View source for Tranquility Lane

[[XCOM:_Gray_Dawn#Recaps]]<br>
[[Training Day|Previous]]...[[Strangers in A Strange Land|Next]]
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When we last left off...

Game #26 (The almost-kind-of-real season premier!) 1/31/15

Days 26-36

Tranquility Lane

In the aftermath of the assault on the alien base in Brazil, the team ponders what to do with the the Hyperwave Beacon.  Since Marie managed to shut the device down rather than destroy it, recovery is a viable option.  The device in question is actually not that large; she could have a small detail of men help her break it down into manageable pieces in a few hours time.  While Marie completes this task, the others investigate the countryside nearby and make contact with the locals.

Their first stop is a small "resort."  They find a couple of tourist families with children in need of rescue. They make contact with members from the World Health Organization that were here prior to the Sweeps, conducting research and humanitarian operations.  The team convinces them to come back to Elma.  Side note: It did not take much convincing.  They touch base with a nearby plantation and hear a rumor that one of the northern villages captured an alien.  They also hear that the locals have lost contact with one of the villages.

Investigating these leads, they make contact with the plucky natives to the north.  These people are not completely untouched by civilization, and are pretty friendly once they figure out the team is not there to hurt them.  The universal translation granted to members of the team from Draco's magical Pez dispenser helps a lot, as well.  The natives reveal that an alien foot patrol attacked their village a few days ago.  They captured a Gray during the fight.  Brock tries to interrogate the tortured prisoner and surprisingly finds out how to activate the stun grenade weapon (with a tiny implant in the alien's fingertip).  The fingertip in question is part of a necklace worn by one of the villagers.  The team trades for the prisoner and his finger.

Since they have time before Marie is done with her task, they investigate the missing village.  Wisps of smoke rise above the jungle canopy as they close in.  Fayth and Brock make their way in and find the place in ruin.  Villagers have been cut down by plasma weapons and needlers.  Some have been mauled and partially eaten.  In the village, they find a few survivors tied to posts.  Fayth examines one of them.  She sees a single scabbed-over stab wound on his abdomen, which reminds her of the wound to Dr. Kristoff in Seattle (During Recruitment Drive, part III).  When she examines him further to see if he can be saved, his bicep splits open under her touch like an overripe fruit, releasing a chryssalid claw that slashes at her and cuts deep.  Fayth recoils back and burns her mag at the beast peeling free from its human cocoon.  Startled and a little slow on the uptake, Brock also jumps in, and their combined fire kills the alien monster.  They look fearfully to the other prisoners tied up, and dispatch these murderous hatchlings before fleeing and trying to forget this village ever existed, because it certainly does not exist any longer.

With those images fresh in their minds, the team is eager to get off the ground and let Brazil go fuck itself.  Marie has finished breaking down the beacon.  She awaits the team's return so they can load the machinery into the ship and take off for home.  Last thing they knew, bogies were in-bound to Elma, and they don't want to leave the people at home hanging any longer.

Their departure is stymied, however, when the repulsor drive breaks down on startup.  Marie and Fayth determine that the arrival of the alien fleet and their "gravity braking" out of FTL caused an overload to some delicate system within the Firestorm's drives.  Since Fayth can't fly until it's fixed, she is able to help Marie as an able-bodied lab assistant.

Marie realizes that the repair task ahead could conceivably take days if she can't quickly school herself on the basics of UFO navigation technology.  Using all the help available and all her concentration, Marie focuses her attention to a razor's edge and attacks the problem.  She dissects the machine in her mind and learns the secrets of its inner workings.  Before the night gives way to dawn, Marie declares victory, and gives Fayth the all-clear to fire up the Firestorm!

Fayth hauls ass back home.  They make it to Elma shortly after dawn.  A couple miles outside of town to the southeast, in the wooded hills, they see a UFO crash site.  The ship is similar in design to the Firestorm.  There is no activity at the site, and a bunch of Red Hand power armor down.  Closer to town, within the perimeter of the Great Wall of Elma, there is another downed UFO, swarming with friendly military personnel.  They cheer on the returning heroes as they pass by.  Fayth lands to offload passengers, then lands at the development park.  Since Alamo and a shit-ton of cargo is still on board, she lands in an empty parking lot instead of her regular perch atop one of the cooling towers.

When she goes to the cargo bay to shoo Alamo out, he does not react like a giant, eager puppy.  He sits there...like a robot.  She tries to engage him in a bit of play, tossing a soccer ball his way, which is deftly caught by a manipulator and popped.  Fayth manages to verbally guide Alamo off the ship, but all his drive seems gone.  Back at the base, Fayth gets Brock on the case (since they are his playmates, too!) but he also has no luck with Alamo, nor Thunder and Flash.  He is having plenty of luck with the ladies, however.  Nearly every woman he sees is making passes at him, even the couple of lesbian scientists who are usually trying to woo Marie.

Before this mystery can be solved, the team is called together by Mrs. Kjelstad for a debrief.  They learn that after they left for Brazil, the nations of the world managed to pull together some resistance at the 11th hour, and were able to respond to the invasion with ground-based missiles, AAA and interceptors.  It has also become evident that the reason Gurov wanted the landing data was so they could secure a beachhead for the invasion.  All eyes turn toward Douglas so everyone can say "I told you so!" in unison, but he spoils their fun by not being there.  Someone mentions that he took off earlier, and no one knows where he's at, but they all have their guesses.  Probably making kissy-face with Gurov.

Lillian tells them that the UFOs have largely been dealt with, but the new enemy is now clear:  The Red Hand!  She reveals more recent discoveries of Gurov's betrayal that have come to light in the wake of the invasion:  Back in '72, he was fiddling with alien mind control tech and got himself assimilated into the Collective.  However, with no Collective influence for 70,000 light years, he was able to operate somewhat independently...until his masters showed up in force.  Then, he started marching to the beat of their drum.  X-Com needs to shift its sights and take out the Red Hand before the heavies of the invasion fleet make it to Earth.  Lillian asks if the team will help and asks for any and all info they have about Gurov, the Red Hand, their locations...anything.

During the debrief, Brock notices (!?) that AJ's left hand twitches repeatedly, and he seems to unconsciously fiddle with his wedding band.  Fayth scans him with the Lizardman Detector.  He shows up clean, but Fayth notices that Lillian seems oddly fascinated by the scanning process.  Brock asks AJ what's up with his hand.  AJ brushes the question off as nothing (secretly, though, he wonders if it is foreshadowing of his impending doom, like Captain Miller from Saving Private Ryan!)  With this odd behavior brought to his attention, AJ notices something else strange: the indent on his ring finger from his wedding band is gone.  AJ suspects this might mean he is a clone, so he keeps that fact to himself.  With peculiarities mounting, AJ does concede to voluntarily give up his weapons and armor and checks himself into the sick bay until things can get sorted out (or he just doesn't feel like it anymore; whichever comes first).

During the meeting, Fayth notices that her normally unflappable beau is acting uncharacteristically nervous and irritable.  He blows up on Marie at one point for speaking to her mother, telling her, "Stop talking to that woman!" before storming off.  After the meeting, Fayth gets AJ situated in the sick bay with a copy of Catcher in the Rye that happened to be in the base's library, and a peanut butter and banana sandwich that just happened to be on the lunch menu in the kitchen.  Then she goes off to meet with Carville and find out what is troubling him.

She finds him in her room.  He explains that he feels he is being watched, and it is unnerving to him how no one else can feel it as well.  He explains that since their return, things have been exceedingly strange, and he conducts an experiment with Fayth.  He asks for her rifle, the one that belonged to a fellow Ranger before he gave it to her.  He opens the small compartment in the stock and pulls out a small package, a ring.  This is peculiar to Fayth because she had found it several days ago and put it away in her room for safe-keeping.  Carville explains that he did not know she had done that.  He expected it to be in the rifle, so it was.  

Carville says that when Fayth has asked him to kill her if she was ever mind-controlled by aliens, he had agreed, but wasn't sure if he could do it in the end.  This line of conversation makes Fayth nervous, especially when he pulls his pistol on her.  He says that he doesn't have those doubts anymore, and that by killing her, it might be the only way to save them all.  Comments like that make Fayth think he's gone a little bonkers, and she is not down with this whole "getting murdered for the greater good" plan.  She tries to talk him down, to gently put her hand on his gun and aim it away from her...

...he knows that if he lets her talk, she will melt his resolve.  He shoots through her hand and into her face, killing her.

Meanwhile, AJ contemplates his PB & B sandwich.  The call to his wife earlier that went so well.  It was just how he'd like a call with her to go after he's risked his life in the field.  Then he hears gunshots in the distance, and decides that this whole being idle and unarmed thing is for the birds.  If Brock can wander around in a hospital gown, so can he.  He slinks off to the armory and grabs a pistol, then makes his way to the main lift that leads to the ruins of the Kjelstad home.

On his way up, he can see down across the dome, and sees a massive murderfest in full swing that Sergeant Carville seems to be winning.  Calm and detatched, AJ knows he can't let this pass.  He takes aim and drills the unsuspecting Ranger in the face, killing him.  The situation is too surreal for him, almost like it's not really happening, anymore.  He then makes his way up.  The confined passages that lead to the open air do not seem to bother him like he expected.  He makes his way further off the rez to test his theories further.

Meanwhile, Fayth wakes up to see a Gray leaning in close and gently stroking her face.  She recoils in horror and pushes it away, finding that she is attached to some alien machine.  The Gray tries to act friendly and asks for her help.  It tells her that she and her friends were captured and put in a simulation in order for the "Masters" to subtly interrogate them and eke out information they are seeking.  The Gray reveals that its people are nothing more than slaves, and it wants to prevent what happened to them from happening to the people of Earth.  It says that the only way to get the other "actors" out of the simulation is from the inside; if they try to externally remove them, it will immediately draw the attention of the Masters.  The Gray offers to sneak Fayth back into the sim as a voice inside the head of the least stable of them (the "Dark-Skinned One").  It also apologizes for the tweaks introduced to Carville's mind, which ultimately led to him jacking her out of the sim (with bullets).  The Gray tells her that when this is all over, Carville will probably need her help to sort things out.

Reluctantly, Fayth agrees to go back in, as a passenger within AJ's mind.  She has to try and convince him to kill the others, and then possibly himself.

Then, the team can start working on what the hell happened after Brazil...if any of it ever happened at all...