Mid-West Campaign
Session Thirty-Six

Saturday, 16 December 2000 (continued)

[Editorial note: The longest day limps toward its conclusion. Due to further investigation into the time tunnel on the door to Hamblin's office, this day is actually repeated three times. A full description of the various unstable time lines - as well as an explanation of how time travel works - can be found on the section on Time Travel. Also check here if you're wondering who the heck Henry Devries is. This section details the various permutations experienced by the players in the order they were played. Events in blue type never really happened. Only Bradley Ecks and Todd O'Connell remember all the time-lines, although the other agents have been told what transpired.]

The stand off between Nathan and Jane continues. Nathan begins to see that Jane has a point and realises that he has to give up the pendant. At that point Todd arrives. He has made a break-through in looking into the background of Vitrano and Lavin! They were transferred from the NSA ten years ago. That means they have no backgrounds. Artemis's great conspiracy is looking all the more likely - they could be Ukrainian agents like Elaine Ross.

Todd is suspicious that Jane is not bowled over by this news. As they talk Jane is shocked to realise that Todd remembers the original timeline where Nathan was a computer-hacking spod and not the revised timeline where Nathan is a millionaire playboy. Something very odd is transpiring. Jane phones Artemis and explains the situation, looking for occult insight. Artemis thinks there could be something wrong with Todd (a brain bug) and suggest he is scanned on the pretence that Vitrano and Lavin did something to him. Artemis also suggests putting a bomb in Nathan in case he goes nuts and tries to kill everyone, but Jane refuses.

Todd is not happy with this procedure, thinking that Jane is nuts. However, his hero Artemis Black, manages to smooth things over and the pair go to the local hospital (although Todd insists on providing Jane with some anti-depressants before stepping in a scanner). Todd is perfectly human, and is blood is entirely normal.

At the west coast HQ Ecks asks Schult to give him the square route of a nine digit number, which Schult solves instantaneously. Ecks is now convinced that Schult is really S.C.H.U.L.T. (Sentient Computer Holographic Utility something something) and that there is a space craft buried under the building.

Jane picks up the ballistic reports (the murderers of the west cost team were using Teflon coated bronze-core 9mm bullets) and returns to HQ at 9:00pm. Todd and Ecks settle down for a Star Trek movie marathon and begin to bond in that strange sticky manner only geeks can. Jane and Nathan talk.

Jane has many questions such as where is this reality's Nathan's Harlow? Presumably a Nathan was a still born in this reality. The Nathan Jane is speaking to could not have taken over his life until he was an adult - so where is he? Nathan doesn't know, and that bothers him. He says that he wants the pendant out of him, but first he wants to repent. They decide to go to church that evening. Before this happens Ecks has Schult slip a nanotech tracking device into them both.

Nathan, Jane and a heavily armed Burchill head for the church of St. Mary the Virgin only to find it closed. They go to the home of the local reverend (Malone) but something is stopping Nathan from walking up the stairs to Malone's home. This frightens Jane who runs to get the reverend. After much cajoling she convincing the reverend to come out onto the street (as Nathan cannot enter holy ground). However, Nathan utters an uncharacteristic obscenity and walks away.

Jane realises that something else is making Nathan's decisions, and she catches up with him. She has to get him back to HQ and remove that pendant now - he is too dangerous to be wandering around with that inside him. However, the force possessing Nathan has other ideas and he pulls his gun. In a short and brutal fight neither Jane now Burchill are a match for Nathan. Both are killed. Reverend Malone runs out to before the last rites. He is also gunned down by Harlow who regains his senses and flees back to headquarters in the hope he can be restrained.

At the west coast headquarters Schult tells Ecks and O'Connell that Jane and Burchill are dead. Ecks realises that Nathan must have killed them. Todd is devastated by Jane's death and vows revenge. He and Ecks tool up with heavy body armour and extremely large guns and go hunting for Nathan. On the way to the church they pass Nathan driving back to headquarters and give chase.

Todd liberally sprays Nathan's car with an assault rifle and it explodes. However, Nathan staggers out of the flames completely uninjured. Ecks is not willing to talk and the pair open fire on Nathan. Nathan flees down a near-by alley but the pair give chase. They eventually bring the fleeing Nathan down in a hail of bullets. Todd blows Nathan's head off at close range, killing him.

Ecks takes the initiative and tells Todd everything about evidence response. He reasons that Todd has already seen too much to strung along any more. Ecks contacts the police and the pair return to HQ to clean the blood off their clothes. Ecks does a little digging and finds out what happened to the original Harlow from this new time line. There is a death certificate of a Nathan Harlow suffocated at birth. The time travelling Nathan must have done it. In selling 75% of his soul to Lillian Winter Nathan lost his free will. Everything is a mess. Jane is dead. Burchill is dead. Harlow is dead. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Todd points out that they can reactivate the time portal and go back to correct all this. They can't contaminate the time line so they would have to go back to 1941 to the exact time and place that Harlow arrives after he has made the deal with Lillian Winter. If they do that, then they should correct the time line and Jane and Burchill would still be alive! Todd reasons this has to work - how else would he be able to remember the original time line unless they somehow restore it?

Todd and Ecks rush to Hamblin's office in the library where Todd in a moment of divine insight works out how to use the complicated symbols. They create a time portal back to 1941 and step through, finding themselves in a sewer. They take up position with their heavy machine-guns and wait. Very soon Nathan Harlow steps through into 1941. He has just made the deal with Lillian Winter. "I'm alive!" he exclaims.

Ecks and Todd open fire killing Nathan again. But the timeline isn't fixed yet. They fish the pendant out of Nathan's corpse. Green tendrils had connected themselves to all of his vital organs. Nathan is also carrying the pendant he stole from the HQ before he went through the portal back in the year 2000. Ecks takes this pendant and leaves it on the surface. This is the pendant that will eventually find its way into the hands of the west coast team (see the section on time travel for more information on these pendants). Now Ecks removes Nathan's hands so he cannot be identified and the pair go back to the future.

In what is now the original, real and only timeline Jane is revived by Schult. She collapsed the moment Nathan stepped through the portal and now feels the link between them severed. She asks Schult if there have been any changes in the timeline to which he lists several dozen including a lot of activity around the original deaths of Nathan at the hands of the Joker.

A triumphant Ecks and Todd arrive back at HQ, both on a complete adrenaline high at 3:00pm in the afternoon of this long, long day. They are delighted to find Jane and Jack alive. They proceed to tell Jane everything that happened and after some time, she believes them. Internal Affairs never turned up to investigate Harlow's earlier hacking. Evidently Nathan made a deal to change that part of history before Ecks and Todd killed him.

Jane sees the bag containing Nathan's hands and realises that Nathan is dead and that this time it is forever. She knows that Nathan was a fool and that he shouldn't have made the deal with Winter, but she also knows that he is burning in Hell for all eternity and there is nothing she can do to help him.

Jane checks old copies of Los Angeles Times and sees a news article from 1946 detailing the discovery of a handless corpse in the sewers. The body was never identified, and was buried in an unmarked grave. She searches the database of outstanding cases for the west coast team and finds details of that very case (number LA0007). She can mark that particular case closed. Utterly confused, Jane feels the need to grieve for Harlow and departs for the church of St. Mary the Virgin. She spends the rest of the day in prayer.

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