LeanerMinds

The old mansion in the swamp was bustling with activity for the first time in over 20 years. There were Energen technicians working on the smart home systems, noisily co-ordinating with the team at the nearby research facility. Wearing ultramarine, breathable polo shirts, emblazoned with the Energen molecule logo, they stood out amongst the army of contractors that had invaded the house.

This Energen company seemed sincere. Its employees were from all walks of life, and as far as they knew, had nothing to do with XCOM, the Livonian or any terrorists/resistance fighters. Most of the technicians had carried out scheduled maintenance on the site in the past. Energen attended the site every quarter to ensure the swamp wasn't swallowing it. Otherwise it was kept locked and supervised by Energen security, and that was that.

Or had been until recently, when the owners announced they were restarting the bio-oil research, using the proprietary chemical reactors Energen had developed in the intervening years. Everyone in the company smelled money. And apart from a big payday, it was an exciting change to a technician's daily routine. So even in the summer heat, the technicians worked with obvious enthusiasm. There were discarded ice cream wrappers dotted around, here and there.

Dr Karen Vahlen watched them from the staircase mezzanine. Good people, ordinary people. Lots of them. Apart from Energen, there were painters, decorators, fitters, movers, all under the watchful eye of Pavise. The tall, elegant Englishman looked quite at home in the lobby, unflustered and in control amidst the chaos. His blonde hair was immaculately trimmed and side parted, even his shirt, shorts and sandals looked like formal attire. Impressive. He wasn't even breaking a sweat.

He was one of the Livonian's inner circle, no doubt, but where did Energen fit in? The company had close ties to the High Commission, doing exactly the work that the aliens wanted humankind to do; to innovate, to excel, to better themselves. Their logo was a pentagonal bipyramid, a type of highly reactive molecule used in their chemical reactors. Sustainable, renewable energy; the small high tech company appeared to be in the cheerleading squad for the aliens. Yet here they were on the Livonians payroll?

The Swiss scientist had heard about the Livonian, rumours on the underground -- the underground that the aliens had tried so hard to keep her from, to turn her away from. He was a symbol of resistance. Some old miser in Eastern Europe, who had defied the aliens, refused to help the aliens preserve his language and culture, told them to "fuck off and leave him alone" as she'd heard from many dregs and vagrants. The media had covered the story since 2025, but found it to be an urban legend, possibly started as a hoax.

To many it was a blatant cover-up of the truth, and not just to those living on street. Some chose to think of the Livonian as a religious crusader, a holyman and prophet, and there were some Christian connections in Livonia's history. There was only one thing Dr Vahlen was sure of. The Livonian she'd spoken to, the Livonian in charge of this operation, was not the Livonian.

A cough. Dr Vahlen had been leaning against the railing, she turned to the sound, tucking a strand of her auburn hair behind her ear. Two red-faced, sweating moving men hefted a chaise longue between them. She was in the way.

"Sorry, ma'am... coming through."

She smiled at them tightly and walked away, climbing the remaining stairs to the first floor. She didn't speak, her European accent too distinct to Americans, even if it left Europeans wondering where the hell she was from. The authorities had an APB out on Dr Karen Vahlen and although they hadn't gone public yet, she had to be careful. She was confident in her appearance, at least. The authorities would have recent pictures of her; gone 60 and showing it, greying hair, wrinkled, worried frown. Since her rescue she'd dyed her hair, Dabbled in active anti-aging cream, and even applied a soupçon of make-up. More than that, she felt alive, envigorated. She felt desparate, but she felt free. She looked like a different person.

Her rescuers were all out except for Conner, the soldier. The rest of the Livonian's henchmen were over at the research facility where they were having fun with pole saws and strimmers, aka ground clearance. Good for them, she thought. Soldiers needed occupying.

None more so than Conner. Dr Vahlen had met many soldiers with the XCOM Project, selected from militaries around the world. She remembered once when Colonel Bradford had suggested the XCOM soldiers were the "best of the best", and the Base Commander had responded "more like the most readily available of the readily available". Regardless of their background, they all had flawless psyche evaluations.

Conner, however, had a troubled mind.

The first floor was less busy, and she knew which (of two) master bedroom(s) the test subjects had been dorming in. The one with the walk-in shower and his and hers sinks; larger in floor space than her old studio apartment in the city.

It was bright in the corridors. Like the exterior, the interior was white-walled for the most part with a few warmer peach tones in the floor tiles, lobby and atriums. The paint was all wet, of course. Fast drying but the air here was humid, and Energen hadn't started the HVAC yet.

The auburn-haired woman wondered into the master bedroom, expecting the proverbial bomb site it'd been yesterday, but Conner squared the place away. Duffel bags were all packed and stacked against the wall. The interior decorators would have no problem.

But where was Conner? How was he coping without a "phero-buddy", as Nate had called it? Vahlen was confident that he'd be OK for a day or two on his own, surrounded by the test subjects' dirty laundry. They'd all worn XCOM issue jumpsuits for several days, then bona fide hobo outfits. They'd also been sleeping in the same bags for days. It would be enough.

Besides, the Livonian had overstated the risk of withdrawal. Vahlen had read the logs; the test subjects who'd been revived before Conner's batch likely suffered from previously existing psychological and mental disorders, shock from being revived in 2043, and rapid neurological degradation from lack of Meld. The fact was, she'd never witnessed such debilitating reactions in her experiments with the XCOM Project. The scientist wisely kept this information to herself though.

Maybe that was why Conner stayed behind? Testing the boundaries.

Vahlen sighed and drifted over to the bay window, looking out the front of the house, west-facing, away from the swamp. Sunlight streamed in but was cooled by spectral filters in the glass.

There he was. In jumpsuit and trainers, jogging across the circular driveway, passing parked delivery vans and disappearing down the private access road. Conner spent a lot of time running, perhaps running from his past?

The doctor reflected on this with pursed lips. These test subjects, her rescuers, were her responsibility in more ways than one. She pulled the scroll computer from the pocket all work trousers had these days, exactly for that purpose. Decided. She was going to try out that chaise longue and do some reading on one Conner R. Stamp.

The private road led through the swamp to the outside world. Its tarmac surface hadn't was in good condition along the centre, but the curbed edges were eroding and being chewed up by the swamp.

He stayed away from the creepers and long hanging branches. It was mid-afternoon, the July sun was hot and he was pounding along in a pair of dirty Tevas™ that were handling the swamp and his best efforts to destroy them with aplomb.

The scent of pine and black gum, and the sound of insects hung in the air. The woods either side were impenetrable, and even at this time of the year the ground was very soft, as he'd found out the hard way. This was the Great Dismal Swamp. Supposedly similar to the Florida Everglades!? It was hard to picture when surrounded by dense woodland. When Conner and the others first arrived at the research facility, they'd used an airboat to navigate a narrow channel back, after ditching the fisherman's pickup. But so far he hadn't found any wide open, Everglade-like marshes, even if he had found where the ground beneath the trees became so sodden it was impassable on foot. That was about a kilometre east. He was heading west, onto Jericho Lane.

First the classy stone arch bridge over the maglev tracks. Nhut said the tunnels under the site ran out as far as here, and Conner had noticed an Authorised Personnel Only door under the bridge.

Pounding over the crest, sweating hard and only a couple of mins in. Conner had to dodge to the side of the road as another delivery van pulled in and accelerated up towards the mansion. The hybrid engines of 2043 could be very very quiet at low speed, with the electric motors providing all the horses.

Classy gated entrance too. High security. Cameras, sensors, ratcheted electro-mechanical windings, like a horizontal portcullis. They glided open as he approached and passed through. They always did, and he never questioned it.

Out onto Jericho Lane he ran. Another 10 mins and he'd reach the main road, from there he'd take a right and skirt the perimeter of the GDS, up towards the Interstate, where the entrance to the research facility was. In passed the railway yard, and across what looked like a sewage treatment plant to him, then down a deer trail back to the mansion. Around 18 km that'd take him nearly 2 hours 30 in this climate.

It was hot, around 30 degrees, but his skin was still tanned from 40 years ago. He'd been locked in complete darkness for that time, but in stasis his body hadn't aged.

Maybe the thought reminded him of his fellow XCOM test subjects? He was wearing one of their olive drab jumpsuits after all, unzipped and tied at the waist with the arms. His sweat mingling with theirs, dried in.

The swamp's humidity made that 30 degrees feel like hell. The Persian Gulf had been hotter but drier. Innercity Riyadh could top 46 on a summer's day, but sweating worked. Same with Australia's Outback where he grew up. Conner demonstrably had no problem with the heat. Humidity though?

Thinking back he couldn't be so sure about his own memories. The files, and everything Piper had found on the web, suggested he'd cheated on Jessie (his wife) while in Saudi. With a local Arab translator, Nisreen Taher. Nisreen had then been killed by extremists. He'd returned to Hawaii, had a psychotic break and murdered Jessie. That's not how he remembered it...

But he did remember Nisreen. Young, exotic, beautiful, he'd killed her accidentally in a checkpoint shooting in Iraq, no? The file said not.

Jessie had been with him in Saudi, she had been killed by extremists, no? The file said not.

It was all fubar.

The file said he shot his wife dead. The murder weapon was the AK-104 he brought back from Saudi; fully automatic carbine, it was classed as a prohibited Title 2 firearm and that made it a Federal offence. 10 years in prison before he'd even pulled the trigger.

Conner could remember the AK-104 well enough. In the Kingdom, the police and Ministry of the Interior troops were equipped with AKM assault rifles, so his company kitted them out with weapons in the same calibre, using the same mags. Conner couldn't remember bringing his AK-104 back. Had no need to. If he did, why didn't he obtain a licence? Avoid criminalising himself. Maybe he'd tried and his application had been rejected?

That weapon held the key to unlocking this mystery.

Had he really gone crazy? Was he still crazy?

His thoughts probably raged louder than his heartbeat and footfalls.

[ooc: Any thoughts over the next 2 hours and 30 mins?]

Blair Anderson yawned, so wide that her jaw cracked.

Bobby heard it, even though the radio was on, and shook his head without taking his eyes off the road, or more precisely, the thick verdure growing behind the fence on the east side of the road.

"Very ladylike!" He commented.

Blair grunted back. She was watching the side of the road too, but with a lesser slice of her attention than Bobby. Bobby was driving, so it kept him focused. She had passenger malaise.

They were sat in the front of a Mitsubishi Express minivan, a heavy duty commercial vehicle that had spilled out of the Jakarta factory after the war and taken the global market by storm.

The same type of minivan that had appeared on the morning news a few days back. A plain white Express blazing through late night Nansemond with the police in warm, colder, colder, stone cold pursuit. Captured on camera by a bystander, the shaky handheld footage had quickly gone viral. Unconfirmed reports from the PD said it was clocked at 186 mph!!

Blair's Express wouldn't go that fast unless it drove over a land mine. It was a Channel 10 news van, the roof cluttered with domes, dishes, aerials and even a telescopic mast.

Sources said the police had chased the mystery van from the scene of a crime; an East Indian couple leaving the Shequoiya Mall, a backstreet mugging by Nigerian thugs... Assault, robbery, rape in progress. Until some hardcore madreador came strolling down the street and stomped the attackers, saving the couple but fleeing when the squad cars pulled up. Apparently the responding officers pursued the guy on foot, across rooftops, but he escaped to his very non-standard Mitsubishi Express. Everyone in the newsroom had the V-word on the tip of their tongue but were too excited to say it.

They just hoped the guy struck another blow against crime soon. And got away with it.

Blair and cameraman, Bobby, were on the southern outskirts of Nansemond now, driving along the perimeter of the GDS. Not trying to track down the mystery van -- no, that would be too much like an actual news story -- they'd been assigned to get a few shots of some pre-war billionaire's mansion being rennovated, and maybe get an interview with one of the workers. The owners of the mansion, Energen, weren't interested. "Too busy. Work in progress. Not ready for presenting to the public." They said. One of the producers back at the newsroom thought it was a good local history/cultural story though, so Blair had been assigned.

Blair was a young, aspiring reporter, and like most young, aspiring reporters, she wanted to cut her teeth on edgy investigations, where her energy and zeal would make a difference.

Her problem was, even though she'd gotten a dream job in the Convergence, it was in Nansemond. Blair didn't have local colour and didn't have sex appeal. She was short, plump, with a big nose and a quirky fashion sense. She looked like a white, middle-class college grad. Nerdy. Safe. Her employers thought she was Little Miss Sunshine, and lined her up for safe, white, middle-class pieces that emphasised her geekiness.

They didn't realise how hardcore she was, on the inside. One the inside she was a hungry tiger, a champion of the truth.

Blair sucked noisily on the straw of her sugar-free, iced grande vanilla latte with soy milk.

Hottest part of the day. The van's climate control was barely keeping pace with the day's escalating heat and humidity temperature. She hated that about the city in the summer, with all the concrete and asphalt, all the heat traps, it never cooled off overnight. Out here, next to the Great Dismal Swamp, it was even more humid.

Much longer and she'd call the studio, tell them to get some aerial shots or use archive footage instead. They'd just driven an entire lap of the swamp's border fence and not found any back way in. No way to sneak in and grab a few shots of the work. Blair was not going to get caught in rush hour traffic for this.

That's when she saw Conner round the corner from Jericho Lane, out for a run in the mid-afternoon haze, soaked in sweat. He looked like a swamp-dweller from his dress and he must've come by the mansion or close to it.

Of course, Blair and Bobby had already tried the front gate. It was closed, and the gates operated too quickly for them to sneak in when a contractor's van was leaving. Not to mention the CCTV! This yokel probably knew another way in, a trail through the forest.

Blair blurted, "Bobby!" and that was all the instruction the cameraman needed. He swerved over to the side of the road, nearly mounting the curb, the engine stop-start cutting in and the kers whirring.

She was buxom, red cheeked with short mousy hair and wearing an eccentric-looking cloche bucket hat. The window slid smoothly down, letting out what little cool air was left inside.

"'Scuse me! Hey mister, wait up. We're looking for a trail into the swamp, one that leads close to the mansion. You know anything like that?"