Chill: Mouthful o' Bugs

With that cheery image in mind, here's the conclusion of our current case.

Last time, Mercy Williams had just been rushed to the hospital following a strange, painful attack of some kind as she'd been tending to Jean Cameron's (self-inflicted) wounds. Jumping ahead to that evening, Jean has been stabilized and put up in psych ward. Mercy has likewise been treated, and they've run tests, and found exactly nothing out of the ordinary in her EEG. She's in a room for the night for observation, and the other three envoys join her to talk this through a bit (they're still waiting on a callback from Alison Ware, their new contact in SAVE).

Amelia Rostov goes upstairs to the psych ward and visits with Jean. They don't remember much - they were just cutting up a tray of fudge and then looking at the knife and suddenly cutting their wrists just made sense. Jean agonizes over explaining this to their wife; Amelia says of course she'll try and help if she can. She also listens for the Unknown (she experiences it as a ringing in her ears) and hears the faint ringing she's had before. This Unknown presence, whatever it is, has its hooks in both her and Jean, but it's not doing anything at present.

Amelia goes back to the room and reports to them on Jean's status (both mundane and supernatural). Amelia tries to text the group chat to check in with the others, but suddenly she doesn't have signal...no one does. Mercy watches the door to try and flag someone down, but no one walks past. Amelia tries to leave the room, but can't. When she steps close to the open door, she feels far away again. "Damn." 

Fortunately, they know how to get around this, at least momentarily. Amelia has Nicholas Failor stand near the doorway and uses Disrupt on him, allowing him to get through the door before the effect reasserts itself. The envoys in the room see Nicholas vanish (likewise, to Nicholas the room looks empty). He grabs a pad of paper from the nurse's station and write "I'm fine, what do you want me to do?" and slides it into the room.

Britt Lepus goes to pick it up, but the pad flies into the air and papers scatter everywhere. The envoys talk this through a little and figure that if Amelia wards the room, it might cancel the effect - she does, and it does. Nicholas comes back in, Amelia's text goes through, Dustin, Danika, and Rochelle all send variations on "wtf is going on with Jean".

The envoys put their heads together. They know that each of them seems to have a specific effect that follows them. For Amelia it's the barrier, for Britt it's objects flying around, Mercy gets physically attacked, and Nicholas seems to call extreme weather. Over in the other friend group, Dustin cause a woman to vomit bugs (rather, he didn't cause it, but it happened around him), Jean gets these self-destructive impulses, Rochelle sleepwalks, and Danika...we're not sure, maybe the dog attacking her? Whatever happened to her, it doesn't seem to be as dramatic. 

They chart out all the manifestations they've seen and try to find a pattern. It's not cyclical, the timing seems random. It's not when groups of them are together because it's happened when they're alone just as much as not. It's not just when they just the Art or sense the Unknown, though they do notice that with the meditation group, it seems to happen when they zone out or let their minds wander, which considering this started happening because of meditation and lucid dreaming makes sense. Maybe Danika is just more present in the moment, and that's why it hasn't hit her? But that still doesn't get them any closer to beating it.

They decide to get back to the community center and gather the others, and have every stay there tonight in a warded room (except Jean and Mercy, obviously). Mercy gets her hospital food ("yay"), Amelia buys burgers on the way, and when they get there, Dustin and Danika are waiting. Dustin says Rochelle is on the way.

Meanwhile, Mercy, with not much else to do, tries to do a little research into Stan Walton, the SAVE envoy who murdered Desiree Cummings while possessed and then turned up dead a few months later. Mercy discovers that his ex-wife, son, and brother all died between May and December of 2000, all in "accidents." 

At the community center, the others are about to go in, and then Britt feels something in her teeth...and then feels it move. She coughs up a mouthful of flies, but manages to keep herself from freaking out too badly. The envoys push everyone inside and Amelia wards the room. Dustin looks out the door and sees Rochelle pull up. "Yo, Rochelle! Come in! Wait, where you going?"

Dustin runs out after her, but slips on the gravel. Amelia tries to get to her, but she's not fast. Nicholas, however, is, and sprints across the parking lot, grabbing Rochelle just as she is about to step into the road. "Huh? What's happening?" 

"We need to get inside," says Nicholas. They start moving, and the wind starts to kick up. Debris flies around and smacks both him and Amelia, but doesn't do more than give them cuts or bruises. They all manage to get inside, into the ward, and calm down a bit.

They set the non-envoys up with a DVD and get on a video call with Mercy. She tells them what she's found, and they figure that if the entity possessing Stan is that aggressive, it should be possible to track it. Amelia points out that, according to Alison, SAVE was under attack in 2000, but that doesn't explain Stan's family. Mercy tries to track down similar patterns of death (clusters of accidents within a family or a group), but it's too broad to get very far tonight. She decides to get some sleep.

Britt's phone rings - Alison. She puts her on speaker, and Alison explains that she hasn't been able to find anything that specifically fits this creature's MO. It's not as simple as "oh it's a dream demon, you need to put robin feathers on it" (Britt: "Is...that a thing? Should we get some robin feathers?" Alison: "Never seen anything that reacts to those, but a lot of creatures of the Unknown do respond to shit that weirdly specific"). The thing she finds interesting, though, is the creature's apparent ability to use disciplines of the Evil Way through others. She likens it to having tied elastic around people and being able to twang the strands when it wants. 

Amelia asks if having everything sleep in a warded room would break that, and Alison says it might - if the creature can't find the people it's connected to, it might get lost. That's going to be difficult, though, because Mercy and Jean are in hospital. The envoys had been thinking that they were as safe as they could be, but if they could get in and ward their rooms...

At this point Mercy calls them and tells them that she had a dream. In the dream, she was in the community center, alone, when someone knocks on the door. She answers it, and there's a man standing there that she doesn't recognize, but who is smiling far too broadly. He says he's been looking forward to meeting her, and steps forward, at which point she wakes up, heart pounding. 

Alison hears this, and gets quiet. "I'll look into it," she says. "Let me get back to you. If you do see that kind of person, don't let them in."

Alison hangs up, and the envoys talk about the possibility of getting everyone under a ward. Getting Jean and Mercy out of the hospital at this time of night is unlikely, but getting a ward to them seems doable. 

They decide to try it. Amelia and Britt leave to head to the hospital; Nicholas stays behind with the other folks, both because they figure someone should and because they don't want a hurricane happening. They drive to the hospital and visit Mercy's room. Amelia wards the room, and then she and Britt head upstairs to psych ward. The find a machine that dispenses clean scrubs and Britt uses her Skeleton Key discipline to activate it. They walk up to the woman in the office and Britt uses the discipline again, and explains to her, using perfectly accurate medical technology, why she needs to get in. The woman lets them in, and Britt kind of blinks and asks Amelia what happened. "You were just a Viking," she says. "Yeah, weird," says Britt. "Kind of like being possessed, but in a good way!"

They find Jean's room and, through the window, see Jean start to thrash in his sleep. Britt quickly uses the discipline one more time, and Amelia goes in and wards the room. The thrashing stops, Jean flips their pillow to the cool side and goes back to sleep. 

Amelia and Britt head downstairs to Mercy's room and just crash out there. Everyone sleeps well (Amelia and Britt wake up a little stiff from sleeping in hospital chairs, but otherwise they're fine). Everyone (except Jean) gets together for brunch, and a few attempts to sense the Unknown confirm that, whatever it was, it's not in them anymore. 

Dustin leans over and asks Britt if there's an application or something for SAVE. Britt just says "you're hired!" Rochelle, however, basically tells them she's done with this nonsense; she is going to have to have a long, boring conversation with her mother as it is. Danika is unsure, but leans toward helping out. The weirdness isn't going to go away if she doesn't, after all, and now she knows about it.

The Seward HQ seems to be growing!