<begin forwarded message>

From: “Newton Geiszler” ngeiszler@wgbh.org

To: “[redacted]” <[redacted]>

Sent: Monday, November 14, 2016, 3:52:01 PM EST

Subject: "Black Tapes 207 Final Edits"

Attached: BTP207-edited.mp3 (60.6 MB)

SEASON 2, EPISODE 7: THIS HERALD SAYETH

[PUBLICATION PENDING]

(Fade in... exterior sounds, wind)

(As audio gets louder, sound resolves to waves and wind. A boat on the ocean. Wind is howling, motor is straining, waves are hitting side of the speeding boat.)

(Motor whines)

(Wind and waves continue)

NEWT: (calling over wind) Is that it, up ahead?

VOICE: (muffled from inside ship cabin) That’s it!

(motor whine pitches down as boat slows; waves slapping get louder)

NEWT: (quieter) Hermann, do you see that?

HERMANN: Yes...

NEWT: Is it smoke...?

CAPTAIN: (loud, muffled from inside) I’m going to dock same as last time. Sound good?

NEWT: (calling back) All good! (lower) Hermann, what is that...

HERMANN: I don't know. I don't like it.

(motor continues slowing down)

NEWT: If--

(resounding THUMP)

NEWT: Whoa!

(stumbling footsteps, objects crashing to floor)

HERMANN: (indistinct)

(Ship captain yells indistinctly)

NEWT: [expletive bleeped]! What the hell was that?

(voices nearby)

(slapping waves continue)

NEWT: Did we hit something? I can’t see anything--it’s too dark.

HERMANN: I think something hit us.

(yelling getting closer--coming from inside the cabin)

HERMANN: (low) They’re getting closer.

NEWT: (hissing) Should we be quiet?

HERMANN: I think they’re looking for us.

VOICE FROM INSIDE CABIN: (muffled) ...It’s non-negotiable. We will not use force unless we have to. But if we have to, we will.

HERMANN: (sharp inhale)

NEWT: Hermann?

(door crashes open)

NEWT: (hisses) Ow!

FEMALE VOICE: You. Both of you. Come with me.

NEWT: Uh... I don’t think so. I don’t really make a habit of doing what balaclava-clad pirates tell me to do.

WOMAN: Non-negotiable. You’re not going onto that island. You’re coming with us.

NEWT: (provocative) Are you, like, threatening me?

HERMANN: (voice thin, strained) Newton, we’re going with her.

NEWT: (angrily) Oh, are we, Dr. Gottlieb?

WOMAN: Like I said. Not negotiable.

NEWT: Hermann, would you mind explaining what the hell is going on? And while we’re at it, releasing your death grip on my arm?

HERMANN: (...) (strained) Newton Geiszler, I’d like to introduce you... to Vanessa Gottlieb.

(exterior ocean sounds)

(interior boat sounds: now we are inside a cabin. Wind and waves and motor are audible outside, but muffled. The motor whine on this boat is higher. It’s driving away fast.)

NEWT: What was going on on the island? What was that fire?

VANESSA: I don’t know.

NEWT: Where are you taking us?

VANESSA: Somewhere safe.

NEWT: What was the danger on the island?

VANESSA: It was a trap.

NEWT: Set by whom?

VANESSA: I’m not answering any more questions.

NEWT: What was the fire?

VANESSA: Cookout.

NEWT: (...)

NEWT: But who would set a trap for us? Who? What could anyone possibly want from us? Information? Don’t they know they could just call?

VANESSA: (snapping) What did I just say?

NEWT: (impudently) I can’t seem to recall.

VANESSA: I said I’m not answering any more [expletive bleeped] questions on tape.

NEWT: But how did you know we would be--

HERMANN: Newton.

NEWT: (...)

(pause) (engine and ocean sounds continue)

NEWT: (subdued) Sorry. I’ll... let you two talk.

VANESSA: We’ll talk on the mainland. I need to focus right now.

NEWT: On?

VANESSA: Getting us out of here.

-----------OFF THE RECORD-----------

(wind, waves, but no motor)

(one seagull cries in the distance)

(footsteps on wooden dock, boards creaking)

NEWT: Hey. I’m sorry. For before.

HERMANN: Sorry?

NEWT: For grilling her. I shouldn’t have pushed.

HERMANN: It’s alright.

NEWT: No, I could see it upset you. (...) I’m sorry.

HERMANN: (...) It’s alright.

NEWT: Okay.

(beat)

NEWT: Talk to me, man. Do you know what’s going on?

HERMANN: No.

VANESSA: (in the distance) Let’s go!

-----------RESUME RECORD-----------

(sound of door closing)

(footsteps with cane)

(someone sitting down)

(pause)

(faucet turns on)

(water filling a glass)

(faucet turns off)

(footsteps)

(glass being placed gently on wooden table)

HERMANN: (softly) Thank you.

NEWT: (quiet) Mhm.

HERMANN: Thank you. For... waiting. With me.

NEWT: Yeah. Of course.

HERMANN: And for... 

NEWT: ...Oh. No, yeah (...) I get it. Don’t worry.

HERMANN: I’m still... processing.

NEWT: Yeah. Of course. Don’t worry.

(beat)

NEWT: Maybe you’ll see each other again. One day. Maybe?

HERMANN: I don’t think so.

(pause)

NEWT: (quiet) I’m sorry.

HERMANN: It’s alright. (...) I never thought I’d see her again to begin with.

NEWT: (...)

HERMANN: (with difficulty) At least... At least this way I got to say goodbye.

NEWT: Yeah.

(long pause)

HERMANN: Let’s go.

NEWT: Go?

HERMANN: Yes. Out of this house.

(stands up)

NEWT: Where--?

HERMANN: Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.

Hermann drove. The whole way, he was silent and still. Wishing to respect his conversational and emotional privacy, Newt tried to keep silent too. The late unlit streets of the sub-freezing Greater Boston Area were hollowed out by the cold and the hour. No one else was on the road. And in the pressure of the cold silence surrounding them, Hermann seemed completely still.

Newt watched him from the passenger seat. He did not know where they were going, if anywhere, nor when they would get there, if ever. Newt thought, as he often did when going from one place to another, of Zeno’s paradox. If you crossed every distance by half-intervals, could you ever reach your destination? Half-distance after half-distance was closed, each one smaller, until you were infinitesimally close, but never arrived. Maybe that was what they were doing. Closing endless half-intervals to nowhere.

“You don’t have to be quiet for my sake.”

Newt didn’t even see his mouth move, in the dark. If he hadn’t heard him, he wouldn’t have believed he’d spoken at all.

“Sorry?” he said.

Another car passed in the opposite direction, sending a lance of icy light over Hermann’s motionless profile.

“I’m just thinking,” Hermann said, tone neutral. “I don’t need silence for that.”

“Oh,” said Newt. “Okay. Right on.”

He turned on the radio. He was feeling very uncertain about the boundaries of privacy and care, particularly with his recorder going in his pocket.

“I was trying to give you some personal time,” Newt said, as the anesthetic tones of Rivers Cuomo filled the car. “To process.”

“I am processing,” Hermann said.

Even when he spoke, he seemed motionless. Newt was in awe, suddenly, of his colleague’s steadiness. He was like a glacier. Newt had never known someone so constant. Maybe that was another word for stubbornness, he thought, but that did nothing to stem his sudden flow of affection. There he sat, perfectly still, thinking over whole scores of things in tamped-down silence; thinking a rate that appeared incremental from the ground, but was, in reality, carving a whole landscape.

“Where are we going?” Newt asked at last.

“Nowhere, yet,”

“...But?”

“...But, we’ll go somewhere, when I’m done.”

“Done thinking?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Soon,” Hermann added after a pause.

Newt found that his heart was beating hard.

“Take your time,” he said.

NEWT: So, I know it’s late, but... if you’re up for it?

HERMANN: Yes.

NEWT: We don’t have to. We can wait. Or (...) Or we can leave it.

HERMANN: No. It’s alright. I’m ready. Can I get you a drink first?

NEWT: Sure. Whatever you’re having.

(clinking)

(footsteps)

(two glasses being set down)

(sitting down on a couch)

HERMANN: She was a watcher.

NEWT: Vanessa?

HERMANN: Yes. That’s what she told me.

NEWT: Did she leave us the painting, with the message?

HERMANN: No. Her original message, the one she sent to you, was intercepted. She said she believes “they” are monitoring the podcast. The message on the painting was planted by them.

NEWT: A trap?

HERMANN: So she said.

NEWT: What does that mean, a “watcher"?

HERMANN: Her original assignment was to track my whereabouts, report on my activities, and keep me safe. She did this at the behest of a shadow organization led by the Advocate.

NEWT: Did she know who the Advocate was?

HERMANN: She said she never met them. Mark Roth was her highest contact.

NEWT: She didn't think it was him?

HERMANN: She said she didn’t.

NEWT: Sounds like you disagree.

HERMANN: I plan to keep looking into it.

NEWT: (hesitantly) So... if she was... assigned to you, then... your marriage. Was it...?

HERMANN: No.

NEWT: (quietly) No?

HERMANN: She told me... (pause) This is difficult to talk about.

NEWT: I know. I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about your marriage. It’s okay.

HERMANN: She told me she cared about me, but not... in the conventional way socially dictated by a marriage. (...) Our relationship began as a job. Dating was the natural course. Then marriage.

She told me she never fell in love, but that she grew to care about my well-being. She felt protective of me, and uncertain about her original assignment. It was complicated. I never knew this, of course.

(sigh)

At a certain point she began to lie to her superiors, to protect me from both “sides.” Sometime before her disappearance, she realized they suspected her. So she disappeared.

She’s been on the run from her organization ever since. As far as I could gather, she now works for an opposing organization. She refused to go into specifics about that.

NEWT: What else did she say?

HERMANN: She warned me that the Advocate had been watching me for a long time. She said they were preparing something... big.

NEWT: Something big? What does that mean?

HERMANN: I don’t know. She doesn’t either. The whole thing, it’s... something to do with my family.

NEWT: How?

HERMANN: Genetics. According to Vanessa, these people, for some insane reason, believe I am the heir of some genetic key that gives me some sort of “Gift of Sight.” (derisively) They believe this gift will assist in whatever nonsense they’re planning.

NEWT: I’m not sure I understand. What people? What sight?

HERMANN: Vanessa believes that the Advocate, working through Rothco, has been working with the Cult of Tiamat.

NEWT: (intrigued) Really?

HERMANN: Yes. In order to bring about some... some sort of something.

NEWT: (lightly teasing) Sounds like you’re avoiding a particular word...

HERMANN: (archly) Does it?

NEWT: (pause) (quietly serious) ...Like the Herald thing? The Pilori? That kind of sight?

HERMANN: Newton, those are nothing more than stories.

NEWT: (...)

HERMANN: (...)

NEWT: (realizing) Oh... Was that why Mark Roth stole your coffee cup? For the genetic material?

HERMANN: The possibility has occurred to me. 

NEWT: So tell me... I couldn’t help but notice things were strange between you. Which, I know, is to be expected after eleven years. But I was wondering.

HERMANN: Yes?

NEWT: Was this really the first time you saw each other?

HERMANN: (...) I had been trying to get in touch with her for some time. Since last December.

NEWT: You told me you never found her.

HERMANN: I didn’t. But I did find some leads. Some leads which I kept to myself. I got one of them from your friend, Mr. Becket.

NEWT: Really?

HERMANN: (grimly) That was what you... overheard us discussing.

NEWT: (surprised) You were talking about Vanessa?

HERMANN: Yes.

NEWT: Why didn’t you tell me?

HERMANN: I didn’t want you to broadcast it. I didn’t want to scare her off by potentially exposing her. But then... Well, I reached out through the various back channels I discovered. And when she finally answered me, it was through the podcast. That surprised me. I was able to get in contact with her following our visit to Quebec last month. We exchanged several encrypted emails.

NEWT: But you were surprised to see her, tonight. Right?

HERMANN: Yes. Her language in those emails led me to believe she was deep in hiding. I didn’t expect to see her. Ever.

(beat)

NEWT: Can I ask you something?

HERMANN: I believe that’s how this works, yes.

NEWT: (chuckles) Uh--so I’ve been wondering. The Gottlieb Institute. Was there some other reason you founded it, besides the stated mission? I don’t mean an ulterior motive. But like, an underlying motive.

HERMANN: I remember you asking me the same thing on the day we met.

NEWT: (audibly smiling) You brushed me off that time too, as I recall.

HERMANN: (not without warmth) Well. No. The Institute’s mission is to debunk all claims of the paranormal. That is the primary reason for its existence.

NEWT: ...But?

HERMANN: But.

NEWT: You started the Institute soon after she disappeared, didn’t you?

HERMANN: Yes. (...) At a personal level, it’s possible I was motivated by other factors, in that period. Grief, some... personal failures.

NEWT: Like what?

HERMANN: When Vanessa disappeared... I went looking for her. You recall.

NEWT: For five days. You said you went out into the woods.

HERMANN: Yes. I did. I thought I had insights the police wouldn’t have. I knew her. (darkly) Or, I thought I did. Well, in any case, my insights were worthless. I found nothing. So I became desperate. I attempted to... rekindle the ability I believed I had possessed as a child.

NEWT: ...The ability that led you to the body of Alex Calder?

HERMANN: Yes.

NEWT: So you...

HERMANN: But it was absurd, of course. I’m not a psychic. I never was.

NEWT: Then how do you explain it? You led them right to Alex Calder’s body. How did you know it was there?

HERMANN: When Alex disappeared, the news upset my mother deeply. I didn’t understand why, fully, at the time. She was already having difficulties--our father was away, she was arguing with my sister. She was friends with Mrs. Calder, and maybe that contributed. The sense that something so horrible could happen to a family she knew. I don’t know. For some reason... she was distraught.

I wanted to help, somehow. Fifteen-year-old boys, they think they have all the answers, if only someone would just ask them. I was no different. I thought I could solve the case through reasoning. And I knew those woods better than any police officer. So I pored over maps of Lincoln and the surrounding towns. I tried to locate where a killer might, logically, discard a body.

It was a long week. I must have spent an unhealthy amount of time doing this, because I ended up dreaming about it.

NEWT: “A very vivid dream.” That was what you said to your friend Jackson.

HERMANN: We do a lot of processing in our sleep. It must have manifested in a dream. Either way, when I woke up that morning, it had crystallized.

NEWT: But you led them right to the body. That isn’t logic.

HERMANN: No. It was luck.

NEWT: (incredulous) Luck?

HERMANN: I was young. I may have had a... flair for the dramatic. That affected the manner in which I presented my “theory.” But I was certain I could find him. So I led Jacks and the others along a path that took us through every location I had thought would make logical sense.

NEWT: So it wasn’t direct?

HERMANN: No. I took a route that touched many possible places. And that pool was the spot where we finally found him.

NEWT: But you told Jackson Styll that he was in a pond, in a clearing.

HERMANN: No... That wasn’t what I said. I told Jackson that pool was one of the many places we might find him. If that’s what he said, he's misremembering.

NEWT: But you saw it in a dream. Right?

HERMANN: At the time, I thought so.

NEWT: So Jackson thinking you led him directly to Alex...

HERMANN: ...is a construction. I told him about the dream. I told him I knew where the body might be. Then, against all odds, we actually found it there. That discovery alone, for a group of kids, is traumatic enough to create a shock. The shock on top of the unlikelihood--it all combined to reformat his memories.

NEWT: Well. Maybe yours too.

HERMANN: Maybe so.

NEWT: Afterwards... did you know Jackson thought you were psychic? Like, did you ever talk about it again?

HERMANN: I didn’t like talking about it. Jacks... well.

(beat)

NEWT: (...) Did you see anything else that day?

HERMANN: What do you mean?

NEWT: I ask because when Jackson described you getting up and leaving his friend's house, he said you seemed to see something. Outside the window. Do you remember that?

HERMANN: No.

NEWT: You didn’t see anything out there?

HERMANN: Nothing I can remember.

NEWT: Okay. So then, what, fifteen years later... You convinced yourself you could rekindle this ability. To find someone else.

HERMANN: Yes. I was desperate... I gave in to the impulse. It was a lapse of judgement.

NEWT: You tried to be psychic.

HERMANN: And failed. Obviously.

NEWT: And set up the Gottlieb Institute?

HERMANN: That’s right.

NEWT: So... I have to ask again. Are the black tapes all connected?

HERMANN: (low) I don’t know.

NEWT: Do you think they might be?

HERMANN: I don’t know.

(someone picks up a glass)

HERMANN: Could I ask you something?

NEWT: (with faux solicitude) I think that's my line.

HERMANN: (...) How did you read the code on the painting? When we discovered it?

NEWT: Read it? I didn’t read the Capovolto Code.

HERMANN: But you read something. You read me a short verse. All I saw were letters and numbers.

NEWT: Right... Well, like, I thought I did. It was weird. When I look at the photo I took of the painting, I don’t see any words. I just see the code, like usual. I was pretty hyped up at the time, so I thought I saw something. I was probably just seeing patterns... Pareidolia, if you will.

HERMANN: (wry) I believe that’s my line.

NEWT: (laughs)

(someone sets down a glass)

NEWT: So... and you don’t have to answer this. I’ve just been wondering. Were you surprised by what Vanessa told you tonight?

HERMANN: (flat) Was I surprised that my ex-wife was a secret agent?

NEWT: Well, yeah. Like, did you... ever think something was up?

HERMANN: While we were together, you mean?

NEWT: Yeah.

HERMANN: (...) As I said before... I attributed it to an affair. But even at the time, that seemed... wrong.

NEWT: So did this make more sense?

HERMANN: In a strange way? Yes. (pause) After so many years of wondering... It isn’t exactly good news. It carries a lot of sinister implications about the rest of my life. But I'm still... I’m glad I know.

NEWT: Why?

HERMANN: (slowly) It puts some things into place. Things about which I’ve been confused.

NEWT: (quickly) Like what?

(long silence)

(movement, muffled click)

--------- ⏹ Stop ---------

Beep. Hermann reached for Newt’s phone, where it rested between them on the coffee table, and stopped the recording.

“Turn off your other one.”

“My other what?” Newt said, taken aback.

“Newton.”

Hermann stared at him, eyes sharp. Newt's heart was suddenly thumping.

Then Hermann leaned forward across the table. He reached into Newt’s breast pocket and pulled the backup recorder out. The little red light was on.

But instead of turning it off, he held it up to Newt’s mouth.

“Ask again.”

“What—?” said Newt, flustered.

“Ask your question.”

His voice was low and flat as a blade.

“...What is causing your confusion?” Newt said.

Hermann pulled the recorder from Newt’s mouth and held it to his own. “You.”

Newt stared at him, wide-eyed.

The recorder in Hermann’s hand hovered in the air between them. He moved to flick it off, barely a twitch—but Newt’s hand closed around his wrist. Stopping him.

He looked up at Newt. The journalist was staring at him with tractor beam eyes.

Newt tightened his grip on his wrist.

In a clatter the recorder fell to the table and they were kissing, Newt clasping Hermann’s cheeks and Hermann grasping for purchase on his wrinkled white shirt. Professional boundaries burned like bridges in both their minds. Newt, for one, was leaping right from the fire into the river. He kissed his subject with a fervor that could only be described as fascination. Hermann kissed him back with a passion that belied his aloof manner, or perhaps that perpetually thundered behind its locked door.

Hermann tugged Newt by the arm, already trying to pull him closer across the two feet of varnished walnut between them. Pulled off balance, Newt dropped a hand onto the table to steady himself. Was Hermann going to drag him straight over his own living room furniture?

In the half-second gap chasing Hermann’s lips, he felt the two-foot air gap between their bodies like a cliff drop he was scoping for a base jump. He imagined the free fall with his gut. He thought of all the slopes and planes of Hermann under those clothes—not in the vague way he had often imagined them, but in an immediate and material and urgently real way. If he jumped, he was going to find out.

He wanted to.

Their lips met again, and Hermann let out a tiny gasp that made Newt shiver. Almost enough to push him off the cliff. Hermann’s left hand found his arm and wrapped round it, ran down and up again, and tugged. Towards himself, across the solid distance that stood like a sword planted between them.

“Hermann—” he managed.

Hermann tugged his arm again.

Newt tugged back. “Hermann—” He pulled his mouth back as best he could. “How, exactly, do you expect me to get—”

“Newton,” Hermann said, leaning further forward and kissing him again, “For once—would you shut up?”

Newt pulled farther back, drawing Hermann further forward. “So that’s how it is?”

Hermann caught him again. “Yes.”

“Mm,” Newt articulated. “Mmkay”

Unable to accept reality or unwilling to navigate it with grace, Newt shoved forward and put his knee onto the table. Hermann made a muffled exclamatory noise. Newt climbed onto the coffee table. There was a thump as, predictably, he knocked a glass to the floor.

“Newton!”

“Excuse me,” Newt said, kneeling on the table. He secured his new upper position by wrapping his arms around Hermann’s shoulders. “I thought this was what you wanted me to do. Was I misreading your signals?”

“Yes—” Hermann said, before Newt cut him off.

“Yes,” Hermann tried again a moment later, breathless, “And I—”

“Oh, excuse me, I thought we were shutting up?” Newt said, pulling back slightly, grinning. Hermann was already satisfyingly flustered. Advantage: Newt. “Was that not the plan?”

“I hope you know...” Hermann broke off, distracted, as Newt began kissing under his jaw.

“Yes?”

Newt kissed his neck.

“About you being quiet...” Hermann tipped his head back.

“Yes?”

“It is not my preference.”

Newt paused, lips on his throat.

“Are you telling me you like the sound of my voice, Dr. Gottlieb?” he asked.

“I think you are good at your job,” Hermann replied, his voice drawn sharp by his stretched vocal cords.

“Mm,” Newt said into his neck, unbalanced both by the compliment and by Hermann’s hands on his waist. “You heard me... didn’t you?”

“In the hotel room?”

Newt’s breath caught. Hermann was rubbing arcs with his thumbs in Newt’s soft sides. “Yes.”

“Yes,” Hermann said. “I did.”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“You liar,” Hermann murmured, continuing his bilateral shirt interference. “You knew.”

Newt reasserted his conversational upper hand by lightly biting Hermann’s neck.

Hermann inhaled in surprise and tightened his grip. Newt exhaled, grinning. He bit again, but his smile put a damper on the effectiveness. Hermann made a noise that could have been either distress or approval. Newt kissed his neck again.

“You are absurd,” Hermann murmured as he moved back up.

“One of my most attractive qualities, I’m told,” Newt said, and kissed him again.

Newt exhaled, short and sharp as Hermann’s probing thumb found the scooped hem of his dress shirt, which, riding up from exertion, exposed a triangle of skin. Hermann wasted no time in pulling the rest of the hem out of his pants.  

"Your information is faulty," said Hermann as his hands slid up the back of Newt's shirt.

After a moment, Hermann put real pressure on his back to draw him forward. Newt acquiesced, and climbed off the table and onto Hermann’s lap, pushing him against the back of the couch. He ended up straddling him, legs tucked on either side of the doctor’s, making sure his weight was off his left leg. Newt rubbed the back of Hermann's neck, stroking the stubble of his cropped hair. He had wanted to touch it for so long. He kissed Hermann slowly, with all the temporal unconcern of the post-midnight hours and the months of waiting. He worked round the perimeter of his mouth like a flame licking the edge of a slip of paper. 

At length Hermann broke away, kissing Newt’s cheek and then his jaw.

“Newton,” he murmured.

“Mhm?”

“I'm sorry for making you wait.”

“You needed your time,” Newt replied softly.

“And you didn’t?”

“Mm-mm,” Newt replied in the negative, stroking his cropped hair.

Hermann kissed the shell of his ear.

“In December...”

“When you planted one on me? Or when you ghosted me?”

“I was afraid. I left.” Hermann kissed his neck. “I shouldn’t have.”

“But you came back.”

“I had to.” Hermann paused again. “But when I did, I felt worse than ever. I had no idea how to act towards you. And I felt guilty, for leaving, for my feelings when my missing spouse was out there somewhere... guilty for compromising your work, and mine...”

“What changed?” Newt asked softly.

Hermann lifted his face and put his forehead against Newt’s. Newt kept stroking his hair.

“When you got sick, I was very upset.” Newt shifted uncomfortably. “While you were on leave, I realized I had to uncouple my feelings about you from the feelings I was tormenting myself with. The guilt, the upset. I realized if I never did that...” Hermann closed his eyes. “Relationship or no relationship, if I never disassociated you from that, I would never have the least chance of happiness.”

Newt’s hand slowed. He stared at him in up-close surprise. “Just like that? You just snapped yourself out of it?” Hermann opened his eyes and met Newt’s. Newt smiled. “You analytical bastard.”

“I trained myself out of it,” Hermann corrected him. “It didn’t happen overnight. But yes.”

He closed the gap and kissed Newt slowly. Eyes closed, Newt pictured him alone in August, repainting and refurnishing his house room by room, rearranging his thoughts until they were hospitable.

“That’s remarkable,” Newt murmured when they broke apart. “Honestly. You’ll have to tell me how you pulled that one off.”

“You are not difficult to make space for,” Hermann said, looking him in the eyes.

Newt smiled, warm and abashed.

Hermann slipped his hands back up under Newt’s shirt. He ran his hands over Newt’s stomach and around his waist.

“Then there was the issue of my spouse,” Hermann said.

“Right,” Newt said, a bit breathily, trying not to squirm at the press of Hermann’s thumbs into his hips. “That little issue.”

Hermann exhaled what passed for a laugh. “Well.”

“Well?”

“Even if I had been ready,” Hermann said, “I had to resolve things with her first. Even after all this time.”

Newt understood. Hermann’s conscience would not have allowed it otherwise.

“Mm... But once you did,” Newt leaned in close and murmured in his ear in his most fake-lascivious-but-really-real voice, “You wasted absolutely no time...”

Hermann actually laughed, squeezing Newt’s sides. Newt laughed too, and nosed the curve of Hermann’s ear.

“Apologies—” Hermann said, sounding rather breathless himself. Was he sensitive about his ears? “Perhaps I've rushed into things.”

“Undeniably,” Newt whispered into his ear, grinning. “You are too forward, Dr. Gottlieb. Give me another year and a half to think it over.” He closed his teeth around Hermann’s earlobe, which earned him a disproportionately startled grunt and then a swat. Newt pulled back, laughing.

“Stop that,” Hermann said, and Newt saw that he was actually a bit flushed.

“Sorry,” said Newt, grinning. He kissed him, still smiling.

“But—Newton?”

“Mhm?”

“What about you? Your work? ”

Newt hesitated, avoiding Hermann’s gaze.

“We’re not talking about that right now,” he finally said.

“But—”

“Preferably never,” Newt said, sitting back.

“Alright.”

Hermann’s hands had slowed to a stop on his waist. Newt looked, unseeingly, back and forth between Hermann’s brown eyes, his mind skirting the dark sinkhole he had, so far, been successfully steering clear of.

What was he going to do?

It was one thing to have sexy daydreams in direct conflict-of-interest with your day job.

But this...

It’s over.

The words came from the sinkhole in his head. It's over. It's over. The show couldn’t go on, not now.

It was over.

With new momentum, the force of abandon, Newt pushed forward and kissed Hermann. Hermann made a muffled noise of surprise but responded in kind. Newt slid his fingers up into the longer locks of his hair and tightened his grip. 

If he was going to burn it down, he was going to burn it all down.

Hermann seemed to see some of that in his eyes when he pulled back again. Newt moved to undo his tie, but Hermann caught his hands.

“Wait.”

They stared at each other.

“Let me.”

Newt let his hands down slowly. The flames were licking at his stomach.

Hermann loosened the knot. He did not break eye contact. Newt tipped his chin back but didn’t break it either. Hermann didn’t pull the tail out—he untied the knot completely and let the ends fall, draped around Newt’s neck.

Leaning in close, Hermann undid the top button of his shirt. It was actually the second button—Newt never buttoned the top one, he didn’t like the constriction. Hermann mouthed at the exposed skin of his neck. He wondered, as Hermann opened the next button, if he had thought about that open button and loose tie knot the same way Newt had thought about Hermann’s hands and the short hair on the back of his head. He opened the next one. 

Hermann kissed his neck below the ear and said, “Lie down.”

Newt did so. Hermann tipped him and he lay back on the couch. Hermann sat on his legs. He undid Newt’s last few buttons, then bent down and kissed his chest. He ran his hands over Newt’s stomach, up his sides, over his chest, and up over his collarbone, so lightly he was barely touching him. Newt breathed out slowly, like he was exhaling smoke.

Moving slowly, Hermann pushed his sleeve off his shoulder, and revealed the dense tattoo tapestry concealed there.

“Surprised?” Newt said weakly, lifting his head slightly to look. Hermann was leaning close, studying them. “A full sleeve is considered unprofessional, so I’m keeping it confined to the t-shirt zone until my 401K is secure. But after that...”

“I’m not surprised,” Hermann said softly. “I knew they were there.”

“You did?”

“I could see them,” Hermann murmured. “Through your shirts.”

Newt shivered.

Hermann leaned in and kissed him again. Newt matched his slow, heavy pace. Hermann worked his fingers through Newt’s messy hair. When Hermann pulled away, he was not breathless. Nor was he smiling. Newt stared up at him. He leaned over Newt, hand braced on the couch, mostly not touching him. His cheeks were flushed. His hair was disorderly.

Newt dipped his head to say, Well? and slid his hands up under the hem of Hermann’s sweater. Obligingly the doctor pulled it off. Then he leaned back over Newt and let him take care of his dress shirt’s many buttons.

Open, it revealed a sleeveless white undershirt. Newt pushed the shirt back over his shoulders and it landed behind him on Newt’s ankles.

Hermann leaned slowly back in, his hands running down to Newt’s stomach. His heart was thrumming there, right beneath Hermann’s southward-moving hands. He closed his eyes, sinking his head back...

But right as his eyes closed, he heard a gasp. Hermann’s hands disappeared from his stomach.

Newt opened his eyes.

“Hermann?”

His colleague was sitting up, leaning back, looking startled. No—not just startled. Shaken. His eyes were wide. The color had drained from his face.

“Hermann?” Newt said again, hiking himself up on his elbows. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I... Yes,” Hermann said. He shook his head, then squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sorry.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing—” Hermann shook his head again. “Nothing, I just thought I saw something. I was just imagining things. It’s nothing... I’m alright.”

Newt sat up as best he could, and touched Hermann’s arm.

“Saw something?”

Hermann exhaled and opened his eyes. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry.”

“Okay...”

“Oh, Newton—”

“Huh?”

Hermann was reaching for his face, eyes wide again— “Are you bleeding?”

“Am I—?”

Newt reached quickly for his nose. But there was nothing. Newt felt no blood there. He pulled his hand away and looked. His fingers were clean.

“No, I don’t think I am.” Newt looked up at Hermann, panic allayed but worry mounting.

“I’m sorry.” Hermann frowned. “It must have been a shadow.”

“You feeling alright, Doc?” Newt said. “Was that two consecutive hallucinations in the space of sixty seconds?”

“No... No,” Hermann said, composure mostly restored. “Tricks of the light.”

“I feel like I’ve heard that one before,” Newt said, sitting up fully. Hermann shifted to let his legs free. The air felt a lot colder on his exposed chest than it had before. “I’d better go check, anyway.”

“There’s a bathroom at the top of the stairs,” Hermann said. Newt stood up stiffly from the couch. “I’ll bring your things.”

“Upstairs?”

Newt shivered—partly because of the cold, partly because of his knowledge of the first floor bathroom.

He had never been upstairs.

“Yes,” Hermann said, looking up into Newt’s eyes with fully visible nerves. “My room is the door to the left.”

“Such presumptuousness, Dr. Gottlieb,” he said, mustering all the faux affront he could while shivering with his shirt open in his journalistic subject’s living room, said subject in his undershirt before him. A bid to reassure them both.

He saw Hermann’s face relax slightly.

“Go,” was all he said. 

Upstairs in the bathroom, Newt flipped on the light and shut the door. He took a second to brace himself against the sink and exhale dramatically, then to run his hands through his hair and rub his eyes under his glasses, then to make a prolonged study of his own face. Nothing to get spooked at, as far as he could see. No blood.

He breathed out, rubbing his jaw. It was strange, the first time you kissed someone. For hours after, you could still feel all the places they’d touched you, like a phantom limb. Newt passed his fingers lightly over his lips.

Then he pulled off his glasses, turned on the water, and splashed himself a few times. He dried off his face and put his glasses back on. More out of habit than hope, he gave himself a once-over. He was extremely disheveled. His hair was a nightmare, and he had passed 5 o’clock and was approaching 10 o’clock shadow. He moved to take off his tie, at least, then left it. Hermann had left it. Maybe it was doing something for him. That white undershirt was certainly working for Newt.

His hand lingering on the light switch, he studied his reflection once again. Was something wrong? Would he be able to tell? He shook his head. What would even be wrong?

Newt opened the bathroom door and stepped hesitantly into the rhombus of bathroom light on the hall floor. The only other light came from the bottom of the stairs. Otherwise, all was shadow on the second floor. Including the room next door. Newt hadn’t heard Hermann on the stairs, and the light was off. So he wasn’t in there, probably.

After a moment’s hesitation, Newt flicked off the bathroom light. Then he heard what sounded, for all the world, like a voice from another room.

A voice that was not Hermann’s.

Fear rushed through him. He flipped the light back on.

Nothing. He heard nothing else.

He saw nothing.

The light from the bathroom did not travel far outside the rhombus below his socked feet. The dark air was dense. Nothing moved through it. Not even sound.

Newt heard nothing else at all.

Maybe it had been the wind, or a tree, or just his overactive imagination. Or maybe the house was haunted to hell. That, at least, would make some sense.

But for a tense moment in the doorway, all the stories of the last year and a half—all of them were myths, lies, fabrications engineered to send shivers down the spines of public radio listeners. None of it was real.

This was what was real.

Alone in a dark, empty house.

The shadows were harboring something in the absolute black, and every second those patches of light, where he could see a corner of wallpaper or and edge of hardwood, those patches were about to be infested with reaching shapes crawling from the darkness.

Newt squeezed his eyes shut tight. Then he opened them again, exhaled, and stepped towards Hermann’s door. He left the bathroom light on.

Inside the bedroom, dim blue nighttime light fell through the wide uncurtained window on the far wall. He could make out a large bed, and a desk, surprisingly messy, and a glowing analog clock on Hermann’s bedside table. It showed that the time was 3:40.

Newt stepped in hesitantly, feeling like a cat burglar. His heart rate was slowing back down, but fallout adrenaline was trickling in. He felt shaky. He reached for a light switch, but his hand only found blank wall.

The floor creaked behind him. Newt whirled around just in time to see undershirted Hermann in the doorway. Then Hermann was on him in the dark, kissing him intensely once again. Hermann’s hands were shockingly cold on Newt’s skin; Newt’s own hands were shaking.

“Jesus—you scared me,” Newt managed. Hermann was steering him backwards.

“You’re too jumpy,” Hermann murmured. Newt’s back collided with the wall. He heard a click and a light switched on. With a crackle, his anxiety blazed into adrenaline. Newt wrapped his arms around Hermann’s back and pulled him against himself. Hermann made a muffled noise of satisfaction and kissed Newt against the wall.

All the spots on his body where he’d felt the ghost pressure of Hermann’s touch were filled again. Even over such a short span of time, it already felt like a return to the natural state of things. Perhaps that was a function of waiting. Why, Newt wondered, could you tell the difference, just by touch, between your skin and someone else’s? He ran his fingers along Hermann’s shoulderblades. Not you. Someone else. How could you tell? Because you were not occupying it from the inside? Because you didn’t know the intimate details of where the other body was in space, its velocity and position? (Zeno, don’t distract me, Newt thought. I’m doing an excellent job of closing gaps right now.)

Hermann shifted his grip and clamped Newt’s upper arms, pushing him bodily against the wall. A suppressed sigh escaped Newt. Hermann was going for the full frontal press, hip to sternum. Newt’s arm mobility was now limited. Problem? No. That was fine. He scrabbled at Hermann’s waist and found the hem of his shirt, then slid his hands under it. Hermann exhaled from his nose.

And did he wish he was—wish he was occupying that space? Unifying, Plato-style? No, Newt thought. He didn’t get that thing, that want-you-so-bad-I-want-to-be-you thing, he really didn’t. He was Newt. How could he enjoy this if he wasn’t? Sometimes sex was a way to get out of yourself, he supposed. If you were into that—self-effacement. He wasn’t. But maybe Hermann was? Newt liked being Newt.

Did Hermann like being Hermann?

It was hard to tell.

It did seem like he was doing his best to occupy the same physical space as Newt at the moment. Newt wriggled his arms in a bid for freedom, or at least leniency, but Hermann did not give. Fine. Then Newt was going on the offensive. He dipped his fingertips into the back of Hermann’s tightly belted slacks. He had limited reach but he would use it. He dug his fingers deeper, somewhere near the base of Hermann’s spine, and slid them around front. With constricted difficulty he circumnavigated Hermann’s bony hips and made it to the front before he realized the grip on his arms must have relaxed, because otherwise he would not have the range to reach Hermann’s front like this.

Advantage: Newt?

Hermann’s hands were still on his arms and his mouth was still, purportedly, in charge of Newt’s; but his grip was slack and his lips felt distracted. Newt could make that worse, he decided. He slipped his hands out of Hermann’s pants and went for the belt.

Hermann made a surprised nonverbal sound, but Newt kept on. With a clink he unbuckled his belt, fumbled the button open, and dove his hand down the front of Hermann’s pants. Hermann inhaled, mouth going lax against Newt’s. Newt grinned, breathing out a quiet, exhilarated laugh. Hermann-Newt-wall pressure decreased as Newt-hand-pants friction increased. Hermann leaned on his arms, more for support now. His face drifted away from Newt's, eyes closed, absorbed.

Newt laid a hand on the back of Hermann’s neck as he upped the pace. Hermann dropped his head onto Newt’s shoulder. Newt rubbed his thumb along Hermann’s cervical vertebrae. Hermann groaned quietly. 

Should he? Maybe it was unfair—but he had to. Newt slid his hand down and rubbed his thumb along the helix of Hermann’s ear. In response Hermann buried his face helplessly between Newt’s neck and shoulder. His breath was hot against Newt, his mouth slack. Newt rubbed his ear once more. Hermann made a sound which Newt could not hear, but which vibrated in his collarbone.

Newt relented, pulling his hand out of Hermann’s pants and clumsily kissing him on the top of the head. Hermann raised his head. He was catching his breath. Newt offered a grin. Hermann’s eyes were heavy, dazed but rapidly clearing. They were filling instead with intent.

Newt’s smile widened.

Hermann turned them around and steered Newt backwards towards the bed. In the absence of his cane, he put a lot of weight on Newt’s arms. His mouth did not smile but his eyes were bright. Hungry little flames. Somewhat alarming, maybe, Newt thought. But in a hot way.

“I think your house is haunted,” Newt commented as the back of his legs hit the box spring. Hermann, gently but firmly, shoved him down. Newt fell back obediently. “You might want to look into that.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Hermann replied, still standing, taking off his slacks. Newt watched, on his back, lying on top of the blanket—his shirt still on but scandalously open, pants still on and scandalously fastened.

“Nice boxers,” Newt couldn’t help but say, grinning stupidly. They were tartan. The light was low but Newt thought he could see Hermann’s cheeks turn a brighter shade of red. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a boxer guy, if you had asked me—”

“And I didn’t,” Hermann said, climbing onto the bed.

“Well,” Newt said as Hermann approached over him, knees between Newt’s legs. “I like them.”

“Back up,” Hermann said. Newt obliged, scooting backwards until his head bumped a pillow.

“Far enough for y—” Hermann sank down and kissed him before he could finish his question. Newt kissed him back, sighing, languidly lifting his knees up around Hermann’s legs.

But Hermann caught his legs in hand and pushed them back down. He slid his hands up Newt’s thighs to his waist and, with a jarringly loud noise, pulled away from Newt’s lips.

“I take it back,” Hermann said as he slid downward. “You do talk too much.”

“Wow—” Newt said, breathless as Hermann kissed his stomach. He seemed to maybe have a thing about Newt’s stomach. “Are you telling me to be quiet?”

He could feel Hermann’s breath on the hairs at the base of his stomach. Was that his mouth on the button of his pants?

“I didn’t say that.”

Newt was panting distractedly. “Then what do you...”

In lieu of a reply, Hermann unsnapped his button and unzipped his fly. He divested Newt of his pants with some help in the form of definitely non-agitated leg kicking. “Fewer words,” Hermann clarified—and then he was running his hands back up Newt’s bare legs, pushing them open, and going down on him before Newt had time for any reply that was remotely verbal.

Newt's mind started and stopped proceedings on a number of thoughts, unable to complete even a mental sentence. He was... He was tipping his head back, mouth open uselessly, he was reaching back up towards the pillows for nothing at all. Whatever sounds his mouth was making were outside of his control. His legs engaged in a languid conversation with Hermann’s hands. Hermann’s thumbs were rubbing the soft insides of his thighs in a way that was, while not the most absorbing thing being done in that vicinity, distracting nonetheless. Without much conscious input Newt’s knees lifted slowly, legs drifting up and open wider. Hermann applied himself in the open space.

Newt groaned and rubbed his foot against whatever it was currently touching, which seemed to be Hermann’s ribs. Hermann hummed around him in response. Newt closed his eyes— “Ah—Hermann,” he managed. “You should slow down—”

For a second Newt thought he would do the opposite just to assert himself—kind of fair—but then he pulled away. Newt opened his eyes. Hermann’s face was very flushed, almost embarrassingly so. Newt was a little dizzy. A lot of blood had just rushed to or from his head. He went for the hem of Hermann’s undershirt. Hermann pulled it off.

He levered Newt to sit up and slid his shirt the rest of the way off. Then he got sidetracked by the reveal of the rest of Newt’s tattoos—his quarter sleeves wrapped around his upper back. Hermann ran his fingertips over the lines and swatches in slow fascination.

“Working for you?” Newt murmured. “Wouldn’t have predicted that.”

Hermann kissed his shoulder by way of a reply, and then his mouth. He broke away, eyes moving behind Newt. Newt looked at him questioningly from up close.

“Just a moment,” Hermann murmured, putting a hand on Newt’s shoulder. “Lie back down.”

Newt did so and Hermann reached over him for the bedside table. He heard the sound of the drawer sliding open, and then halting.

Hermann reappeared over him. “Hold still.”

Newt wasn’t sure what for, but obeyed. Hermann reached for his face and slid his glasses off. Oh. The room plunged into a low-lit subaquatic haze. The shape formerly known as Hermann leaned away again, and Newt heard the click of his glasses on the bedside table, then the drawer opening fully, and objects being taken out. He shivered. Air was touching more of him than it had in a while, and his skin remembered that it was, in fact, a mid-November night. He heard the sound of a wrapper opening and then felt Hermann’s hand on his chest, steadying.

“Are you cold?” Hermann’s voice said softly. Newt nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. His voice came out a whisper. 

He felt the covers move next to him and allowed himself to be encouraged under them. Without his glasses, he was now, effectively, flying blind. Newt was used to that in sexual contexts; at a certain point he had to work mostly by feel, and there was a low-level thrill of suspense and instinct to that. Nonetheless the pause now, with him alone under the sheets, seemed to be getting long, and he didn’t know why. The sounds he was hearing were unclear. Maybe Hermann was having technical difficulties; maybe he was having second thoughts at the altar. Maybe he was moving towards him by descending half-increments and would never actually reach him, trapped in a paradox; but then, maybe time would progress in that same way for Newt, half smaller and half smaller, and maybe the minute of waiting would never end for either of them. Stop. Focus. Don’t think about Zeno. Don’t think about momentum. Think about friction. He felt the mattress move. Think about continuity, infinitesimals—Hermann lifted the sheet and leaned over Newt—infinitesimals down to the infinitely tiniest point, so small it takes up no space, so small it isn’t small at all, it isn’t space, it’s zero space. That’s how close I want to get, Newt thought, as Hermann slid into place on top of him, as he pulled the sheet back over them. That’s how close.

Hermann obliged him.

*

“Are they following you?”

The question was asked so softly under the sheet, and at such a contextual distance from the million other times and places Newton had posed it to him before, that Hermann actually let it reach his ears.

“I don’t know,” Hermann whispered back after a pause.

Newt adjusted his position minutely. His eyes were closed.

“You saw one of them, that day,” Newt said quietly. It was not a question.

Hermann nodded minutely.

But Newt could not see that. So he whispered: “Yes.”

“Out the window. With Jackson.”

“Yes.”

“Just standing there?”

“That was all. When I got outside, it was gone.”

“How many times did you...”

“Hundreds,” Hermann whispered. “I saw them hundreds of times. I couldn’t count.”

Newt didn’t open his eyes or say a word. But Hermann felt him tense under his hand, saw his eyelids flutter tight. Like the confession hit with the force of a tiny splash of water.

“Still?”

“Not often since I was a teenager.”

“But sometimes?”

“Not for a long time.”

“...What do they want from you?”

“I don’t know.”

“But they want something.”

Hermann hesitated. He gazed at Newton in the warm under-sheet shadow, so close and quiet with his heavy eyelids and without his glasses. He rubbed his thumb slowly against Newton’s cheek.

“Yes,” Hermann breathed. It was barely a sound.

The moment sat for a long while between them.

“What are we going to do?” Newt said at last.

Hermann shook his head slightly against the pillow. “Nothing. What do you mean?”

“I mean—” Newt shifted, but still didn’t open his eyes. “I mean. You’re not safe. Rothco is monitoring you. The damn cult was spying on you for your whole life. They manufactured your marriage. And, and the... those...”

Newt didn’t complete that sentence. Hermann said nothing.

“There’s nowhere to run,” Hermann murmured after a moment.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Hermann said.

“I’d go with you.”

“Stop that.”

“I would!”

“There’s nowhere to run,” Hermann whispered again. “They won’t lose me.”

“Rothco can’t be everywh—”

“I’m not talking about Rothco.”

Newt fell silent. He opened his eyes.

Hermann said nothing more.

When he finally drifted off to sleep, Hermann’s dreams roiled in fearful, humid technicolor. He dreamed he was an interdimensional spelunker, traversing tunnels between universes, down into the vast and boundless deep. In one dark world, he and his companions awoke a slumbering monster of incomprehensible size. They fled to the tunnel to seek safety in another dimension but the monster chased them up and up. It could not be stopped. As they flew, diving through shafts and sulfurous stacks, barely keeping ahead of it, Hermann understood that they could not outrun it, not ever. They could not hide, they could not flee, they could not stop. Unless they killed it, it would kill them.

*

Hermann woke late. He was alone. 

He found Newt downstairs, standing in the screened-in porch, facing the frozen landscape outside. The sky was still darkly cloudy, giving the impression it was much earlier, or much, much later than it really was.

Newton stood very still. Something about his stillness made Hermann hesitate in the doorway. Newton shivered once, like a tremor.

“Newton?”

Newton turned—just his head. Then the rest of him seemed to wake, turning round to look at Hermann. His expression was strange.

“Oh—hey.”

“What are you doing down here?”

“I don’t know,” Newt said.

Hermann walked over to him, an awkward limp without his cane. He touched Newton’s arm. Ice cold. 

“Newton, you’re frozen,” he said, putting his hands on Newton's shoulders and then his cheeks. “How long have you been down here?”

“I don’t know,” Newt said. “I don’t... I don’t remember coming down here.”

Hermann frowned. “Did you sleepwalk?”

“I don’t think so—” Newt said. “I don’t think I slept.”

“At all?”

“Well, I haven’t been,” Newton said, voice getting hoarser.

“Sleeping?” Hermann said dumbly.

Newt shook his head.

“At all? As in not one hour?”

“No... Not for a while. Not since Quebec City.”

Hermann looked horrified. “But that was weeks ago.”

Newton shook his head again.

“It’s not possible, Newton,” Hermann said. Despite himself, his mind jumped to what he had seen—imagined—the night before. Those terrible eyes. “You would be nonfunctioning. You would be a vegetable. You cannot survive that long without sleeping.”

“I... I feel fine,” Newt said, moving his head so Hermann’s hands dropped away.

“If you can’t remember, you must have been asleep,” he said, his voice closing up like a shut box. His eyes swept over Newt. “You must have sleepwalked down here...” His eyes stopped at Newton’s feet.

Newt followed his gaze down.

“What?”

“...Your feet are dirty.”

Newt looked. His socked feet were muddy, with bits of yellow grass stuck to them. He lifted his left foot. There was a spot of blood on his sole.

He looked back up at Hermann. “Did I go somewhere?”

---------SPONSOR BREAK---------

⏮ ⏯ ⏭

(sound of car door closing)

NEWT: Thanks for driving me down.

HERMANN: (stiff) Of course. We’re going to the same place.

(phone buzzes)

(engine starts)

NEWT: Whoa... I have like... a million missed calls from...

(phone buzzes)

(phone buzzes)

(phone buzzes)

(phone continues buzzing)

NEWT: Oh [expletive bleeped].

HERMANN: What’s the matter?

NEWT: It’s Mako. She’s freaking out. I better call.

(phone rings)

(Mako picks up after one ring)

MAKO: (muffled over phone) Newt?

NEWT: Hey--what’s going on? Is everything okay?

MAKO: Newt! Oh, thank god. I’ve been trying to call you. Where have you been? Are you alright?

NEWT: I’m sorry, my phone died last night. Of course I’m okay! What’s--

MAKO: Are you with Dr. Gottlieb?

NEWT: Yeah. We’re on our way in.

MAKO: From the harbor?

NEWT: No--we left last night. What?

MAKO: So you didn’t go to Rainsford Island?

NEWT: No. I sent you a text. We got intercepted and went back to shore. It’s... kind of a crazy story, actually...

MAKO: I didn’t get a text.

NEWT: Oh. (brief pause) Oh no, it looks like it didn’t go through. [expletive bleeped], sorry, Mako. I didn’t mean to freak you out.

MAKO: I wasn’t upset when I didn’t hear from you last night. I was a little worried. But then I woke up this morning and saw the news. And when I checked my phone, you still hadn’t called. That was when I panicked. And then I went into the office and everyone was talking about the fire and the signals and you still...

NEWT: Whoa whoa, what news? I haven’t seen the news. What’s going on? What signal?

MAKO: The Coast Guard got called into the harbor this morning. There’s a massive fire on Rainsford Island.

NEWT: What?!

MAKO: The whole island is burning. You can see it from shore. Turn on FOX 25, they’re showing it right now.

NEWT: I can’t, we’re in the car--holy [expletive bleeped]. Do they know what caused it?

MAKO: Not yet. And they have no way of slowing it down. It’s too powerful. They can’t figure out what's fueling it until it goes out, and they can’t put it out. They just have to keep it contained.

NEWT: Wow... (turning) Hermann. Quarantine Island is on fire.

HERMANN: What?

MAKO: (on phone) So you never got there?

NEWT: (back to phone) No--we got intercepted. I’ll tell you--but what was it you said about a signal?

MAKO: Well the Coast Guard said the other reason they’re having trouble putting it out is their radio signals are getting jammed in the harbor.

NEWT: What? How?

MAKO: There’s some kind of interference in the area. Elaine said--

NEWT: Elaine Sanders?

MAKO: No, Elaine from Production. She called the Trade Center too, and the Harbor Police. All the radio signals in the harbor are getting jammed. It’s already disrupting shipping and water traffic.

NEWT: Do they think it’s connected to the fire?

MAKO: They don’t know yet.

NEWT: Did something else happen?

MAKO: (stressed) Yes. I just got off the phone with [expletive bleeped] Sheriff Collins.

NEWT: Whoa! Mako!

MAKO: He said--I’m sorry, not professional. (exhales) He said Robert Motherwell was found dead in his cell this morning.

NEWT: What?

HERMANN: How? What happened?

MAKO: Blunt force trauma to the head. His skull was caved in. There was blood on the wall. It appears--unless someone else broke in, and no one else is seen on the security tape--it appears that he bashed his own head in.

NEWT: Good god.

HERMANN: When did this happen?

MAKO: Last night.

NEWT: Busy night. Yikes.

MAKO: Well, that wasn’t all. Look at this. (rolling chair noise) This was taken on the inside of his cell. It’s on the wall. Look above the blood.

NEWT: Oh... oh my god. That’s the symbol of the Cult of Tiamat.

MAKO: Yes. Collins said it was done with charcoal. He also said Motherwell’s book has gone missing from evidence lockup.

NEWT: Really? The, uh, “prayer book”?

MAKO: Yes. They checked on it after they found his body, and it was gone. They don’t know how long it’s been gone for.

NEWT: Okay... so obviously, this is connected to his cult activity. Could it be someone trying to keep his mouth shut?

MAKO: He hadn’t exactly been chatty about cult secrets.

NEWT: I guess not. Maybe it was suicide, then. Ritualistic suicide?

HERMANN: That seems most likely. If it was self-inflicted, he probably drew the symbols himself as well. He was familiar with the content of this podcast. It’s possible he got the idea from you in the first place.

NEWT: Finally...

MAKO: Did they say why it’s been taking so long?

NEWT: Yes, actually. Whoever had possession of it--(door opens) Hermann--hey. You’re just in time.

HERMANN: Hello. (door closes) What for?

NEWT: The ISG finally answered me about the painting authentication.

(objects being set down)

HERMANN: Really? Is it the genuine article?

NEWT: They think so. But the reason it’s taking so long is that it’s been painted over. Someone painted on top of the original.

HERMANN: I don’t understand. They painted the same painting over it again?

NEWT: Something close enough to it. That’s what the lab lady said. She said the original is underneath the top layer of paint. That’s why it’s taking so long to authenticate. But that’s also why it looked like it was in such good condition.

HERMANN: Because it was actually “painted” in the last 20 years.

NEWT: Exactly.

MAKO: That’s a new height for art vandalism.

NEWT: Right? It’s kind of f...

HERMANN: Has all of it been tampered with?

NEWT: Huh?

HERMANN: All of the painting--was the whole thing covered?

NEWT: You mean like... including the code?

HERMANN: ...Yes.

NEWT: She said some original parts had been left exposed. (clicking) Uh... Yes. The creepy background face, and the books in front. She said that was how they realized the original was underneath.

HERMANN: So the code is original.

NEWT: Apparently. But the book cover is painted over. You know how it's red? Like Dr. Byrne said? The original is underneath. Green. Just like Motherwell's book.

MAKO: Hold on. I don't understand. When would it have been vandalized? She had red in her notes from the eighties. That would mean it was painted over before it was stolen. 

HERMANN: That makes no sense.

NEWT: Unless she was lying. Maybe she was a plant. To throw us off the trail. 

HERMANN: To what end? We already had the book in our possession. That makes no sense either.  

NEWT: It doesn't add up.

HERMANN: What doesn’t?

NEWT: Well. None of it.

HERMANN: Well, certainly. But the mysteries only seem that way from the outside. From the other side, everything fits together logically.

NEWT: (wryly) The “other side” meaning “the Rothco conference room where they plot out their schemes”?

(ping notification sound)

MAKO: Is that tech support already? That must be a record.

NEWT: No--yes, it is, but they didn't run the diagnostic yet. They're just sending me some specs on our... (trails off)

MAKO: Newt?

NEWT: Guys?

MAKO: (concerned) Yeah?

NEWT: The code?

HERMANN: (tense) Yes?

NEWT: You know the number? At the end of the code?

MAKO: Yes?

NEWT: It’s us.

MAKO: What?

HERMANN: What?

NEWT: It’s our IP address, here at the studio. If you add the decimals: 10.136.43.26.

MAKO: Um... That's odd. 

HERMANN: (...)

NEWT: How is that possible?

HERMANN: How is what possible?

NEWT: How could a number appear on a Renaissance painting that happens to correspond with our IP address? That’s insane.

HERMANN: Coincidences often appear so.

NEWT: (sarcastic) Oh. Right. Coincidence.

HERMANN: What--are you honestly suggesting that this is anything more than a coincidence? Newton--stop and think about it for more than ten seconds. When those numbers were painted, the power of electricity had not yet been harnessed. There is no plane of reality on which Caravaggio anticipated your computer’s IP address.

NEWT: (frustrated) Hermann, do you hear yourself? What are the odds of this?

HERMANN: It doesn’t matter what the odds are. Reality is sometimes unlikely. That changes absolutely nothing. It is still reality. There is no possible connection.

NEWT: (loudly) The number is the connection!

HERMANN: (almost shouting) Connection to what? If this isn’t coincidence, then what? Is it fate? Were we fated to find it?

NEWT: Well what if I--

(Newt falls silent)

(beat)

HERMANN: What? What if what?

NEWT: (...)

HERMANN: Newton? (suddenly concerned) Is something wrong?

NEWT: They put out the clues so we would follow the trail... but we didn’t actually find anything. They drew us in, put it in plain sight, and led us to it. And I just read it off... just read it off like it was nothing. (horrified) What if I just played right into their plan?

HERMANN: Who is "they"? What are you talking about?

NEWT: Rothco. The Cult of Tiamat. I don't know. Their plan.

HERMANN: What plan? 

NEWT: The number. It’s us. We were supposed to find that code. We were supposed to read it aloud.

HERMANN: Don’t be ridiculous.

NEWT: Then explain how I could read it.

HERMANN: Pareidolia. Your synapses were misfiring. You said so yourself. Twelve hours ago, you were perfectly satisfied with that explanation.

NEWT: How could I read it, Hermann? What if it’s--(whispering) what if it’s me? What if I’m...

HERMANN: No. Stop. (trying to stay calm but sounding agitated) Go to the Gardner Museum right now and see if you see the same message again. You won’t.

NEWT: It doesn’t matter. I already spoke it.

HERMANN: Spoke what? (upset) There was nothing there.

NEWT: (quietly) The incantation.

HERMANN: There is no incantation. Newton. (...) Nothing is happening. None of this is real.