Sovereign

Entry 17: Sanders' Journal - 02/28

28 February.

Dear Journal,

Haven’t started a journal entry like this in forever but nowadays, it seems rote is helping me bridge the more obvious lapses in my memory. I forgot for a whole 72 hours that I had a journal hidden away somewhere in this hotel room, (new development, since I found out what I’m really dealing with, I’ve taken to hiding the journal on the off-chance that one of ‘them’ gets ideas and decides to check up on what I’m getting up to in my alone time). I’ve kept journals since I was sixteen, since after the Great Road Trip and my first official brush with Alyssa, and I have read my journals every single day, even when I had nothing to write in them. For me they’re like taking stock of how your day’s gone over a cold beer and television. I remembered this morning, four days after the fact, only because I had enough time to start my day with my usual routine and halfway through my 30 minute yoga session, I realised I didn’t have any reading material. The only thing I read during my yoga sessions is my journal. It took me the remaining fifteen minutes of stretching to even remember I had a journal, and another twenty minutes to find it. Both became awfully clear to me after the fact, as though a screen had been lifted off certain parts of my mind.

I haven’t been myself since.

Been having little premonitions, the easiest to describe them would be visions in reverse. Flashes of light, and sounds familiar enough that they nag at my memory but nowhere near concrete that I can reach into my head and draw out the corresponding thought. Now these occurrences have been happening with frightening frequency once I leave the bunker, where normally my cognitive senses are crystal clear, I suspect from the stress of keeping my mind guarded from subtle and not so subtle mental intrusions. I am not sure what they mean, but I have narrowed down the two possible causes. They are either the aftermath of the effort of keeping up a psychic guard for so long (almost three weeks now?) and that guard being assaulted by the calibre of beings I now work with. I have NEVER kept up a mental guard this long. In the last week I have literally left it up even when I’m out of the bunker, because the process of dismantling the guard and relaxing then putting it up the next morning is literally much more hassle than just leaving it be. It used to take most of my mental energy to put up a psychic guard, now I barely even remember it’s there till something tries to breach it.

I’ve asked Edwin to find out the longest any of Para division’s telepaths has left a guard up. Didn’t bother telling him how much mine has lasted. He would pull me out of the field faster than I close this journal shut and damn the consequences. Good ol’ dependable Edwin. The second theory I have is that either deliberately or inadvertently, someone in the bunker is doing something to me, the bye-products of which is manifesting as these godawful premonitions. The implications of the second is something I am not yet equipped to consider properly. I am not cut out to handle the consequences of the second on my own.

The reason I’m writing this out instead of wreaking hell are my missing hours. I’ve gone through the whole journal and now I can see I have a whole six days unaccounted for. One hundred and forty four hours which I have no memories of and I cannot vouch for because I didn’t record them and I cannot remember why. For some reason, these come behind entries where I was either apprehensive about suspected memory loss or feeling unnaturally alienated from Norman, my boyfriend. Now I don’t need a chart to tell me something’s up.

Norman, my boyfriend and one leg of the four man team I am a part of back at the Bureau, you know the same paranormal team that consists of Wong, half British, half Asian guy with so far the only completely attestable photographic and muscle memory; Edwin Allen my immediate superior and handler for this investigation and the only telepath I’d voluntarily let into my head and Norman Fischa, mostly clairvoyant with two levels of precognition (and more importantly, boyfriend to me). We nicknamed ourselves the Gyrus team, after the scientific investigation that was conducted on us for a whole year after the incident that put us in the government spotlight and got me the job that led me here. I wish I had them with me right now. It would be so much easier to get to the bottom of this, all of this. For some reason, my mind is alienating me from Norman and my memories. I want to understand why. Norman has been the love of my life from the very first time I met him, back in the reform school he used to go to all those years ago, St. Andria. I am not very comfortable around men thanks to Persepolis and the things Edwin says he suspects were done to me before I came under Father Roberto’s protection (he’s Norman’s legal guardian) but all that doesn’t matter around Norman.

When I think about it, there is only one reason why anyone would want me away from Norman; his clairvoyance. He’s the real deal, not like the blurry images in the ether kind of mediums we see in the field. His mind is able to jump time streams, allowing him to actively see into the future most likely to occur for  up to minutes at a time, and passively see events of supreme importance to him and those he holds dear for as much as years ahead. For now, the FBI is something he holds dearly, so he is able to see their future as well. As he is able to see mine, actively and passively. He thinks it’s because of how much he loves me, but I have other theories. Over the last decade we have shared an almost constant psychic link for as long as he within range of my telepathy, I suspect that this must have rerouted some of his neural pathways to allow him See my future as easily he does his.

Following this theory, the only way someone could stop him from seeing me, was to sever the psychic bond between us from my end, and create enough emotional tension that any visions he has will be tainted and useless to the both of us. Theoretically. Even without the empty dates, there is enough in what I’ve written to make me worried. I have never handwritten and posted Norman a letter before. We’re in constant contact via phone and email (or were before the bunker). Even then, it’s just too out of character for me to handwrite a letter, then rewrite it in the journal because I was afraid I wouldn’t remember it for some reason.  Then there is me forgetting Valentine’s day, confiding in Edwin and directly asking him to keep information about me from Norman and finally me being relieved at getting my period. What the hell was that, I’ve been getting contraceptive shots for the nearly half a decade now. Pregnancy and the field don’t mix. I checked and my latest shot is good for another two months. How can I possibly forget something so vital? What the hell was going on with me?

Enough about this, I haven’t updated about the case. It has taken an unexpected turn. Raphael has given me the third and final preliminary report of incidents around the Pine Street area before the incident itself. From what he says, three supernatural events happening one after the other in the space of a week is less likely to happen as three tsunamis happening in the same place in the space of a month. Yet, it happened, three incidents each worrying in their own right, but minor compared to the Pine street incident itself. I have so many questions. Who is Promeno? That case really bothered me, especially because of the peculiar behaviour of the creature referred to as a ‘portifer’. In the event of a supernatural attack, the creatures are usually less concerned with delivering messages and more with staying in the temporal plane. Then there is Henry Delaney, sticking out like a sore thumb in each one of these events. With as many containment teams as the Esoteric department has, and the mental toll fighting these creatures has on the containment units, it’s a wonder that Raphael Heath would send the same team thrice. I can’t reach Delaney and Raphael is coming up blank. It might be time for a fresh perspective.

Landsteiner.

I saw I penned his name down before. It might be time I finally had that chat with him.  Every time I come across in the bunker, he’s always cheerful, too cheerful. The Esoteric division is full of people whose personalities range from frigid like the tundra to more than a little constipated. Even Raphael who is in the middle with his seriousness almost never shows any positive emotions other than the occasional amused half smile. Landsteiner sees me and he lights up like a Christmas tree covered in tinsel and left out on the porch in June. He has something to say, something I might find very important, if someone doesn’t get him to shut up first.

Not taking anything for granted. My phone’s been updated with my schedule and alarms set. No more blanks if I’m going to get to the bottom of all these conspiracies without getting covered in mud myself.

Zoe.

N:B: Trust no one. And get in touch with Norman as soon as we can.