Sovereign

Entry 20: Sanders' Journal - 03/02

2nd March.

Progress comes slowly to those who wait, or so they say.

My head feels a lot clearer now.

So does this case.

And the greatest question on my mind remains: Why am I here?

Finally got my interview with Landsteiner. He wasn’t what I expected after my many run-ins with Heath. He flirted constantly, a minor irritation and spoke out of turn at every opportunity. Wouldn’t last a week in the bureau, but was brilliant for what I needed. He wasn’t a part of the first mission concerning the Pine incident but even then my interview with him was still just as insightful. First of all, he heightened my suspicions about what had happened to me over the weeks since I started this investigation. He had been ordered by Heath to suppress my extra sensory powers and my telepathy. That's my only logical deduction. He hinted this he was sad I didn’t try to read his mind again, that I was a ‘spoil sport’.

Not once had I mentioned my extra sensory abilities to anyone in the Esoterics.

I think this was why I had such severe memory loss and disorientation. I have depended way too much on my telepathy over the last ten years, so much so that it has become part of how I interact with the world and how I create memories. The forced restriction of my telepathy must have affected me the same way blindfolding or muffling the ears affects a regular person, but with amplified results. He was quite cavalier about it too. Never in my life have I wanted to hit someone with the full scope of my telepathy, bore into his head and violate every single one of his most private memories. But he only insinuated, so until I have facts, I’ll keep an open mind. But I’m convinced that Heath had a hand in this. Somehow.

Landsteiner threw up a few names and organisations that I need to check up and gave me a very interesting story about himself and his partner. His dossier tags him an Attenuant/Null symbiote; one of the strongest ones ever recorded. But he also told me he also has the ability to disrupt or amplify electricity, all kinds of electricity and energy; even brainwaves. That got me thinking, so I did a little research. Landsteiner has one divine parent, and has Celtic tattoos. In the dossier, his father is listed as the Celtic god Ogmios, who is known to be a binding god worshipped for his wisdom, and is also a psychopomp. Psychopomps in themselves are pretty heavy hitters in the wide world of  mythology. I've checked out parallels in other religious and ancient writings kept here at the Esoteric archives. Many sacred Sanskrit and Chinese texts place them as the guardians of the realm between life and death, the conscious and the unconscious, who rein in chaos and can reshape it to their whims. These texts also state that chaos is the substance from which order is formed (I’m starting to take these ancient texts a little more literally, heck I walk past Tsagaglalal every morning). In essence, they possess the power to alter the fabric of all reality.

That would explain the range of his powers and how well he is able to use them. The Celtic gods passed powers down through an advanced form of muscle memory, that way their children are able to survive the blood lust of the divine families into which they are born. Currently the Esoterica use him as suppressant for the more unsavoury proclivities of his partner, Emma Hodge. Another interesting character. At some point during their pairing as a team, she was ‘consumed’ by an Angler, the biggest baddie of the monsters that prey on the divine. She somehow was able to imprint her will on the usually mindless creature and make herself its sentient consciousness, giving her all of its power and none of its weaknesses. But Landsteiner is capable of much, much more. He is able to amplify power just as easily as he can suppress it. A fact he has kept from the Esoterica and revealed to me; something that makes me question his motives even more. He also not so subtly insinuated that the Bunker is not as apolitical as Heath has tried so hard to convince me. He asserts that Emma Hodge and he were marginalised while they worked in Europe under the Les Evangelius and that the marginalisation has continued though to a lesser degree in the four months they have been here.

There is also the suggestion that Heath has a preference for using Henry Delaney and Crystal no last name for his missions. He sent them thrice in the space of a week to investigate supernatural occurrences during the Pine Street event when clearly sending in any of the other four containments units would have been the more efficient option. He infers that this might be because there are suggestions that both Crystal and Henty are of Nephilimic ancestry while most of the Esoterica is of pagan divine ancestry. Pagan ancestry seems to be an unspoken ‘dirty’ word in the Les Evangelius, who only dips into that pool when they find supernaturals with power too strong to be ignored. Heath, despite his best interests seems to have transplanted some of this ‘racism’ to the Esoterica. Along with Doctor Moses, the man–in–charge. I know nothing about Moses.  I need to change that.

Anyway, back to the issue I've been scratching at for the past month. From the preliminary reports, something happened during the Pine Street incident. Something so big that it agitated every supernatural malevolent being in the region and drew them to that apartment building. It modified that behaviour, pushing normally solitary feeders to form packs and hunt with sophisticated methods. Creatures normally sated with the occasional hapless human gorged themselves needlessly and drew a lot of attention in what I’m beginning to suspect was a diversion for what was the real purpose of the incident. A lot of lives were lost, civilians, police officers, members of the FBI and I suspect even members of the Esoterics themselves. Eventually they had to burn everything to ground to get rid of the rodents that came with the ship, and in doing so, they missed something that would have helped solve this.  Something I have been called in to find. I used to think that the Esoterics was a greased machine, but now I realise there are cracks. Big enough to have let a mole in. If there is a mole, then I’m the only one who can find it.

The mediums involved with the incident are top on my list of suspects, they were at most of the happenings and the way they work is subtle enough to allow them raise the kind of hell that played out. Then there is Heath himself, how a general with a 96% success rate cannot control several consecutive events begs questioning. Then there is Landsteiner and Emma, marginalised outsiders both at Les Evangelius and Esoterica, revenge is always an excellent motivator. Then Henry Delaney and Crystal, already guilty of murder by negligence, neither is quite sure of their ancestry, or so they want us to believe. It’s not uncommon to see gods raise children to be used solely as pawns. Then there is the enigmatic Dr. Moses. Even a possibly divine being shouldn’t be so detached when this much happens in his backyard, unless he is well aware of what is going on and has sanctioned it. Because as it stands, they're giving me so little to work with that right now every one of them has an equally bright red X on their forehead. God, what I would do for a handful of subpoenas and warrants right now, but of course the Esoterica’s dummy front as an international relief organisation with diplomatic immunity stands even against the FBI’s top brass. I’ll just have to find out the old fashioned way, a lot of digging.

That brings me full circle. Why me? Sure, diplomatic immunity means internal affairs cannot investigate the Esoterica directly and even Para Division cannot be seen investigating an FBI branch with more jurisdiction than it has, but there has to be a reason I was chosen to handle this freak show. Since I found myself working this case, I’ve noticed my powers are subtly changing, as if to compensate for the memories I am losing. Since my interview with Landsteiner, every other person I meet, I seem to glean information off, not enough to alert them, but enough to form a fairly accurate composite of who Landsteiner is. I know enough about him now to realise he wasn’t playing a role when he tried to get me to go on a date with him, and that his depiction of his history with Emma Hodge is true, even down to their meeting on the internet (I found that particularly hard to believe, sonsofgodsareus.com?). Another thing that bugs me is how calm I am about all this. Why do I feel so comfortable around these people, a different kind of comfortable from what I feel with Norman and Edwin? I didn’t even freak out when Landsteiner played his trump card to unnerve me. I just found myself cataloguing it and considering ways I could use it against him.

Then there is Persepolis. My mother. The name keeps popping up whenever I'm trying to think about other things, like an irritating gnat that refuses to fly away. What does she have to do with all this?

Man, I have my work cut out for me.

- Zoe.