Gentlemen, we need to talk

[34th Brigade]

"So, everyone from higher ups are here?"
"Yes, we are."
"Good, then we can begin."

Four men settled into their seats. The room was filled with various tactical maps, operational time, CCTV cameras, and more. In short, this was the 34th Brigade tactical classroom on the "Hades" cruiser. Today's meeting had a special occasion, and so the circle of invitees was narrowed down. Cold white light illuminated the room so that there wasn't a single shadow where any extra eyes or ears could lurk, and the soundproofing kept any words from escaping.

Victor sat down by the computer, opening the Brigade's e-mail account - with the proper level of encryption, even simple e-mails via neural-net didn't seem surreal to the Order's agents. He reached into his inbox and ticked off the messages that had started arriving since September 22, 835 A.S. The sender was one Andry Scott.

He looked at everyone else, coughed loudly, and then began his speech.

"On September 22, 835 A.S, at 8 a.m., the Brigade's Science Officer, Alex Foster, opened his mailbox, which had a e-mail new notice on it. At 10:11 he left his workplace and went to the Brigade storage, placed on Dabadoru station. After informing security that he needed additional equipment, he was allowed through, and then he picked up an "Ageira-Micro-53" microscope with enhanced resolution capabilities from the storage and returned to his lab. This happened at 10:20. An hour later, the researcher left the laboratory and headed to the day room assigned to the 34th Brigade. At that moment, two people were in the room, having rested from their night shift, as well as one person on duty, conducting morning inspection-"

Jimm rolled his eyes, then glanced at Adam.

"Can we get to the point already, Vic?"

"Yes, sure,” He answered. "At 11:31 a.m., a scientist assaulted the duty officer. The duty officer and two others resisted the attacker, handcuffing him and placing him in an isolation cell. A standard interrogation was conducted, as well as a search of the room, in which Kyler Wendell, an Expedition veteran, participated. During the search, Kyler noticed that the scientist's laptop was still open, so he closed it before anyone else could directly see the monitor. Kyler then submitted a request to search Alex Foster's email account. Alex received a message from a certain Andry Scott. Without further ado, I'd like to remind you that only Expedition veterans know who Andry Scott is."

Now it all becomes clearer.

"During interrogation, Alex claimed he was unaware of what was happening, describing the situation as a series of hallucinations and realistic images. A search of the scientist's laboratory and personal room revealed no psychotropic substances. Questioning of acquaintances and a search of their rooms also revealed nothing suspicious. Alex was also unable to remember the images he saw."

"Okay, continue." Now Jimm looked tense. He already knew what this was all about.

"Jimmy Manderson and I took steps to contain suspicious emails," Victor continued. "We conducted a mass remote scan of all the mailboxes of every Brigade member. Alfred Schwartz's mailbox was also bombarded with unknown messages. An immediate message was sent to Waldemar Otto, 341th wing commander, asking him to detain Alfred on suspicion of infection. However, Alfred showed no signs of aggression and was asleep at the time of detention. A brief analysis of his electronic devices revealed that Alfred had accessed his mail several hours before sending the messages. Koji Yasu checked Alfred for signs of mental contamination and stated that Alfred had not come into contact with the infection, after which he was released.

Jimmy and I set up an automatic tracker that redirects dangerous messages to the "SPAM1" folder assigned to his inbox. So far, we've got 10 messages."

He paused for a second, his gaze changing to a more menacing one.

"I knew he'd come back. I knew all along he was still alive. That he'd come when he saw fit. And now he's here. We'd forgotten him, we'd erased him from our history, we'd presented every possible proof of our innocence. William, in fact, nearly sacrificed his career to prove that nothing had happened to us specifically. We checked every database imaginable, but found no mention of Andry Scott other than the papers we carefully stored on Hades.

Our expedition showed us what the Daam-K'Vosh were capable of. More people died not from alien weapon fire, but from the madness that drove them to the grave, taking a few more with it. But not Andry. He just ran away after he realized the fight wasn't going to be in his favor. And now we know he's alive. And he's sending us these messages. We've gotten about ten messages so far, six of which are illustrations, and four of which are-"

"Wait-wait-wait, how did you realize they were illustrations? How did you realize it was text?" - Adam asked.

"In the mailbox settings, I set the display format to FILE, so we know in advance that there might be an image, but we don't know the content. If there's neither, the text will be in the message itself. Watch."

Victor moved the mouse cursor over one of the messages.

"It says there are four attachments. And they're all images. I didn't open it because it could be text with images attached. The same goes for everything else. The sizes range from 5 KB to 20 TB. It's possible that there will be more. Bigger the size, and bigger the posts. And here's where-" The cursor went to another message. "And here you can see that there are attachments as text files. 5 TB in size. 5 terrabytes of fucking text, I have no idea what he wrote in there. But inbox is limited, so sometimes we have to send text in files. - Victor stopped for a second. "So far, messages have been sent to two people. We expect more to come soon. Since two people were hit, one of whom was on the Expedition and one who wasn't, Jimmy and I suspect Scott is searching for a weak spot."

"To do what?" - Adam felt a whiff of those times, beyond the Sirius sector. This wasn't some cruel joke. The sender was someone they thought dead.

Victor sighed and lowered and closed his eyes for a moment.

"He's trying to take control of us. He needs someone who can spread the infection further. He needs the entire Brigade. And he needs chaos. What will happen when Wedjat finds out about all this?"

It was clean now.

"Given how the Brigade is getting closer to unraveling the Erhart system, which is definitely not a Nomad system, we have every reason to believe that Andry has come here to disrupt our plans. He doesn't see the Order as an organization as a threat. He sees us as a threat. You, Adam, me, William, the Second Division. If he can't capture us, he'll certainly succeed in sowing discord within the Order.

The thing is..." - Victor coughed. "Let me expain this one better. When we did the expedition, I did a lot of digging in the scientific literature, because I was tasked with solving the problems of psychosis in the Brigade. And I came up with that very theory of pscyhoweapons. Those two worlds we set foot on were not just planets, they were places where Daam-K'Vosh had set up an apocalypse without firing a single shot personally. And they had tremendous knowledge of psyche and psychology. According to my theory, our brains have areas that are instinctively embedded in us, and we are unable to recognize them, but, given the proper trigger, they manifest themselves. We are like a walking computer whose settings can be changed on the fly. If you use a certain “code” embedded in an image or simple text, you can change us beyond recognition.

And this is just the beginning, Adam. Remember what happened to Sasha? Remember what Tyler told us moments before he killed himself? And Robert? He set off a whole chain of psychosis, infecting ten other people. And they all attacked Tim, then dismembered him and killed themselves. All of these incidents... The ruins of Daam-K'Vosh defended themselves against us with our own help. We were just a toy in their hands, even though they weren't around at all.

But Andry is different. He just disappeared into those systems. Four hundred-plus light years to the nearest point in the Sirius sector. We didn't see him on the way back, even though we prepared for it. We didn't see him afterward, and what's more, we had to explain to Overwatch that such a man existed. Or rather, existed. It was as if he'd never been born. He's only remembered by members of the Brigade, and now he's opened his hunting season, in such a twisted way.

If he's alive, he alone poses a threat far worse than the infectee and the Nomads combined. This is another level, this subjugation no longer by the Nomads but by their creators, their ruins. Something more terrible than we can imagine has happened to it.

And we must be prepared for it."