.28
"That determination which cannot go beyond dreaming, fearfulness, lamentation, moroseness, and illusion-such unintelligent determination is in the mode of darkness."
- B.G., 18.35
where are you
The Counselor cried out in her sleep, frightened back to outer consciousness by a familiar voice, bleeding through the events of a chaotic nightmare - a field of blood, the distant sound of a woman screaming, and a decapitated head rolling to a dead stop at her feet. The Counselor sat upright and scanned her darkened bedroom with nervous eyes, but was met with nothing but the gentle hum of the resident power systems coming through the walls. Drawing a thin, shallow sigh, the old woman turned to the communication device upon her nightstand and checked the time. Once again, she had not been able to sleep through an entire night.
Sleep. The concept had become so foreign to her lately.
The waking nightmares had become an increasingly routine experience for the Counselor as of late. Dire visions of the Marker and of a mysterious message had been intensifying over the days as the Marker project progressed, alongside her ongoing struggle to keep her involvement in Isaac Clarke's escape a secret from the others.
Something had to be happening. But was this a proper sign?
In the period following Isaac's escape from the Sprawl, the Counselor had been faced with increasing scrutiny as the investigation into the incident by her superiors advanced. Even with her attempts to misdirect them by way of Adrian Mattock's staged acceptance of responsibility, some of those who had worked closely with her had begun to suspect that she was either directly involved, or at least knew something she wasn't being forthcoming about. She knew her time to enact the final phase of her plan was running out.
Please. I need more time.
Folding her hands gracefully before her, she closed her eyes in solemn deliberation. She was exhausted, her throat felt dry, and deciding to fetch herself a drink she pulled the blanket off and started to climb out of her bed. She briefly glanced again at the communicator on the nightstand as she came to her feet, and upon noting the time display, she smirked.
The date was wrong, again. The hackneyed network on this station couldn't stay properly synced for five goddamn minutes...
At that moment, something occurred to her. She second-glanced the display.
Wait. No. Not again.
A strange sense of urgency suddenly took hold of her, and she immediately reached for her robe. After putting it on she turned back to the communicator and activated the holopad, dialed in a number and waited. The static flickered for a few seconds, and the Counselor tapped her nails nervously against the hard, oak paneling of her nightstand as she awaited a response.
You slick bastard. I didn't mean it literally.
The screen's display tuned in to a view of the Overseer's office, and she was greeted with the ancient, wrinkled face of the old man as he approached the device on his end. Recognizing who it was, his stiff, cinereal stare came to rest upon the screen and he quietly waited for the Counselor to initiate the conversation, but when he saw her deeply troubled expression and received no standard greeting, he knew it was something urgent.
"Madam... what's going on?"
The Counselor stared into the camera, her countenance trapped somewhere between curious wonder and incomprehensible dread.
"Sir... I've received another message. I'm sure of it."
"... A message?"
She hesitated.
"This time, it was different. Events have changed."
He was silent a moment.
"... Hmm. How different? Do you think it means anything?"
"I don't know. I do know that it won't be much longer. It can't be."
The Overseer, not entirely sure how to interpret her cryptic reply, merely bent a brow at her and smirked in his usually cold fashion.
"Well, you couldn't have had more impeccable timing, my dear. I've just received word that they're in the process of retrieving an encrypted broadcast from one of our scout ships."
This baffled the Counselor.
"... What?"
"The USM Credence. It's been homing in on a distress signal coming from somewhere within Aegis7 space. It may be the escape shuttle you had predicted."
Escape shuttle?
Not expecting to hear anything about an escape shuttle, the Counselor shot another wary sideglance at the time display on the communications panel.
"Escape shuttle? Where is the Valor?"
The Overseer flashed her an odd expression.
"The Valor? What are you talking about?"
Now, the old woman knew that something was wrong. Not wanting to display any obvious surprise that might suggest to the Overseer that she had lost her insight, she stammered and anxiously sought to end the conversation.
"I... I have to go."
Before the Overseer could respond she switched off the channel. As the screen shot to static, she could only stare with dumbfounded amazement at the dim glow of the holopad's illuminated keys at her fingertips.
He had done it again. Was he trying to prevent her from fulfilling her plan? Why?
With a driving impetus to understand what was happening the Counselor quickly dialed the Medical lab. She stared with hard, focused eyes upon the strands of transient digital snow rolling across the holodisplay just seconds before one of the administrative nurses answered her call.
"Medical... Oh, oh what can I do for you, Madam?"
The Counselor glared coldly at the nurse on the other end of the video, hesitating for only a moment. Though it was doubtful, she was pressed to see, nonetheless.
"... Dr. Werren, please."
The nurse on the other end paused, glanced at one of her status terminals, then nodded.
"I'll transfer you, hold please..."
The image of the nurse scrambled into a field of frenetic lines, and a few seconds later - to the Counselor's disbelief - Dr. Alex Werren's face appeared on the monitor.
"Counselor, is everything alright? You look like you've just seen a ghost."
The Counselor was speechless. After a long, uncomfortable pause, she hung up the line without a word. She looked down at the floor, eyes wide.
They had to have started over again... what else could explain it? She had already had Werren incarcerated... yet there he was, sitting in his office as if nothing had ever happened. The Overseer speaking of finding the escape shuttle...
Once again, she shot a fierce glare at the time display on her holopad. As she looked at it, it occurred to her that the date it was reporting perfectly coincided with the USM's discovery of Isaac Clarke's escape shuttle to the day - an event which, from her personal experience, had happened a little over 3 years prior. Though she had no idea how or when it had happened, she was most certain that that this was the work of the Red Marker - and that of its incompatible anomaly.
So... it has happened again. The Marker was trying to reset itself.
Having come to learn of the Marker's redundancy algorithm through Challus Mercer's extensive research, the evidence she was seeing now made it clear that she and everyone around her had in fact just experienced one of the Red Marker's most phenomenal capabilities. And, as it had always happened in cycles past, no one else around her seemed to have any awareness of it, or of the alternate reality of which she herself had complete recollection. Still, she failed to be wholly impressed by the miraculous occurrence, for was something she had come to anticipate as a result of her understanding of the Marker's workings. Her tightly drawn look of wonderment slowly decayed into a calloused, calculating grimace filled with animosity.
All this time he had been out there, and he still had not completed the bond. Incompetent fool... All of her efforts, wasted yet again! It should have always been hers.
"USM Credence, this is CEC Central Dispatch. We have a lock on your transponder signal; you have approximately five minutes before blackout to transmit your message."
A tired, overworked dispatcher of the Sprawl's central communications fought off a long and winded yawn as he leaned against his hand, lazily rubbing his left eye and readjusting his headset. He stared with fading interest at the holomonitor before him, responding to the incoming transmission of the USM Credence which was in orbit over Aegis7, and as the encrypted lines of data scrolled endlessly across the screen he had to fight off the desire to fall asleep. That is, until he was startled by a hard slap against his shoulder.
"Hey, you're not off the clock just yet. Keep your eyes on that and make sure its secured."
The sleepy dispatcher was about to curse under his breath until he realized it was his superior.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm on it, sir."
The dispatcher leaned back in his seat and eyed his superior's back as he walked away, then returned his eyes to the screen before him. Seeking something to stave off boredom, he began picking absently at his fingernails, and after several more minutes with nothing but the soft, digital bleeping of the console to keep him company, the incoming message finally completed the security watermark scans and alerted him. He initiated the video playback with a grave lack of interest at first, but as the message progressed and he realized what it contained, the disenchanted man's eyes opened a bit wider. He straightened his back and blinked as the message completed and began to loop.
"... Holy shit. They found one. They actually found a survivor. Altman be praised."
The bright halogens of the loading dock along the outside of the station spilled in through the windows of the Counselor's otherwise lightless apartment. She sat in a large, oak trimmed decorative chair just off in the shadows beyond the light's reach, watching with the anciently framed eyes of an eagle as the Sprawl's crew toiled ceaselessly along the decks like a colony of ants with no regard for time or tide. Deep space had no tolerance for night or day; in this place, the value of such measurements proved null and void.
The old woman sat silently, thinking constantly within herself. If it were true that the world around her had in fact regressed to a period of time that predated the Ishimura's discovery by the Marker's untold power, then it also had to be true that she would now be just moments away from learning that the its one known survivor had been discovered.
Why couldn't he just let her finish this? They could all finally be at peace.
Her eyes darted with premonitory instinct to the communication device upon the nearby table just seconds before the interface lit up with an incoming call. She stretched out her hand to activate it, subconsciously tracing the outline of a Marker symbol with her finger across the keypad just before doing so. As the screen came to life, she saw exactly what she had expected to see - the visage of the CEC dispatcher.
"Good morning, Counselor. We've just received word from the USM Creedence. They have a message for you."
Anxiety welled up within her, but she gave no outer indication of it to the dispatcher. She bitterly remembered how many times before that she had accepted this very same message, with the increasingly fleeting hope that each time would be the last.
"... Patch it through."
The dispatcher nodded obediently, and the screen went blank. Then the visual waveform monitor representing the audio of the encrypted message from the USM Credence appeared, and she listened intently, recalling it almost word for word.
"Central Dispatch, this is Lieutenant Iben of the USM Credence. This message is being broadcast on secure subcarrier frequency 352 and deemed red in priority. Transmitting decoding key separately... This is to confirm that we have located and retrieved auxillary transport vessel USG-CV4 - I repeat - we have retrieved Ishimura auxillary transport vessel USG-CV4. We have established contact with target and have in our possession. ETA to return to the Sprawl with acquisition, 53 hours."
The Counselor rubbed her chin, her mind racing madly as she continued to absorb the recording. There were some notable differences, mainly the identity of the reporting ship, which to her recollection had in a previous iteration been the USG O'Bannon. There had been many others as well, but at her age, she couldn't remember all of them.
"... We've also picked up an additional signal that we can't identify originating from Aegis7, but confirmation of identity is negative at this time. We'll report anything further we find. Lieutenant Iben out."
The holomonitor flashed off and the Counselor sat in the darkness for several minutes before she finally turned her tired, distant gaze out the window.
Additional signal? Who or what else had he managed to drag into his self-induced quagmire?
Drawing a deep, shaking sigh she retrieved a cigarette from the drawer of her desk, pressed it to her dry, brittle lips and ignited it, inhaling stiffly. She had but a few scarce moments to relish it before she was interrupted by another incoming call.
"Have you seen it, Madam? Did you receive the transmission?"
Seeing it was the Overseer, she quickly composed herself and gracefully ran her fossilized hand along the side of her face to sweep away a few stray strands of mottled, silver hair.
"Yes, I've seen it... but let's not talk online. I'll meet you in your quarters."
The Overseer clasped his gnarled, tree-like hands together.
"This must be it. Call Werren, and tell him to have the Medical team ready to go when the subject arrives. No slip-ups on this. We cannot start a panic. No one must know he is here."
She responded with a compliant nod, and the Overseer dismissed her immediately. The Counselor hung up the line and then dialed the Medical lab, this time greeted on the other end by Dr. Werren himself.
"Yes Madam, is everything alright?"
She could recall her exact words to him each and every time. Still, in order to get her hands on her target and reenact her plan, she knew she had to do her part and play it out.
"I've just received word that they've picked up a stranded transport vessel."
"The stranded?"
"Yes. The one from the Ishimura."
The sound of Werren's voice briefly flatlined in a moment of shock.
"The real, honest-to-god survivor? Alive?"
"Yes."
Again, his silence absorbed the airwaves, and the thick hairs of his beard parted with an excited smile.
"It's true. Altman be praised."
The Counselor nodded with waning interest.
"They will arrive in two days. The Overseer wants to start the procedures immediately. Have your team ready."
Werren nodded and was just about to speak, but he was quickly interrupted.
"Ahh - and, we'll be trying a modified suppression serum with this case."
Werren looked surprised, he pulled back a little.
"... Counselor, we agreed that if we want these tests to be representative -"
"I appreciate your attention to detail, Alex. But this is non-negotiable. I have a case of the exact dosages you are to use. You'll come by my office, and pick it up."
Again Werren looked to interject, but the Counselor's harsh glare and demanding tone of her voice disappointingly reminded him that to resist her would be futile. He looked down, the smile he had had slowly vanishing beneath his beard.
"Yes. I understand."
A moment of unspoken friction passed between them, until the old woman sourly dismissed Werren from the call. With a venting sigh that borderlined annoyance, Werren disconnected and the screen of her holodisplay fell dark. After a long moment of self contemplation, the Counselor quickly dressed herself, then left her apartment and headed directly to the Overseer's office.
She arrived at the Overseer's office some time later, and she stormed in like a dark cloud to find the old man sitting at his desk. It was obvious he was expecting her arrival, and as she neared his desk, he arrogantly raised his chin and folded his hands like wasp wings before him.
"Well, Madam. It looks like I owe you an apology."
The old dame slowed her pace, and calming herself she slowly took a seat in front of his desk. The Overseer continued to shake his head with an odd grin.
"You know me, Counselor. I'm not much of one for witchcraft."
"Witchcraft, Sir?"
"Despite my faith, I still deal in practical things. When they told me about you, what they said you knew, I admit I was skeptical. And as far as you being in line with that Mercer maniac, well... heh, Madam. Quite frankly, I took you to be a total fraud."
The Counselor flashed him a queer look, not certain whether he was about to insult or compliment her as he continued to slather her with his condescending tone.
"But... I can't deny the fact that you have given me what no one else has - tangible results. Of all the people involved in this project, you are the only one who has delivered exactly what you have promised. You said we would find him, and this survivor is exactly what we need to successfully finish this project."
Then the Overseer fell quiet and leaned back in his seat, nodding his approval in an insincere way. The Counselor just bore a cold, tight smile.
"Thank you, sir."
Any hint of warmth that might have been within his expression quickly vanished as he changed the subject.
"So, have you heard from Mercer at all? I assume not, since the incident."
The Counselor shook her head.
"I got a final message from him about three weeks ago. But it doesn't matter, I have enough information from him to carry on without his guidance."
The Overseer raised a facetious eyebrow and scoffed.
"Well, thank god for small miracles. But, we have a problem, you realize. A USM ship has gone missing, "
The Counselor looked up at him with concern; while various components of their conversation were familiar, she couldn't remember it having taken this direction before.
"A military vessel?"
He nodded grimly.
"Yes - a high profile warbird named the Valor. Its last communication came from somewhere in the Cygnus system - near Aegis7."
The Counselor glanced to the side in thought; she remembered the USM Valor, but not in this way.
"How long has it been missing?"
"About a week or so. Its already raised some very influential heads, and they're starting to look more closely. They're saying it appears to have been some sort of terrorist attack, so we're going to run with that for now."
"Hmm. see."
The old woman's eyes jostled restlessly, feeling a bit awkward and defensive as she could guess the next question on the Overseer's mind.
"Counselor, why didn't you tell me about the Valor?"
Looking down with a rare display of deference, she shook her head.
"I... I honestly didn't know about the Valor. This isn't how I had seen it before. Of course, my visions are not any guarantee; they're merely suggestive. I suspect the Marker is becoming more unstable."
The Overseer's expression darkened.
"Well, Counselor... Unfortunately, this is becoming a problem. As I said, the USM is declaring this a terrorist attack and because of our presence out there, we're gon the receiving end of serious finger-pointing. I can't make any guarantees that EarthGov won't just declare martial law over the entire sector. We may very well lose our control in this matter."
"I understand, Sir."
"Your job, Counselor, from this point on will be to see to it that the survivor gets taken care of properly, right into the testing lab. I want this immaculate. So far, no one else knows this is a live case. It must remain that way."
Anxious to leave and seeking to take the lead in breaking their conversation, the Counselor rose to her feet.
"Yes. You know you can trust me, Sir."
Despite his inherent disliking for the old woman, he knew he could - at least, for now.
"If anything else comes to mind, do let me know. I trust you'll be as forthcoming as you always have."
The Overseer waved his hand to dismiss her, and without a further word she stalked out of his office. Once she was clear of his room and out of his sight, she released the tranquil facade she had been wearing and hastened her pace down the hall.
"It's time to finish this, Isaac. Time to play this thing out to the end for the last time."
