The two sat in silence for a bit, one of them mildly inebriated and totally relaxed, the other now taken aback, panicked and thinking furiously. Ushers prepared to close the doors to the conference hall, beckoning Moone and MacBeth in from across the foyer before they did so. MacBeth dragged Moone, feathers ruffled, behind him. They found two empty seats together, as [the introductory speaker] began introducing Gef.
Moone [filtered out] an anecdote about Gef's being shot at during his cubhood in India, and tried to think.
What would be MacBeth's motive? Was it truly to use the summit to maintain funding? The ambitions had to be bigger than that- use the summit to gain power for himself, then? A place in this new world. The NOC was being stationed by the front entrance, where there had been recent repairs done- Gef would be able to go through the tunnels there, were there truly crawlspaces slipped into the renovations, but how would the glyphs installed inside the walls function, would those also assist in the making off with the NOC list?
Moone thought again of the utterly alien presence at the end of MacBeth's line, and felt a chill. Gef wasn't connected to MacBeth's network, Moone realized as he probed the perimeter once more, in the direction he knew Gef even now was waiting just offstage. But it would have been impossible that MacBeth acted alone, right? Moone had seen something sexy and Gef-shaped out of the corner of his eye when the shots had been fired... though the bombs' aura trigger could, as MacBeth had pointed out, easily have been counterfeited... especially by a powerful psychic.
"You know who could have enhanced my psychic aura," MacBeth leaned over and whispered suddenly, as if reading Moone's mind (but not truly doing so, of course,) "is, the Pontifex. I think. He'd been supposed to have this... power. Tap into the source of things, you know? An intermediary between the gods and men. Alas," MacBeth sighed, turning his champagne glass upside down to prove it truly empty, "Moone made off with the Pontifex, after the assassination."
Moone frowned behind his mask. There was no way that MacBeth would put the pieces together, was there? "Part of his plot, do you think?" Moone, in his as Mothman, offered quietly.
"I thought you suspected Gef?" MacBeth said, nodding up to the stage, where the speaker was talking about Gef's fifteen minutes of fame as a poltergeist on the Isle of Mann. "No, see, this is what cements Moone's guilt: Moone disappears, alongside a recently recruited enemy agent? He was probably working for them the whole time, a sleeper amongst our ranks. The Pontifex's recruitment allows him to [awaken] and strike. Shoot the Secretary, bomb the building, slip out.
"And then their escape together. Something... changed, in Moone. But I don't think that it's as simple as whatever boon he was granted from the Pontifex. Whatever he managed to do to allow him to [change] like that, I think it goes deeper."
Gef took the stage, placed at the lectern by Lovecraft, and hopped up to another, smaller lectern on top of the first one, which had been constructed specially for his address.
Between Gef's sitrep on every declassified detail they knew so far, and MacBeth's periodic whispers over to Moone filling in the classified gaps, Moone could build up a model of the evidence against him. It was true, what MacBeth said, there were [gaps in the model] of how Moone could have done it, and they seemed genuinely baffled how Moone's aura seemed to go invisible upon his recruitment of the Pontifex, where he'd twisted his aura around itself. MacBeth made out like the mysterious gaps were evidence that Moone collaborated with the Cabal, but Moone knew that those gaps were somehow caused by how MacBeth pulled off the feat.
[explain how MacBeth did it. Something about aural planes, to explain the bomb stuff, and twinned sigil portals to explain the angle of the gunshot.]
Gef had been innocent. Should Moone recruit him against MacBeth? He would be a formidable ally... but, just as Moone had thought he'd seen Gef do it, Gef had thought-- genuinely-- that Moone had been the one responsible. The only proof Moone had that MacBeth [was the one who did it] stemmed from Moone's unique ability to read MacBeth's mind at this current time-- the only way to prove anything to Gef would be to, what, detach all three of Moone's current auras and bestow them upon Gef? Moone had the feeling that as difficult as that was to say it would be even harder to do.
Whom to take this to, then? Would he be able to prove the provenance of the glyphs and [stuff] inside the walls? Moone pondered this, as Gef wrapped up, and realized that the only way he'd be able to prove anything was to catch MacBeth red-handed. He would have to allow MacBeth to get his hands on the NOC list, and then expose him before he could make off with it.
Moone didn't know when MacBeth would decide to make his move- but he still had an upper hand. He was sitting inside MacBeth's head, and when the time came for MacBeth to move, Moone would know it.
...
MacBeth made his move for the NOC list [time] later. [describe where both of them are at at this time. MacBeth someplace covert to complete his action, Moone monitoring him psychically.]
It was in an unexpected way that almost took Moone off-guard. The sigil hidden within the wall of the entry hall was apparently two-staged-- the first stage burning out set up a localized sphere of space-time, like looping the feed of a security camera. The second took the guards out. It wasn't timed by MacBeth at all, not as an action [itself]- Moone only knew when MacBeth knew, and didn't understand what was going on at first, when MacBeth received a psychic [urging] that the sigil had activated.
He was already two steps behind MacBeth. MacBeth, with the sigil as part of his psychic bubble, extended himself into it, [transcendental meditation, something about aural planes, etc] in much the same way that MacBeth had assassinated the Secretary of the Department a month ago. He had the sigil's twin here, and could reach through it like a portal, grasping toward the Necronomicon where it was being held [describe location- box? chest? vault? by the door.]
Don't panic, Moone told himself, on edge as he realized somewhere in the back of his mind that it wasn't him in danger this time and so he had no safety net to fall back on. It was a game of chess, that's all that it was. Only played without letting the opposing player realize that you were playing against him.
Being an invisible part of MacBeth's psychic bubble, Moone could watch in both the physical and aural planes as MacBeth stepped halfway through, stretched out between them like a ghostly wad of sticky chewed gum. There had to be some way to attack, some way to rescue the book-- would Moone be able to do that without alerting MacBeth to his presence? Probably not, but Moone flinched back as he realized that if he were himself also to press into the aural plane, MacBeth would see him instantly for who he was; there was no way of being anonymous about it at all.
MacBeth dropped the NOC list into the aural plane within the portals, into the space between spaces.
Well, too late for that "not letting the opposing player know he's even playing against someone" bit. Moone moved carefully around the rim of MacBeth's bubble. And he pulled himself into it.
Moone was immediately aware of MacBeth himself being aware of him. They were in a psychic space, a virtual projection [pocket dimension thing] [wherein MacBeth could smuggle the NOC list, if only briefly- magic having benefits and costs, this pocket dimension could only be a temporary solution. Being physical object taken into aural plane, within MacBeth's aura now- possibly painfully.]
In this space, Moone was his physical self- but also his true self, simultaneously. He was still in the Mothman suit, but this Mothman suit was also, still, him. With three auras on, in the aural plane he was the Mothman, the Pontifex, and still himself as well.
MacBeth paused, pondering the cherubic chimera before him, and blinked rapidly over rolling eyes, like a spooked horse. He paled as he realized the true identity of the companion he'd spent a good hour divulging classified information to. "Moone?"
[Moone says something.] Moone stepped forward. From where he'd pushed himself into MacBeth's astral plane, he was now in the lobby, the desk a ghostly glassy presence in between them. MacBeth stepped forward as well, pressing through the apparition of the physical object with ease, it reforming behind him as he did so. [MacBeth says something.]
"Why'd you do it, [first name]? Is it just for the list, or..."
MacBeth's expression turned cold. "This goes," he huffed through gritted teeth, "so much deeper, than you can possibly imagine."
"Whatever you did, we can get you through this..."
MacBeth nodded. "It's actually a good thing you showed up here, because I'd been going to say the same thing to you." And something came down through the thread that MacBeth had been extending through the sigil network, to outside of the building.
It was the alien presence, now also here, in this [space between spaces.] It felt so acutely wrong, so animal yet so intelligent. Tall, seven or eight feet, with strange mottled skin and sunken orange eyes so piercing they made the Mothman suit's seem [adjective] in comparison.
It spoke, and it seemed to speak directly into Moone's mind. [You can join me. Everyone already thinks you're the guilty one- why do you think we framed you, of all people? Be what they already think of you, and gain protection from us. We're trying to recruit you, and you don't have a choice.]
"But I do have a choice." [alien presence backs off somehow, leaving just moone and macbeth.]
"Not a real one..." MacBeth interjected.
"MacBeth, I've never made a realer decision in all my life."
"Very well then," MacBeth said. And then they were back in physical space, in the lobby of the Pentagram, with MacBeth announcing in a much louder voice: "He's here! Moone is here! In the Mothman suit!"
And just like that, the whole agency was [once again] on top of Moone.
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