nanowrimo day 3

Chapter two [this section could use a lot of work. Not only are there pretty major show-don’t-tell violations, a lot of the tradecraft and military jargon sounds like I don’t know what I’m talking about. Have actual spy or spy expert review chapter later???]

It had been five years ago. Moone, coming home late at night, had been contacted by a man identifying himself as Smith. Entering his house, he had found Smith in his living room, sitting in the dark. Being used to supernatural attacks coming without warning, Moone [hadn’t thought much of it,] until he sensed the aura of the man, which exuded from him as stench exudes from powerful cheese.

Moone would come to realize, later on, that Smith was no man, that Smith’s true form was probably unknowable; as for now, Moone took Smith to be of earth, if perhaps from the elder days. The aura is what gave him pause, and allowed Smith enough time to speak, and even make a deal. Deals themselves weren’t that uncommon in Moone’s life either; throughout the years, he had answered a thousand riddles, signed a thousand crossroad contracts in his own blood. Smith’s offer to Moone was unusual, however, for two reasons [one and two.]

Moone came in contact with creatures from every spectrum of the magical realms, and encountered a lot of privileged information. If he thought any of it actionable, he was to pass it on if at all able (occasionally he had to resort to roundabout ways, as contractual obligations bound him magically to tight clauses. There was the story of [research!], who was once bound from telling any living soul of the nature of his curse, but this did not prohibit him from discussing it loudly with a wall, which happened to have people on the other side of it.)

At the same time, Moone was to do asset recruitment of his own-- usually not recruiting those who came to attack him, although some of his most trusted agents had been [recruited] from such a medium.

[something else in here]

Smith had given Moone a choice, and to this day Moone wasn't sure if his contract with Smith counted as a genuine danger to him, and thus capable of [avoiding it.] The missions that Moone was sent on, and the agents that Moone was sent to recruit, Moone suspected of genuinely serving the greater good; however, Moone knew enough of people to know that those sending him out on these missions were flawed human beings (for the most part) with agendas of their own [show, don't tell?]

As far as he knew, the company Moone now worked for and had been working for for the past five years, had no real name. Moone just referred to it in his head as Tetragrammaton. The Unknowable, the Unspeakable Letters, the Alphabet Soup. Moone wasn't even sure if it was an official branch of the CIA, though that seemed to be the organization that Tetragrammaton most closely resembled.

It was a tight line that Tetragrammaton walked: information was his job, gathering it receiving it and disseminating it, but every secret that Moone knew he'd probably be able to find a way to weaponize if the situation called for it. Possibly even turn against his own agency, if the situation called for it.

It was what he and Lovecraft had in common; perhaps she enabled his paranoias too much, but there was a familiar point of reference between them, which the other members of his team wouldn’t begin to understand.

Still, the willingness to provide Moone with the very tools that he would need to escape his [servitude toward Tetragrammaton] was the second reason Moone suspected Smith to be an ally rather than a threat; the longer he stayed in his job, of course, the more he came to realize that those two could very often be one and the same.

[maybe an anecdote of that in here, to SHOW better, and also to segue:]

As far as anyone knew, the Cold War would be continuing indefinitely. But the [Eastern Bloc?] did fall, not too many months ago, [maybe something else in here too,] and there was even already talk about disbanding the CIA now that the threat seemed to be over, now that the west had no true superpower standing against it. In the supernatural world, however, it does not take a superpower to develop and use a superweapon.

A few months ago, in January immediately after the Soviet Union had dissolved, one of Moone’s assets had received a coded message, over the internet, claiming that there was still a conspiracy taking place holding the union together, not of a secular nature, but of a supernatural one.

[give paragraph-long explanation of Usenet as it stood in 1992- still only available to colleges, still one of the biggest networks on the internet. Act informative, but act as though this is present-day, high-tech technology being discussed.

[Bring up the in-joke and explain its origins, “there is no cabal.”]

Over the next few months more details were revealed, and independently corroborated:

The Jewish Pogroms had allowed sectors of the Cabal to grow [establish that earlier, in the Usenet thing, also sound less anti-Semitic], undetected, under Russia’s nose; now, wrangling power for themselves, they sought to subjugate all local folklores under them, disempowering the local myths and allowing their own to [have the power.] Belief in folklore was a powerful force, and in many places of the world local legends and boogiemen were dying out. The overthrow of a major secular state was the perfect opportunity to fill in an officially atheist vacuum with [a power structure of one’s own.]

Something had apparently changed within the structure of the cabal, however, and now the message read that their informant [needed to] defect. It was the old, unspoken assumption of cold war espionage, now taking one final form: the west received their intelligence only from defectors, while the east had agents in place, stationed all over and even in the highest levels of government. Everything in tradecraft needs to be taken cum salo granis, so there would need to be a thorough debriefing of the agent to vet that they weren’t replacing one kind of spy with another one, but the urgency of the message was enough such that Moone had requested, and been given permission, to lead an immediate [dust-up] team to extract the target.

The asset had given the time and place where he was to be extracted, and provided a specific marker to identify him by. The time was this morning. The place was here, at this compound where the cabal had [holed up.] Specifically, the room that Gef and Cloud were outside of right now.

Outside of, awaiting the signal [to extract the package.]

MacBeth crouched into a snowless sheltered area underneath a tree where a limb had fallen against it, making a natural lean-to, and put his psychic bubble back up over each member of the team, Moone covering him, the demon-possessed phylactery slipped into his jacket pocket and his pistol out. They were far enough along in the mission that guards wouldn’t pose a real threat during extraction [establish reason earlier], and Moone suspected anyway that being exposed out here was the real danger, now that their previous position had been made. [establish earlier that the bubble also makes you invisible to cameras maybe, or else otherwise explain disabling the cameras inside the compound or looping/tricking them somehow.]

Lovecraft was covering Gef through another method entirely, a direct link between the two that didn’t require MacBeth’s telepathy to operate [sending out psychic spikes to cover in case of danger? Maybe that took the guard out last time.] She had taken backup command when MacBeth’s psychic links had gone down, but now that the bubble was back up, Moone regained control.

Alright, [Lovecraft.] They know we’re here. Let’s get this done quickly. Extract the target, pull out; Gef, Lovecraft, Mushroom, you extract to Charlie point while MacBeth and I go bravo, and [if nobody’s tailing us] we regroup at alpha point in 0300 hours. Moone felt the others over the link give the affirmative, and gave the signal.

Moone went back to covering MacBeth, giving the area around them wide coverage. A few minutes later, there was a series of muffled explosions from the direction of the compound- Gef’s handiwork (paw-i-work?) having placed explosives around the compound during his initial infiltration, not only to provide a distraction and therefore cover during their escape, but also to deflect suspicion off of the fact of the asset’s defection. The plan from the beginning was to disguise the whole extraction operation as enemy sabotage; their agent wouldn’t have been able to disappear without raising suspicion of his activities.

Moone and MacBeth encountered no more guards or cabal agents, and could [extract themselves] normally. They proceeded to their designated [fallback point] with caution, and from there to the regroup point. [provide physical and sensory description.] The other members of the team, women, mongoose, and asset, arrived [time period] later.

[how is asset being transported? Is he walking? Are they carrying him? Does he have a headbag on? Is there anyone injured, and how badly?]

The asset turned out to be a thin and wiry man; he would have been feeble-looking but for the fact that he carried himself unshakingly, and the gait of a man with very strong core muscles. His cheeks had lines parallel to the jaw, which ran up into deep bags underneath his eyes. His dark hair was thick and wiry, curled relatively tightly and matted to the top of his skull.

He was called the Pontifex, which Moone understood to be meant not in its ecclesiastical sense but in its literal one. Latin for maker of bridges, a medium between men and the gods. Moone could sense his aura, and his proximity to MacBeth gave the aura sense an unusual degree of nuance- there was something strange about it, layered like an onion. Any aura could be bestowed upon another, for a limited amount of time, and usually requiring tools or other magical assistance to accomplish, but the power of this one, and the slick way it seemed to float just off of the Pontifex’s body, made it clear to Moone that this was a man used to bestowing his aura onto others. The aura had an intrinsic magical ability, one that the Pontifex never seemed to use on himself. Moone got closer to the man…

And could feel his own aura grow slightly, subtly stronger as it intersected with the Pontifex’s. Was he imagining it? He retreated back a few steps toward MacBeth, and stuck one hand in MacBeth’s aura (and I must look ridiculous, he thought to himself, though knowing full well that MacBeth would also be able to hear him)—and reached out, sticking his other hand toward the Pontifex’s aura. Sure enough, with MacBeth’s psychic aura enhancing Moone’s own aura-detecting power, he could see in his third eye the aura of his outstretched right hand brighten. Both bane and boon in that hand, specifically grow stronger.

And the Pontifex looked up at Moone like he was one of the most delicious steaks that he’d seen in his life. Hm. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, thought Moone.