So Alien And Of Another World

After his shower, the giant killer of giant rodents got dressed out of the bag that the old woman had given him. Once dressed he walked into the room and looked at the young woman on the bed. He spoke to her quietly calling her, "Jessel."

He talked in hushed tones, moving her from sitting up to laying down on the bed. When she was situated he sat on the floor in front of the door and leaned back into it. Over a few hours he went from sitting against the door to sleeping on the floor in front of it. It reminded Mitchell of a dog lying in the doorway of a young child.

As the man progressed from sitting awake against the door to sleeping in front of it, Rosa and Mitchell went over what their next steps were.

"We need to do something. They're obviously running from the LTC and they're being hunted by those things. They're in danger. Rosa, come'on. You know we need to help them." Mitchell had pled.

"Unless otherwise directed, we will stay down here in and we will observe." Rosa responded, perfectly following policy.

"Have you heard anything back? Are there no 'otherwise' directions?" He asked. He had seen her shoot off a flurry of texts and attempt a few calls but she had not shared the fruits of her communication labor with him.

"Nothing back yet, which is unusual but that just means that I'm making the call right now. My call is we wait." She said firmly, meeting his eyes and clenching her jaw.

And so wait they did. As they waited, Rosa reprogrammed their sign to let anyone driving by know that there were no vacancies and on their website she wrote that the Helscion was currently shut down for remodeling. Mitchell argued that this was suspicious and might be picked up by the LTC as something weird.

When she asked him if he would be the one to start checking families into what might soon be a warzone, he conceded that she made the right call. Thankfully they didn't have anyone checked in so they didn't have to worry about civilian casualties. They left cars in the parking lot and rotated them from time to time. An entirely empty roadside motel is much more unlikely to have people stop in to than one with a few cars in the lot.

Mitchell tried to sleep in a sleeping bag that he found in one of the crates but after a restless 45 minutes her returned to the creep station where Rosa was glued.

"You try to get some sleep, I'm too wired." He told her as he settled into the chair beside her.

She looked at him but said nothing, her headphones were still on, she probably hadn't heard him. He tapped his ear and pointed at her ear.

Rosa slid the headphone off of one ear and he repeated himself.

She closed her eyes tightly and yawned, "Alright, you're up." She stood, stretching.

Mitchell watched the screen, the big man stirred in his sleep. In the same moment Rosa snatched up her phone, unlocking it. She looked confused. The man in the room was fully awake now, Rosa had put down her phone and was watching him intently.

"He's getting a call." Rosa said, placing her phone on the desk.

Mitchell watched the man put the phone to his ear. "What's he saying?" Mitchell asked, resisting the urge to press his ear to the headphone.

Rosa hadn't responded by the time he'd hung up. After he put the phone back into his pocket he walked back into the bathroom and started rooting through his bag. The young woman was still sitting on the edge of the bed, unmoving. It was deeply unsettling when Mitchell though about it. Why not just lay down at least?

"The only thing he said was 'bye' just before he hung up, he only listened. What's he looking for?" She asked, not expecting an answer.

Mitchell respected her expectations by not saying anything, just watching the big guy move. He'd found what he was looking for. It was tiny, smaller than one of his fingers. He began moving around the bathroom, he saw it start to flash a little. As the man got closer to Mitchell and Rosa, as he got closer to the camera they were observing him through, it started to flash more frequently.

His giant paw reached out towards them, clenched in his fist the device flashed faster and faster until he touched it to the camera. After that the camera was dead.

"Fuck.." Rosa said letting out a breath.

They could no longer see him in the bathroom but he remained in there before Mitchell saw him emerge into the main room.

"FUCK!" Rosa yelled, pulling her headphones off and making a move to throw them before gently setting them down by her phone.

"He's getting the audio too." She sounded defeated.

They both watched in silence as he walked around the room, finding and destroying all of their observation equipment.

Rosa sat still for a few moments before she started in on the keyboard, that poor thing was taking a pounding. She was on the admin side of their little outpost and she was locking them down.

"No new information in or out of this place, something fucky is going on. Until I hear from Heton, this place is a tomb." Rosa nodded to herself as she spoke. She pushed herself away from the keyboard.

Mitchell didn't question her, she always did things exactly as their handbook instructed them. This was all new to him and he didn't want to be the person to really screw something up. When he thought about it, Rosa was probably new to the situation too.

"Put the headset on and listen to the adjoining rooms, wake me up if you hear or see anything. If nothing happens, wake me up in six hours. I've got calls out to everyone that needs to be in the know on this. Stay off your phone. If you get a call wake me up." The energy she'd had earlier seemed drained and she looked defeated.

"You got it." Is what he said. What he really wanted to do was ask question after question but she clearly needed rest.

He watched the bank of monitors. There was no movement. It was now past 1 am. He turned to look at Rosa and her back was to him. Her steady breathing signaled that she was very asleep wrapped up in the sleeping bag.

After another hour of nothing happening, Mitchell pulled up the file he had saved on their local server that contained everything they knew about codename: Babushka. He poured over it. There were photos, a timeline of when she had been seen where. She was at least 80, maybe older.

She'd first been photographed 60 years ago and she looked to be in her thirties. She had been stopped by a photographer in Clover city, the artist, Clara Dunn, was putting together a portrait book of 'Real Americans'. Babushka had been walking along the sidewalk with a baby in her stroller when the portrait taker stopped her. That the LTC member had allowed herself to be photographed was surprising, Mitchell guessed that she didn't think much of it. While LTC folks traveling out in the world didn't go out of their way to engage with people on purpose, they tended to avoid being recorded in any fashion. Obviously over the years it eventually became nearly impossible to be out in the world and not be caught on camera. However, 60 years ago she could have easily avoided letting the Clara take her picture and she hadn't.

She stood perfectly erect, smiling, looking directly into the camera. Her features were strong, deep eyes and thick eyebrows, wide cheek bones and a strong chin. She was a handsome woman, dressed in what looked like a well-made wool coat, three oversized buttons on the right side, a dress or a skirt coming out from underneath it. No hat but white gloves that matched the buttons on the grey coat. The photo did not capture her footwear or her baby.

The artist, upon being interviewed years later named this photo as her favorite in the book. That was how they'd found it, an HPI field specialist had tried her hand at being a photographer. Specifically a portrait photographer and Clara Dunn had been her favorite, the reason she'd given it a shot. The would be portraitist wasn't able to make in the art world and found her way to the HPI. One day while working through her reading assignments, she saw a more recent picture of Babushka and brought the photograph to the attention of her superiors. It is a small small multiverse, Mitchell thought to himself as he read over this particular bit.

Under her portrait in the book it read: Name -Kay Baba Occupation-Nanny. In her interview she'd said that the photo was her favorite partially because of how striking she found Mrs. Baba and how different she thought the photo of her would be verse how it actually looked. In person, Kay had been warm and wonderful, her accent was thick and hard to understand but she had clearly loved her child and was a happy person. In the photograph, Clara said that none of that came through. Mrs. Baba seemed so foreign, so alien and of another world in the portrait.

They were just down the road from the hospital at which that baby would anonymously dropped off the next day. He thought of the baby and wondered what became of it.

Mitchell looked back at Rosa, she was still breathing soft and steady. While he didn't like to do it often, he'd seen Rosa key in her username and password numerous times and had it memorized. She hadn't caught him yet and he told himself that he wouldn't do any snooping that would draw attention to them. It'll be fine he told himself. Trolling the internet for a baby born in the 1960s shouldn't bring the LTC down on them.

With his rationalizing all done, he started digging into the whereabouts of that baby and the trail went cold after the child was moved an orphanage. The man running it had been a drunk and kept files on nearly nothing, the things that he had filed had been incoherent garbage. When they were shut down a few years after the child had been given to them, records of where the kids were sent simply did not seem to exist. Peculiar.

He lost himself, digging through old photocopies of orphanage files, uploaded spools of microfiche and birth records and adoption papers. He thought if he began searching elementary schools in the area, he might have a chance to find something. It was a long shot.

The Longshot came up short. He shifted his focus to where she had been sighted. She popped up every few years. A lot in the last few especially. He came across a file linking her to a branch on the otherwise of the country. She had been in and out of there a dozen times ten months ago. It seemed the branch near where he and Rosa were working had just recently become her center of operations. To be clear, her center of operations again, she moved about a bit. On a hunch, Mitchell began to dig into where she had been when and trying to put together a timeline. He wanted to find the rhyme and reason of her movements.

Mitchell thought he was on to something when movement on the parking lot cams caught his attention. The old woman was back.

He sent himself a couple of key files, deleted the search history and put the outpost back into the same lockdown parameters that Rosa had installed before going to sleep.

"Rosa!" He called over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off of the car as it slowly backed into the same spot it had occupied the night before.

His partner stirred, the zipping sound of the sleeping bag followed by the sound of it sound of shuffling feet brought Rosa to his shoulder.

She eyed the old woman. The old woman seemed to look directly into the camera that they were observing her from. She walked to her room, the door swung open and she stepped in, it closed quickly behind her.

Rosa looked at her phone, Mitchell couldn't see the screen but she didn't unlock it so he guessed they hadn't gotten word on what to do next. Their outpost might have been made by the big man and old woman. They knew that there were cameras and audio in the room, at the very least someone was watching them. Hopefully they thought it was just a couple of creepy motel employees. Possibly they might think it was the government. At the very least they knew that there was a recording of them and the people most likely in possession of that recording would be in that little dark office that he and Rosa were hiding beneath.

"Nothing yet," she rubbed her eyes and ran her tongue over her teeth, "I'm going to-" Her phone rumbled in her hand.

She opened her phone and read quietly to herself. Mitchell gave up watching the monitors, giving Rosa his undivided attention.

"If the young woman asks for our help, we are to do everything in our power to assist her in evading the Life Tree Collective." She bobbed her head as she spoke, sounding stunned to be saying it.

Mitchell was stunned too. He knew that they were here to watch the LTC, to protect humankind. Despite all of the stern observe and report rhetoric that had been drilled into them, they were now going to be active participants in thwarting the beings that Mitchell saw as foreign invaders.

"What about the other two?" Mitchell asked.

"They aren't mentioned." Rosa responded moving closer to him, looking behind him at the screens.

"Ask them." Mitchell said, aggravation clear in his voice. This secretive shit is important but giving them that little information on this wasn't helping at all.

"Something is happening, what I told you is all we have. I got two messages, the first one I shared with you, the second one was a codeword. HPI is under attack."

"How bad is it." He asked. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears.

"I don't know." Her voice was even, calm.

As he tried to process what it all meant, Rosa leaned past him, staring intently at the monitor. He repositioned to look at what had drawn her attention. Walking towards their office was Babushkas giant little helper.

He walked right up their door, knocking on it. He peered up into the camera directly at the two agents and a look of… a look like he'd eaten something that tasted sour came over his face.