"The Service Weapon," she says, acknowledging, explaining. 

She tilts her head slightly in acknowledgment, hesitates, then says, "Also—and this can sound crazy—he keeps appearing to me, saying things. It's hard to make out, but he told me to cleanse the control point? Push the Hiss out. The whole room shifted around." And she is not going to explain that she did that with Polaris's help.

"You did that?" Emily replies, surprise and delight twisting her face into a further smile. "And you entered the building when it was already in the lockdown, before you became the new director? How??" 

I'm not ready to tell her about you yet. That much she's sure of.

"A janitor let me in," she says, which is at least somewhere in the vicinity of a true statement.

"I love it!" Emily laughs, her confusion and delight showing on her face, still laughing a little as she continues. "This is fucking unbelievable. It's- I can't even-" She takes a breath. "Look, Jesse, I have a million questions, you probably have a million more." 

Like: Do you know my brother Dylan?

Not yet.

"But there's something I need to ask you to do first," Emily says. "If you can cleanse a control point, then you can maybe cure those infected, possessed, by the Hiss. Because if that's possible," she takes a hopeful breath, "our options are very different." 

Yeah, they would be, wouldn't they.

I don't know her, but I like her already. She's the opposite of the faceless agency I've blamed for what happened to me for so long.

But I can't trust her yet. Or rather, the Bureau she's a part of.

"Yes," she says firmly, then amends to a slightly more hesitant, "I can try."

Emily nods at her in grateful acknowledgement, watching her as she goes to try. 

I'm speaking for you, of course. She smiles, just a tiny bit, as she turns away. We can try it together.

The nearest floating businessperson is... there. (It's weird how fast they become part of the background.)

Okay. You with me? We did it before. Pushed the Hiss out.

She reaches for the stranger's head, trying to feel through the air the way she felt along the concrete floor for the right place to push when she and Polaris cleansed the control point.

After a moment, the floating woman whose head Jesse's hands are around starts shaking violently in midair. 

It's hard. Even though Polaris is doing most of the work. Just keeping her hands in place feels like straining against a strong wind, and the sound/not-sound of the Hiss makes her feel a little like her bones are trying to vibrate right out of her body, but she sticks to it grimly until all at once, like last time, the red noise collapses and the soothing light of Polaris floods back in.

The woman falls to the floor, clean and free of the hiss, no longer softly chanting into the air. 

And then after a few moments, she dissipates into multicolored smoke, disappearing entirely. 

Well fuck.

It didn't work. The Hiss has burrowed too deep. Ripping it out rips them apart.

She heads back over to Pope.

Emily looks forlornly over at Jesse as she approaches, though with a curious and quizzical look in her eye. Still, even as curious as she clearly is about what just happened, there's a part of her that feels the worry and loss of all of the people who are now lost. 

"I can't cleanse them."

"I saw." She sighs softly. "It was worth a shot. Thank you, Director. Jesse." Motioning for Jesse to follow, she walks towards the board room, and the door opens as both of them approach, letting them inside. She sits down at the side of the big conference room table, letting Jesse take the seat at the head. 

She has that pigeon-in-the-wardrobe feeling again as she sits down.

I'm gonna tell her why I'm here. I'll risk it.

"Listen, the Bureau is involved in an incident in my home town, Ordinary, seventeen years ago. The Bureau came in and covered the whole thing up. I've been looking for this place for a long time."

That's enough. She sits back, trying to hide her nerves. Maybe that's too much already. I can't tell her about Dylan and the rest yet.

"I've seen mentions of an Altered World Event case dealing with Ordinary." She leans forward in her chair towards Jesse, face alight with curiosity and excitement. "You were at ground zero as a child? It was one of the big ones. And before my time. And very classified," she adds, leaning back into her chair. "I can try to dig out some old files for you. My boss, Casper Darling would know, but he's missing. I think he knew this was coming, or, suspected. He came up with the HRAs, the Hedron Resonance Amplifiers," her hand moves to indicate the device on her chest. "I think they're what saved us, or a few of us. And Director Trench would know." 

So far so good. Seems Pope is too caught up in the excitement of it all to have qualms about Jesse's agenda.

That last name catches her attention. "Trench. The... ghost, or whatever he is... he mentioned something called the Hotline, said I should find it."

"It's another Object of Power like the gun, an old Bakelite telephone, a direct line of communication between the Director and the Board." She leans forward again, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Maybe he can talk to you more clearly through that. Trench has years and years of experience. He might know how to destroy the Hiss." 

So the question is, "Where is the Hotline?"

"It's kept in the Communications Department, through the Mail Room. It's part of this sector so we can access it even with the lockdown in place. We'll get the door open for you."