Cleanup Part I

## Official Summary

Cleanup chronicles an important event in ORPHEUS's recent past, and honestly, it'd be unkind to say much more than that. Cleanup's story is a mystery, and trust me when I say that the threads that were pulled led somewhere horrifying.

## Detailed Recap

Three ORPHEUS operatives are air-dropped onto a remote island off the coast of Maryland. Cynthia Thomas, AKA "Madame Rosa," is your standard Los Angeles psychic charlatan except she's actually psychic. Hank Gomez is an arrogant theoretical physicist and hermeticist with a withered leg. Eva Whitlock is an adrenaline junkie who provoked an attack from a werewolf and got infected.

The mission is to investigate the home and lab of Dr. Mohindra, a missing scientist who has been working for ORPHEUS. He dropped off the radar and there was a massive release of toxic bio agents like anthrax on the island. Eva, head of security on the mission, sends Harper and Sven to check the perimeter.

They approach a large suburban-style house, the only building on the island. They notice there's no sounds of animals or insects, and Cynthia feels little psychic energy. She reaches out to animal spirits in the area, and they show her a vision of them disappearing one by one. She also sees a statue of a Catholic saint outside the home, but cannot identify it.

They check out the inside of the house. The first floor has a kitchen, dining room, great room, and music room. The second floor has an office with tons of papers, some normal-looking bedrooms, and a strange windowless bedroom where every surface is entirely black. Spiral motifs are present in several room.s There's a stairway down to a basement, but the basement door is locked with a keypad. Hank examines it and determines that it's rigged to explode if the wrong passcode is entered. Cynthia uses psychometry on the keypad and gets an incomplete vision that gives her some clues about the passcode but not enough to attempt it safely. They decide to search the house for more clues about the passcode.

Cynthia uses psychometry on the doctor's luxury cars. She sees him driving his Ferrari recklessly to work out fear and frustration. He has an unhealthy gray cast to his skin. She sees him driving his Mercedes to a meeting with an ORPHUEUS employee, and she overhears enough of the conversation to learn that they have him working on some kind of chemical reagent, and he needs help getting supplies. Both cars are registered under the name Sanjay Ramdas.

Hank inspects the documents in the doctor's office. He learns that Dr. Mohindra was doing a complex refinement of various exotic plant compounds. He finds mentions of shamanism, druids, Thoth, Ganesh, Kokopelli, and the parable of the three blind men and the elephant. He figures out that the plants are entheogenic, or psychoactive/hallucinogenic.

Eva searches the black room. She finds a little spider who glows like a coal. Excited, she scoops the spider onto a sheet of paper and shows it to Hank. He believes the energy from the burning of the spider is going to another dimension. By the time Eva shows the spider to Cynthia, it has turned to ash. Cynthia uses psychometry on the ash, and hears a low rumbling sound and sees a shadow with a proboscis that resembles a beak or elephant's trunk.

Cynthia uses psychometry throughout the house to see Dr. Mohindra's routine: He gets high in the basement, plays music on the first floor, and then lies on the bed in the black room while listening to drums.

Outside, Sven sees something in the sky. He shoots down a surveillance drone. Cynthia uses psychometry on it, but it's warded with anti-scrying magic, and not only does she fail to learn anything about it, she becomes instantly drunk. Silly and giggling, she goes back inside to check out the violin, and finds the hidden sheet music. Hank looks at the music and sees that it's some kind of musical encoding of physics equations.

Eva inspects the drone, and removes an SD card. She realizes the drone is rigged with explosives.

## Quotes

* "He was trying to *play* quantum physics!" - Hank Gomez

## Music Credits

* Kevin MacLeod - Temple of the Manes
* Wimus - Crockett's theme remix
* Myuu - Prey
* Kai Engel - Silence
* Darren Curtis - Peaceful Forest "Into Oblivion"
* Borrtex - Darkness
* Kevin MacLeod - Bridge
* DOS-88 - City Stomper
* Tri-Tachyon - Edge of the Wastelands
* Kevin MacLeod - Anxiety
* Myuu - Phantom (Horror Soundscape)
* Three Chain Links - Resetting the Grid
* Myuu - Ghost Town
* Kevin MacLeod - Satiate Strings
* Three Chain Links - Portals
* The One They Fear - Wolves