Chill: Britt Getting Married

Back to the scintillating metropolis of Seward, AK. Here's last time.

The envoys meet up for lunch and talk through what they've learned so far and think about some next steps. They're a little stuck - Jessica, the girl who was pushed into the water last night - isn't willing to talk to them, and Naomi, the girl that did the pushing, is but she's in jail so likely safe. They still don't know who the mysterious "Donald" really is and they don't have enough information to go on.

However, they realize, they do know that Donald claims to be shipping out on a crabber called the Thunderstruck. Nicholas does some quick research and discovers that the Thunderstruck was indeed a crabbing boat, but it sank in December 2018, losing three crew, including the owner. But before that, in October 2004, a 19-year-old man named Donald Young out on his first crabbing job was swept over the side during a squall and lost at sea. 

Nicholas is not much for research so Amelia takes over and starts digging into Donald. He died at 19, his parents are now deceased but his sister Kelly lives in the area. He was local to Seward, and an article from around the time of his death quotes his girlfriend Anya Kostov (20) as saying "I told him I'd wait for him." Looking into Anya, the envoys discover she was murdered about a month after Donald died. She was found strangled in her car in a parking lot in Anchorage.  

The envoys consider their options, and they decide that since they know Donald's MO (to approach women out by themselves or in small groups on the docks), they'll wait until evening and have Mercy and Britt act as bait. Since everyone was up late last night, Mercy and Britt go back to their respective homes to get some rest, but Nicholas and Amelia go out to City Cemetery to find Anya Kostov's grave. Maybe nothing, but maybe Donald has visited it?

When they get there, they find something odd. Anya is buried near a woman named Monica Frank (who died at 78). The earth in front of Frank's grave is freshly tilled; it looks like she was exhumed recently. But the tilled earth continues over into Anya's plot, as though part of that plot was dug up? Nicholas uses Postcognition, and sees men working a backhoe and digging up Frank's plot, but then one yells "Hold it! What the hell is that?" He jumps down into the hole and scraps at the earth, and reveals a boot...with a leg still in it, wrapped in a cloth. "Think you better call someone!" he yells up.

Amelia and Nicholas find the groundskeeper and ask about the weirdly tilled earth, and the groundskeeper is only too happy to tell the story - though he warns them it starts strange and gets stranger. See, Monica Frank was exhumed due to a messy legal battle involving her children from her first marriage and her widow from her second, but none of that is especially relevant. When they went to exhume her casket, they found another body, buried in Anya Kostov's burial plot. The body was that of a young man, maybe 20-25, but the groundskeeper remembers saying that based on soil analysis or whatever the guy had been buried 20 years or so. But the groundskeeper saw the body, and it didn't look like a body that had been decaying for that long - actually it looked pretty fresh, didn't even smell. 

Anyway, he says, they took the body to Anchorage (he's not sure why), but then it disappeared from the morgue that night, and a security guard got killed! Weird, right?

"Very weird," agrees Amelia, already typing this into the group chat. 

That evening, Mercy and Britt wake up, everyone gets dinner, and Mercy asks around a bit and finds that, yes, a security guard named John Wheaton (54) was killed a couple of nights ago. He showed signs of being strangled, but what actually killed him was a heart attack. His keys were missing, but were then found - they'd been used to open a storage bin in the morgue, the sort of thing where personal effects from corpses would be kept.

So did Donald walk across the ocean floor and get back to Seward? It seems like this is a corporeal being, rather than a ghost - maybe that's good? They decide to go ahead with the plan. Britt and Mercy stand on the docks chatting, while Amelia and Nicholas hang back to watch. Amelia also uses the Blessing discipline on Mercy, just to give her a leg up if there's a confrontation or Donald tries to use his powers to make her fall in love. (If you read the title of the post, you might guess where things went wrong.)

They stand there for a while, and then Britt feels a tap on her shoulder. She turns, and finds herself staring at the love of her life. He's tall, dark, and mysterious, wearing a pea coat and jeans and boots. He has black hair and very pale skin, and he smells sweet - like strawberries. Britt immediately melts, and the man introduces himself as "Donald." 

Mercy sees this and quickly understands what's happened. She signals to the others (Amelia: "SHIT, I Blessed the wrong one!"), but they aren't sure what to do. Britt and Donald are giggling together; the effect has been intense and immediate. Mercy, a woman of action, grabs her scarf and puts it around Donald's neck and yanks him back onto his butt.

Britt, outraged, tries to slug her, but misses terribly (Britt is not trained in combat). Mercy keeps pulling, and Donald grabs her wrists. She feels her heart flutter a little, but nothing really happens. She wraps the scarf around his eyes - maybe that'll break his spell? But it doesn't, and Britt keeps trying to swing on Mercy. Nicholas gets there and pulls Britt back, and Amelia touches her and uses Disrupt.

The effect fades and Britt comes to her senses, but it doesn't last more than a few seconds before she falls in love with Donald all over again. More people are getting involved now (this does look like a fight), people are recording, calling the police, and then Mercy looks down and realizes that Donald isn't there anymore. She didn't feel him slip out, he's just...gone.

The police arrive and separate everyone, take statements, but Amelia manages to mostly get things calmed down, and no one is pressing any charges. Britt is sobbing because Donald is gone, and they decide to have Nicholas take her out on a boat and keep her isolated for the time being. But just then, Mercy collapses. 

Fortunately, first responders are already there. They give her oxygen and stabilize her, but it's clearly very serious - it looks like she's had a heart attack. Amelia rides with her to the hospital and the EMTs ask whether she's been doing drugs tonight, she has a history of heart problems, because this is very weird for a 20-something. But no, it just came out of nowhere. Mercy is, clearly, going to be admitted.

Meanwhile, Nicholas tells Britt that Donald is on the boat (which he's borrowing from a friend), and she happily goes along. As they're heading out into the bay (Nicholas doing his best to keep himself steady, because being out on the water is pretty triggering for him), Britt goes into the cabin and who does she find waiting for her? Her love, Donald!

Britt suggests they run away to Vegas and get married and have lots of kids - Britt's family has money, they'd never need to work. Donald hesitates; he's supposed to ship out on the Thunderstruck tomorrow, he explains. Britt says he doesn't need to, she'll take care of him. He agrees, but says that he needs to tell his captain. Will she meet him tomorrow night on the docks where they met? Will she wait for him?

Britt enthusiastically agrees, but asks for something of his to hold onto. He gives her his class ring from high school, and then kisses her goodbye and leaves the cabin. Britt leans back on the seat and squeezes a pillow happily. Nicholas comes down into the cabin and notes the ring, and Britt explains everything. She doesn't seem to have any problem with the fact that Donald was just here on a boat and now...isn't. 

Nicholas texts Amelia ("HELLLLLPPPP"), and, since Mercy is safe, though very weak, Amelia arranges for Nicholas to come back. Britt thinks she has to go and pack, so Amelia and Nicholas join her to keep an eye on her. They also talk her into having some drinks to celebrate and give her a gummy, so she passes out and they put her in the bathtub (though Nicholas puts a bunch of blankets and pillows in it first) to make it easier to keep an eye on her. Amelia puts a Line of Defense across the door, but of course that'll only last until sunrise and it won't prevent Britt from leaving the room.

Amelia also does a little more digging into Anya Kostov and turns up a news story about her murder that quotes her friend, Gina Carruthers. Gina is now a chef at a local Seward restaurant, so Amelia decides she'll go see her tomorrow. Amelia also thinks about this whole mess, and she comes back to one important question - how did Donald wind up buried next to Anya in the first place? 

In the morning, Amelia heads to the restaurant for brunch and chats with Gina. Gina tells her that she and Anya were both students at AVTEC (a local vocational/technical school) in 2004, and that she remembers Anya being devastated when her boyfriend Donald died on a crabbing boat. But then a few weeks later, they both went to a Halloween party together and Anya was there with a guy she called "Jake"...except that she confessed to Gina that it was really Donald! Gina was a little drunk that night, but she remembers Anya saying something about how Donald was "legally dead" but they were going to "fix it" and she was going to "wait for him."

Amelia notes all of this, and mentions the strange occurrence at the grave. This jogs Gina's memory, and she tells Amelia that in November 2004, just after Anya was murdered, a group of people she'd never met came to her asking questions about Anya and Donald. She doesn't remember their names, but one of them gave her a card that had a weird symbol on it. She does a quick sketch, and Amelia recognizes it right away - the indalo, SAVE's symbol. 

Amelia gives Gina her card and asks her to call if she remembers anything else, and then puts all this into the group chat. Britt is insistent that she's going to the docks tonight to meet Donald and then they're going to the airport and eloping to Vegas, but Mercy keeps Britt busy running around doing errands for her. Nicholas and Amelia go to the community center to look through the archives, but unfortunately 2004 was after the blackout period started - they basically don't have records from 1997-2007, and the Anchorage HQ (which is probably the one that handled this case) had already been lost by 2004. 

But, looking through the information they do have, Amelia is able to draw a couple of conclusions. First, clearly the first SAVE team managed to incapacitate Donald and bury him next to Anya, and that kept him inert for 20 years until he was dug up. But Donald isn't actually fixated on Anya - he hasn't been back to her grave and he's not looking for girls that look like her exclusively. This tells Amelia that he's more in love with the idea of being in love than with a specific person.

What does that mean? How they can destroy him? Amelia wonders if they can lure him into a firepit and burn him, because he's clearly dangerous, and she has no idea what happens if Britt meets up with her "love" again tonight.