There was a brief, heated debate over comms about the merits of violently persuading the church Elder to give up whatever secret phrase was required to stand down Edict's mind control. Arguments were put forth about practicality and legality, though not morality. In the end, it came down to a matter of risk. They had to assume if there was a stand-down phrase, there must also be a trigger phrase. Should the Elder decide to choose spite over sense, he might order Edict to do something truly disastrous.

Agent Carver was eventually convinced some concessions were required. The raid on the Evo Church had actually achieved most of its stated goals, assuming the civilian issue was resolved without excessive bloodshed. The fugitive was in custody. The church itself had committed enough inexcusable crimes that it would be stripped of its religious exemptions, and likely decommissioned. The Church of Infinite Evolution had effectively, if temporarily, lost its foothold in D.C.

Things were not all sunshine and celebrations, however. The feds had a grand total of three priests in custody. The rest were long gone, evacuated through the scrapped teleporter and without any legal means of calling them back. The Elder was unfortunately correct in his claims; none of the priests had been ordered to remain in the building. In fact, the plan was for the guilty party to attempt escape, and for the police positioned outside to detain them. Unfortunately, nobody had expected every single church staff member to flee en masse, through means untraceable and unknown. Teleporters weren't even illegal, just incredibly cost-prohibitive and notoriously unreliable. In fact, it could be argued to be just as likely the device had exploded from overuse, as it was from deliberate sabotage.

Then, there was the matter of the Geists.

"What is a Geist?" the Elder asked with perfect befuddlement.

Carver's mask was transparent, showing her flat, unamused expression. "There's no point denying it. We were jumped by half a dozen of them."

The Elder looked politely puzzled. "And you think I ordered this? Do you have proof of that?"

Carver stared at him, then shook her head. "It doesn't matter. We've got the bodies. That will be proof enough."

"Do you?" the Elder asked pointedly. "Have the bodies, I mean."

This was an excellent question. Dan immediately opened a portal inside his helmet to peek down the cramped corridor where they'd disabled several Geists. The signs of battle were everywhere, walls and floor covered in flour, and a gaping hole in the wall providing enough light to see. The Geists, though, were gone.

Maybe the flour came off, Dan thought desperately. His veil poked out from the portal and nosed its way along the floor. There was nothing there to find.

Dan swore over the comms and said, " The other Geists!" Still mindful of his supposed limitations, he added, "They've probably evacuated the ones we downed. The fuckers are invisible; getting out the doors would be trivial when half your squads are deliberately staying in cover."

Carver's jaw muscle throbbed in a disturbing manner, and her mask returned to an opaque black slab. She turned to Dan, muttering, "Even if that's the case, our helmet cameras caught the whole thing."

"...Do Geists appear on your cameras?" Dan asked, already knowing the answer.

"Well, no. But it's clear that we fought several invisible individuals." There was a pause, as she considered her own statement. "Though, that doesn't exactly narrow it down. How did you know they were Geists?"

"Previous experience," Dan replied shortly. It was only after he spoke that he realized the implications of his statement. All three of the feds had stopped what they were doing to stare at him.

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Dan spoke up again, before the silence could grow oppressive, "It's not something which translates well to video."

"No," Carver admitted, slowly, "I guess it wouldn't." Another long pause, then she ventured, "Nothing for it, now. Without bodies, without solid evidence, I can't go around claiming there are Geists running around unsupervised."

Dan shrugged. "Charge what you can prove."

"Right."

She turned back to the Elder, apparently unwilling to continue this line of thought. Government assassins gone AWOL were obviously well above her paygrade. Maybe she assumed Dan would be dealing with the situation on his own end. Hilariously, that was a correct assumption, even if it was born out of a complete misconception. Dan suspected his name would be appearing on a report, somewhere, detailing knowledge and experience he almost certainly did not actually possess.

Dan found himself pleased to be overestimated. If anonymity was off the board, he'd happily settle for unearned acclaim.

"Alright, Elder," Carver said in a low, threatening growl, "here's how it's gonna go..."

The story they spun was a simple one. Eddie Charleston came to the Evo Church to hide from his crimes. The Elder allowed him into the church, despite knowing his background. Charleston, having genuinely converted, used his upgrade to mentally subvert the civilians until they were willing to die in defense of the church. Shortly before the raid, Charleston suffered an unspecified brain injury, leaving him immobile and nearly comatose. He had just enough consciousness left within him to—after frantic pleading from a fellow Brother—unleash his scheme to protect the Church. Fortunately, nobody was harmed, and the Elder was able to talk Charleston down, despite the man's impaired state.

This would be the public story, the press release, and there were more holes in it than a dartboard. For one, the expansion of Charleston's abilities went completely unaddressed. Carver casually chalked this up to "Bad intel," which Dan understood to really mean, "Not my problem to deal with." Charleston's unique circumstances would undoubtedly draw eyes, but Carver was supremely uninterested in investigating that particular mystery. It would get out eventually, no doubt. Someone, somewhere would say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and the news would scream about faulty upgrades. Until then, though, everyone involved seemed happy to cover things up. Anastasia's pessimistic predictions were put off for one more day.

The Evo Church's cavernous underground tunnel system went similarly unmentioned, for purely practical reasons. Nobody in the DCPD, or the D.C. government at large, wanted the stink of that particular fuck up to get out to the public. It was one thing to miss a hidden basement here or there, it was quite another for one of the largest buildings in the city to have an extra two or three stories packed beneath itself with nobody the wiser. It was a massive excavation, and not a soul had noticed. It was a bit like coming home to find your slim, supermodel wife had swapped places with a sumo wrestler at some point in the distant past, and you'd only just now realized it.

Not really something one wishes to advertise.

Charleston would be taken into custody, and shuffled off to doctors and upgrade specialists, where he'd probably be poked and prodded for the rest of his life, assuming his condition was as permanent as Dan assumed. The Elder would take the fall for the convict's hiring, along with sole responsibility for the underground excavations. He'd promised to give up the names of whoever did the work, but Dan guessed they would all mysteriously drop off the grid before they could be tracked down and arrested.

The Evo Church's religious exemption would be pulled, and the entire building condemned for investigation. If there were more secrets within, they would be found. If whatever precautions the Church had taken to destroy evidence of malfeasance did not hold up, more charges would be brought to bear. Dan doubted anything would come of it. This was clearly a contingency they'd planned for extensively. The planning had paid off, even if the initial gamble had not. Risk, and reward.

It was entirely possible Edict could have operated almost indefinitely out of the Church, not a soul ever identifying his name or face. He'd mostly operated in the southwestern states, far from Maryland. The odds of someone walking into the church and recognizing him were low, but not impossible. They'd rolled the dice, and lost. But Dan knew better than anyone that the Evo Church was only down, not out. Nearly the entire priesthood had escaped, teleported to parts unknown. There were still assets in the city itself, waiting, plotting, planning: Madison and the Andenos and all their allies that Dan may have missed.

The word was out, now. The Church had been attacked, its priests scattered, its structures, stolen. It was only a matter of time before there was a reaction. The consequences of this day could not yet be measured. Good or bad, Dan had committed to the course. Now he could only press on. Come what may, he'd finish what he'd started.