Nathan, very late Monday night
Jun. 28th, 2005 12:55 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsUnable to sleep, Nathan reviews some more of the cult files Madelyn pointed him towards. It triggers a precognitive 'moment', but it doesn't tell him anything helpful. Or does it?
He ought to be in bed, Nathan told himself. He was supposed to be picking Saul up at the airport fairly early tomorrow morning, and he was a little short on sleep this week already. But between Saul's imminent arrival and the email from Madelyn, his mind was racing around and around on a particular subject again, so he was sitting here going through the public documents about Project Megiddo.
He'd read through quite a bit of the report at this point. Nothing really interesting had popped out at him. Some of the millennial cults the FBI had studied had possessed definite Social Darwinist qualities - usually the ones that expected the end of the world to be a protracted thing involving a struggle for survival. Or maybe he was just stretching his definitions a little. Dissatisfied, Nathan continued to scroll down the screen.
This was getting increasingly awkward. The more he doubted his memories, the more the memories seemed... elusive, hazy. At least on the question of doctrine. Had there even been a doctrine, as such? There hadn't been... services, religious or otherwise. Had there?
Damn it. Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, sighing. Settle down, idiot. He opened his eyes again, and kept skimming through the document. He'd read a few more pages, then call it quits for the night. Even as he made that decision, something caught his attention, a sentence or two in a bare-bones summary of a group the FBI had never been able to gather any significant information about. It was one on a list of many 'ghosts', groups or cults that had never been proven to be more than rumor.
Conclave: Existence substantiated by one informant's testimony, but never confirmed. Ideologically focused, Social Darwinist elements. Millennial orientation uncertain.
One on a list of many, Nathan thought distantly, even as something tugged at his mind, drawing his focus in tighter to the two lines on his screen.
Conclave.
And he stiffened in his chair, his breath catching on an indrawn hiss as the patterns twisted suddenly, as if someone had just grabbed them in both hands and given them a wrench. Images cascaded through his mind, so bright they burned - a key, the desert in New Mexico, a glass and steel office building against a sky painted the colors of sunset. A room full of computers, another room with a long glass desk and a black leather chair, turned towards the windows so that he couldn't see who was sitting there, even though he knew there was someone, and they were important. Greek letters, alpha and omega and the knife cutting away his Mistra tattoo, only that wasn't the future, that was the past and...
STOP.
The patterns slowed suddenly, leaving him gasping, drenched in sweat and clutching at the edge of his desk. "Shit," he muttered fitfully, under his breath, and glanced at the screen almost fearfully. Still there. And the walls seemed perfectly stable, thank fuck.
Just a precognitive 'moment'. And one that made no sense at all. Except... ignoring the way his head was throbbing already, he reached out and picked up a pen, scrawling down the word 'Conclave' on the scratch pad on his desk.
A key, possibly. Pun intended.
He ought to be in bed, Nathan told himself. He was supposed to be picking Saul up at the airport fairly early tomorrow morning, and he was a little short on sleep this week already. But between Saul's imminent arrival and the email from Madelyn, his mind was racing around and around on a particular subject again, so he was sitting here going through the public documents about Project Megiddo.
He'd read through quite a bit of the report at this point. Nothing really interesting had popped out at him. Some of the millennial cults the FBI had studied had possessed definite Social Darwinist qualities - usually the ones that expected the end of the world to be a protracted thing involving a struggle for survival. Or maybe he was just stretching his definitions a little. Dissatisfied, Nathan continued to scroll down the screen.
This was getting increasingly awkward. The more he doubted his memories, the more the memories seemed... elusive, hazy. At least on the question of doctrine. Had there even been a doctrine, as such? There hadn't been... services, religious or otherwise. Had there?
Damn it. Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, sighing. Settle down, idiot. He opened his eyes again, and kept skimming through the document. He'd read a few more pages, then call it quits for the night. Even as he made that decision, something caught his attention, a sentence or two in a bare-bones summary of a group the FBI had never been able to gather any significant information about. It was one on a list of many 'ghosts', groups or cults that had never been proven to be more than rumor.
Conclave: Existence substantiated by one informant's testimony, but never confirmed. Ideologically focused, Social Darwinist elements. Millennial orientation uncertain.
One on a list of many, Nathan thought distantly, even as something tugged at his mind, drawing his focus in tighter to the two lines on his screen.
Conclave.
And he stiffened in his chair, his breath catching on an indrawn hiss as the patterns twisted suddenly, as if someone had just grabbed them in both hands and given them a wrench. Images cascaded through his mind, so bright they burned - a key, the desert in New Mexico, a glass and steel office building against a sky painted the colors of sunset. A room full of computers, another room with a long glass desk and a black leather chair, turned towards the windows so that he couldn't see who was sitting there, even though he knew there was someone, and they were important. Greek letters, alpha and omega and the knife cutting away his Mistra tattoo, only that wasn't the future, that was the past and...
STOP.
The patterns slowed suddenly, leaving him gasping, drenched in sweat and clutching at the edge of his desk. "Shit," he muttered fitfully, under his breath, and glanced at the screen almost fearfully. Still there. And the walls seemed perfectly stable, thank fuck.
Just a precognitive 'moment'. And one that made no sense at all. Except... ignoring the way his head was throbbing already, he reached out and picked up a pen, scrawling down the word 'Conclave' on the scratch pad on his desk.
A key, possibly. Pun intended.
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