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Between A Rockabilly and Hard Places<br>

For a period of a few days, nothing exploded in, on or around Elma’s Bunker November or its people.  This allowed them some much-needed personal time to deal with day-to-day life issues and catch up on pent-up drama waiting for an opportune moment to be released.<br>

AJ had been waiting for the all-clear from scientist Ophelia Bellaci regarding the revival process of the Sleepers, since his mother is one of them.  He was informed that they managed two successful tests of the process, and he was clear to proceed with waking his mother when and if he was ready.  Before he committed to this, he asked to speak to one of the Sleepers.  He was pointed in the direction of Major Miranda Abnett, since the other, a woman named Jordan McKellar, was being more closely monitored and the people she was exposed to currently was being limited; apparently McKellar had been implanted with quite a bit of cybernetic and nanotech augments which could lead to psychological trauma if the subject was not handled with care.  Major Abnett was considered safe, though, and she agreed to meet him.<br>

AJ spoke with the woman to get a feel for her situation, to see if there was anything useful to learn from her experience, and also to try and get a picture of how the revival process may have affected her, so he could use that information when making the final decision as to what to do with his mother.  AJ’s wife, Naomi, was in favor of waking her and Alton, AJ’s Dad, is reluctantly supportive, as well, after speaking with his son previously about the situation.  He just warns that AJ must be prepared to do what needs to be done if his mother—who worked for the FBI—cannot leave her previous mission behind.<br>

In much a much less dramatic venue, Slick conducts a tryout for Lieutenant Spiers, who has offered to help the struggling Rockabilly band “Bone Yard Pulp” by lending his talents as a singer.  Nicolette LeFevre, the woman who bailed on her bandmates provided supporting vocals and rhythm guitar.  Spiers can’t play the ol’ six-string, so he enlists the aid of one of the scouts named Steve, who has played guitar since he was an (even younger) kid and is an accomplished member of the high school’s jazz band.  Spiers knocks his audition out of the park, and the kid doesn’t do too bad, either.  Slick signs them up on a probationary status for now; at the very least just to make their next performance on Friday (which happens to be the next night!)  With only a night to rehearse, the two newbies get to practicing.<br>

On the night of their performance, Spiers does a passable job, but Steve gets a little overzealous, having set his amps to blare out a little bit too much of the sound that worked so well for him during tryouts.  Slick is able to save the day by sneaking one of the arms of his suit over to the kid’s equipment and performing a quick fix to calibrate the levels on the fly and prevent the guitar from drowning out everyone else.  Bone Yard Pulp still draws in a fair crowd, and all the band members earn a few bucks in tips.<br>

The next day, while taking a break from band practice and catching a drink in the lounge, Slick notices Armand Spiridakos at the bar nearby with a couple of his engineering cronies.  Armand is proudly showing them some pictures on his phone, which get quite the reaction from the other two nerds.  From his vantage point, Slick can’t see what the photos are, but he suspects they are nudes of some girl.  He hatches the bright idea of enlisting Douglas to help him out, and after a brief negotiation that will hand over a tiny portion of the wall of Slick’s apartment, he enlists Douglas’ drone-based assistance for the price of a five-gallon bucket of peanut butter and a dozen hand grenades.  Douglas stealthily sends one of his scout drones into the lounge, sucking up against the ceiling to spy over Armand’s shoulder.  Douglas live-streams the view of the drone to Slick’s phone, whereupon he discovers that Armand is sharing dozens of nude pictures of his girlfriend, Ophelia Bellaci, with his buddies.  Slick thinks this is a dick move, and “accidentally” bumps into Armand on his way past, knocking the douche’s phone out of his hands, whereupon Slick “clumsily” stamps one of the feet of his 3000-pound power armor suit on it, completely destroying it.  This totally pisses off Armand, but he’s not really in a position to do anything about it against someone like Slick and his suit.  People don't wind up on the assault team because they are pushovers!<br>

While Slick is dealing with Armand and his lecherous treachery, Dr. Emily Halter, the bunker’s resident veterinarian, asks for a meeting with Fayth, and gives her some troubling news:  During a routine checkup, she discovered that one of Thunder’s 24 animal brains has died.  She performed some tests and suspects that in suspension as they are, the organic materials may only be viable for five to six years.  She doesn’t know how long the drones have been operational, but suspects that Thunder’s biological components may be nearing the end of their normal lifespan.  She is worried that as time goes on, more of his brains will perish, and she doesn’t know at what point this becomes terminal for him or begins to mentally affect him.  Unfortunately, there is little else they know about the animals from which the brains were sourced.  This eventually draws Fayth to the ''Firestorm'' and it’s computer, which, if she recalls, had an extensive database of odd and banal information that really wasn’t relevant to her at the time.  She goes in a-researchin’ and finds quite a bit of info about the construction drones and the animals that contribute their biological components.  Unfortunately, none of that info is of any immediate help.<br>

While enjoying his day off, AJ goes on a bike ride with his family when he is interrupted by a call from the Ops Center.  It seems his comm has pegged his location near a disturbance reported to X-Com by the local authorities, with whom X-Com has a mutual aid pact.  The nature of the call is that a female claims she was attacked by her husband and killed him in self-defense.  AJ is being requested as a first responder to secure the scene and render any immediate aid, if necessary.  AJ calls in some backup, has Naomi escort the kids to safety and heads to the scene just a few blocks away.<br>

While Fayth and some MPs head out to meet him, AJ determines that the woman is no longer in any danger and that there is, indeed a dead man in her house.  There is blood all over the place, as she stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife.  She explains to AJ that her husband had been acting strangely lately and leaving the house at odd hours.  She claims that he struck her, said something along the lines of “you know too much and are a threat to the plan,” and at that point she fought back to save her life.<br>

AJ and Fayth check the body of the deceased.  He shows definite defensive wounds, and the killing blows appear to have occurred either when he was kneeling down or already on the ground, as there is a distinctive height difference between the man and his wife.  AJ follows up on some of the other leads the wife gave; the shed she claims he was spending all sorts of time in is a bust.  The dusty cobwebs still in place suggest nothing much has happened in here for a while unless the guy was just standing inside the place.  He asks the neighbor who called in the disturbance, whose story jives, and he learns more about the wife of the deceased.  AJ also recognizes the man as a construction worker, occasionally involved in some of the local city projects.  He interviews a few of the deceased’s coworkers and learns more.<br>

Meanwhile, Fayth has been learning what she can from the body and her own interview of the wife.  She finds it odd that just about any question they have to ask her, the wife has a ready answer for, almost as if she is able to supply them with too much information, all of it exonerating her, of course.  When AJ returns, they are able to compare notes and determine that the wife was formerly an advertising executive with a firm in Olympia before the sweeps.  She was used to a certain level of luxury and status that the sweeps eliminated.  With the end of the world, she was relegated to the role of housewife while her husband had useful skills and was highly valued by the community.  There was a definite power shift, and she was known by many to be “prickly” or “difficult” once her career was rendered largely obsolete.  People were not surprised that the deceased was ducking out on his wife to drink with the boys because she had become an unpleasant person to be around.<br>

AJ and Fayth can’t hang the woman on what they have and can’t disprove her story that her husband was under the influence of alien mind control, as his wife had suggested.  With the emergency situation taken care of, the investigators from X-Com resign themselves to hand the investigation over to the local authorities but ask to be kept in the loop regarding developments in this case.<br>

While wrapping things up, Fayth gets a call of her own:  There has been another murder, and Feargus is involved!  She immediately responds to the scene in town, and also calls in Slick, just in case something he can do might be handy (and to keep the party together!)  When she arrives at the scene, Carville is down, along with a stranger, who has been beaten to death by the hulking Ranger.  She focuses on her man.  AJ focuses on the “victim.”<br>

Fayth is horrified to discover that Carville is not breathing and has no pulse.  He gives every indication of being dead and has what appears to be a tranquilizer dart in his neck.  Her immediate fear is that this dart was full of some deadly poison and that she is now a widow before she even got a chance to tie the knot with her man.<br>

AJ finds that the dead man is disturbingly familiar.  He has seen him before.  Five times, before, to be exact, and three of those times, this guy was dead.  It sinks in with him, that this dude is one of Vladimir Gurov’s cloned foot soldiers.  AJ finds the weapon used in the attack and sees that it is some specialized pistol with Cyrillic writing stamped on it, definitely a Russkie weapon.  He learns from bystanders that Carville was leaving the residence of one Mrs. Ellen Mayfield when this guy who had been loitering approached the Sergeant, drew a weapon and shot him.  Carville then fought back, slipping on a pair of brass knuckles and beating the guy to a bloody pulp before falling to the ground, himself.<br>

Fayth is frantic and calls for medevac.  Lt. Easton gets the ''Skyranger II'' on scene in short order and gets everyone back to the bunker.  Fayth is able to determine that Feargus does, indeed, show the faintest signs of breath!  He may not actually be dead!  Then, he sits bolt upright and gasps, barely holding back and preventing himself from pressing the attack against Fayth trying to render him aid.  He is completely confused and disoriented.  He can back up the claims of the bystanders, but beyond that, he is of no real help.  Fayth gets him to the imaging room and calls for Dr. Rhys to give him a once-over, since he is well-versed in how to use the advanced imaging machines in there.<br>

In short order, Dr. Rhys reports frantically to Fayth, “It’s ''Methuselah!''  He’s been dosed with Methuselah!”  This is a mysterious enough pronouncement to most everyone, but Fayth seems to know what Dr. Rhys is talking about.  Then, she gets a text message from an unknown sender that can only be Vladimir Gurov.<br>

''Has the package been delivered?''  The message asks.  Fayth does not give him the satisfaction of a reply, so shortly after that the first message is followed by a second:<br>

''Perhaps you should ask Lillian why she is holding out on her obligations.''  She doesn’t reply to this one, either, but decides to have a meeting with the woman very soon, right after she tells her fiancé what his situation is, and regretfully informs him that she will have to place him under medical observation (AKA "house arrest") for the time being.<br>

Fayth’s meeting with Lillian results in the former custodian of the bunker revealing to Fayth the existence of a treatment codenamed “Methuselah.”  It was based upon alien technology they had researched early on in Covenant's history and that she, along with all other bunker commanders are issued one dose, ostensibly to treat their successor.  She admits that she had not given her dose to Fayth yet because she wanted to make sure Fayth would stick with the job.  At this point, Lillian has no doubts about Fayth’s dedication, and reaches into her clutch to produce a small vial, handing it over the woman selected to lead the fight here.<br>

Fayth’s mother has been cloned and given a whole new lifespan to live.  She has recently discovered that her father was secretly dosed with this agent, presumably by Vladimir Gurov.  Now Carville, more than ten years Fayth’s senior, has received it.  Methuselah stops or drastically slows the aging process, that much is known.  It has no immediate benefits, but decades down the road its effects will become evident as Fayth’s hair turns gray, wrinkles form where there were none before and her mind and body begin to slow down...while the man she will marry suffers none of these setbacks and looks every bit as young—or younger—than he does today.  Like Lillian, Vickers, Church...and even AJ’s father, Alton.  All of them have been augmented by the mysterious agent called Methuselah.  Again, it makes Fayth wonder why Gurov insists on tampering with and tormenting ''her'' family.<br>

Fayth accepts the dose from Lillian but does not administer it at this time.  She gives Rhys the tiniest sample to study, and locks her dose away, uncertain what to do with it at this time.  Which is all well and good, because outside forces care nothing for the drama people may be dealing with before dumping their own issues on the laps of others.<br>

The Ops Center fields a call from Agent Vickers who is far out afield with Agent Church in Lansing, Michigan, performing a covert operation with Fayth’s approval.  They are attempting to kickstart old Covenant communications gear into operation, laid down decades ago for use in the event that normal communications were rendered inoperable.  However, they are faced with a new form of opposition that they are ill-equipped to handle and that poses a grave threat to the success of their mission.<br>

Lansing has been overrun with the Lost.  To top things off, there is a new set of players on the field that Church has dubbed “The Purifiers,” and they are systematically engaging the hordes of the lost and clearing them out, but they show every sign of being some faction backed by the Collective.  Vickers and Church are requesting some reinforcements to help them succeed with their mission, otherwise they may never be able to activate the communications hub here.<br>

At the same time, the tracking station reports an engagement spotted in the skies over southern California.  It is a UFO and an aircraft of human manufacture.  As details are gathered, the interceptor potentially has the profile of an F-22, and the UFO is of a class known to the collective as a “Constructor” vessel.  Fayth recognizes it from the ''Firestorm’s'' database and her own experiences as the same class of vessel Draco made his trip to Earth in, and if so, it could possibly have its own construction drones!  The interceptor causes enough damage to the UFO to force it to land or crash before it breaks off and returns to base, where the tracking station loses the interceptor somewhere over Kansas, headed northeast.<br>

This UFO could provide invaluable research to Dr. Halter when it comes to helping Fayth's litter, but if history is any judge, X-Com has a limited window to respond before the UFO is repaired and escapes to parts unknown, or until the forces that shot it down send their own troops to secure the site.  Fayth has to make a choice between two missions.<br>