The Mission Is Never Over—Presence

With Clyde Baughman's indiscretions covered up, and Delta Green's secrecy maintained, the Agents went home to be with their own families.

The spitting image of a sitcom dad, Malachi threw open his front door and called out, “Honey! I'm home!” He shared a drink with his wife Claire before dinner, first bemoaning what a little shit their son Ash had become now that he was a teenager, then describing the alpine moss he'd been away studying on Mt. Greylock. An environmental consultant, Claire could mostly keep up with Malachi’s research, but she had no idea alpine moss doesn't grow on Mt. Greylock.

Wren went digging into the FBI's files on Joy Schusterman, once a psychologist specializing in prisoner behavior until she fled arrest in 2008, and found a paper in which Joy had praised Albert Yrjo. His story was similar to Joy's own: a psychology professor until 1964, Yrjo was disgraced after a test subject killed multiple people during one of his experiments. Wren cut her research short to visit her sister Robin, an artist, who talked at length about her latest project. Robin knew Wren wouldn't admit to the strain of her FBI caseload and trusted her to work through it herself, but their mother worried about Wren's preoccupation.

Finally, Rex had dinner with his ex-wife Maria. Though divorced, the two continued to live together as roommates; the friendly bickering revealed that Rex contributed nothing to rent or bills, helped with none of the chores, and generally took on no responsibilities. While the conversation was as friendly as could be under those circumstances, Rex still retreated to the basement to be with his bugs.

The team's next night at the opera began on December 14, in the lead-up to Christmas, and brought them back to New England. The Customs & Border Protection office suite at Bradley International Airport was cut off from the bustle; travelers kept well back from the door crisscrossed in yellow tape warning of remediation. Inside, Agent MARCUS, wearing dark sunglasses and an N95 mask, collected their phones before briefing them.

At 2 am EST that morning, a woman named Regina Bullock received a text in Alabama from her sister Emily; an hour later, her phone provider issued a roaming alert for her smartwatch in Vermont; and by 10 am, she'd been checked into Grace Cottage Hospital in Townshend, VT, by a local cop responding to a 911 call. The Program wanted to know how Bullock had traveled so far so quickly, whether Unnatural forces were responsible, and if so, to get ahead of things before anyone died. The Agents would be investigating as a new FBI task force looking into human trafficking, but they were warned Bullock's family would be racing them to Regina. The Agents asked for the contents of Regina’s text messages but were denied; Malachi realized they had likely been acquired illegally through NSA mass surveillance. 

With the briefing over, the Agents left in a black GMC Suburban from the CBP motor pool. Wren called ahead to the Brattleboro courthouse, planning to stop just long enough to grab a search warrant, but the judge had more questions about their case. After considering their options, she decided to take the extra time to meet with the judge: when Emily got to the hospital, they would treat her as a potential ally, not an obstacle.

Delayed but with the warrant secured, the team pulled up to Grace Cottage Hospital, vision swimming from the sudden heat as they stepped inside. The silhouette of Black Mountain loomed through the windows. This sense of space and openness made Wren feel cozy, while it was a familiar, comforting sight to Malachi thanks to his work in the area. But something about it filled Rex with paranoia. Maybe it was the tug he felt as he walked past, a small, invisible force trying to pull him in the mountain's direction.

The team met Dr. Embla Haugen, head of the ER. With their credentials, she immediately related that Regina's condition was not serious: they had treated her with an IV, a heated blanket, and several hours of sleep. However, she pulled Rex aside to tell him a blood test had found benzodiazepine, a strong sedative that blocked new memories from forming, in Regina's system. She was found near Indian Rocks, and all the locals knew teenagers and college kids partied up there; Dr. Haugen assumed she had been given the drug at just such a party. Rex didn't care about medical reports, though. He wanted to know more about the mountain, and the doctor's tall tales about mischievous goblins called pukwudgies confirmed that the mountain was evil. He then tried to flirt with her, complimenting the green of Dr. Haugen's eyes, but she was put off by an earwig literally coming out of his ear.

Meanwhile, Wren and Malachi went to Regina's room, where their person of interest was sketching the view of Black Mountain. Wren complimented Regina's drawing, engaging her by talking about Robin's own talent for art. When Wren turned the conversation to Regina's arrival in Vermont, she said she'd flown up to meet some friends, gone to a party on the mountain, got drunk, and wandered off; all lies, and likely ones she had heard whispered among the hospital staff. But when Wren pushed, Regina shut down and asked her to leave, seeming on the verge of a panic attack. Wren left her phone number and asked Regina to call whenever she felt up to it.

But with Regina focused on Wren, Malachi pocketed her smartwatch. The digital display showed arms like an analog watch; if he didn't know better, he'd think it was. Outside, he gained access and pulled up her text messages, learning Regina had been at a nightclub called the Hunt the night before. She told her sister it was slow, and while she was there with friends, she started talking to a woman she only described as being their mother's age.

Rex moved on from Dr. Haugen and tracked down nurse Kylee Hoffman, who had examined Regina when she was first brought in. Hoffman confirmed Dr. Haugen's account of Regina's condition, but she noted that Regina wasn't dressed for a party in the woods on a winter night, and that she had no phone, purse, ID, nothing on her; they only identified her when her watch chimed and Hoffman realized it could receive and send texts, at which point she reached out to Regina's family. Officer Jason Revett, the cop who'd brought Regina in, had also said she'd been rambling about weird stuff and suspected she was on drugs. She had nothing to add about Black Mountain or pukwudgies and eventually agreed the mountain was evil, if only because she was too exhausted to argue with Rex.

Wren looked up the Hunt online, an LGBT night club in Birmingham, AL, owned by a gay married couple named Eddie Starr and Luther Moore. She called the club and got Eddie on the phone, but when she said she was with the FBI, he told her firmly to come in with a warrant if she had questions for them.

At this point Emily arrived, heading for Regina's room. Malachi intercepted her with a cup of coffee, and while she was grateful for its warmth, she became wary when “Dr. Danielson” revealed he was part of an FBI task force rather than one of the hospital's doctors. He pointed out the strangeness of Regina's appearance in VT; Emily tried to dodge his questions but accidentally confirmed Regina had not traveled to see friends and her being there was unexpected. She recovered by pressing on, asking if Malachi was looking into the other disappearances too. Malachi tried to get more from her, but she insisted on seeing Regina, so he gave her his phone number and stepped aside.

Wren called the Winhall Police Department. She learned that Officer Revett was off-duty buy probably getting a beer at the Red Fox Inn, which turned out to be a townie bar with a hostile vibe. The ceilings were low; the wall decorated with the front half of a taxidermied cougar, leaping out claws-first; and it was full of men bigger than Wren, many armed, their holster paddles open. Surprisingly, Officer Revett was just such a man, but he was impressed an FBI agent wanted his help. With a little sympathizing in the stresses of being a cop, Revett admitted that Regina had been talking strangely when he found her. None of it made sense to him, but he offered to share footage from his body cam if Wren came to the station the next day.

The next morning, December 15, Malachi donned his cold weather gear with a plan to follow Revett's path from a nearby golf course up Black Mountain. Rex, unhappy with feeling drawn to the mountain, threw on an impractical camelhair coat and went with him. Revett's bootprints were still preserved in the cold, muddy ground, as were the prints of someone heading down the mountain in heels: they followed those to Indian Rocks, a clearing with a circle of standing stones. Tabs from countless beer cans littered the ground and the inside of a burned-out Ford Ranger from the 1980s, but it seemed like there hadn't been a party there in weeks. Yet signs of life clung on in the deepening winter, old man's beard lichen hanging from the trees in curtains. Regina's footprints began here: there was no sign that she had climbed up the mountain from somewhere else, as if she had teleported into the middle of Indian Rocks. And the longer they looked around, the stronger they began to feel… something. Like a repressed memory lurching back towards full awareness; Rex, knowing he would not like what would happen next, sat down to meditate on that feeling, while Malachi studied the standing stones.

When Wren arrived at the Winhall Police Department, the officers were celebrating someone's birthday in the back, and anyone not joining in was simply chilling or doing crossword puzzles, ignoring a ringing phone. Revett noticed her and, still wearing a pointed party hat, showed Wren to a private room to view the body cam footage. She watched Regina, alternately dazed and intensely alert, speak about a goddess in the ocean. One who begat life and ended it. With a thrill, Wren recognized what Regina was describing: however Regina had learned it, Wren had read it from a very odd book.

Rex and Malachi suddenly found themselves on an island in a warm, endless sea, though the standing stones were there and unchanged. Malachi looked into the water, watching strange shellfish feed on each other and spiky seaweed drift in the current; he realized they had gone hundred of millions of years back in time. But Rex looked up, where pulsing lights flew overhead, changing colors as they approached a mountain that did not exist in the modern day. Suddenly Rex knew these glowing creatures did exist in their time and had continued unchanging across all that time, only evolving as they chose to better serve the mountain, their mother. The mountain was his mother too, and Malachi's. Both of them had been given life. Now it demanded their lives back.

Rex attacked without warning, trying to drown Malachi in the seawater, but Malachi pistol whipped him with Clyde Baughman's drop piece. When Rex fell, he landed in frozen mud, breath misting on a winter morning in Vermont.