1.6 The Killing Fields

When last we met

Geoffrey, London, Sergei, and John had entered a bucolic setting of prosperity and abundance in which many enslaved gods labor in fields, forests and rivers against their will.

Meanwhile, outside the enclave in the "real world," Maeve, Wren, and Kevin – gods themselves – are unable to follow their friends into the barn. They instead face off against the infamous Alex Duke and a uniformed security force, as Duke nonchalantly spins a worked golden torc around on his fingers, taunting them that they can't get in without one...

Barn Exterior

Duke (on comms): "You got visitors. Not sure how many. [Listens] Uh, it's 3 out here. Not sure if they'll be any good for you. [Listens] Roger. We'll bring them in."

Duke lunges for Maeve trying to whip the collar around her neck. Maeve tries to move out of the way but isn't quite fast enough... and then it doesn't matter, because his hand passes through her like she's not even there as she goes briefly incorporeal before snapping back to the physical world.

But while he misses Maeve, he connects with Wren on the backswing. The torc lashes out and wraps around her arm, causing the golden hieroglyphics on it to go dark.

Maeve: "You know, I thought you'd be cuter. I mean, there's this whole Ken Doll thing that you supposedly have going on, but I really just don't see it."

Meanwhile Kevin is cornered by three other thugs, and unwilling to hurt them when they clearly don't mean lethal harm, they're easily able to slip the collar around his neck. Kevin suddenly feels disconnected from himself, standing quiet and docile, not even realizing he's devoid of free will.

Maeve and Wren continue to scuffle with Duke as he grabs hold of Maeve and Wren in turn grapples him from behind. As she clasps her wrists in front of him, the torc snakes across as though it has a mind of its own, binding her wrists together, as the symbols that reflect her mythic powers flicker out and die on her second arm. She's trapped against him, even as Maeve wriggles free thanks to her efforts.

Duke: "You're an awfully pretty girl to have such a dirty demon in you."
Wren: "Your nickname is really well-earned."

Maeve draws and shoots Duke at close range, trying to get him off of Wren, but while she hits, he doesn't seem shaken. Instead he grabs Wren by her connected wrists and starts hauling her toward the barn, gesturing for the three men with Kevin to follow while he orders the rest to subdue Maeve and meet them inside.

Maeve runs for the car but gets cornered against it before she can wrench the door open. One of them grabs her gun arm, disarming her quickly. She twists herself out of his grasp, dislocating her shoulder in the process, and stumbles into the field of tall grasses close to to barn to hide in the shadows.

The men search for a while, eventually giving up and returning to the barn. Maeve responds to an alarmed text from Daniel, reassuring him that Geoffrey is safe, or was which she last saw him. Then she turns off her phone.

Maeve has just started creeping back out of the grass when she's caught in blinding headlights as a car slides to a stop and a figure steps out. It's Cillian. Equal parts pleased to see him and pissed that he's there, Maeve tells him about her friends being taken hostage and that she needs one of those collars to be able to find them. Then she shares her half-assed plan to run the guards down by driving London's SUV through the barn so she can get one.

Cillian opts for a less aggressive approach, since he recognizes some of the guys on security detail. He goes into the barn to try to talk to them, but it doesn't go well, and one of them ends up drawing his weapon and backing Cillian out of the barn. As he creates a diversion by talking to the guy about Car Things, Maeve creeps up to try to nab the collar off his belt. She's spotted, but not before she gets a hand on the torc, which snakes its way around her arm the same as it did to Wren.

Cillian punches the guard in the face and he and Maeve take off running for the barn. They... both... slip easily through the door... and face the fields within.

The Killing Fields

Inside the enclave, John, Geoffrey, Sergei, London and B watch in horror as enslaved gods work the land. All are agricultural and fertility deities, and most are racial minorities. Here are just a few of the figures that they see:

• A dark-skinned god is robotically using a scythe-like structure that you don't see in this area of the world to carve pools in the ground. And as he does so, you see leaves coming up from it.
• An olive-skinned man with straight dark hair is walking through a forest, stopping, leaning down, touching the ground, standing up, walks a few more steps, stops, touches the ground, and just endlessly trooping onward as grain grows behind him.
• Another man with Asian eyes and dark hair walks through a marshy land, occasionally sinking into it as he slogs forward slowly, with rice growing in his wake.

Looking out towards the river, B spots a chained Black woman with the tail of a mermaid who is a fertility goddess, causing animals to breed spontaneously with a smear of blood from her hands. B cries out, "Maya!" and starts running towards the woman. They all follow. B gets Maya unchained and out of the water, where her tail resolves back into legs, but the woman doesn't respond or really seem to notice them. She's awake, but borderline catatonic.

Guards spot them and come running towards the group, and they support Maya as they run into a field of tall grasses to hide.

Once they lose their pursuers, Sergei tries to Science the collar off of Maya, by first picking a fight with John. He transfers the energy from a solid squabble into electricity, letting it flow through the torc. It interrupts whatever the collar is doing, waking Maya briefly into lucidity, before the effect ends and she stares off into space again.

The guards find them again, and one manages to hit John with a tranquilizer dart from a tranq gun. As he staggers, London pulls a switchblade and engages the guard, successfully disarming him and kicking the gun away, but losing his friends in the process. Geoffrey and Sergei fight off the remaining guards and as a group they disappear deeper into the fields, Geoffrey carrying Maya and Sergei supporting John as he descends into unconsciousness.

Sergei's attempts to remove Maya's collar spark (ha) an idea and Geoffrey asks him to help boost his phone signal temporarily to help him get a message out to Daniel, but after the first send, it fries his phone.

Geoffrey (texting): "I'm alive, we're inside an enclave. I'm here with John and Sergei and London and B. There's a bunch of god rifts that are captured and being forced to make food. Fucked up and weird. Sorry for the wall of text. I don't know if I'll be able to text again.

"We drove to southwest of town, found a barn, got pulled through the door. Don't know what happened to Maeve or Kevin or Wren. Maybe you can find them and get us out. We'll see what we can do from the inside.

"Love you."

Standing in the enclave, Cillian and Maeve look around in horror. And confusion – because how the hell is Cillian here and seeing this – but mostly horror. They scan the fields of enslaved gods, searching for their friends, but don't see anyone they know. Maeve asks Cillian to try to get the torc off of her, and after a moment, he succeeds. He doesn't like the way they feel, saying they have a staticky tingly feeling like they are electrically charged. He drops it on the ground, but Maeve asks him to hold onto it, just in case.

Cillian resets Maeve's dislocated shoulder quickly and efficiently (she is super proud that she doesn't puke) before they start searching for their friends in earnest. Cillian massages his temples where there is the beginning of an intense headache...

Written in the Stars

Daniel uneasily waits for news at the condo with Inez. He sends off a blast of text to every number he has, but everyone but Maeve shows as offline. Maeve responds, letting him know that Geoffrey was okay the last she saw him... and then she too shows up as unavailable.

A single message from Geoffrey shows up a short while later. The information sends Daniel into motion, and he encourages Inez to head to Sophia's house to spend the night. She reluctantly goes. Daniel immediately gets on the phone and calls David Orlog, informing him that Geoffrey and Maeve are both missing and demanding to meet with Armand. He offers his assistance, and special abilities, in exchange for any information or assistance. David is intrigued by the offer.

He expresses concern, notably about Maeve's disappearance, given he'd reengaged her to find Erica Garza. She is a collaborator with Apples + Oranges that has gone missing, in addition to being Tez's daughter. Given Tez has many enemies, they're concerned for her safety. He says he'll work on getting Daniel an audience with Armand but can't guarantee anything. They hang up, with Daniel dissatisfied.

Daniel: "Oh... now I understand why she has always been so eager to come over to our place. I'm going to need a tetanus shot after this. And oh my God, how many tacos has that woman eaten?"

Daniel scrabbles through drawers looking for the key to Maeve's apartment. He rushes to her home, lets himself in, almost faints at the clutter, and then spies the crime board she has been working on. Daniel studies the board in detail. The connections start to light up like constellations as he realizes what is right and what is wrong, and begins to see what is happening.

Assessing probabilities and relationships, Daniel concludes that Tío Tez is a man who has contingencies for his contingencies... and that Tez has likely hidden Erica to keep her out of the hands of his enemies. So Duke does not have her. She's somewhere else.

He also has the horrifying realization that Armand Short, and by extension David Orlog, are the force behind these disappearances...

The Casita

In a spacious, airy room, David Orlog hangs up the phone and walks down the stairs of a Spanish Colonial style manor house, overlooking a courtyard where Wren and Kevin are escorted to a small secondary building.

As the door shuts and locks behind them, Wren starts scanning the room for something, anything, she can use to make a big noise. She's confident their friends are trying to find them, and she needs to point them in the right direction.

With her wrists bound, Wren can't do much digging on her own in the storeroom... but Kevin can. While he's not autonomous, he follows directions. He shifts crates and boxes and pokes in corners until he turns up a discarded box of firecrackers, including some old black cats. Now all she needs is a light...

Wren pats down Kevin as best she can with her wrists bound and finds a lighter in his pocket. Maneuvering the firecrackers into the barred opening that passes for a window in this space, she lights the fuse...

The Courtyard

The group in the tall grasses, both hiders and seekers, hears a blast of popping sounds that are not quite gunfire off in the distance toward the Big House. The guards immediately abandon their search and take off running for the buildings. Geoffrey, Sergei, B, Maya, and John (who has largely recovered thanks to his drug-tolerant natural state) take off after them while London, still lost in the grass some way away, also gets a heading and moves to intersect them.

Close to the river, Maeve and Cillian hear the sound as well and immediately start running while attempting to skirt the notice of the guards everywhere.

The groups converge and Cillian is quickly pressed to get the collar off of Maya. He does so, and Maeve asks him to keep it with the others just in case. Maya comes bak to herself abruptly, gasping. She sees B and the two women immediately hug, sobbing.

They see the wafting smoke above the smaller outbuilding close to the main house and quickly brainstorm a way to get past the guards. Geoffrey conjures Rumpelstiltskin, and instructs him to disguise himself as Freyr and make himself as visible as possible, leading to a chase to capture the powerful god that distracts the security force.

Sneaking in to the building they find a single guard still outside a closed storeroom door with an arched, barred window within it. They attack the guard, with Wren eventually managing to get her bound wrists around his neck. She cuts off his airflow until he eventually passes out. Fortunately they find the keys in his pocket because nobody knows how to pick a lock.

The group gets Wren and Kevin out and Cillian gets the bonds off of them. Kevin comes back to life at that. And poor Cillian has so many questions... and a raging migraine.

Everyone turns to flee toward the main drive, but they quickly realize that they can't possibly all fit in the single car that idles there. As the guards move toward them, they pivot and sprint across the manicured fields and toward the river.

The Riverbank

Armand: "First people who have gotten in here. Interesting. Gotten in... but of course, we can't have you exiting. Apologies."

The guards quickly pin the group against the bank of the river, weapons drawn. They part to reveal Armand Short and Alex Duke strolling toward them. He's intrigued that they managed to get into this enclave, but nonetheless, he regretfully has to make sure that they don't get out again.

He turns to Maeve, and tells her he's willing to make a deal. But not for all of them... only for her, as a thank you for finding Briana for him.

While they talk, Kevin realizes that the river behind them. Looks a lot like the curve of the river in the real world, where it arcs towards La Colonia de Sombras. He can almost tell that it's the edge of this farmland enclave, and on the other side of the river is the city itself firmly anchored in reality.

Geoffrey leans toward Maya and whispers, asking if she can use her abilities to them out of there safely through the waterway. Maya looks to B, who does some quick mental calculations, and nods. The three of them subtly link up arms and start backing ever closer to the edge of the water.

Armand: "I don't recommend that. Charybdis and Scylla are not a lot of fun to meet."
Maeve: "I'm sure they're not. But they can't be worse than the current company."

Armand sees what they're doing, but doesn't try to stop them as the rest of the group quickly forms up and makes the jump into the swift current of the river. As they break back above the surface, they realize that the mist has rolled in. And where the enclave was sunny and bright, they are now back in the dark of night, with the towers of The City rising on one bank, and a wild eddy of water foaming at the other bank. A sudden swift surge in the current breaks their linked line of people, and Geoffrey, Maya, and B are swept away, leaving the remaining people unprotected, without a river goddess to guide them...

MC: "And the rest of you.... See you in the water, next week."