Sovereign

Entry 15: Sanders' Journal - 02/24

OMG! OMG!! OMG!!!

The god awfully sweet smell of success drying off on the stack of paper lying on my lap. Today has been the weirdest and yet most productive day I’ve had so since I came to the bunker. Of all the possible unexpected things that could happen to me, the unlikeliest one just ups and falls into my lap. Raphael Heath, yes ol’ smouldering blue eyes is now on my side.   He invited me to his office to come collect ‘files’ related to the Pine Street incident and next thing I know, I walk in and Claudia Stryer the stenographer is there waiting with him and he’s granting me an interview, without any strong arming, all of his own volition. I kind of stood there blinking like an idiot for a bit, I had no questions, like none whatsoever. I was so sure pigs would fly before Raphael would bend to make my job here easier; he even let me ask personal questions. But of course there’s an angle. I’d have been really worried if there wasn’t. He was hostile to me before because he thought I was just another one of those lifeless drones from internal affairs who just swoop in and murk up years of hard backbreaking work just so everyone can say they’re doing their job. So apparently he tested me. How I’m not quite sure, but I do know I passed. Now that he’s sure I’m just as eager to get to the bottom of this mystery as he is, he’s officially asked for my help. He says I’m a ‘fresh’ pair of eyes, and that my newness to this whole divine SWAT thing might allow me see things that he and his superiors missed.

He’s been guiding me all this while, pushing me documentation and reports seemingly unrelated to the Pine Street incident that he had suspicions about, suspicions that I have come to share. In particular are preliminary reports about encounters with a real life Wendigo (the ones in the fairytales are puppies compared to this one), a Portifer and a couple of other creatures I probably couldn’t have dreamed up in my worst nightmare. Though we can’t prove it (yet) Raphael agrees with me that the incident with the Wendigo was some sort of elaborate fly trap. He thinks the attack was merely to put him out of commission but now I’m not so sure. Going through the documents again, with the sheer volume of Orchid essence in the warehouse, the Wendigo could have comfortably drowned all three of them. If the effect just a splash of the thing had on him is any measure, then getting drowned in the stuff would have killed him, or at least come very close. I guess nobody expected Crystal to be as resourceful as she was. Just unfortunate that her resourcefulness couldn’t keep her from getting killed or taken.

Raphael revealed to me something else, the amount of malevolent anomalies the Esoteric division handled sky rocketed during the Apparition's window period. That’s the time elapsed between the Wendigo attack, the first in nearly a decade and the day I arrived here. It started slow, first the Wendigo, then two others in the same week, all three needing Containment. An exact week later, the Pine incident begins and while I’m still yet to find out what exactly happened during the incident, it ends with Henry severely ‘broken’ (the exact words used in the briefing Edwin gave me, no idea what that means) and Crystal AWOL, presumed dead. There has to be a reason, something to trigger so many incidences. Or someone. That’s what I need to get to the bottom of.

Raphael also gave me a peace offering, a report of the last incident contained before the Pine Street incident began. The idiot still wouldn’t let me take it out of the bunker to find a photocopier, had to painstakingly copy it out again. It turns out the reason he won’t let me use the ones here is because they have none. Something about this place really messes with electronics. I’ve gone through the report three times already. The format in which their reports come leaves a lot to be inferred but I’m getting very good at filling the gaps myself. Henry Delaney’s relationship with Crystal is something I really want to go into. Just reading through has given me a ton of questions to ask him. According to the report, without her by his side he’s a wreck, an ass kicking wreck that gets the job done but a wreck none the less. There’s also Crystal’s absence and what mission she could be on that would be so top secret that she wouldn’t bother to tell her partner. Also it seems her paternity is a big deal. Considering before the third incident no one knew anything about her ancestry. They’d all assumed she was an Angler like Emma.

Now Magdalene, she is something I didn’t see coming. If Raphael’s to be believed, Magdalene is as old as the earth itself or at least close enough. Then of all the people that I could have guessed were linked to each other, Magdalene Price and Henry Delaney? Really, Universe, really? I should have seen it, all the signs were there. But that’s what you get with these Divines; nothing is ever what it seems.  

Edwin’s read Raphael’s second interview and seems to disagree with Raphael on the possibility of an inside job. He says no one can truly reform a divine being. Their duplicitous nature is what makes them divine. He also doesn’t trust Raphael’s sudden change of heart, thinks Raphael is using me. I could have told him that myself, but if getting used gets me to my destination this much faster by all means, sign me up. Norman isn’t taking our ‘separation’ too well. He’s burying himself in work. Edwin says he’s running out of errands to send him on but there isn’t anything I can do from here. I can’t shake this feeling that I’m on the cusp of discovering something that will change everything, I can’t get distracted now. I need to finish transcribing this report so I can send it up.  
This is getting very deep very fast, Zoe help me stay on top of this.