Sovereign

Entry 24: Sanders' Journal - 03/07

7th March.

The investigation is finally underway.

Oh ye gods, thank you.

Heath has changed tactic. As have I.

I requested a third interview with him. Which he granted. This is the longest interview I’ve had with any Esoteric Division officer - including Landsteiner - and not once did Heath answer me directly on any question I asked. I even tried to use my new found ability to glean information off him but he is clean as whistle, or his mind is. But he did infer a lot of things. And the things that were inferred in that interview were disturbing, depending on what you’re looking for. But one thing stood out to me.

Heath, and by extension the leadership of the Esoterics, has little or no regard for the lives of the Esoteric Division.

According to the last reports I got, Henry Delaney and Crystal were sent as a back up team to clean up the mess with the Anglers. There was a team involved prior, containment unit C; a team that, according to Raphael, got “overwhelmed”. “Overwhelmed” being fancy speak for “brutally murdered and their bodies consumed and repossessed by the Angler ‘siblings’ as troops for their revenant army”. Someone called Fritz Plange (the person who the medium was reporting through) survived, who Heath told me was truly immortal unlike the rest of his team who are apparently very mortal. At some point in history, we all equated humanity with mortality, a generalization I think a lot of these people have adopted. I would have never pegged in a million years that these deities and existential beings were killable. It does make sense now, Greek myths and legends like Perseus and Theseus ‘slaying’ gods.  Probably why these beings created cities like Olympus and Asgaard and roped themselves off from their human worshippers. It was just as much for their benefit as it was for ours. If there is anything humans are blessed with, it’s a penchant for wanton destruction. Granted these gods are ridiculously hard to kill (it took not just one but two sentient Anglers to get the job done) but it can be done. It gives me no little pleasure to know that.

That was the second disturbing thing.

God-killing sentient Anglers who are not Emma Hodge.

With the exception of Ms. Emma, an Angler needs to kill a baffling number of people to gain sentience (numbers rivalling the bubonic plague). It worries me to imagine the process of how the culprits in this case came to being: from how many each of those two Anglers massacred, and then to seek out and adopt each other as family, then find themselves a network of spies to do only heavens know what. These Anglers enjoyed killing together. How many more centuries old Anglers are there out there, capable of killing gods and quietly biding their time? I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. But I do know that someone directed the brothers to Pine Street. And gave them information about Henry Delaney and Crystal. For all intents and purposes, this someone set them on the pair. But on the flip side, Containment unit 4 went in blind, against impossibly powerful creatures already armed with knowledge about them, and they somehow managed to obliterate these gods with efficiency, not so much as a scar. The same Anglers that made light work of another much older team and almost killed a truly immortal being.

Who exactly is Henry Delaney? Or more importantly what?

In Raphael’s exact words “Delaney is not to be taken lightly.”

He doesn’t talk about them being underestimated as a unit, though I asked about the both of them. The way he said it, as though I should have already taken it for granted that Crystal is somewhat feared. I can understand that. Even in the paranormal division, the most mysterious of us are the deadliest and despite my best efforts, facts about Crystal remain as rare as a two dollar bill. But she has the Mist Hex, a supposedly amplified version of commoner antimatter hex that she uses with devastating effect. The kind of hexes an esoteric is able to perform is a hint to their ancestry (I got this factoid from the employee file which referenced Landsteiner’s godly parentage). These powers flow along bloodlines. It is something I will look into when the more pressing concerns are taken care of. But Henry shows no overt mastery of hexes and his ability to use nexes is unrivalled. Nexes are the very framework on which the paranormal world is built. It might even affect how we humans with paranormal powers operate, though to what extent I do not know. There are few goddesses whose powers are similar to hex manipulation. Henry’s mother (my digging through a ton of records has led me to deduce that she might be Aine, the Celtic goddess) is not one of them. Traditionally nex manipulation is a skill peculiar to women for their ability to feel.

Henry gets more interesting the more I encounter him. He is able to use nexes with the dexterity of century old goddesses, has obscure ancestry like his partner Crystal and is able to dispatch Anglers with ease. Yet somehow he loses his partner and has gone into hiding or is being sequestered from me for some reason. With powers like his, no one should be able to control him, yet he is docile. There are far too many question marks around him. But not just him; Crystal, Emma, the whole of the Esoterics. With things like the Wendigos and Anglers on the loose, even other beings aren’t entirely safe, so pre-emptively killing before they are killed makes sense. But these beings have always waged war against their natural predators in their own pantheons, from Ragnarok, the apocalypse, the Olympians, Rapture and the seven years of tribulations. There are instances everywhere. Why come together to work like this?

What are the origins of the Esoterics and how does it connect to Henry and Crystal?

How do any of them connect to suggestions that there is a mole here?

I’m getting a headache.

In other – and not particularly joyous – news, I was finally able to reach Norman. He says he has been having dreams. A lot of them. About me and this place. The bunker. He has described most of it in startling detail. Heath, Landsteiner, Magdalene, Emma. Anyone I have interacted with he has Seen. Before now his clairvoyant dreams are always thematic and metaphorical. But now they are in startling clarity. Somewhat. For some reason all these people turn on me, they snap and get violent. He says this happens because I come across Crystal, alive but unconscious and when I run to get help they stop me and the slaughter begins. I don’t know what to think about this.

But I have an idea. One that has floated in my head since the very time I spoke to Landsteiner.

During the encounter with the Anglers, they revealed someone had supplied them information about Henry and Crystal in particular. Someone that had to have known a lot about the division. Despite what Heath and I discussed, I have come to realise that if I, a human, can swipe information off these gods, then anyone with enough patience and wit to hide their powers can do the same. The only two people truly absolved of any suspicion are Landsteiner and Emma, who were brought in after the incident to theoretically replace Containment Unit Three. Landsteiner’s partner is an Angler. He is the only with some level of control over an Angler, the only certified god killer. Why bring someone that volatile from the Les Evangelius to your division where you already have suspicions that there is a mole. Unless…

Is that why Landsteiner and Emma Hodge were brought here? So Heath and Dr. Moses can have their very own God killers for when they find the mole?