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I’d been in the Oceanview Motel a number of times but being dumped in a hallway and not the reception, that was a first for me. But you know what they say, one step forward is still a step forward, except all my times in the Motel didn’t help me. Sometimes I’d take my lunch breaks in here when I was at HQ, I even peaked the director in here a few times, I guess all field agents new or old gravitate towards what’s familiar to them and on the road that’s a cliché American family run highway motel. Except this wasn’t like my normal trip through the Oceanview, like the Lake House perverting art, the motel seemed set on throwing me a curveball, or maybe it took pity on me since it didn’t force me to complete some asinine puzzle.
The realisation, it wasn’t instant as I made my way through the door the motel had put in front of me, the recognition registered a few seconds after I actually took in where I was. Saga I’m sure you’re familiar with the smell of stale office coffee, musty case files, well unlike Quantico the Oldest House has that permeating from everywhere, the stereotypical office smell seeped into every carpet, each piece of concrete, hell I swear the plants are tainted, but you get my point, it’s fresh printer ink, shit coffee and cheap stationary.
There was a painting to each side of me, one I was well acquainted with since it was a picture of the Oldest House, solid concrete rising high up into the sky and the other painting well I was half familiar with. There were two subjects, Zachariah Trench, he’s been the FBC Director for my whole tenure there, the other person was harder to make out, redhaired and her stern look matched Trench’s. I felt a splinter of recognition, like someone I’d see in a movie long ago, or picture I’d seen in passing, it irritated me, like a gnawing question on the tip of my tongue.
I knew this excitable research specialist, her name was something religious, Nun? Bishop? Maybe Pope? I can’t quite recall her name but she was a favourite of Darling’s, she’d talk your head off about her research, smart and cute to boot, well anyway I remember she was explaining this idea that might help investigations, Synchronicity, maybe being in the Oldest House I was expecting to see the Director and well there they were, maybe this other woman was helping or hindering, maybe the agents in the OH saw them as the director and I blurred the picture being an outsider, but to be honest I wasn’t really thinking about that, since now I was home... Home, of course I have a house but after my last relationship ended I never really felt at home there but the Oldest House that was where I’d spent so much of my life, it was home for a workaholic like me and well I guess after all the terror of the Lake House I was just happy the Motel led me here, to see home again.
A sign above the next door read Panopticon and a flurry of memories flooded back about the type of place that was, Headquarters, the Oldest House, you see before HQ went silent whenever I wasn’t Agent in Charge at Bright Falls I was back there, writing reports, helping Langston monitor his little band of troublemakers, lobbying Trench for more funds and lamenting how I chose this over my social life time and time again. Think of the Panopticon like the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark, except each box is a cell and each item can do something either relatively benign, life threatening or reality altering, so all in all this job has its variety of problems.
Anyway back to the Panopticon, I’d last seen it 4 years ago before HQ went into lockdown and I ran through that door pistol in hand ready to speak to a fellow agent or fight whatever kept the lockdown in place and like the Oceanview failing to place me in the lobby, this wasn’t any part of the Panopticon I’d been to, worse there wasn’t anyone official to talk to, no Director, no Darling, no lowly field agent like me, just a bald guy talking to himself in a cage similar to what we’re going to use to trap Scratch in.
To say my heart dropped would be an understatement, after all these years I was back in the Oldest House and yet still at step one, no answers, no director and no backup. Any answers I got from the guy weren’t immensely helpful and I couldn’t see another way out, not that it mattered since it wasn’t too long until I was transported back to the Lake House, surrounded by the Mormont’s madness.
Saga, Casey told me you’re under the impression your kid is alive, I know it isn’t the same and I hope to whatever higher power there is that you’re right, take it from someone who’s lost there home, you’ll get yours back, we’ll get through this. Scratch has no idea who he’s dealing with.