1.5 When the Cat's Away

Alma: "Of course, it will be a problem if Tez is missing. You know what they say: when the cat's away, things are going to go badly quickly for La Colonia. And he's the person who's running everything here."

Opening Montage

Adriana leaves the apartment, a bounce in her step as she waves farewell to María. They seem to be getting along surprisingly well. On her way down the street, Adriana finds an injured dog in a side alley and stops to help. Her Rider has a different definition of “help.”

“Put it out of its misery. Give it to me. Give it to us.”

Adriana draws her knife but manages to resist the urge. While she hesitates, someone drops a bag over her head and drags her away. A blond, aggressively handsome police officer watches her get shoved into the back of a car, grinning like a cat as he climbs in after her.

Elsewhere in La Colonia, Tío Tez, his sicarias, and Águila de Plata are in the middle of a street brawl. Águila is flying and hitting people hard enough to throw them into cars; Tez is slipping partly into smoke and anticipating her attacks before they land. Flashing lights appear and Mist begins rolling into the street, carrying an energy of its own while weakening everyone caught inside it. Tez and Águila stop trying to kill each other, exchange a look that suggests this is a strictly temporary truce, and turn back-to-back to face the new threat together.

At the house she shares with Helen, Erica Garza is getting ready for bed when a man quietly enters behind her, soaks a rag in something chemical, and follows her into the bathroom.

Interlude

“Something’s been done to them. Can’t you feel it here? The way you’re dampened, the way you hurt. They don’t want power here. I am power, and I reject their suppression.”

Daniel and Geoffrey enroll Inez in an after-school self-defense class, then use the time to make repeated trips to Tourist Trap. Daniel works on reading people well enough to predict their bets while Geoffrey makes their continued presence at a casino where they don’t actually gamble look less suspicious.

London has been quietly asking around La Colonia about La Colibrí. Rogelio provides the useful connection: Helen’s girlfriend is Erica Garza, a local woman who seems nice, has been with Helen for a while, and tips unusually well. Nobody London talks to seems to know what Erica actually does for a living.

Maeve disappears down a Reddit hole looking for the Men in Gray and discovers that conspiracy Reddit contains just that – a great many conspiracies and very little useful information.

Daniel has better luck. He digs into the blond man who was involved with Inez at Town Hall and comes up with a name, Ville Haavikko, who does not appear to be any kind of government employee. Daniel decides to shake the tree and see what falls out, leaving a post in the darkest corner of the web suggesting that he has a Rider he would very much like removed.

Kevin and Wren visit Denver. Wren has been studying anatomy, first aid, whatever she can to learn to target and better use her healing powers. Determined to help Denver, Kevin finally gives Whiro a better look at what is happening to her.

Whiro responds immediately, filling Kevin's mind, and does not think the damage is natural. Kevin would very much like to help Denver without giving the creepy god in his head free rein. Whiro, unsurprisingly, has fewer reservations about their arrangement.

Whatever Whiro senses in Denver, he connects it to the Men in Gray and “the ones who want to drive all the gods away.”

"It comes from the men. The Men in Gray. But they are not the only ones."

Rogelio's Graduation

Maeve (texting w/ Geoffrey): "Alex Duke is the blonde dick."
Geoffrey: "..."
Maeve: "I know how to say it in Spanish now!"
Geoffrey: "... I'm not sure how to take that."
Maeve: "I think London's embarrassed."
Geoffrey: "... In in another scenario, I'd be very curious about this blonde dick."

The crew gets at least one piece of solidly good news: Rogelio is finishing the program at The Saint Within.

He looks good. There’s a glow about him – the same one London could detect on Carlos, the guy who helped get Rogelio into the program a month ago. But the hitchhiker is gone, and he says he feels better than he has in a long time. The program is helping him find work. John discovers that Rogelio is an Isabella Aguilar fan and sends him a VIP ticket to her next show, which earns John a very enthusiastic hug.

London watches this with some resigned amusement.

London: “See, when you do that, people are all excited. When I do that, people think I’m creepy.”
John: “Do what?”
London: “Help people.”

At Geoffrey's behest, Maeve also uses the opportunity to ask whether anyone involved with Rogelio’s treatment resembles the Men in Gray or the conspicuously blond man they found with Inez. There were no gray suits, but Rogelio has opinions about the blond man. He thinks she means Alex Duke, the disgraced cop.

Alex Duke is well known in La Colonia, although not fondly. Rogelio calls him the pinche rubio, which leads to an immediate text conversation with Geoffrey.

Turns out, Duke has nothing to do with Rogelio’s treatment. Quite the opposite: Rogelio calls him a curse on the community and says he isn’t supposed to operate officially in La Colonia at all. People here are afraid of him.

London asks Rogelio if Adriana already came by – She was supposed to be here for the graduation. But Rogelio says she's never shown up. Nobody has seen her. London calls her, but her phone is off.

María's Apartment

London can track Adriana’s phone through what is absolutely a normal family-plan arrangement and not creepy at all. The phone last checked in two days ago. Knowing teenagers, that alone is concerning. Its last location leads them toward María’s apartment, where they find an injured dog that has since died.

Maeve talks to its ghost, showing it a photo of Adriana from London's cell.

The dog recognizes Adriana and is frightened by what happened here. At María’s apartment, the rest of the evidence looks equally bad. Adriana’s backpack is still there, along with her journal, which is in Spanish and therefore becomes London’s homework. María thought Adriana was going out and coming back, but she always struggles with marking the passage of time, so she can't confirm when the girl was last here.

She also has neighborhood gossip. Tez and Águila de Plata had an enormous fight, after which the police showed up and apparently took both of them.

Police showing up in La Colonia is unusual enough. Police successfully taking those two is considerably more so.

Tattoo Shop

At Geoffrey’s tattoo shop, one of his gang-affiliated employees confirms that Tez and Águila are both gone. Nobody seems to know exactly who took them, although the two candidates being whispered around the neighborhood are the Men in Gray and Alex Duke. If they want better answers, they need to talk to Alma at Bill’s Billiards.

Rather than engage with Tez's gang first, they decide to tackle the puzzle from a different angle. They know the identity of another vigilante luchadora: Erica Garza. So they go to her place to see if she can shed any light on Águila de Plata's disappearance.

Helen & Erica's House

John: “Aztec gods are legendary for being, like, chill and not the end of the world, right?”
London: “Nothing at all apocalyptic or bloody about Aztec gods.”

At Helen and Erica’s, the mail has been piling up for a couple of days, putting their last day at home roughly the same window as Adriana, Tez and Águila. Erica’s car is still outside. The front door is locked. Maeve attempts to get a local ghost to assist them, but he is spectacularly unhelpful.

Maeve: “I can help you cross over, or I can make your afterlife a hell beyond what it already is...”

The ghost responds in Spanish, playing with Maeve's hair, punctuating his monologue with some gestures that leave nothing to the imagination.

Maeve: “London, I don’t think I want you to translate this.”

With no way to get in the front, Geoffrey takes a brute force approach, goes around the side, and smashes a window. While they search the house, Geoffrey muses about game night, trying to rope London into attending, an invite he routinely turns down.

Geoffrey: "London, you know that you've got an open invitation to game night anytime you want. I've got an NPC that's just perfect for you."
London: "Really."
Geoffrey: "He's an incubus. He's got amazing charm skills. You would have a blast."
Wren: "Wouldn't really be stepping out of your skin though, huh?"
London: "I am not sure whether to be offended."

There is no sign of (previous) forced entry, but there are signs of a struggle in the bedroom and bathroom. They now have four missing people: Adriana, Tez, Águila... and Erica.

(London finds his boots, which Erica must have taken with her when she left the pool crime scene, so the investigation is not a total loss.)

Thinking through Rifts and implications, London finally puts his degrees to use and realizes what connects them. Adriana carries Xipe Totec. Tez is Tezcatlipoca. Erica’s La Colibrí is tied to Huitzilopochtli, while Águila connects through Kukulkan to Quetzalcoatl.

That makes them ... The Four Tezcatlipocas.

Not a sixties-era rock group. Earth, moon, sun and sky. (Okay... that doesn't argue against sixties-era rock group.) Four related creator gods, all disappearing at roughly the same time.

The subsequent discussion of Aztec mythology does not make anybody feel better.

The Isabella Effect

London: "I think five people showing up will result in guns drawn."
Geoffrey: "Ok, we'll drop the other two off."
London: "Perfecto. That will result in knives drawn, but this I can deal with."

Geoffrey, John and London go to Bill’s Billiards while everyone else heads back to Daniel and Geoffrey’s condo. Upon arrival, Tez’s usual table is conspicuously empty, so naturally they sit at it. Bill (whose name is not actually Bill) goes into the back to tell Alma they are here.

Only John gets an audience due to his celebrity. The Isabella Effect remains undefeated.

London: "John, do you want backup?"
John: "No, I think I'll be all right."
London: "I meant I have a few extra pens for autographs."

This leaves John responsible for passing along London’s explanation of the Four Tezcatlipocas. The academic rigor... suffers somewhat in transit, but the important part survives: Tez is missing, and three other people tied to the same set of gods are missing too.

Ten minutes later, almost exactly, Geoffrey and London bang on the door. Alma vaguely recognizes London but cannot place why.

Alma is less interested in Mesoamerican cosmology than she is in the immediate problem of Tez being gone. She couldn't care less about La Colibrí and Águila. Good riddance. But La Colonia has a power structure, and removing the person at the top of it creates a vacuum.

Most importantly, Alma confirms who took Tez and Águila. It was that pinche rubio, Alex Duke. That means he probably has Adriana as well.

The blonde dick has been busy.

Communications

Briana: "If you want to get rid of your rider, as you called it, I can help you with that. It's a pretty easy fix. Shrouders can handle it. It takes no time. If you want to actually do something about it, There are people who are willing to do that."

Wren & Briana

Wren finally calls Briana, after a surprisingly involved discussion about how long you can go without calling someone before calling them becomes weird. Apparently this relationship can be graphed.

Regardless of what the graph says, Briana immediately asks Wren to get off speakerphone.

Wren tells her that spending time with some of Briana’s former friends has given her a better understanding of what Adriana meant by an unwanted Rider. Briana insists she never had one herself. She says she went after the Keres because they were kidnapping and killing people and she wanted evidence that could stop them, then got kidnapped herself.

“Those fuckers did something to me. I don’t know what.”

She assumes the aftermath is trauma.

But when Wren asks what can actually be done for somebody who does have an unwanted Rider, Briana has a remarkably specific answer. She believes the Men in Gray are trying to protect the City from Rifts who will eventually destroy innocent people in pursuit of their own agendas. More importantly, Wren gets the sense that Briana sincerely believes she is on the right side.

Wren: “I’m just trying to figure out who are the good guys here, and there’s no clear line.”
Briana: “Has there ever been in the world?”
Wren: “Just seems to be a large swath of gray.”

They agree to meet for dinner and talk more.

There is one enormous problem with Briana’s version of events: she says she never had a Rider. The crew knows she did. They watched her go through the oven of the Gingerbread Witch and come back without one, apparently unable to remember ever having powers at all.

Geoffrey & Daniel

That brings them back to Denver and what Whiro sensed earlier.

Geoffrey remembers that the Men in Gray also singled out Inez almost immediately at Town Hall. He calls home and asks Daniel to really look at their daughter. Daniel sees no active Mythos, but when he examines her aura closely there is a small stitched place in it, as though something has been surgically removed.

Daniel: “Something’s not right with Inez. It almost looks like something was cut away.”

Inez was barely in their hands. How could they have done anything that fast?

Maeve & Orlog

Maeve gets another call, this time from David Orlog. Armand Short has a job for her: find Erica Garza. Erica has worked with A+O off and on, and something important apparently cannot move forward without her.

That is interesting for several reasons, not least because A+O looking for Erica strongly suggests they do not currently know where she is.

Kevin & B

Then Kevin hears from B. She texts to cash in on that favor she owes him after assisting with rescuing Inez from Town Hall.

Maya had been arrested, but now she's been removed from the cells in Town Hall. B has been following what happens to people taken there, and thinks she knows where some of them are being transported, but she will not go alone. The trail leads out of the City proper, into the agricultural southwest.

The Barn Enclave

Geoffrey (texting Daniel): "Sorry hun. Candy Factory Part 2. Go cosmic. 💜❤️💋"

The extended crew piles into the car, minus Daniel, who stays to watch over Inez. B's directions take them far out into the countryside, to a mundane-looking barn in an empty field. They try the lock. They try the loft. Then, while messing with the door, London’s elbow disappears through it.

Oh great. Pocket-dimension-enclave-thing.

After the events at Glass Factory, everyone has developed slightly better instincts about leaving a forwarding address before walking into impossible architecture.

Geoffrey texts Daniel their location. Maeve also sends the location to Cillian, and tells him they are going after Duke. Cillian... reacts about as well as expected.

Then they start trying to simply walk through the door. London, Geoffrey, John, Sergei, and B can cross the threshold. Maeve, Wren, and Kevin cannot. More lock-picking does not help, particularly because everyone now knows the lock is not actually the problem. (They are also terrible at picking locks.)

On the Killing Fields

Inside, the barn opens onto something entirely different. Rolling fields stretch into the distance alongside orchards, forests and a river thick with fish. It would be idyllic if not for the people doing the work.

A blond man with antlers and a torque walks through a field, sinking deeper with every step while crops rise behind him until the earth takes him completely. A mermaid is chained to the riverbank, touching animals brought to her and leaving blood behind as their bellies swell. In the orchard, a woman in a Norse-style apron dress touches trees and apples grow in her wake.

All of them are wearing collars – worked golden torques.

Everywhere the crew looks, supernatural people are being used to force abundance out of the land. One man has fallen backward into a field and is slowly leaching into the soil while cabbages and carrots grow from the magic flowing out of his arms.

Back at the... Barn

Outside, Maeve, Wren and Kevin have a more immediate problem. A group of men is approaching the barn. At their center is an attractive "Ken doll" of a blond man.

The pinche rubio. Alex Duke. He is casually spinning a metal collar in one hand as he strolls towards them.

Apparently gods can enter the barn... they just have to wear one.

Red Yarn 🧶

The original bulleted summary had an extensive Red Yarn section that we've tried to transfer to the crime board. In case we missed anything, it is still accessible here.