"Ugh I wish I could remember what else he said. He said some weird stuff."

"Apparently he'd been going to shows for a while, well before Zoe got involved in all this."

"He sticks out of a crowd a bit. Especially when he's there in the midwest same as the city." Zoe is trying to wrack her poor mangled memory. "He... heck. I think he told me I ... shouldn't trust liars? Or something like that? Something about how I should have a shooting act?? I'm sorry, if he said something important I have no idea anymore."

It doesn't make sense for something to do with the cult to have been following Zoe for years beforehand, Mordred tries to tell himself.

Unless that's retrocausal somehow, unless they've always been involved in all this, shut up brain now is not the time to be anxious about Hickering mentioning Scottish immigrants from the Orkney Islands and small towns near Innsmouth --

So he was around before... or was he? (dun dun dun) Oswald does not say because he is all the way over here comforting Lev, even if he is now eavesdropping, and also it would be rude.

But Zoe did suddenly develop a bunch of weird memory stuff.

"Well. We're looking into the cult of the Liar from Beyond, and that doesn't sound innocent to me."

"The cult has a name?? The cult's name is Liars???"

"The cult doesn't have a name but the thing they worship does."

"I mean, we think it's ultimately a cult devoted to the service of something called Nyarlathotep? And the thing they keep calling him is the Liar from Beyond."

"Okay so... this spooky immortal guy who has apparently been following me around for a decade showed up just to tell me to beware of the evil god that's trying to, I don't know, end the world or eat everyone or something???"

Zoe is starting to think that everyone is probably secretly in on the cult stuff. She looks around warily at passersby.

"It's possible that he was somehow trying to warn you. But it's also possible that - Trammel spoke of Nyarlathotep being a pharaoh, and also owned the book that identified Nephren Ka as a pharaoh who was - one of the seven masks? Whatever that means? And, uh - I think those things are probably connected. Or at least that Trammel thought they were."

So Nyarlathotep is known as both Nephren Ka and the Liar from Beyond and some guy named Nephren Ka told Zoe not to trust the Liar--

"I want to say 'this is too weird and confusing' but honestly it's about as weird and confusing as everything else we've learned. Which.... still might be 'too,'"

"Yeah. ...well. I don't like this, but I don't really see what we can do about it, right now, besides - follow up on the stuff we were going to follow up on."

The CMC has seven warehouses and a set of "offices."

The offices seem to be primarily occupied by a dozen half-white half-black children playing while being watched by a much darker-skinned black woman.

Awwww. Kids are great. Hope you don't get eaten by an ancient horror, kids.

Lev asks the woman who the people in charge are, and she directs them to the offices of Federico Acquaronte.

He speaks with Lev for a few minutes, then says in English "We don't often see white people here in Mersa Fatma, what brings you here?"

"We were trying to find information on an archaeologist friend of ours. Apparently his dig was destroyed by a volcano about eight years ago. We'd heard that you might have funded it, and might have some records on what they were doing?"

"Oh, we didn't fund it, thank God. Can you imagine? No, it was funded by some philanthropist from America. Echvar or something like that. We just sold them supplies."

(He looks very bored, and glad for the chance to talk to someone.)

"Oh, I see. Good for you, I guess. Ah - Mr. Aarons was a student of one of the archaeologists, and had been hoping that we would be able to learn more about what he was studying here. If you have any records at all regarding what his mentor may have been working on, we'd be very grateful for more information."

"No, unfortunately, I only handled the business end. I think Eskander, my right-hand man, saw Acuna the other day in Massaua? Perhaps you can speak to him." He rolls his eyes. "Can't imagine why you would want to. Absolute nightmares to work with."

"Oh?"

"Acuna was insane and Ayers was a drug addict."

Gosh that sure is a face Lev is making right now.