Clear skies

Hey. Been a while, huh?

The day after the second fight at the Tower, Robin called me to ask if I'd meet her at her office at AMU.

The door turned out to be unlocked, and I entered to see her in a black dress, staring out the window. Afternoon light streamed through it, painting the room in amber.

She turned to face me, and her face lit up with a tired smile. She looked beautiful.

"Hey, Addie."
"Hey, Robin. What's the special occasion?"
She rolled her eyes. "C'mere."

I walked towards her. Somehow, it took me by surprise when she hugged me.

"Thank you for keeping me safe."
"Uh- yeah," I stammered as I realized how tightly she was holding me.
She leaned back and looked up at me. "You're cute," she said, smiling.
"I love you," I blurted out, and my eyes widened.
"I love you too."
I gave a nervous laugh. "Oh. Okay, um… good."
She smiled, punching me lightly in the arm. "Addie, you dork."
"What?" I said defensively.
"We've been through the end of the world together. You gave up everything for me. I always knew."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"Because I was scared, dummy."

That was a while ago, now. Suffice to say we're very happy together.

Since then, ARC and the Archive have entered an uneasy alliance, brought together by our shared experiences at the dead tower. The Forest has been kept in check by the revived Newborn, though it's become a more active player than it has been in a very, very long time, and together our two groups are working to research the Forest, to find ways to hold it back.

It isn't lost on me how far I went to get Robin back when ARC and AMU ended up as allies in the end anyway. But that was a long time she was around. A long time that she was with us, safe albeit overworked, instead of kept in a cramped cell and watched constantly.

I don't care if it's selfish. To me, that's all that matters.

Back in the tower

It was around the time the tower came into view in the distance that we arrived at a clearing where the Forest's influence was weaker, around which were former office buildings, now overgrown with vine-snapped wires and rotting flesh. There were a number of people there, Samuel included, but before we could chat, strange green blurs began to move incredibly quickly around the area.

"Those blurs are Green Men," I said. "They're plant people- well, not people, they're anomalies manifested directly by the Forest- never mind, point is, they're gonna try to kill us all and the people here can't take them on."

"Got it!" Kareena said, then let out a "WHOOOOOO!" as the tank's treads rolled over one of the Green Men, producing a sound somewhere between crunching leaves and breaking bones.

"Well, at least somebody's enjoying the apocalypse," Jenn muttered.

"Everyone plug your fuckin' ears," Kareena said as she lowered the tank's cannon, waited for one of the blurs to move past her line of sight, and fired. I couldn't tell if it actually hit the Green Man, but it certainly made a sizable hole in one of the buildings.

Just after that, a bolt of lightning struck in the middle of the clearing, and Dr. Daniel Ferris appeared. I lost track of what happened after that. There was a lot going on- a lot of shouting, a lot of fighting, a lot of strange anomalous bullshit that hurt to look at. Suffice to say that we made it out.

I don't know how long it took- time didn't seem to work right in the Forest- but as the tank moved forward, something huge came into view, something of an impossible color shot through with patches of gray and silver and red. It smelled like woodland rain and rotting meat.

It was the tower.

We were finally here.

What had once been KRAKEN headquarters was covered in bone and flesh meeting as one with rusted metal, in flowers of hues nowhere to be found on the electromagnetic spectrum, in vines that reached out towards us like tentacles until Robin cut them away with her machete. Untold billions of cold, dead wires covered the ground, long since snapped by Forest vines.

We got out of the tank.

A lot of other people had just arrived there as well, by some bizarre coincidence, or by supernatural means, or... something. Either way, with that, the new group was made up of, well, basically everyone who had entered the Forest and not died.

I couldn't see Robin's face behind the gas mask, but I could tell from the way she carried herself as she led our small contingent of ex-ARC agents to the tower, hacking away more and more vines, that she had no interest in dealing with the Forest's bullshit. I didn't feel nearly as confident as she looked while I did the same, and where her determination would normally be reassuring, I instead found it unsettling.

The inside of the tower looked much the same as the outside, but with far more space for vines to stretch across; as outside, the floor was covered in layers upon layers of dead wires and cables.

As we waded through the detritus to a door whose sign would have read BASEMENT ACCESS if it weren't partially covered, I still saw that bitter, unnerving determination in Robin's walk.

I took her hand. "Robin."
"What is it?"
"Be safe. Please."
She turned to me, her shoulders relaxing. "Yeah. I will."
 

We stood there for a moment.

I heard a crunching sound from behind us and turned around. Pouring in from the hole was a flood of people who had clearly been in the Forest for far too long.

"Motherfucker," Jenn muttered as she got her pistol out. Practically everyone else seemed to have the same idea; people all around me were pulling out guns, knives, hell, the multiple swords I saw weren't even the most surprising weapons.

 

Leo and I followed Jenn's lead.

"Those of you who can't fight, come on," Robin said, beginning to hack away at the vines.

More and more of the infected swarmed in. One of them grabbed onto my leg, and with a degree of cool under pressure I didn't even know I had in me, I put my gun directly to its temple and pulled the trigger.

You really never get used to the sound of what happens when a bullet enters a human head at point blank.

Grimacing behind my mask, I kicked the body away. As I did, I caught something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Dr. Ferris talking to Robin.

"You need a hand?"
Robin turned to him. "Yeah, that'd be much appreciated, thanks."
"Cool. HELLFIRE, help her out for a second, don't be a dick about it."
"...Excuse me?"
"You ever host a Dying Man shard before?"
"No...? Wait, what?"
"First time for everything. Have fun with him, he's a charmer." He looked to me and said as he dissected one of the infected that had nearly reached me in a flurry of rose petals, "You should really pay more attention to the battlefield."

I felt a mixture of bewilderment, gratitude, and annoyance, but before I could figure out which one to listen to, a number of roots suddenly came down from the ceiling, one of them managing to curl around his arm and snap it. He cried out in pain and tossed the cane he'd been holding in our general direction, Robin grabbing it out of the air. 

"That's what's left of the Newborn," Dr. Ferris said. "Use it well."

 

As Dr. Ferris destroyed the roots and teleported away, and we continued to fight off more infected, I felt a presence enter the tower that I knew immediately wasn't one of them. I've never been able to detect auras or whatever other bullshit, I don't have any supernatural powers, but I knew on instinct that Hell itself was walking into that tower.
 

"Everyone, get through! Door's open!" Robin shouted.

I turned around, and I ran. I could feel the presence behind me, still walking at a steady gait yet keeping up with my sprint.

As all of us flooded down into the basement, the presence followed.

A hand grabbed my shoulder from behind, sharp claws digging into my flesh.

"So, this is where the hunt ends."

And then I knew who it was.

"Turn around," she said, releasing her grip.

I complied.

Daisy Krenson towered over me, seemingly even more than she once had. There was an eyepatch over her scarred left eye; her filthy black hair was tied into a ponytail, and she wore a tattered gray overcoat over her torn suit. She was breathing heavily, the gashes in her clothing exposing toned, powerful, bloodied flesh. Her right eye glowed red, shining with malice.

Her lips curled back to bare her teeth (her lips were black, like a dog's; her ears, her teeth, her face, it was all far too sharp).

"I told you to turn around. I didn't tell you to look me in the eye." She slammed me against the wall by the chest, knocking the breath out of my lungs. "Don't you dare act as though we're equals, after all you've put me through. You abandoned all of us, and for what?"

Jenn walked slowly, quietly, towards Krenson, but in one fluid motion, Krenson released me, turned around, drew her pistol, and fired into Jenn's shoulder with frightening precision.

"That was a warning shot."
"This-" Jenn gasped in pain. "This isn't you."
"You don't know me."
Jenn involuntarily slumped against the wall. "You're… you're right. I don't know you, not the Daisy I'm looking at. But I know who you used to be."
"Listen to me," Krenson said, stepping forward and staring her down. "I don't care that your precious Robin killed the Newborn. Not really. To be perfectly honest, I have to respect the force of will that represents." She grabbed Jenn's wrist as she started to reach for her gun. "But you made a deal with a devil for her, and I won't let you traitors bring back the devil you killed." Suddenly, she twisted Jenn's arm with a stomach-churning crunch and took the gun from her limp hand before it could fall to the floor.
She turned to me, smiled, and raised it.
"You don't know how long I've waited for this."

I didn't hear the shot, didn't feel the bullet enter. I slipped in and out of consciousness, my hearing fading in slowly to the sounds of screaming and shouting and Leo and Robin saying my name over and over. I tried to tell them I was fine, but the words wouldn't come out.

What I'm about to recount is what I've been told afterwards.
 

As Leo and Robin stood over my unconscious body, Robin turned to Krenson and screamed, "You FUCKING PRICK," before charging at her with her machete in hand.

Robin's mouth moved on its own. "Language," said the Dying Man shard known as HELLFIRE. His flame spread across Robin's body, enveloping her machete.

Robin was too enraged to think clearly, and Krenson was fast. She growled like a dog as she dodged backwards, firing a shot into Robin's chest that she didn't even feel as HELLFIRE took over, trading fireballs and slashes from weapons formed of black mist with Krenson's shots until she ran out of ammo and threw the gun at Robin's forehead, which she, again, ignored as she/HELLFIRE forced an unarmed Krenson to slowly back away, unable to attack her directly or risk being badly burned. As Krenson backed up against the same wall that Jenn was slumped against, she suddenly felt a knife in her side.

"I'm so sorry, Daisy," Jenn said, drawing it back out, blood spurting from the wound. "It shouldn't have had to end like this."

Daisy fell forward without a sound, her body charred and mangled to hell and back. At around that time, I finally started to exit the shock I was in.

"Now," HELLFIRE said, "allow me to do what I've been asked to do."

With that, HELLFIRE led Jenn, Leo, and myself back to clearing away the vines, his fire making short work of the plants. It was… well, it was very strange seeing "Robin" act so distant, even though I knew it wasn't actually her in control.

We fled deeper into the basement. The tree at the heart of the tower, like a grotesque Yggdrasil, grew outwards from here. On the ground knelt a young man with long black hair, some sort of vambrace on his arm, and…

"The Dagger," I muttered to myself. "That's… that's the Dagger."

The kid, Kai, was holding it tightly, scrawling some sort of runes on the ground, barely seeming to notice anything around him, or maybe just too overwhelmed to react.

The cane containing the last remaining fragment of the Manufactured Newborn was in the hand of the one who had killed it, and the one who had performed the ritual to bring it through was performing a ritual to brick it back. It was only natural, maybe, that that was when it happened.

There was a low rumble before a tower of metal and cables erupted from the ground beneath the tree. The tower was so massive that Robin only barely dove out of the way in time to avoid being smashed against the basement ceiling, hitting the ground as the cane in Robin's hand was merged into the rising tide. As the tower rapidly expanded outwards in a nightmare of cables and wires, past and future fought once more.

Somehow, we managed to escape the crossfire, the two Fears balancing one another even as they fought. It was a long trek back out of the Forest, but it seemed that the Newborn's rebirth had made it possible to escape, the anomalous properties of the area becoming less potent through the counteracting influence of the Newborn. We emerged, finally.

I don't know how to feel about Krenson's death. She made her choice, I suppose. I mean, I barely knew her myself; I only really knew what she meant to Jenn. But it seemed like she meant a great deal to her. And now she's dead.

There won't be a funeral for Krenson, just like there weren't funerals for the others. Far too many have died for that to even make sense.

I don't know. Even to the bitter fucking end, I just don't know.

In the Forest

Like the other AMU agents, I had been equipped with an anomalous gas mask, specially designed to counteract the effects of the Forest and its spores. However, those spores clouded the lenses, and when I cleaned them off, it became apparent that the AMU group had been split up, though I hadn't heard the sounds of footsteps going in any direction but my own. I'm going to have to chalk that up to the Forest's anomalous geometry.

I was left with Jenn, Leo, and Robin as the three of us made our way into the depths of the Forest. It was equal parts horrifying and heartbreaking- crumbling, abandoned homes overrun with mushrooms and vines, deer with hundreds of eyes and sharp teeth, people with ragged clothing and green-glowing scars all over their bodies.

That was when I caught sight of a man with long brown hair and a cane.

"Huh," he said. "You're the ARC agents who joined AMU instead, right?"
"Right," Jenn said. "And you are…?"
"Dr. Ferris. Not. Mr. Ferris."
"…Okay," Jenn said. "And Dr. Ferris is?"
"A friend of Malkator's," he said. "I research the Fears."
"Oh, I've read all about you," I said. "You built the Extractor that lets you harness the Fears' powers, right?"
"Wait, you can do that?" Robin asked. "I feel like that would've helped a lot of problems in the past…"
"It's not as easy as it seems. That kind of power attracts much stronger enemies, people with powers of their own."
"What, like a guy with birds inside him that can rip your friend's eye out?" Jenn said, her arms crossed.
Dr. Ferris scoffed. "I'm not talking about Nests."
Jenn glared.
"So, how does it work?" Leo asked, though I got the feeling it was at least partly to change the subject. "The Extractor, I mean."

"It's really pretty simple- well, in principle, anyway. It drains eldritch energy from a given sample, like, say, an Intrusion spider, then it amplifies it, then it compresses it into what I call a Cell, basically an eldritch battery. Then I have to get it back out, which-"

 

And that's when the tank showed up.

The tank's hatch opened, and a teenage girl popped her head out.

"Need a ride?"
I blinked. "What."
"I'm Kareena," she said.
"Huh," I said, squinting in confusion.

"You're with Kai, right?" Dr. Ferris said.
She gave a thumbs-up. "Well, was. We got separated from him while we were entering the Forest."
"We?" I asked.
"Me and Royce. Come on, you need to get to the center of the Forest, right?"
I glanced at Leo, who shrugged.
"Fuck it," Jenn said. "Why not."
"Is there even enough seating in here for all of us?" Robin asked.
"I'd say a lack of elbow room is preferable to dying," I said as I climbed into the tank.

"Well, I've got work to do," Dr. Ferris said. "See you around."

 

And then he vanished. Because, yes, he can do that.

With that, we drove to the heart of the Forest- the tower where KRAKEN had summoned the Manufactured Newborn.

Lightning strikes twice

Hi. I'm back.

Allow me to fill you in on what happened since my last post.

Moira died. I still don't know who killed her, but it didn't take long before there was a shootout between AMU and the combined forces of KRAKEN and the White Comet. I ran for cover, as did Robin and Leo. We weren't there for our firepower, after all. Jenn, however, shot some people on the other side, and she killed at least a few of them. It wasn't pretty, but it had to happen. They weren't going to let us into the Forest, and it was going to be bad enough just getting there.

Pretty soon, KRAKEN got taken out, and the White Comet fled.

We had dealt with our human enemies, but we still had a Forest to enter and a Convocation to deal with on its outskirts.

The birds stood vigil on the treetops, outlined in flashes of lightning and screaming in the sounds of thunder. At the same time, a young woman in a red dress walked out of the Forest with unnatural movements and a huge black dog with burning eyes padded into our midst.

The Convocation. The Wooden Girl. The Black Dog.

Our work was cut out for us.

 

We turned to an AMU higher-up named Dr. Eiffel, expecting a command to retreat. She didn't give it. We stood there, knowing that any of the three Fears could kill us in an instant, until, finally, something happened.

There was a voice from behind- the voice of Cimbrius Tviblindi, de facto director of AMU.

"Excuse me," he said as he pushed past Avie.

"Mr. Tviblindi, what are you doing here?" asked Dr. Eiffel. "It's dangerous!"

Tviblindi grinned. "Don't worry about me, Cassandra." Slowly, he took the sunglasses from his eyes.

 

Behind were not the eyes of a blind man, but the eyes of the Blind Man. Avie's account describes him as having had white voids instead of eyes, but what I saw was just a... blank patch of skin where his eyes should have been.

The others knelt before him, save for one Professor Malkator. Leo, Robin, Jenn and I glanced at each other and did the same. 

 

"There is no time for formalities, my children," the Blind Man said. "I am here to ensure your passage into the Forest. There will only be a short window for your survival. Do not hesitate."

The Blind Man and Black Dog approached one another, the Black Dog growing larger with every step until it was three times its original size.

 

The two of them stared at one another, the Blind Man with eyes that were not there and the Black Dog with eyes that burned like coals.

 

Neither made a sound.

 

The silence was finally interrupted by a cold and bitter wind, accompanied by the sound of a child singing "Alouette." The Cold Boy had arrived, and was standing by the Blind Man's side.

 

The Blind Man threw his cane at the Black Dog as it leapt towards him; midair, the cane transformed into a golden spear, piercing the Black Dog's hide.

The Convocation fell like a thunderbolt upon us, but a wall of ice blocked their descent. The Wooden Girl outstretched her hand, sending a number of strings towards us, but from nowhere, her form was blocked by that of a black mass of feathers, an anomalous being called Valravn that dug its claws into her wooden skin.

With the Fears entangled in combat, Dr. Eiffel gave the order, and we ran into the Forest.

Return to Seattle

We're fucking doing it. For... some reason. I guess the fine folks in the upper echelons of AMU genuinely believe that we can do something to deal with the Forest, even now. Or maybe they just know that if we don't go here, the alternative is that we end up consumed by the Forest anyways.

So we're at Seattle.

(What a way to spend Thanksgiving. Jesus. And last year this time I was trying not to get shot to death by ARC guards for making it obvious that I wanted my friend out of paramilitary confinement.)

Somehow, even now, it still manages to surprise me when I'm directly involved with these things instead of waiting on the sidelines. Even after a year of chasing and being chased by eldritch horrors and their servants (and, when push comes to shove, their enemies), it still manages to catch me off-guard. A deep part of me still says that this isn't right, I'm a college student, not an agent of an anti-anomaly organization turned agent for a pro-anomaly organization.

Oh, Jesus, I think the Forest cultists are here.

Let me back up. I've been a little busy, between making updates about my own experiences, dealing with paperwork, and trying not to get murdered by elder gods, but there are people who have decided to fucking worship the evil Forest that turns people into cannibal cavemen with plant matter for brains. They call themselves the White Comet, and they're working with KRAKEN.

The leader of the White Comet is a servant of the anomaly known as the Ivory Woman, a chalk outline of a woman whose presence brings only destruction and pain, with no clear motive or meaning beyond that. Said servant's name is Moira.

And now Moira is explaining what happened to her to make her join the White Comet. She doesn't seem to want to, though. She seems to be... in pain.

I think it's Avie. They're somehow ripping the secrets out of her.

This is fucked up.

OK. Things feel tense. Signing off now.

Captured, uncovered, wounded

They did it. They actually fucking did it.

The fine folks here at the Archive kidnapped two ARC field researchers who were out looking for information- I don't know the specifics of where they found them, how they knew they worked for ARC, how they got away with it, anything like that.

The agents didn't want to divulge any information at first. Obviously. But they did once it became clear what the alternative was.

I don't want to go into the details here. Suffice it to say it would've been quite unpleasant if they hadn't complied.

So we- yes, I'm including myself here- we went to ARC West headquarters, here in Washington, and we cut off the serpent's head. 

There were some survivors. They seem to have fled to the Midwest Branch. We're not interested in following them, though. The important thing is that they can't bother us here anymore.

Or near the Forest. 

Hope

I'm tired of hopelessness. I'm tired of scrambling through the dark like a scared animal. I'm tired of feeling like I'm just a tiny cog in something so huge I can't even understand it.

I need to remind myself why I keep fighting. There is light in my life, even with all the darkness around me.

When I look at Jenn, I think of how much she trusts me. She gave up so much when she turned against ARC. She didn't even trust the Archive- still doesn't- and yet she believes in me.

When I look at Leo, I remember how long we've been friends, how he's never steered me wrong, how he told me exactly what I needed to know when he knew I was getting in over my head after ARC first contacted me.

When I look at Robin, I think of how much she means to me. Of course it's awful that AMU is trying to turn her into a weapon, but Leo and Jenn and I, we saved her from ARC. We saved her from questionably-legal imprisonment by a shady and utilitarian paragovernmental organization. We saved her from that, and we aren't going to give up on her now.

The past was flawed, and the present is painful, but we can make the future better as long as we remember who we're doing it for.

The Screaming Tower

It was a sunny day out in the courtyard. Robin, Jenn, and I were all sitting together, nothing better to do.

"Well?" Jenn asked.

Robin looked up from her book. 

"What happened at the Screaming Tower?"

"I don't know-" Robin began. She sighed and lowered her head. "It wasn't good."

I took her hand. "You don't have to talk about it."

"No, I... I want to," Robin said. She looked up at me. "I have to let it out.

"It wasn't my idea. Of course it wasn't. I knew it wouldn't end well. But they wouldn't hear it. They knew how bad it would be if we let Tower TV stick around. So they sent me and four Martyrs to the Screaming Tower.

"They baited the Wooden Girl with an artifact, this ratty old puppet with buttons for eyes. It was hers, of course, but they had it in storage somewhere. This was the first time they'd touched it in a long time.

"So they talked to this guy, a new recruit I think, and they told him to use it. Went crazy with power pretty quick, and pretty quick the Wooden Girl showed up to see what happened to her old toy. We somehow got into the Screaming Tower while she was there. I think..." She trailed off, eyes wide. "I think she tore the guy's guts out and filled him with cotton while the Martyrs and I were going in.

"I don't even want to know how this idea made sense to them. Guess it doesn't matter now, though.

"So we got into the Screaming Tower. It was... it was awful. It was exactly what it sounded like, this giant tower filled with people being tortured by human puppets. 

"Only two of us got out. Me and one of the other Martyrs. One got turned into a Puppet by one of the Willing Dolls..." She was shaking all over by this point. "One got killed by the Puppets. They put wires in him and... and pulled.

"I wouldn't have made it either. I know that for sure. But this giant stone door just showed up in the middle of the wall, and I remembered it from when you guys saved me from ARC. So I went through the door and into the Catacombs."

"Blind Man playing favorites, huh?" Jenn asked.

"That's your takeaway?" I asked.

"I was just wondering. Seems weird for him to do that. Plenty of Martyrs..." She shook her head. "Well, never mind."

We sat in silence like that for a little longer, none of us really sure what to say.

I have to wonder.

The Wooden Girl doesn't have to use the Screaming Tower to enter a place. She can move the same way as any of the rest of them, unconstrained by spacetime as we know it.

So why did she bring it with her this time? Did she know what AMU was attempting?

Did AMU even have that idea of their own free will, or did one of them come across that puppet and have the idea to confront her in the Screaming Tower without even realizing the idea wasn't their own?

Puppets

Robin wasn't around for a while there.

 

The day before yesterday, Magnus mentioned that he heard word from the higher-ups that there were plans to shut down Tower TV.

You do the math.

Yesterday, there was a knock on the door of my quarters. I knew who it would be before I answered the door.

"Hi, Addie," Robin said as she walked into the room. She gave me a relieved expression, followed by a hug.

"Hi, Robin," I said.

"...What's wrong?" she asked.

I sighed. "That obvious, huh?" I shook my head and pulled away. "I wanted to know... what have you been doing the past few days?"

The color drained from her face. "I... I can't talk about that."

"Okay. Okay," I said, walking to the window and staring out at the courtyard. Finally, I turned around. "What are we going to do, Robin?"

"What do you mean?"

"We can't go back to normal. Not anymore. I don't even know if normal worked, if something like this was able to happen. So what do we do instead?"

"I don't- I don't know."

I laughed. "I don't either."

Storm brewing

We knew there would be ARC agents stationed all along the Forest's perimeter, trying to contain the Convocation. We knew sending Martyrs there would be suicidal now that ARC has ordered its agents to kill ours on sight.

 

I tried to tell Magnus to call them off. To pull some strings somehow. But he didn't listen. He let the higher-ups of AMU send the Martyrs to the edges of the Forest. He told me that Martyrs are meant to be expendable. He seemed more comfortable with this than I liked.

I knew how it would end. I knew far fewer of the Martyrs would return than they sent out.

 

But it didn't matter.

 

Of the returning Martyrs, only one was willing to speak about what happened.

 

It was a massacre, just like I knew it would be.

 

It was horrible. Bloody. Preventable.
 

We don't know where ARC's West Branch is currently stationed. Their old base now looks like an abandoned but ordinary office building.

 

We want to cut off the serpent's head. We want to leave the agents stationed around the Forest without intelligence or decision-making.

The higher-ups do, anyways.

So that's the plan. Find members of ARC in the wild, kidnap them, and get the necessary information out of them.

The reliance on coincidence just doesn't make sense to me. I think the higher-ups here at AMU are getting reckless, losing their nerve, going to last resorts first. 

 

They are only human.

Tower TV

A channel called Tower TV has started broadcasting on cable television across the US. Nobody seems to know who runs it or why it's there.

The people who watch it start acting very strangely, though the exact nature of their odd behavior appears to depend on what they've seen. For instance, those who watch films made by a mysterious company called Horma Studios enter an anxious or paranoid state related to the contents of the film.

 

The show I've read of the most out of all the Tower TV shows is called Playtime with Mikey. Playtime with Mikey features the titular Mikey, a man dressed in a monkey costume, who plays games with preschool-age children- the same age, presumably, as the target audience- and teaches them about basic math, science, and art, as well as concepts like sharing and personal space.

So far, so innocuous. The troublesome part is the people who watch Playtime with Mikey. They often end up detached, in a haze of sorts. All of them recall having watched the show as children, though I can't find records of Tower TV or Playtime with Mikey existing before the past few weeks, and all of them seem caught on the feelings of nostalgia it invokes in them. Conversation with those who watch it is fragmented in nature, as the aforementioned viewers always start talking about their childhood memories before they can actually express any original thoughts.

 

The thing that scares me most is that, occasionally, they have flashes of lucidity where they act normally again, or, much worse, moments of fear or anger, seeming scared or upset about "she," "they," or "it."

 

Allow me to state what you may have already put together yourself. "It" is the show, "they" are the people behind Tower TV, and "she" is the Wooden Girl, who rules over the Screaming Tower and whose strings are beginning to reach ever further.

I want to be clear on one thing. Aside from my own conclusions on the nature of Tower TV, I'm not getting any of this information from the Archive, though we're all well aware of it. I'm getting it from the news.

The coming storm

There's something at the edges of the Forest that used to be Seattle.

There are strange black shapes covering the trees.

There are countless crows and ravens and blackbirds massed together at the edges of the Forest. Watching, waiting, and defending the Forest against anyone who comes too close with claw and beak and lightning.

 

The Fears are showing themselves to the world. They don't need to hide anymore, and they know it. 

 

There is a storm brewing.

One year

It's been one year since the Newborn died and the Forest took its place. One year since the events that led Robin to become a weapon for the Archive to wield. One year since I failed the world.

I know that's not true. I mean, I look at Robin and Leo and I know that they don't blame me for what happened. They blame themselves.

Maybe it would be for the best if I just acknowledged the truth. It wasn't my fault, and it wasn't theirs. It was KRAKEN's fault. Of course it was.

It's so strange to think how powerless they are now. Sure, they're still around, but they've gained no real power. They're still just incompetent fools guided by hatred.

It's almost comforting.

Weapon

Robin told us something when we got home the other week. She told us that the Archivists want to train her. They want to use her to hunt down rival Fears, because however she killed the Manufactured Newborn, the Archivists seem convinced that it had more to do with her than that dagger.

That's why they've taken her from us. So they can turn her into a weapon.

But the Archivists are the only thing shielding us from our former employers.

So I don't know what I can do about it.

Robin's birthday

Robin's birthday was today. Leo and I took her to her favorite restaurant, Italia Trattoria, and got her a present. A new set of knives, specifically; she's into those.

(We waited to give her those until we got home. Neither Leo nor myself thought it would be a good idea to pull out a bunch of knives in the middle of a restaurant, gift or no.)

I think she needed a break from work, and I'm glad we were able to do that for her. She seemed a lot happier than she has been over the past few months. It felt really nice seeing her look like herself again.

She was still a little drunk when we got home. She's asleep on the couch right now.

ARC and the Archive

Being hounded by an organization that specializes in secrecy and anonymity is difficult even when you're familiar with them. ARC has switched things up a bit since we went rogue- updated passwords, decommissioned old pseudonyms, the works. 

Strange, isn't it? ARC is so much more mundane than many other groups that deal with the Fears. They don't seem to have any occult rituals, any hidden ties to the Fears, any real investment in the paranormal beyond making sure it doesn't hurt anyone. In a way, it makes sense. Deal with beings made of fear by refusing to show emotion.

But hiding your fear isn't the same thing as overcoming it. ARC knows that, even if they don't advertise it. They're all terrified. And who can blame them? We're in a game of cat and mouse where nobody knows which is which.

Magnus

Working as an Archivist has been a peculiar experience.

Leo, Robin, Jenn, Samuel, and I were introduced to the job by a man named Jonathan Magnus who wore glasses and a tweed suit, which, to be honest, conjured some unpleasant memories of the KRAKEN agent ARC has had in security for some time now thanks to Robin.

Magnus says he had been Gifted someone else's memories after the Blind Man stole his. The memories he has now are those of the person originally called Jonathan Magnus- he doesn't know the name he was given at birth, so he uses the one the Blind Man gave him.

He seemed less concerned about this than he might be.

As Magnus told me and the other new Archivists, being Gifted has its benefits, namely that other Archivists treat them with respect. I wondered if this was a hint to myself and my companions, but I didn't voice the question.

To summarize the explanation Magnus gave of AMU and the Archive, AMU is a branch of the Archive- not so much a front, since that implies an attempt at secrecy. The Archive as a whole is devoted to the Blind Man, a Fear who walks libraries and collects the memories of those within. Those memories are stored in the books in his Catacombs. I already knew all this, as it's relatively basic information on the group, but I think it's important to refresh the memories of anyone who might have forgotten over the duration of my hiatus. (Sorry about that.)

I haven't seen Magnus much since then. He's high in the ranks of the Archivists, so the circles he runs in rarely overlap with mine. From what I gather, he chooses to introduce people to the group because he genuinely enjoys it, not because he's a no-name tasked to do so by the powers that be.

Speaking of ghosts, Robin hasn't been around lately. I think the Archivists are trying to use her for something, but she's cagey about what.

Leo and I did so much to get her back, and she's gone again.

Still better than her being imprisoned. From her perspective, this is certainly an improvement.

It still hurts, though. Is that selfish?

The Catacombs

Avie and Tviblindi accompanied our group to the AMU campus after our meeting at Murphy's. Once we got there, Tviblindi whispered something to Avie, and Avie said their goodbyes, that creepy smile still on their face.

Courtesy of Tviblindi, we were supplied with additional firepower and had escape vehicles set up outside of ARC headquarters. We were also accompanied by several Martyrs, the Archive equivalent to soldiers. Frankly, I was starting to get paranoid that the whole thing was a setup and they'd turn on us, given that there were a few more of them than there were of us.
 
I won't describe the person who opened the door to the Catacombs for us, as per her request.

Other than the possibility of betrayal and death, our group entered without issue.

The Catacombs are difficult to describe. They're not really supposed to be... seen, I don't think, at least not by humans. It makes me think of the Newborn's true form back at Seattle. It was impossible to really parse.

(Maybe that was just me, though. Nobody else seems to have said anything like that, including the other members of our group.)

The closest my brain could really figure out to a descriptor for the Catacombs is that they looked like a seemingly-infinite maze of tunnels, bookshelves lining the walls. Given how cold and damp it was in there, I assumed the fact that I didn't see any books that were even slightly damaged was a result of the Catacombs' true nature, i.e., hellish and wrong.

There were... spiders there. Not quite spiders, really. They had too many legs even for spiders, and their many eyes were placed irregularly around their heads. They were white as bone, and they covered nearly everything that wasn't being walked on, crawling about on their too-many legs.

In short, they looked like what I imagine arachnophobes see when they think about spiders.

They all moved in one direction. According to the Martyrs accompanying us, that was the Archive's patron Fear the Blind Man guiding our way. We followed the bone spiders, and we made it through the Catacombs.

Eventually, we came to a massive door made of dark wood. The doorway was made of bone, or at least, I thought so at first. As I moved closer, I realized that it was actually made of countless bone spiders pressed tight against one another. I couldn't say whether they were dead or just very still, if concepts like death even apply to them.

I moved past the rest of the group to open the door. With that, we stepped out of the Catacombs and into Robin's cell.

Most of what happened immediately after that was a blur, if I'm being honest, but I remember bits and pieces: Robin hugging me, me having to pull away from her and try to explain what was going on, Jameson cutting through several of the bars with a circular saw, Samuel shooting several guards' legs out to incapacitate them, Jameson picking the lock from the inside and opening the door, all of us leaving the cell with a now-terrified Robin in tow.

We fled the cell block, but there were a number of guards stationed at different points. We tried not to hurt any of them and focus on just getting out before we were trapped, but there were points where we had to.

The problem with not killing the people who want to kill you is that they can still try to kill you.

As we ran out of the cellblock and into the meeting room, we were followed by two guards we hadn't already injured or... neutralized. One named Ivan- nice guy, brought in doughnuts once- shot Jameson in the chest twice. A Martyr named Merel shot Ivan in the head. He collapsed to the ground, blood flowing from his temple. Ivan's partner George knelt down beside him, about to... I don't know, check his vitals or something, but Merel shot him too.

I was starting to feel sick to my stomach.

But there was no time to grieve. We kept running even as we were being shot at, even as more guards were called in from other rooms, even as they killed all but four of the Martyrs. We kept running even as we fired back at the people who had once been my friends, who probably would have agreed that Robin didn't deserve to be imprisoned but just couldn't be trusted to keep a secret and had to die for it.

If you couldn't tell, I'm still processing what happened that day.

We ran out of the meeting room and into the hallway. There was a staircase leading up to a door I knew said "Staff Only" on the other side. I pushed the door open and held it as Leo, Jenn, Samuel, Merel, and the surviving Martyrs ran through.

Robin looked into my eyes as she saw what I was doing. For some reason, I thought for half a second that she would refuse to go through, but just like the rest of us, she entered the door to the upstairs hallway. Just like the rest of us, she shot and killed the guards stationed there as we made our way to the office, and from there to the reception room, even though she didn't really know why any of this was happening. Just like the rest of us, she left the building and got in one of the escape vehicles Tviblindi and his people had provided us, even though she didn't recognize anyone there but us.

What kind of person am I that Robin didn't question any of this from me? Or does that say more about what being imprisoned for so long has done for her?

It doesn't matter. All of us are either free or dead. I didn't even know the ones who died that well.

That probably sounds cynical. I don't really care. Robin is safe, and she's with us.

She's just such a different person than she used to be. She's like us now: scared, exhausted, and ashamed. Or maybe she was always like that, and she's just lost practice at hiding it. It's hard to say.

I'll update more later. For now, I just want to get some rest.

Avie

So, Avie has a blog here and recapped their end of things here, and since they seem to have a better memory than I do... well, it's not plagiarism if it's just repeating things people said in the first place.

Now, onto the meeting itself.

 Leo, Jenn, and I were at a shady bar called Murphy's, accompanied by Samuel and Jameson, from what had once been Locke's team. Avie didn't show up somewhere from five to ten minutes past the time we'd set. I was starting to get a little bored, just staring at this weird poster of an orange toad that was hanging up. It was just about the only thing that was actually well-lit, and I sure as hell hadn't brought a phone to occupy myself in the meantime- Jenn's instilled far too much paranoia in me for that.

"Apologies for being late! I forgot how long the forest path gets sometimes," Avie said as they finally entered. I wasn't sure what I envisioned Leo's AMU contact as looking like, but "short, smiling person in a button-up shirt and nail polish" wasn't it.

"Yeah, you really need the patience of a saint around here," Leo said, nodding and motioning to a vacant chair. "So, uh..." He nervously drank some of his root beer. "So, what exactly were you thinking as to the deal? On either end, I mean."

"Well, I was thinking we could give you some Martyr backup and some guns." They called over the barkeep to order something, then went on, "In return, you give us some information about the inner workings of ARC. How does that sound?"

Jenn laughed.

Leo glanced at her, then looked back at Avie. "Works for me. I mean, they're the ones keeping Robin captive, and I only joined them in the first place because I thought they could help me. Obviously they didn't."

He looked over at me. I nodded.

He shrugged. "Guess that's a yes. Anything in particular you're wondering about?"

"There is one thing I was curious about: do you have a plan to pull this off?"

"Eh... sort of. Thing is, the people who designed ARC headquarters made sure to put the highest-security cells in the corner."

Jenn nodded. "Time-out."

Leo ignored this comment. "Point is, they're harder to reach and harder to get out of. Jenn," he said, nodding in her direction, "is bringing Samuel and Jameson. They're good fighters." He suddenly went pale. "...They may or may not have been involved in the ARC raid on Solville where we took those AMU books, actually... anyways, we're thinking between them and whoever you can provide, we should be able to fight our way there. If we can clear things out on the way to the cell, we won't need to do any more work once we've broken out Robin. As to actually getting the cell open, we're thinking of using a cordless circular saw, but that might take a while."

Avie nodded along, listening quietly. When Leo finished explaining, they took a few seconds before responding. "That sounds like a dangerous plan. Maybe talking it over with our Martyrs would be a good idea, and together you could form a plan with fewer... risks?"

Leo glanced at Jenn.

She sighed. "Yes, the fighting was mostly my idea. Yes, it was probably a bad idea."

Leo nodded. "So, the Martyrs would be at AMU, right?"

"Yes, we still have a few Martyr squads currently stationed at our campus," Avie said, nodding.

"It would seem that's the best place to head from here, in that case," I said. "Remind me, is that also where you have the gate to the anomalous location that Stetson fellow mentioned on his blog? The... Catacombs, I think it was called?"

Avie was visibly surprised that I'd finally spoken up, as well as at what I'd said. "The Catacombs? To be honest, I am not sure. I myself have not had the honor of passing through them. Were you planning on using them to reach the ARC prison?"

I shrugged. "I didn't think that would necessarily be the case, but if we are already working with the Archive, it may not be a bad idea." I paused. "I suppose you would want extra payment of some sort. I don't know what these four think of the idea, but I suppose it depends on the price you name, assuming it would even be viable."

"I see. I would have to ask around. Hopefully there's someone on campus that can help you with that."

"There most certainly is." A man in sunglasses stepped out of the shadows and tipped his hat at the five of us.

"Who the fuck-" Jenn began, startled by his sudden appearance. She cleared her throat awkwardly as she noticed the rest of us looking at her.

"...Cimbrius Tviblindi," I said. "You are, aren't you?"

Cimbrius Tviblindi, for background, is the unofficial head of AMU staff. Officially speaking, he's a member of the board of directors, but when he speaks, the rest of them listen. I don't know if he's pulled strings to get to that point, or if it's just because of his air of importance, or what, but whatever it is, it works for him.

Avie stood up and bowed, saying, "Mr. Tviblindi. I wasn't aware you were here."

Tviblindi nodded at Avie and motioned for them to sit back down. "You are correct, Addison, I am he." He smirked. "I didn't intend to eavesdrop. However, when I heard the Catacombs being mentioned, I could not resist."

I nodded slowly. "I see. You have some sort of connection to the Catacombs, then? Not surprising, I suppose, given your involvement with Subject 16- I mean, the Blind Man."

He shook his head softly. "Not really. I merely have what some would call an unhealthy interest in the place. I do, however, know of someone who can guide you there."

"Is that so? Well, then, I suppose our next move should be contacting them." I paused. "If you don't mind my asking, what interest do you have in this? I always thought you had people like them-" I nodded at Avie- "collect information while you managed things behind the scenes. I assumed as much, at least."

"You assumed correctly. I prefer staying in the background. However, sometimes things need a... push in the right direction." He smirked again. "As for my interest in this particular thing, well, I believe Robin has some critical information we need to stop that forest. It'd be quite a shame if her rescue attempt went badly."

"That's a fair enough goal, but... I honestly assumed it was the dagger. I don't remember Seattle that clearly, everything is honestly kind of a blur, but weren't the Martyrs trying to get it to the Newborn when Robin picked it up and used it?"

"Correct. Robin was the one who struck the killing blow, however. She could know some small details everyone else overlooked. Even just the feeling she felt when the dagger went into the tower could be helpful for us to analyze."

"...I see." I wasn't convinced, but I wasn't about to push it. "Now, the person you were talking about who could give us access to the Catacombs, are they on the AMU campus, or...?"

He nodded. "They happen to be on campus right now. Would you like to go see them now?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Ah, before I forget. You did mention the possibility of extra payment. I can confirm that usage of the Catacombs will require that."

I glanced at Leo and Jenn.

"I've got nothing better to do," Jenn said, shrugging. "I'm just curious what you're asking in return."

Tviblindi grinned when he heard this. "All I ask in return is that you join our university as official staff. This might be a steep price at first glance. On the other hand, where else would you go after saving Robin?"

 

We were all silent for several moments.

Leo was the one to speak up first. "Really? I won't complain if it pays well, I suppose, but... I wasn't even a particularly good student. I tried, but I just could not get through Wordsworth." He paused. "Joking."

I muttered something under my breath at the Wordsworth comment, then said aloud, "I'm afraid I don't understand either. I understand we have inside information on ARC and on ARC findings, but is there any particular reason we couldn't do that as free agents? ...Our own safety aside, anyways..."

"You see, our university is very busy at the moment, with the world ending and all that." Tviblindi paused as he sipped from a dark glass he definitely hadn't been holding a second before. "We really need all the extra hands we can get. While we get many applicants, it's hard finding anyone with a proper understanding of our real work. Your experience at ARC gives you knowledge that is hard to find. Everyone else with your knowledge is already working for someone else or... dead." He smirked and set down his glass on a nearby table.

"Understandable," I said, feeling slightly shaken by the reminder that we were only there in the first place because of the apocalypse. "So, you give us supplies and take us to whoever it is that can access the Catacombs, and in exchange, we join you and give you whatever information you might need."

"Exactly. Don't forget we're also sending some Martyrs along with you for the extra firepower." He paused and gave Avie a nod.

Avie nodded back and stood up. "Shall we get going, then?" they asked, their smile never having left their face.

I'll recap the rest when I'm up for it. Right now, I think I'm going to have a drink. Whether Leo and Jenn join me is up to them.

A friend of Leo's

Jenn and I were having another meeting in her office, this one a good deal more recent than the last, when there was a knock at the door. Jenn answered it. It was Leo.

"Volkov," Jenn said as she closed the door behind him. "You're late."
"Sorry," he said. "I was arranging a meeting."
"That so?" Jenn said, pouring him a drink.
He took off his coat and sat down across from myself.
"Yeah. An acquaintance of mine from a while back named Avie."
Jenn set her glass down and stared right into his soul. "You don't mean the AMU employee."
Leo nodded.
Jenn shook her head. "Oh, this just keeps getting better. You know, kid, sometimes I think you've got secrets where your brains should be."

I'll post when we meet up with them.

(Singular them. Avie's coming alone- apparently Leo managed to instill a lot of trust in them whenever it was he knew them, considering that makes it myself, Jenn, Leo, Samuel, and Jameson meeting up with them at a shady bar called Murphy's. Just seems like kind of a dangerous situation to put yourself in, if you ask me.

 

 Whatever. Not my business anyways.)