Robin Thorne exposes a conspiracy within a conspiracy. Overseer Three is given an ultimatum. The Unusual Incidents Unit prepares for war.
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the Magpies shall be judged by the Eagle at the end of days
June 7th, 2024
J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C.
Robin Thorne's teeth were buzzing. They had been from the moment the Acela had crossed the Anacostia River and entered the District of Columbia, bringing them inside the perimeter of the Thornton Wards. That should have been comforting — the Wards were powerful enough to fend off an assault by an elder god — but the sheer magnitude of occult energies that flowed through the city was enough to blind Thorne's sense of Observation, leaving them feeling vulnerable and exposed.
"— victory in New Mexico, Meghan McCain has officially secured enough —" Thorne slammed the door of the taxi, cutting off NPR in the middle of the latest update on the Presidential primary. They had bigger things to worry about.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building squatted like a gargoyle overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue, a brutalist testament to the might of Federal law enforcement. They squared their shoulders, made sure their badge was visible, and strode into the fortress. This was only the third time that Thorne had visited FBI headquarters, and they were quickly reminded why.
"Unusual Incidents Unit, huh?" The security guard looked at their badge and laughed. "Did you find a UFO, Mulder?"
Thorne stared pointedly ahead. "I'm here to see Assistant Director Frost."
The guard laughed again, but waved them through the security screening. "7th floor. You can't miss it — he's real, for starters."
"Thanks." They considered casting a cantrip to make a spot between his toes itch, but decided that he wasn't worth the hassle of trying to slip an evocation past the Wards.
Sure enough, they found the office on the 7th floor without issue. They couldn't help but notice that someone had vandalized the plaque next to the door.
RICHARD E. FROST
Executive Assistant Director
Unusual Incidents Unit
The Executive Ass in question was waiting for Thorne when they arrived. His jet-black hair — precisely trimmed to Army-regulation length — matched the color of his suit. His eyes were gunmetal grey, and his gaze was as cold as a gorgon's. Despite being treated as a joke by the rest of the FBI, this was a man who commanded the ear of the President of the world's only superpower. And he knew it.
"Agent Thorne." He motioned for them to enter. "Come in. Close the door. Sit down."
Thorne did as instructed.
"You're a long way from Three Portlands," he observed.
"Yes, sir." They sat stiffly in the chair, avoiding eye contact.
"Do you want to tell me why?" He raised an eyebrow.
Thorne took a breathe, then said, in a measured, unwavering voice, "Director Frost, I have proof that the Foundation has been illegally operating in Three Portlands in defiance of the Hoover Mandate, starting with the assassination of Special Agent Florence Thorne."
His expression didn't change. "I thought it would be something like that."
They gaped. "Sir?"
With one long finger, he tapped a manila file folder on his desk. "Agent Kartal alerted me to the fact that you were likely investigating your mother's death. I've been keeping apprised of your movements over the last few weeks. Oregon. Minnesota. Back to Portlands. And now here. It seemed obvious that you had found something involving the Foundation."
"You knew?"
"No. I strongly suspected." His eyes flitted to another folder on his desk, then back up to make eye contact with them. "Do you remember Director Gonzalez?"
"Yes, sir, he was the Assistant Director when I joined the Unit." Thorne also remembered that he had resigned in disgrace, after allegations that he had been involved in the 1MDB scandal. He had subsequently been cleared of any wrongdoing, but by that point his reputation was already ruined.
"He was my mentor," Frost said. His tone hardened as he continued speaking. "He was a good man and a great Director. And the Foundation destroyed him. Manufactured scandals, smeared his name, ruined his marriage, and filled his life with so many petty nuisances that it almost drove him mad. Because he dared to speak out against them."
Knowing what they did, Thorne could easily believe it. What was harder to accept was that this was the first they were hearing of it. "Why hasn't the Unit done anything about it?"
He sighed and steepled his fingers together underneath his chin. "Because as much as I know that to be true, I have no evidence of it. And because they would do the same thing to me if I tipped my hand prematurely." He fixed them with a penetrating stare. "Tell me what your evidence is, Agent Thorne. Tell me everything. Tell me how to put an end to the Foundation, once and for all."
So they did. They started with the truth about how Merlo had captured Anderson and the operations they knew — and suspected — the skippers of Site-64 had been running in Three Portlands. That was the easy part.
Then came the tale of their investigation. That part was harder, especially because it meant confessing to a federal crime. Now that their quest for vengeance was nearing its end and the consequences of their actions were nigh, they were starting to regret the decisions they had taken on that path. They had cut corners and broken the law because it was the most expedient line towards their goal, but now they had to consider whether it had been the best approach.
They told him about the oneirograph; about visiting Kartal and learning of the journal; about retrieving it from where it had lain forgotten in evidence; about decoding it; about chasing down proof of the Foundation's involvement all the way from Oregon to Minnesota to the summoning circle of a back-alley necromancer.
And finally, they played him the tape of Corwin's confession.
" — I voted to kill a hero." The voice of the ghost was distorted on the tape, but was still coherent.
Frost reached over and stopped the tape recorder. His expression was grim. "I've heard enough." He sighed. "You and I are going to need to have a talk about acceptable investigative practices when this is over, Agent Thorne. But right now, I think there's someone else that I need to talk to."
"Who?"
"Overseer Three. She requested a meeting with me shortly after you arrived in Washington."
"You know Overseer Three, sir?"
Frost nodded. "Only professionally. She's our main point of contact with the Foundation."
"Do you trust her?"
"Not a bit." He stood up. "Come on. I want you in attendance. It never hurts to have a wizard along for extra muscle."
Pershing Park, Washington, D.C.
Overseer Three was exactly what Thorne had expected.
The aging woman — with her thin-rimmed glasses, black pantsuit, and mousy brown hair that was going grey at the temples — looked just like any other Washington bureaucrat or lobbyist. Maybe even a Representative from a completely forgettable district in the Midwest. It was only the three-lobed circular containment emblem that she wore as a lapel pin which marked her as one of the thirteen self-appointed oligarchs of normalcy.
She was standing in front of the unfinished World War I memorial, studying the bronze relief intently. It was supposed to depict the journey of an American soldier through the course of the war, but the final section, which showed him returning home, was still incomplete and wouldn't be finished until September.
"Richard," she said as Frost and Thorne approached. She didn't turn around to face them, but instead allowed them to take up positions to her right and left. "Be aware that my usual self-defense contingencies are in place, in case you were thinking of having Agent Thorne attempt anything."
"Three," Frost replied. He crossed his arms and stared straight ahead. "I know the Foundation killed Florence Thorne."
The Overseer inhaled sharply. "I was afraid of that. Sasha Merlo developing a sudden interest in Lightfoot Elegy could have been explained away, but then Director Westbrook being assaulted mere days later? It doesn't take a genius to guess what was going on."
"Agent Thorne has been rather unsubtle," Frost said, and Thorne could feel his aside glare, even with the Overseer between them.
"Do you know I voted against it?" Three asked.
"That does nothing to change the fact that you stood here and smiled at me when you knew the entire time that your people were responsible."
"They are not 'my people,' as you put it," she said. "My people are pragmatists. The people who killed Florence are ideological purists who refuse to see the larger picture."
"Did you try to stop them?" Frost asked.
"… No," she admitted. "Would you have done any differently?"
"I can't say," he said. "Because I would never have been in that position. We haven't done that kind of thing since the days of Hoover."
"Yes, yes, you're ever so virtuous with your observance of due process and rule of law," she snapped. "Tell me, what good is due process when the world is burning?"
"You sound just like Corwin," Thorne said. "If you really believe that, why didn't you vote with him?"
"Did you follow due process when you attacked Director Westbrook?" She retorted. She looked from one to the other. "You have no moral high ground here, neither of you. You never cared that we broke or bent the law as long as it was convenient for you. And that's why I voted against it, because I knew what the reaction would be if it ever got out. It was a stupid plan that did nothing to advance the interests of normalcy. The only goal it served was petty vengeance, which I abhor. We stood to gain nothing and lose everything." She sighed. "And now it appears we're about to lose everything."
"Not necessarily everything," Frost said. "I have the list of Overseers who voted in favor. If the Foundation hands them over to us to stand trial, provides us a list of all your Sites in North America, and agrees to the installation of Federal monitors at all of said Sites, then you will be allowed to continue operating. Under the supervision of the Domestic Security Council, of course."
The Overseer looked aghast. "Surely you're joking? You can't nationalize the Foundation!"
"Why not?" Frost asked. "Do you think the Supreme Court will tell us we can't? You're welcome to try appealing to them."
"The GOC wouldn't stand for it," she said. "The Köln Agreement —"
"Is a worthless piece of paper that we never signed," Frost said, cutting her off. "If the UN wants to stop us, they are welcome to try. I think you'll find that they are far less willing to go to war to protect your independence than you seem to think."
"The Council will never agree to it," she said. "As much as I would love to be rid of the purist faction, the Council will always vote to protect its own. If you were willing to offer something more reasonable, I might be able to —"
Frost held up a hand, cutting her off again. "Three, I don't believe you understand the gravity of this situation. We are not negotiating with you. We are giving you terms. You — you, not your opposition among the Overseers, you — have been operating an illegal task force inside Three Portlands for over six years now. Your Foundation murdered one of our agents. You harassed one of my predecessors out of office. All of you are guilty of countless civil and human rights violations. You are criminals. And you're right, the only reason you were tolerated at all is because you were useful — and your usefulness has now officially run out. You will take our terms back to the rest of your Overseer Council, and you will accept them, or else I will recommend to the Domestic Security Council that we immediately enact Operation Blockbuster."
Robin Thorne tried to keep their face blank. They knew what Blockbuster was. Every UIU agent did. It wasn't a secret, not really — nothing that involves that many assets and agents ever can be. Blockbuster involved every single Veiled component of the United States government and military. It had to.
Overseer Three tried to keep her face blank too, but her non-reaction was itself a tell. She also knew what Operation Blockbuster was. That was what made it an effective threat.
Richard Frost didn't bother to keep his face blank. He already knew that Three knew what Operation Blockbuster was, and he didn't care. He wanted her to know. That was half the point.
Operation Blockbuster was the contingency plan to destroy the Foundation.
"Don't make threats you can't follow through on," she said softly.
"What makes you think I can't?" He shot back. "Do you think Blockbuster is just a planning exercise? Those freaks at the Pentagram have wanted to pay you back for the 13th Fleet for over forty years. Who do you think has been advocating restraint all these years, the Postmaster General? We were your greatest ally in the Federal government, and you repaid us with treachery and murder."
"I can't give you all that you want," Three said. Her eyes darted back and forth, surveying potential exit vectors. "Not all of the Overseers who voted to kill Florence are still alive."
Frost nodded. "Then hand over the ones who are. With independent records proving the deaths of the others."
"I'll need time," Three said. "If you want your terms to be accepted. I'll need to confer with my allies on the Council individually, to convince them of the necessity of this course of action. The swing voters especially will need careful persuasion. And there are members of the Council that will need to be discredited, which will require me to activate certain contingencies and call in special favors."
"You have three months," Frost said. "If we haven't gotten your answer by the start of September, we start nuking known Sites. Same goes for if we notice any unusual mobilization of forces or relocation of artifacts. You'll act like it's business as usual, or else we put you out of business."
She frowned. "We already have a major force reallocation planned because of the Anderson debacle. We're drawing assets away from monitoring Three Portlands for redeployment elsewhere — mostly the San Francisco Bay Area."
"I'll allow it," he said. "But I expect you to tell me about any other redeployments in advance."
"How generous of you," she snarked. "Do you have any other conditions, Richard? Perhaps you'd like me to pick-up your dry cleaning too?"
"Don't test me, Three. I am not feeling particularly charitable towards you right now."
She shook her head. "You have no idea what you're about to unleash, Richard. If you fail, it will mean another Occult War, you know that? And if you succeed, you are not prepared for the responsibility you'll be assuming. There are things we do that you couldn't even imagine, horrors that can only be contained by acts that your government would never authorize. You won't come out of this with your hands clean."
"I'm willing to take that risk," he said. "We were able to keep Three Portlands hidden from you for almost 40 years. I think you'll find we're more capable than you realize."
"I pray to God you're right," she said. She turned to look at Thorne. "I know it's not nearly enough to compensate you for the suffering the Foundation has put your family through, but I want you to know that I am sorry. If I had my way, none of it ever would have happened. Not the Nightingale Contingency, not your mother's death, none of it."
Thorne looked her dead in the eye. "You're right, it's not enough. You can't bring her back. You can't take back the last 16 years."
The Overseer sighed. "You're right, of course. But perhaps it can be made to never happen again." She turned to look at Frost. "I will relay your terms to the rest of the Overseers. You will have your answer in three months. I will do my best to ensure it is one to your liking. For all our sakes."
And with that she strode away, quickly vanishing into the crowd of tourists.
Once she was out of sight, Frost turned to Thorne. "And now, Agent Thorne, we're going to have that talk I mentioned."
Thorne swallowed nervously, then nodded. "I expect you'll be wanting my badge."
"I don't want your badge, Agent," Frost said. "But I do want you to comprehend the seriousness of this situation. You went completely off-book to pursue your own investigation, with zero regard for proper procedure. Tell me, if the responsible party had been anyone other than the Foundation, would you have even come to me, or would you have tried to exact your own vigilante justice?"
"I don't know, sir."
"That's not acceptable. The FBI is not a sword for you to wield when convenient and put aside when not. It's a responsibility, a duty, a mission. You betrayed that mission when you decided to pursue your own vision of justice." Frost pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. "However, you went and did something even worse. You got results. You've just handed me leverage against the Foundation, something which we have been after for years. If I fired you now, the Pentagram would snatch you up before you left the city — they love that ends justify the means shit."
Thorne studied Frost warily. "I don't want to work for the Pentagram, sir."
"Few people do, and yet they still end up there." He shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. "I have no intention of firing you. You haven't done anything that would make evidence inadmissible, and you haven't done anything that would generate a Bivens claim. But I can't allow you to go unpunished. You stole evidence and assaulted a civilian."
Thorne frowned. "There were mitigating circumstances, sir."
"I am very aware of that, Agent. That necklace should have been returned to you years ago, and I doubt your father intends to press charges. That's why I'm putting you on unpaid administrative leave for the next month. And I'm assigning you additional legal compliance training at Quantico after your reinstatement."
"That's very generous of you, sir."
"It is extremely generous of me." He turned to stare into the shallow pool in the center of the park, examining the memorial in the smooth surface of the water. "But like Three, I am nothing if not a pragmatist. We are rapidly approaching the eve of another Occult War, and I have no intention of losing one of my best thaumatologists over what is essentially a clerical error. As an agency, we are trying to observe rules made by people who have no idea we even exist. The reality we inhabit is not the same as the reality the Constitution was written for. Frankly, nothing we do here is constitutional. Can you imagine trying to explain our existence to a Senate committee?"
Thorne laughed softly. "I think they'd take one look at me and determine that we're too woke."
"We hire faeries, of course we're too woke. But that's the point. Normal people can't defend normalcy, not on their own. All of us here… we're not normal, and our ideas of right and wrong aren't normal either. That's why it's so important that we try to observe the rule of law. It keeps us accountable to the world we defend. We can't always do it perfectly, and sometimes you have to choose between what you think is right and what you know is legal — but to ignore the law entirely, as the Foundation does… that's the first step towards tyranny."
"So… you think I did the right thing?"
"No," Frost said. "I think you had the right intentions. If I thought you did the right thing, you wouldn't be on unpaid leave right now. Would it have killed you to just make a formal request for the return of property in evidence? I know our internal bureaucracy is pretty bad, but you didn't even try before deciding to go off reservation and pursue a solo investigation on your own terms. That's unacceptable, and if I ever hear about you pulling this whole lone warrior vengeance quest shtick again, I will have your badge."
"Sir, if I may —"
He held up a hand to cut them off. "You may not. Rest assured that I understand your motives, Agent Thorne. I don't want to hear your justifications. You knew what you were doing was wrong, or else you would have involved your partner. I can't imagine that Agent Spencer is going to be pleased about any of this. You betrayed his trust, and even worse, you didn't trust him."
"Yes, sir." Thorne hung their head and shuffled their feet, kicking a pebble into the square of water. They watched as the ripple spread across the surface, distorting their reflections. "Were you serious, sir, when you told Three you would recommend Blockbuster?"
"As an atom bomb. The Foundation took the first step towards tyranny decades ago, and now they're leaping and skipping down the path. For too long, they've been allowed to grow more and more powerful while defying even the most basic laws of reason. It's time they were brought to heel."
"Do you think they'll accept your ultimatum?"
"I don't know. If it was just Three we were dealing with, things would be different, but there are multiple competing factions within the Foundation, and I don't know which ones are in power right now. There is a very real possibility that we are on the verge of another Occult War."
As he spoke, one of the last blossoms fell from one of the last cherry trees still in bloom — maybe the very last blossom in the city. The delicate petals floated gently downwards, coming to rest on the surface of the pool, between the reflections of the two figures. Thorne couldn't help but see it as an omen.
"If I had known…" They began to say, before trailing off.
Frost shook his head. "Do not blame yourself. This has been brewing for a long time, longer than you've been alive, and we're ready for it. But nothing is certain yet, and it may turn out that you've given us the leverage we need to avert a conflict entirely. All we can do is wait and prepare."
"Yes, sir."
"What you do with your time for the next month is your own decision, but I suggest you might spend some of it in Portlands with your loved ones. When you return to service, you'll be reporting to me here in Washington much more frequently."
"Keeping me on a short leash, sir?"
"Absolutely. It's clear to me that your talents are being wasted dealing with street crime. I'd rather be putting them to productive purposes, so you don't go haring off on another half-baked quest. Don't worry, I won't be pulling you off the Portlands beat entirely."
"Yes, sir." The prospect of working directly under Director Frost was equal parts exciting and terrifying.
"Dismissed, Agent."
He strode off in the opposite direction from the one that Three had taken, leaving Thorne alone.
Thorne stayed for another few minutes, watching the cherry blossom slowly sink to the bottom of the pool.
a judgment rendered. a verdict returned. a sentence passed.
too late. the lighthouse is extinguished. the anchor is weighed. the rose is wilted.
too late. the Magpies are already fighting, and Mischief shall beget Murder.
too late. the eyes of the Lady are blind. the eyes of the WORLD shall finally see.
what good is JUSTICE obtained at the cost of the WORLD?
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. EIGHT.
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