:49
"She seriously gave a seminar for this?" Engelhardt frowned. "How to bind demons and spirits?"
"Considering the weird shit we come up against in town, Fred? It's good to have some knowledge outside of your discipline." Cassie drew the last part of the sigil, a little horn on top of the symbol for mercury, before handing the pencil off to Juliette. "Can you write Greek?"
"Some, yeah. I know enough to write the name." She took the pencil, and began carefully writing the name in the seal.
"And you've… attended how many of these seminars?"
"Six or seven." Cassie shrugged. "I had to do something while getting my clearances reinstated after the whole thing with the collar."
"There we go." Juliette stepped back, having written the name. "Best I've managed. You know how to do the rest?"
"Never practiced it, but I know the theory." Cassandra cracked her knuckles, and placed her hand on the edge of the circle. She'd never done magic before. She gritted her snaggleteeth, and felt something flow through her arm; a soft push from her body, her mind's effort to not give into the being keeping them here, to see her friends again, to see her friends live. Her Will.
The pencil lines glowed with an awesome white light, and for a brief moment in time, black tendrils seemed to be sucked from the air, drawn into the circle, filling in the name on the center.
Fred grinned, and clapped his hands, looking at the ceiling, muttering a silent 'thank you' to whoever had given them mercy. Finally. They were getting out.
Or it seemed that way, until the light from the circle faded, the name only half-full of black essence, like a stuck loading bar on an old computer. Mavra Isimeria's name became smeared by an invisible hand, and then vanished entirely.
The voice laughed from all around them. "That actually got a good bit of my essence. You'd make a good mage. Gideon would've loved you."
"Gideon?" Juliette glared at the walls. "What Gideon?"
"Richard Gideon. The damn fool who summoned me, trapped me in this town, and bound me to this hotel. Traitor."
The voice then paused, and murmured, vibrations resonating through the air, before exploding, "UNBELIEVABLE! You bound enough of me that I have to tell you truths!" It laughed. "You're all so much more interesting than the snacks Nina sent over."
All of the researchers recoiled from the volume of the profanity, clutching their ears. "We know what you are!" Cassandra yelled. "We know your name!"
"Yes, and names have power. But you don't have my full name, and even then, most of my essence is contained in that damnable fairground. Now then, as to the matter of your time…"
The volume on the TV grew louder. they all turned, and saw that almost two hours had turned into twenty minutes. "What the fuck?!" Juliette screamed. "That's cheating!"
"You've angered me." Mavra intoned. "I'd like to see one of you die quicker than before. Now, one of you has twenty minutes to live. Make your peace, write your wills."
The voice faded, and the three of them were left, more alone than before.

00:15
The next several minutes were filled with silence. Death, let alone execution like Mavra was offering, was not something that a human being faced lightly. The three at least had the luxury of knowing something awaited them beyond the pain and the fade to white. The next great mystery, one they'd never be able to report on. Maybe they'd be ghosts, maybe they'd go to Nirvana, maybe Mekhane would take them into her metal bosom.
"I'm doing it," Frederick stood up.
"No," Cassie stood, trying to bring him back down. "You can't."
"I've spent over forty years here. I don't have anyone who's going to come calling for me." He looked at Cassandra. "I want you to take care of my cat. Her name's Moxie, she's a Russian Blue. She refuses to eat chicken, and won't have baking soda in her litter box."
"Fred—" Cassie began.
Juliette Hobb stood, and put a hand on her shoulder, before stepping forward with him. "We'll turn away for when… when she does it."
"Report all this back to Mattings, Hennessy… whoever has a vested interest in this." He stood before the TV. "We've made our choice. I'm ready to die." Frederick Engelhardt stood proud, his entire form shaking. "I'm giving myself to you so my colleagues may live."
"Oh?" Mavra snickered, and then chuckled, and then laughed. "I said that two of you would live, and one would die. I never said you got to choose who died. But it was so, so amusing seeing you bicker and beg."
"No!" Juliette rushed forward and punched the TV. An ultimately pointless gesture, as the plastic cracked and did nothing other than make her knuckles bleed. "You fucking bitch!"
"I am the Black Autumn." The room turned dark. "And winter has come for Cassandra Pike."
There was a loud, wet sound from behind them, and they turned to find Cassandra Pike's shin perforated by a long, black knife, held by a being veiled in black. Cassie screamed, and fell down to the ground, the entity twisting the knife in her leg. She should have been out from the pain, but something kept her awake.
"You aren't unconscious yet?" Mavra asked, her voice dripping with sadism. "Oh, this is delicious. You're awake to feel every last beat of your heart. You don't even get to die in your sleep!" The knife twisted in Pike's leg, and blood sprayed into Mavra's mouth. She licked her lips.
"C-Claude," she gasped. "Claude…"
Engelhardt lunged for Mavra, letting out a scream of incoherent rage. He found himself blocked by another knife, this one aimed by his throat. "Ah-ah-ah." Mavra tsked. "I'm giving you mercy. You should leave, lest I decide to take it back." The knife stabbed her again, and Mavra lapped at Cassandra's blood. "You managed to bind me. Something as pathetic as you, binding me."
Cassandra Pike snarled, grabbing the knife with her palm. "Y-you don't know pathetic." She gasped, pain shooting through her "Pathetic is. Pathetic is… g-going to a containment cell, every night, to p-play with the ghost of your d-dead cat." She started drawing something with her blood, staining the carpet. "Pat… pathetic is… wanting to run away… because you're so scared, so utterly frightened of some… one you loved, w… who seemed to turn against you, because…" she closed a circle with her blood. "Because you're both angry, awful people AAAH!" She screamed when she felt the knife nick her artery.
"Feel that?" Mavra taunted. "That's a bone spur, traveling up your arteries, straight to your heart. You're dead, Cassandra Pike. Alone, unloved, pathetic."
Cassandra's eyes filled with tears. She saw the world start to fade to white, her eyes cloud over, her heart slow down. Then, something came from the light. It was the form of a cat, a grey tortoiseshell with a white bib on its chest, one of its sides a little wonky from a broken rib someone had given it with a kick to the side.
"No," Cassandra spat, as the cat started to nuzzle against her. She gripped his fur with a bloody hand and held him tight. "I'm not dying here. I'm not pathetic anymore."
One hand scratched her cat around the ears, while the other pushed Will into the circle she had made with her blood. "You have my blood on you, Mavra," she panted. Sinclair told her this needed an incantation. The best she could come up with was her cat's name, repeated over and over. "Oliver. Oliver. Oliver."
Mavra was hit with energy from the circle, forced back against the wall, where she screeched. Cassandra Pike, in that moment, wasn't sure the cat that had appeared before her was real, but it leaped over her, and she heard something clawing at the Black Autumn.
Frederick Engelhardt wrapped his shirt around her leg the best he could, and carried her out, with Juliette Hobb supporting her torso. They ran into a hallway that had suddenly appeared outside, and at the other end, task force agents moved in. One of them called for a stretcher.
Cassandra Pike's eyes closed, and she muttered an apology; not to the task force, not to Fred or Jules, but to the lonely-looking cat at the other end of the hall, sitting outside of Room 13.
"Sorry, Oliver," she muttered. "Momma can't play with you right now."
Cassandra Pike slumped in the arms of her colleagues.

October 27th
"How is she?" Frederick Engelhardt looked through the windows of a set of steel doors.
"Bad," Claude Mattings wavered, resting against the wall in front of the operating room. "Really bad. They… they might be able to reconstruct the femur. Doc says he's never seen anything like it." He took off his glasses and rubbed them violently; salt residue had coated them. "You know how much force it takes to shatter a human femur?"
"Will she live?" Juliette asked.
"They got enough blood in her that she won't die from a severed artery, at least. And they got out the bone spur." He put his hands over his face, and shook. "We need to stop this. Now. We- we've almost got the whole picture." Claude pulled one hand down and formed it into a fist, his nails digging into his palm. "It… it was stopped before. We need to figure out how to stop it again. We have… we have to find Gideon."
He glared at Hobb and Engelhardt with a glare that would kill a Basilisk. "We're going to show this thing why you don't screw with Sloth's Pit."

« Chapter 7 | Black Autumn Hub | Chapter 9 »


October 25th
Claude Mattings sat with his head in his hands in one of Site-87's break rooms. He had a bottle of hard cider in front of him, sealed. He'd found it in Cassandra's quarters, with a note:

Claude,
Sorry I didn't get this to you earlier! It's hard getting mail into this town, and I had to look everywhere for this cider. Consider it a belated birthday present. Let's pop it open together.
Cassie <3

She had gotten it in before the evacuation, but with everything that had happened, she never managed to get it to him. He considered downing half the bottle then and there. Next to the cider was a radio, and on the other side, Seren Pryce of Squad 25. She'd been quiet for about twenty minutes, and he sat, alone, waiting for any response, any update.
The radio beeped to life. «Mattings, you there?»
Claude picked up the receiver. "I'm here."
«We found Pike's phone. It's busted. No sign of any of them, besides that. Wait, hold on.» The radio went silent for several seconds. «Just got word that they found Hobb's phone in the river. That leaves Englehardt with some form of communication. We're activating phone tracking.»
"Thanks. Stay safe, Pryce." Claude rubbed his head. "God dammit."
«Hey.» The radio crackled. «She's strong. She can get kicked while she's down and punch back twice as hard. She's gonna be fine.»
Claude didn't respond, but he smiled. He got up and took the cider back to his quarters, placing it on an empty shelf in the fridge.

Malcolm Guillard sat alone in a dark room with a folder full of newspaper clippings that had been dropped by a possibly-dead archivist. He was a forensic analyst, that much was true, but he also fancied himself an investigative agent.
The blood bugged Guillard for several reasons; firstly, it was AB-, and Pickman was O-. Secondly, it had genetic markers suggesting that the blood came from an individual no more than ten years old. Thirdly, the blood showed presence of the Salk polio vaccine. It couldn't have been Pickman's; it was from a child from the 50's or 60's. So what was it doing on this folder?
He shook his head, and put down a story about a little league game being cancelled due to all the balls for the Sloth's Pit Bookworms being stolen and replaced by balls of chalk by the Superior Cornsnakes. Nothing relevant there. This one was heavily bloodstained to the point of almost being illegible.

Local Author Z█████y █ll█n Celebrates Re█████ of new Uncl█ Za███ Book
As the Douglas █████y █ai█ approaches, Slot█████ 's own Zachar█ █████ has released a new Hallowee█h███d book. Entitled "Uncle Z█████ and the Great Pumpkin" █████████████████████████

A good part of the article was splattered in blood, but the rest was soaked in it. There was only one other place in town where the newspaper archive could be accessed: the Sloth's Pit Public Library. He grabbed his jacket, and headed out the door. The "█ll█n" stuck out in his mind; it had to be Allen. Z. Allen. A kid's author? Might be at the library too, two-for-one deal.
He left a note on his door saying where he was going, and headed outside, where thunder rumbled overhead. The weather had been slowly turning worse, and it looked like it would break soon.

Malcolm Guillard was sometimes called a "maverick", which is just a very, very polite way of saying "self-destructive dumbass". He had a tendency to go off and follow leads on his own, despite the fact that it was not his job. He found the doors to the library unlocked, and a familiar face within.
Sleeping in a chair in the reading room was Dr. Tristan Bailey. His car had been parked out front, and he had a laptop on the table next to him, with the screensaver running. Resting around his neck was a large digital camera on a strap.
Above him, hanging from the ceiling, was an approximation of the dread visage of Cthulhu. The bookends on top of the shelves also resembled the classic squatting Cthulhu statue from the stories, and various dioramas of scenes from the works of various mythos authors, all surrounding a scale model of Miskatonic University, built from Lego, with figures of Derleth, Lovecraft, Frank Long, and others standing in the windows.
Malcolm walked past all of these and jostled Bailey awake.
He jumped, and blinked. "Nuhwuzhauh? What universe am I in?" He looked around, eyes wide. "Am I in the Library?"
"Yeah. Sloth's Pit Public Library." Malcolm shook his head. "What the hell are you doing?"
"This place has the best internet in town," Tristan explained with a yawn and stretch. "And since Multi-U's not running experiments for the time being, I figured I'd come here and do some independent study." He rubbed his eyes. "You?"
"Need to find the microfiche archive. Most of the documents Pickman died for are covered in blood and impossible to read."
Tristan raised a brow, and moved to one of the library's computers. "Microfiche is, as the kids say, so last millennium." He clicked away as thunder began to grumble outside. With a few clicks, he pulled up a page that proudly proclaimed 'Sloth's Pit Public Library Digital Microfiche Project'. "They're converting all of their microfiche to online text. They have it up through about 1975, for right now."
"Exactly what I need." Guillard cracked his knuckles, and typed in the search term 'Allen, Zachary'. A few articles popped up, and he clicked on the most relevant-looking one, which read:

Local Author Zachary Allen Celebrates Release of new Uncle Zadok Book
As the Douglas County Fair approaches, Sloth's Pit's own Zachary Allen has released a new Halloween-themed book. Entitled "Uncle Zadok and the Great Pumpkin", the book will be premiering at the Bell, Book and Candle bookstore on October 25th. Allen (pictured) will be there signing new copies of his book.

Guillard's eyes went to the picture, and a grin broke across his face. Staring back at him was one of the four men from the photograph. "Hello, Z. Allen."
"Bit slow on the uptake there, Mal." Bailey turned his laptop towards the forensic specialist. "Check this out."
Guillard looked at the article Bailey had pulled up, eyes wide.

LOCAL AUTHOR FOUND, GUILTY OF ABDUCTION OF NINETEEN CHILDREN, SHOT OUTSIDE COURTHOUSE

"What the fuck?"
"They found… partial remains of about six kids in his house." Tristan swallowed. "He admitted to thirteen more, claimed he acted with then-mayor Clive Carter. Who— shocker— went missing two weeks before." He scratched his head. "So, we have a pair of child abductors connected to both Hubble and the county fair."
"Add in the pumpkin motif… hmm." Malcolm pulled up the library's card catalog on his terminal, and typed in 'Uncle Zadok'. His eyes went wide. "The fuck? All of his books are listed under 'restricted'."
"Why?" Tristan frowned.
"I… don't know. They usually save that listing for harmful reading material."
"Anarchist's Cookbook?" Bailey hazarded.
"I mean anomalously harmful. Like Quantum Accelerators for Dummies, or a Cliffs Notes for Cardenio." He pulled away from the computer. "We need to see those books. If they're anomalous, then Allen might have used them to take those kids."
With a bright flash of lightning illuminating a third figure in the room and a sound of thunder, the power died. "Ah, nuts." Bailey pulled a glowstick from his pocket and cracked it, lighting the area around him.
Guillard pulled out his flashlight. "Restricted section's down in the basement." He aimed it at the floor and made his way to the stairs.
Lightning illuminated the floor once more, and Tristan saw a shadow at the bottom of the stairs, before Malcolm. "Hey, Mal?"
"What?"
"Is… this place haunted?"
"It's Sloth's Pit. Every building on Main Street is haunted." He sighed. "C'mon. This way."

The power stayed out on the whole descent to the lowest level. At some point, it stopped feeling like a library, and felt more like a bank. The basement was where the archives were kept, and where the majority of the library's digitization project was taking place; dozens of boxes of microfiche slides were on the tables, ready to be copied onto computers.
An actual, physical card catalog existed down here, along with some items that they considered too valuable to be checked out, such as a first draft of an August Derleth story. Tristan stopped in front of the story, and started reading it. "The Memoirs of Solar Pons? The hell is this doing here?"
"Derleth's from Wisconsin," Malcolm explained. "Why do you think the library has Cthulhu-themed decor at Halloween?"
"Huh." Tristan turned away, keeping his glowstick held high. "You ever been to the restricted section before?"
"Once or twice. They have some interesting stuff down here, and not all of it will kill you if you read it." He looked at Bailey's camera. "What kind of filter do you have on that?"
"If you're asking whether or not I can use it to photograph memetic anomalies safely, the answer's yes. Not sure about coghazes, though." He aimed his glowstick up high, illuminating the sign for the section. "Through here, I guess."
Tristan was met with shelves upon shelves of books that were marked with various symbols indicating that they were somehow hazardous, all locked behind sturdy-looking metal cages; he recognized a couple of spellbooks from Sinclair toting copies of them around the site, as well as several scripts for The Hanged King's Tragedy, which Jackson Sloth Memorial's drama club had somehow got their hands on back in the 80's. The Foundation stopped them from doing something really stupid, thank god.
"Here we are." Guillard stopped before one of the cages of books in the back. Dozens of children's books were behind it, several of which were Uncle Zadok books.
Tristan frowned at some of the titles. "'Jeremy the Corgi in Adventures in Capitalism? Is that a Wondertainment book?"
"Yeah. No-brainer as to why that's there." He looked at the padlock and chain that sealed the cage, and reached into his belt, taking out a bobby pin and screwdriver.
"Seriously?" Tristan asked.
"It's as good of a makeshift lockpick as one can make." Guillard screwed up his face and fiddled with the lock, before with a soft click, the padlock fell open. He opened the cage, and waved his light over the books. "Okay… do you see the Halloween one?"
"Yeah, right here." Tristan pulled it out and put his camera up to his eye. "Look away. I'm going to photograph the pages, send it to my phone, and then send it to Melbourne in memetics."
"I thought he was in Florida."
"He came back for this shitshow. We need all hands on deck." Tristan opened the book—
And watched it slam shut around his hand. He winced as his finger was pinched between all twenty pages of the children's book, and then watched it hover in the air.
Hands manifested around the book, and then arms, and then a face. A stern-looking man with spectacles and a distinct lack of hair scowled at Tristan. "Young man. Are you allowed to be down here?"
"Holy shit." Malcolm's jaw dropped.
"I-I'm going to just take it to the checkout desk—" Tristan tried taking the book back.
The librarian's specter hissed, revealing rows of needle-like teeth. "Only librarians are allowed in the restricted section! Are you a librarian?"
"Well, no, but—"
"OUT!"
The cages of restricted books began to shake, with dozens of hands appearing from within, clutching at the bars. Screaming filled the restricted wing as the metal shook. "GET OUT OF MY LIBRARY!"
Bailey rolled his eyes. "You're the least-threatening thing I've seen all week." Tristan backed away, bringing up his glowstick and a pocket knife in a cross-like shape. "In the name of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, I invoke the Archangel Micheal to banish thee."
Guillard saw where he was going with this; Standard Exorcism Prayer #23. He held up his screwdriver and flashlight in much the same manner, and continued, "Purify our souls, O Lord, use us as your agents to drive evil away."
The specter hissed and recoiled from the pair of them, its form starting to waver and fade away. Even so, the volume of the screaming from the cages grew.
The two chanted in unison, "Banish the evil within and without, in body and soul, so that I may work in your name."
Bailey picked it up from there. "Banish from me all diabolic infestations, possessions, malefice, all restless souls, all hexes and unholy blights."
Guillard continued, "Banish from me all vices. All my lusts, glutonies, greeds, envies, prides, and wraths. All things that may make me stray from thee, O Lord."
The spirit began to fold in on itself. The hands in the cages started reaching for Tristan, grabbing at his coat.
The prayer finished, abridged, recited by the two of them. "I command and bid all the power who molest me to leave me forever. I consign them to an everlasting hell, where they will be bound by Saint Micheal the Archangel, our guardian angels Saint Gabriel and Raphael, and to be forever crushed beneath the heel of the Heavenly Mother."
With an bright flash of light and an eldritch shriek, the spirit was sucked into a rift in the world, and dragged down to Hell, leaving the book behind. Tristan caught it in his hands, and shook his head. "God, that's a mouthful to say."
"Wish the Initiative would let us borrow some of their prayer books," Malcolm admitted, turning away. "Snap your photos?"
"Doing so." Tristan took a photograph of every page, his filters eliminating any memetic hazards on them. He shut it, and sent the photos off to Melbourne in memetics. Starting for the door, he turned and looked back at his colleague, frowning. "Mal?"
"Yeah?"
"We didn't…" the Bailey Triplet's eyes grew wide, and he palmed his face." We didn't say 'amen', did we?"
"Shit."
An invisible force slammed Tristan and Malcolm against opposite ends of the room. Malcolm looked at the children's book as it fell open for maybe two seconds, and felt something dig into his mind.
"FUCK. ING. GREAT!" Tristan yelled, ducking under a wall of force that crushed the metal cage above him. "WE CREATED A FUCKING POLTERGEIST!"
"You didn't say Amen!" Guillard winced and held his torso. "Shit, that stings."
"Either one of us could have said it!" Tristan yelled back. He had a backup plan; in a room full of anomalous books, there had to be at least one book that could get rid of a ghost. "Look on your side for—" the cage behind him crumpled. "Shit! The Bionomicon or Totenkulten!"
Guillard ran past the shelves, looking into them. "Uh, shit, there's—" His head pulsed as the meme implanted in him began to take hold. "SHIT! Uh, um." He grabbed a pair of bolt cutters off of his belt and cut through some chains, finding the first relevant book and tossing it to Bailey like a frisbee.
The poltergeist knocked the book into Tristan with such force that he fell over, and he frowned at the title. "Dr. Wondertainment'sTM Bionomicon for Kids With Special Anti-Spook Spells?! SERIOUSLY?!" He tore it open, and came upon a relevant-looking passage. "To dispel a poltergeist—"
Tristan was slammed against the wall again, and read aloud, "R-recite the following." He looked up, and panted, "Corpus somnus. Spectra quietus. Corpus somnus. Spectra quietus."
The wind began to pick up around Tristan, and he felt the air being sucked out of his lungs. Even so, he kept on muttering, "Corpus somnus, spectra quietus. Corpus somnus, spectrus quietus, corpus somnus, spectra quietus, corpus somnus spectra—"
With an ear-shattering shriek, the room became quiet, and Tristan could breathe again. He took one look at Malcolm and bolted for the door. He was followed closely by Guillard.

The inside of Malcolm's car was soaked.
They had to sprint through the thunderstorm, for fear of whatever was in there following them out. Now, they were listening to Pink Floyd at full blast over the radio. "Can you turn that down?" Bailey sighed.
"I-" Guillard rubbed his head with one hand, the other barely staying on the steering wheel. "I got whammied. I looked at the book, and I-I feel like I'm going to give in if I— I need to be overstimulated!"
"Hold on." Tristan pulled out his phone. "Helen, show all available visual countermemes in sequence." He put the phone on the dashboard, and pulled on the emergency brake, making the car screech to a halt as the phone displayed dozens of images within milliseconds of one another.
The phone rang as Guillard stared at the screen, pulling at his hair. Tristan tapped it and answered. "You're on speaker."
Ryan Melbourne spoke from the other end. "I managed to analyze what you sent. Every page of that book had the same meme on it; three-part geographical pointer."
"In non-memespeak?" Tristan asked. "Guillard got hit by it pretty bad."
"Two components, normally: implants a location relative to where you are, and compels you to go there. This one has a third— it's a sonambulism meme."
"Sleepwalking?" Tristan looked at Guillard as he unbuckled his seat belt. "Wait, Mal, where are you going?"
"You need Countermeme #291!" Ryan barked. "It's auditory, so blare it as loud as you can through your phone!"
Tristan plugged his phone into the car as Guillard started to get out, and shouted at the screen, "Helen, broadcast Auditory Countermeme 291!"
The opening chords of Queen's Another One Bites The Dust echoed through main street, played on every audio system the car had available— the horns, the car alarm, the speakers, even the windshield wipers thrumming back and forth.
Guillard stopped in his tracks, and fainted, face-down in the rain. Tristan dragged him back into the car and sighed, finding that he had a pulse. "Ryan? Can you get Sigma-10 out here?"
"Yeah." The memeticist sounded relieved. "Just… stay there, Bailey."
Tristan looked out of the windows of the car, shutting the door and placing Malcolm upright in the seat. Out of the windshield, towards the north, he could see a red siren light shining through the rain. He thought it was Site-87, and that an alarm had gone off; but then he realized that Site-87 was to the east.
Eventually, the light stopped blinking, and Tristan was left cold, with an unconscious man next to him.

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