Inheritance

Murder Girls is created, written and produced by Eternal Teenager. Content warning, this episode contains discussions of murder, references to past trauma, environmental contamination, and institutional misconduct. It includes mentions of water pollution, corporate cover-ups, legal intimidation, brief references to medical treatment, and prescription medication, as well as profanity throughout. Listener discretion is advised.

Previously on Murder Girls.

You're your father's kid, all right. He came sniffing around Holtwood before he died, asking questions he shouldn't have about toxins in the soil, about what the originals were cleaning up. Said it wasn't just environmental anymore, said it was medical. Look, your father is why I'm even talking to you.

Then help me finish what he started.

The originals aren't just messing with treaties in some courtroom in Olympia, okay? They're playing for keeps. This Omnia deal is too big for them to lose now. Nothing can stop it. We were in Holtwood, restricted area near the old paper mill. This is what we found.

He shows me a video on his phone. Shaky footage, shot through trees at night. A massive concrete pad, 200 feet easy, hidden under camo netting in the Redwoods. Only feature, an industrial lift.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to the Fern River Monitoring Station.

Daniel Siaya told us about it, and he also mentioned that there was an older threshold site there.

Then we noticed threshold barges being loaded on the river.

Cursed-looking shipping containers.

A large, open, warehouse-like space, shipping containers everywhere, stacked high in the distance, three, four levels deep. This isn't a research facility. This is storage. The threshold facility on the island, it felt old, older than our case. How old? Older than 10 years ago. So your dad planted an environmental sensor cache on Osprey Island. So let's see what he found. The numbers are not right. This isn't industrial runoff. This is medical. Pharmaceutical compounds, synthesis byproducts.

Drug manufacturing?

I don't know, possibly.

From the 50s through the 80s, Tlaquah County hosted a ridiculous number of medical and pharmaceutical studies.

Trials, pilot programs, therapeutic initiatives. A lot of them tied to institutional populations. Some were for mental health meds, but then a lot were just out there.

How many are we talking?

Enough that it stops being coincidence and starts being a business model.

So then we cross-referenced with the wellness initiative requisition stuff Dylan was poking at.

And?

Overlap. Facilities. Dates. Program names.

So Dylan was looking into the same infrastructure. Hey, is that?

It's the original's payphone. Video incoming. Sweet. Hey, uh, can't see who that is. They're hidden. They're calling us? Oh my god!

Answer it. Hello?

Jonathan O'Connell didn't die because of what he was chasing.

He died because of what he was about to prove. If you want the truth, stop digging for what they buried.

Start digging for what they poisoned.

Omnia doesn't like surprises.

Neither do the Hulks.

Murder Girls, episode 21, Inheritance.

There's a very specific kind of silence that happens after someone tells you, your dad didn't die for the reasons you thought he did. Not dramatic silence, administrative silence, like the universe is waiting for you to file paperwork. Okay, cool, great, love that.

You know, I think they might know about the camera.

Yeah, maybe. They were definitely angled away from it.

And if that's true, then they know it routes here. So either they picked a very lucky angle.

Or they know about Dee Dee's machine. But that's impossible, right?

It's improbable, not impossible. Regardless, it narrows the field.

To who?

To an original or someone original adjacent.

Or, or a whole other option we haven't considered. Okay, originals.

Eleanor? Nope.

Right. Too straightforward. She came to us. She doesn't need to pull this Cold War shit.

Look, it's fun to keep guessing, but if we chase the voice, we lose the thread.

Okay, so we chase what it pointed at.

What they poisoned.

This is the part where we pretend we're calm and methodical. It's very convincing. Like, if you don't know us.

Here we go. Jonathan and environmental. Let's not reinvent the wheel.

He was tracking contamination patterns, countywide.

Medical waste disposal over decades.

Charming.

The Weirdos tapped some of the requisitions he submitted. We've got some of the file request info here.

Yeah, let's see where he was looking, but let's go beyond what we already know. So leave out around the cannery, Osprey Island, the Holtwood, Eagles Creek, all that stuff.

OK, here's something. He was requesting 80 zoning board assessments for a, hmm, for an Avalon Heights redevelopment proposal. Weird. Huh?

The Heights? Like the Heights Heights, like the cursed part of town?

Yes, some development project called Willow Bluffs. The Willow what? Willow Bluffs. Phase one approved. Phase two? Oh, OK, environmental review deferred.

Deferred how?

Just deferred.

No final report?

Not public.

Maps?

Here's a proposed zoning overlay.

Right, yeah, that's just the Heights.

No, it's not.

It totally is. That's fourth and alder, you know, that like weird half-finished cul-de-sac behind the abandoned laundromat where all the cats in that one weird possum live getting up to god knows what.

So Willow Bluffs was supposed to replace the Heights.

But it didn't.

So the Heights stayed, and the name disappeared.

Avalon Heights was always just the Heights, underfunded, underserved, uneven. Now it has a ghost name. I've lived here my entire life. I've never heard of Willow Bluffs.

That's because it failed.

Developments like that don't just quietly fail. Not when the originals are involved.

Then why did this one?

I think Jonathan was wondering the same thing.

Okay, looks like the holding company that fronted Willow Bluffs dissolves in 89.

And then?

Reconstitutes three years later as a subsidiary of Threshold.

That's predictable.

That feels like a poison problem.

And a real estate problem.

That's a Barriott and Rebrand problem.

Which means?

A business problem.

If Willow Bluffs collapsed after environmental review, then something in that review was bad enough to kill a whole development.

And Jonathan was digging it all back up 30 years later.

Which means it might have been bad enough to kill him. Did Jonathan actually look at this though?

I mean, looks like there was a request out, co-signed by the Nausicaa Council, for runoff data for that part of town and others, but it was rejected. I don't know if this is what the caller meant, but it's definitely got some legs.

You know, the weirdos were already deep in both Jonathan's and Dylan's environmental threads. And we did say we'd stop treating them like interns.

Sure, sure, let's bring them in on this. It stops us doubling up on things and keeps them up to speed as we go.

All hands on deck to Walter's trailer.

Vamanos.

You know what, you know what, I'm just gonna shoot them a wee little text first.

Oh, oh, yep, yep, right, yes, of course.

Like, respect their boundaries and time and all that.

Time, agency, consent, all the good stuff.

Yep, yep, yep. Right, you know, like, maybe they're out, maybe they're busy, we don't know.

Yes, you just never know.

Evolution achieved.

Unsettling, but true.

Yay us.

Avalon Falls is very good at forgetting things, especially the things that almost happened. Almost renovations, almost lawsuits, almost answers. But if you listen closely, you can hear the old names under the new ones. And once you hear them, they don't go quiet again.

Avalon Falls runs on layers, layers of fog, layers of paperwork, layers of things that were supposed to become something else. If you want to peel one back, you don't do it alone. You bring witnesses.

It's open.

Hello.

Hi.

Hey y'all, we brought chips of various types.

Yes.

Yeah, nice.

Chips, multiple varieties?

Are those blue takis?

What a day.

You know, before we start, thank you for seeing us.

Yes, especially at this wildly unreasonable hour of-

It's seven.

It's not even a school night guy.

What night even is it?

I mean, you're welcome, but you don't have to thank us.

No, we do, actually.

We said we weren't going to treat you like interns anymore.

And we meant it, and we mean it.

You didn't treat us like interns.

More like unpaid consultants.

Right. Well, promotion.

So we found something.

Say more.

It's tied to the environmental threads you've been tracking.

And to Jonathan, my dad.

You have our attention.

Have you ever heard of willow bluffs?

Sounds like a candle.

Yeah.

Like a big, fat, expensive one that smells like eucalyptus and soft launch therapy.

Or a hidden glade where stuffed animals come to life and live in harmony.

Yeah. No, it was a failed redevelopment project in the Heights.

Which is way less magical, but arguably far more cursed.

The Heights? Like, the Heights Heights?

Yuppers. Home of three vape shops named The Vape of Things, one extremely confused chiropractor, and a mural that says Hope in Comic Sans.

I don't know about any redevelopment project. Past, present, or future on the books for the Heights. Not in this century.

Well, that's because you got to go back in time to the 1980s for this one.

Even failed projects leave scars. The Heights is just the Heights. Yeah.

It's not like anyone there talks about almost becoming something else.

Right. Because it didn't just fail.

It got handled.

Handled how? Whoever had medical contamination in the pool, you just won five Amy bucks.

What's the conversion rate?

Emotional validation and one expired granola bar. Pending. Uh, actually, just emotional validation. Expired or not, the granola bar is peanut butter marshmallow supreme. So, well, you understand, right? Yeah. You're a smart kid. You get it.

I do not.

Keeping things on the rails here, Jonathan was requesting zoning board environmental reviews tied to Willow Bluffs.

Public?

Deferred.

That's code for someone didn't like the answer.

Maybe we can start with why it may have been deferred.

On it. And just says, pending additional hydrological data.

Translation?

Water problem.

Wait. There's more.

Oh, good. Love that tone.

Utility trenching completed. Subsurface infrastructure installation began.

Began?

No completion filing. No inspection sign off.

So they dug something and then just stopped?

You don't stop digging infrastructure unless you hit money or poison.

We don't have to spell out which one it is, right?

Okay, so a cover up.

Yep. One Jonathan started digging up again in the 2010s.

He was pulling runoff data across the county, but a lot of it was nearby. Holtwood, around the cannery and abandoned railway tunnel. Eagles Creek, the Heights.

Based on the requisitions we found earlier? Yeah. He was cross-referencing water tables with old containment filings.

The Heights requests were the first ones.

Do the dates line up?

Looks like it. Heights requisitions start in 2013. The others come after.

So this was ground zero.

Or at least where it got personal. The Heights is an abstract data. It's people. So think patient zero.

Hold on. I've got something. Heights residents exploring legal options over water contamination. 2014. Archived local coverage.

Class action?

Looks like it was heading that way.

I don't remember that happening.

Because it didn't.

That's the point.

We should talk to Marion. If there was a class action warming up, she probably knows something.

Good idea. If it fizzled, she'd know why.

Let's search again. Broader.

Okay. How about... There. Civil settlements logged. Early 2016. Property disputes. Health claims. Non-disclosure attached.

Just a few months after Jonathan died.

Momentum builds, then something removes the oxygen.

So there was going to be a lawsuit.

Or at least discovery.

Which means someone was about to look under something.

And someone didn't want that. Nope. You know, I cannot stop eating these Takis, oh my lord.

It's impossible, they're perfectly crunchy.

Addictively spicy.

And they're blue.

Actually, that part weirds me out, but yes to all the rest.

Hey, weirdos, do you guys have a, like, you know, homebrew conspiracy theory? Like, one you came up with on your own or whatever?

Um, no Amy, no.

We do not have any theories.

What do you mean?

No theory whatsoever, ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Walter, come on man.

Yeah, we have one. Like, obviously.

What? No way. It's called...

The Eyes. Whoa, the eyes?

That sounds so cool.

What's that all about?

Oh, so we're just gonna tell them?

Right, we're just gonna tell them.

Okay, great, fine.

Walter!

Okay, so, the eyes. High level overview. There's some kind of advanced coordinated surveillance system in Tlacwa County.

Probably created and overseen by the originals.

No one else has that scale or reach.

Cameras everywhere.

Okay, okay, sure. Yeah, but isn't that just, you know, like, America nowadays?

Man? Right, right. The capitalist oligarchy surveillance state, am I right?

Yes, but no, someone is taking that surveillance infrastructure and piggybacking on it.

Someone from the county.

The eyes of Tlacwa County.

Sure, sure, but how do you know this? I mean, that, how do you know that?

The signs are all there.

Signs?

It's all speculation, but we've noticed things.

Cameras in weird places where there shouldn't be cameras.

Working cameras where dummy cameras would make more financial sense.

We haven't tried to prove it, but that's the theory.

Huh, well, that is, that is a really cool, just a straight up Mexican firecracker of a theory. Yup.

Uh, oh, oh, oh, I have a thing. I have a thing. You all originally stumbled onto Jonathan's environmental stuff because you were following what Dylan was requesting, right?

We admit to nothing.

We absolutely admitted to that.

Walter, they saw the files, man.

Ah, yes, then we admit to that.

Please do carry on. We focused on the Holtwood Osprey Island, places we had bumped up against, places Jonathan had already flagged.

Did Dylan ever request anything tied to the heights?

Based on what we have, it doesn't look like it.

He was going through the same government channels, so same walls.

Maybe even thicker ones.

That's not totally right, though.

What do you mean?

Dylan wasn't just hitting the same walls.

Right, walls don't matter when when you're already inside them.

Uh, pipes?

What did you do?

Simply put, I'm inside the Threshold corporate internal network.

You hacked into Threshold?

What?

No!

Holy shit!

Oh!

Oh, boy!

I borrowed the door. Dylan's corporate email account isn't fully deactivated. HR flagged it, pending legal. That means back-end permissions are in limbo.

How long?

Nine minutes. Well, eight minutes, 43 seconds and counting.

That's alarmingly specific.

Because 10 triggers a sink.

Okay.

Go, go. And I am not condoning or endorsing this, but I definitely do approve.

I definitely do not approve, like at all, but what do you have?

Searching heights in his corporate polls got hits. Environmental compliance archives, containment maintenance logs, utility draw reports, closed hydrological structures.

Looks like parcel IDs.

Sites marked as inactive, still pulling power.

Upgrade proposals recurring every six years.

Upgrade what?

That's the thing. These proposals don't specify.

He wasn't looking for reports.

He was looking for locations.

He was triangulating.

Containment adjacent infrastructure.

What does that mean?

It means something physical exists.

And he was narrowing down where.

Is there a cluster?

Not one cluster. It's a pattern. Several sites across the county.

Including the usual suspects.

Around the cannery, the railroad tunnel, outskirts of the Holtwood near Eagles Creek.

Avalon Heights.

They're not labeled as anything. Just compliance nodes, maintenance designations. Yeah, just numbers in spreadsheets.

Ghost files for ghost sites.

Can you map them? At least the ones around Avalon Falls?

Yeah, the usual suspects.

Okay. Sending to screen.

Hey, hey, hey. A printout. We need a printout.

Uh, okay. Sending to Walters just fucking gnarly old printer. Sure.

Yes!

Keep digging around these nodes. Cross-reference anything Jonathan touched. If there's overlap, flag it.

And we'll talk to Marion about the class action stuff. See what almost happened.

Copy that.

Thanks again, guys. Seriously, you can keep all the chips. Really?

There must be six bags here. Oh my god, thank you.

And as an emotionally correct gesture slash surprise, a box of Mountain Dew! I can't believe this! This is too much.

Now I'm getting old.

My leg is broken, but I want to jump.

Bye, real ones!

Sometimes inheritance is money. Sometimes it's a map. And sometimes it's a question someone else died asking.

Marion Caldwell lives in the part of town where the trees are old and the houses pretend they aren't listening. Her home sits halfway into the woods, like it changed its mind about civilization and stopped mid-step. It's an old house, it's a big house, but it's not the type of old and big house where the originals live. It's from the last century, not from the one before that. With the sparse streetlights coming on in the neighborhood, the fall colors beginning to paint the trees, and the warm glow coming from inside, Marion's house emanates postcard energy. How you feel about it all depends on where you land on the matter of postcards, I guess.

You two look like you've been somewhere interesting.

That's one word for it.

Thank you for seeing us. We keep texting you and just dropping in.

And I love it, truly.

Well, that puts you in the minority.

I mean, a surprise at the end of the day? What could be more wonderful? Come in, please.

Well, as long as you're not busy.

Not at all. Is everything okay?

We have questions, legal-flavored ones.

Those are my favorite. Gosh, you know, I was disappointed this wasn't the second meeting of the Avalon Falls History Club. But now I'm intrigued all over again.

Awesome.

Follow me. We can sit in the den. It has a lovely view of the town, especially at night.

You have such a lovely home, Marion.

Oh, thank you, Marguerite. Every few years, I think about selling, moving into something smaller, but... I don't know. It's my home, if that makes sense. Yes, of course. Yeah. Coffee, tea, soda. There are cookies on the table there.

Um, coffee, please. Thank you.

Coffee, please. And I'll just, just, just grab, you know, like maybe just one.

Yes, Amy, please eat all the cookies. That's why they're there.

Well, I mean, if it helps you out, then, you know, okay. The den smells like coffee and furniture polish. It's filled with expensive, though dated furniture and ornaments and art set in front of a wide set of glass windows, looking out through a thin frame of trees down and over the town from an angle I can't ever remember seeing before.

You weren't wrong about that view.

Yes. Isn't it lovely? It's so comforting to watch the lights of the town come on one by one. They keep the darkness of the sea and woods at bay.

There are photos on every flat surface, vacations, birthdays, captured mid-laugh, moments that assume the future will cooperate.

Oh, is this your granddaughter?

Yes, Clara. She's nine now. This was taken last spring. She insists on wearing that hat year-round, even in July, especially in July.

Icon behavior.

Her mother disagrees. Children have such strong opinions about the weather, don't they?

She looks happy.

She is. Please sit. The couch remembers everyone who visits.

Thank you. Hey, Mags, why don't you slide right in next to me on this leather love seat, huh?

Um, all right. Just don't go all elbows McCann talker on me.

Hey.

Coffee for you, Marguerite. And for you, Amy.

Thank you so much. Again, smells delicious. My God.

It's Hawaiian Kona, had it for the first time on my honeymoon and never looked back.

Whoa, this doesn't even smell like coffee to me. It's like chocolate and puppies in velvet.

I'm so pleased you're enjoying it. So girls, how can I help you?

Do you remember a potential class action around Avalon Heights? Around 2014 to 2015, water contamination.

Ah, yes, it never formally filed, so some would say it never existed, but it was definitely real. And it was gathering weight.

You were involved?

Not in the consolidated action. I represented a handful of families independently. Health claims, property damage, you know how those start.

Slow.

And then all at once.

How serious was it?

Serious enough that draft discovery requests were circulating. Internal compliance logs, containment site records, environmental review archives.

Containment sites?

That was the theory. If contamination migrated through runoff, it had to originate somewhere.

My dad, Jonathan, was consulting, right?

Yes, he had been chasing it all already, tracking countywide data. The Heights made it human. Numbers are easy to ignore. Children aren't.

And then he died.

And then momentum shifted. Unfortunately.

We found records of civil settlements. Early 2016, NDAs attached.

That's right. Yes.

So the lawsuit just evaporated?

Class actions are fragile things. Remove a key expert, remove a public advocate, things get delayed, time rolls on, it begins to fall apart, people get tired, people get frightened, defendants get generous. Discovery never happened.

If someone were going to look now, hypothetically, where would they start?

You don't start with headlines. Headlines are for after. Where you start digging is with infrastructure.

Meaning?

Containment requires maintenance. Maintenance leaves paper trails. Paper trails lead to sites.

Even if they're mislabeled?

Especially then.

We came across something called willow bluffs.

Of course you did. That's where it began to unspool.

So the heights was going to change?

Every part of town is always supposed to change. Towns don't erase what's underneath. They just build on top of it. You know, if you're tracing runoff modeling, Daniel Siaya would have seen the drafts. Jonathan looped him in on most of the county projections. If you want the technical architecture of what they were building, Daniel would know more than I ever could.

Daniel, huh? Yeah. I know that he and my dad worked together sometimes. Didn't know it was on this specifically.

Your father and Daniel were careful. Careful men are dangerous in the right circumstances.

Dangerous? Dangerous how?

They ask questions that demand answers, and answers require accountability. Accountability is rarely convenient.

How close were they with this?

Close enough that I advised several of my clients to prepare for change.

What kind of change?

The kind that involves disclosure, inspections, remediation plans, headlines. Institutions do not enjoy that sort of attention.

And after my dad died?

You saw the stories about the settlements. After Jonathan O'Connell died, the temperature dropped. Offers were made. Some families chose certainty over uncertainty.

You mean money?

I mean resolution. Not everyone can afford a war.

Fair enough. I guess there's a lesson in all this.

If we find something real, then you move carefully. Don't detonate something unless you're certain where every speck of dust will settle.

We've been learning that recently.

Yeah, the hard way.

Always remember, Avalon Falls has survived many things. It prefers survival to exposure.

No argument there.

Well, we should get going. If we leave now, we can still catch Daniel.

Oh, really? Okay.

I understand. Please give Daniel my regards. Hope you find what you're looking for.

Thank you again, Marion. Really, it's always wonderful to see you.

Yes, the cookies and coffee were incredible.

My door is always open, especially to you two.

Let's do the Avalon Falls History Club thing soon. Like, soon, soon.

Perfect. Goodbye, girls. Please be careful out there.

For the first time since we spoke with the caller, this felt less like grief and more like math. The simple arithmetic of inheritance. Something my dad had started, plus something we could maybe finish. Okay, Daniel, we go to Daniel. We move fast before anyone decides to erase anything.

Amy.

Mags.

Slow down.

Dude, we don't have time to slow down.

We're parked. You just found out your dad was probably killed for digging into contamination, not because you pushed too far on Osprey Island. You just found out you're a Calhoun. And you restarted your meds. That was all today.

I feel fine.

That's not what I'm worried about.

Ugh, fine. If my dad died because of something the originals buried, and I'm one of them.

You are not them.

Genetically speaking.

No. The Calhouns aren't originals anymore. I mean, the rest of them made that pretty fucking clear, right?

Nothing says you're out of the club like a massacre.

More important. Way more important. You don't inherit guilt. You don't inherit crimes. You don't inherit choices.

Yeah. Well, tell that to the town.

I don't care about the town.

You should.

I don't. I care about you.

Either the meds are leveling me out, or I'm about to spiral spectacularly.

Okay.

That's it? Okay?

If you spiral, I'm here.

You always say that like it's not a big deal.

It's not.

It's a little bit a big deal, man.

Call Daniel. Mags, if my dad was that close, then we don't let it die twice.

Yeah. Okay. I'll call him on the way. Some places in Tlaquah County feel temporary, like they were built hoping something else would come along. The Nausicaa Council Hall isn't one of those places. It doesn't creak, it doesn't apologize. The floors are worn smooth in the places people actually stand. The walls hold photographs and woven banners and the kind of history that doesn't ask permission to exist. Daniel isn't pacing, he's stone still. He stands behind the long table beneath the county map, sleeves rolled up, papers spread out like he's mid-argument with gravity itself.

Marguerite, Amy.

Thanks for meeting us on short notice.

And for hosting us here.

What do you have?

A lot of pieces, but no puzzle.

You mentioned Willow Bluffs.

Yes, the Heights.

And the class action that never happened.

Yeah, well, it should have happened.

How did it start to come together?

Jonathan O'Connell came to me with federal sampling and scattered data sets. It confirmed what the Niseka had been seeing for years.

Which was?

Contamination in the county wasn't isolated. It was an industrial runoff from a single site. It was systemic. And it pooled in places no one powerful had to drink from. Like here in Eagles Creek.

And the Heights.

Right. So we decided to team up. I got the council behind it. Wasn't difficult. We'd been asking questions long before Jonathan showed up. With his federal credentials, I thought it would get somewhere. Did it? Yes. At first. Jonathan and I were tracking runoff migration patterns. The data kept converging on the Heights. Statistically, medically, legally, it was the flashpoint.

What do you mean?

Birth defects. Cancer. Clusters. Patterns. Too consistent to dismiss. That was what stopped Willow Bluffs. They hit it, but they never cleaned it. The development faded away, but the contamination never did.

You two were sharing intel?

Federal filings from him. Independent water sampling from us. We were building something. We were drafting discovery, preparing inspections, lining up expert testimony. There was a lot of their there.

Discovery was circling containment sites.

Yes. If containment failed in the 80s, it wouldn't stay contained.

Gravity doesn't care about property lines.

No, it doesn't.

So we're talking what? Toxic waste dumps? Like a bunker with poison barrels with skulls on them just jammed inside it?

In theory, something like that. Now it would be infrastructure. Buried, reinforced, maintained. But we're talking about something built with standards from the 1970s or even earlier. We thought the primary containment source was somewhere in the heights, but we couldn't find it. Every request stalled. Every permit delayed. Every access point redirected.

So without a verified source of contamination?

You're just some environmental whack job yelling at the man. So we pivoted toward the class action.

Trigger discovery.

Get a look behind the walls.

Exactly. It was the right play. It was gaining traction. Phone calls started coming in. The tone shifted.

Then the accident.

I tried to finish it. But people got tired. They settled. They moved. And the case dissolved.

Understandable.

I understand it. But some of us don't get to move away. Look, you said you had something new?

We brought something.

Something you and my dad could have used back then.

These aren't public filings.

Internal compliance polls, maintenance logs, sites marked inactive that are still drawing power.

Internal? Is this from Threshold?

Dylan wasn't stuck in government or public channels.

Take a look at this.

You have a printed map?

Yeah. I thought it would be more dramatic. You know, slam it down, flourish.

No?

We're not doing a dramatic flourish. You're telling me this is a no-flourish operation we're running?

There's also a digital version.

Let's see.

So the ID numbers correlate with the sites marked on the map.

Dylan was looking into why these sites were so shady. Limited info, limited tracking.

Hidden in plain sight. Lay out that printed map.

Okay. I'll just, you know, I'll just, uh...

You may flourish briefly.

Why, thank you, my good man. And a flourish.

Oh my lord.

So we always believe the primary source was in the Heights.

What am I looking at?

Testing results, patient locations, proximity of harm.

There's an epicenter spreading out from the Heights.

Exactly. Now overlay it on your map. That node, that's the one.

Holy shit, it's right in the middle. It has to be the source.

That's not in the developed part of the Heights.

It's inland.

That's the falls.

If containment failed, It wouldn't stay put. It would follow gravity.

Always does. And this is only one site. If your map is accurate, this wasn't a single failure.

They have to be cleaning this up countywide.

Would explain all the weird X-Files activity going on.

Yeah, for the Omnia deal. It's what Lily and I saw on Holtwood. That facility wasn't just containment. It was consolidation with intent to extract.

That's what we saw at Osprey Island, too. There's a whole threshold base there.

Yes. Yeah. Like an aquatic warehouse full of shipping crates.

What? Yeah. It's wild, dude. We'll explain on the way.

On the way to where?

What? I mean, I was really catching a let's race to the falls and check this out immediately vibe from everyone. Did I misread all that?

If we go, we go before full dark.

Well, shit. Okay.

We're just looking.

Then let's look.

Inheritance isn't just money. It's blood, it's blame, it's gravity and contamination. You can't outrun it. But if you're lucky, you can decide what it turns you into.

Avalon Falls, the falls themselves, are the kind of place postcards are born in. Water, mist, tourists pretending they're outdoorsy. They're not Niagara, not cinematic, no rainbows on demand, but they're wide enough, tall enough, persistent enough to name a town after. And if you stand close enough, the sound drowns out everything else.

Oh man, haven't been here in so long.

It feels the same.

That's comforting.

It shouldn't be.

Where to from here?

Coordinates place this node in the rocks.

Rocks? Like the face of the falls?

Like the cliffs or whatever?

Rock is stable. Hard to access. Harder to test.

Okay, so we climb.

No. There should be a way to get up.

Of course there's a way up. There's always a way up when someone needs to serve as something they swear doesn't exist. The park is pretty much cleared out as night approaches. The falls aren't lit up. It's not that kind of tourist trap. We walk as casual and inconspicuously as possible through the falling dusk and make our way toward the rock face.

There's a fence through the tree line at the base. Let's follow it along and away from the falls this way. It looks like whatever we're going to find is on this side.

We reach the fence, a nondescript chain link security fence where a nondescript chain link security fence should be. We follow it as it traces along the rocks, themselves a natural barrier reaching up into the dark.

Forest is getting thicker now.

Fence keeps going though.

And so do we. The fence doesn't scream, it doesn't warn, no razor wire, no floodlights. It begins to gradually nudge away from the rocks, slowly carving out more and more land. Just a quiet suggestion that someone once decided this part of the forest was off limits.

It's trespassing time.

Go.

We climb the fence, nothing bad happens. I find that far less comforting than I expect and would like. We continue along the rocks, this time with the fence to the left of us rather than right. The ground levels out, the roar of the falls dulls behind us in the distance, like someone turned down a fader.

Look, that's a shed just against the rocks or like cliff or whatever?

Utility structure.

It looks like a park maintenance garage, large door, corrugated metal, a padlock that's newer than the building, no signage beyond a faded municipal sticker that doesn't belong here. Sign says, Tlaquah County Water Quality Initiative. Wow, that's aggressively benign.

Ensuring a cleaner tomorrow. Incursive. Sacramento would be my guess. That's a bold font choice. Like a little to glib. I mean, come on, the planet's dying.

This is it. Stand back.

Bolt cutters. Nice.

You just carry those around?

Do you not?

Whoa, this isn't a garage.

Close the door.

That's an elevator.

That's a freight elevator.

We're taking it, right?

I mean, obviously.

It's just here and working?

Active containment requires access. The real security is that no one knows to look. All right, you sure you want to do this? Because once we go down, we can't pretend we didn't see it.

We're sure.

Like, medium sure.

Stay in the middle. Industrial systems aren't designed for surprises.

You expect a secret elevator that leads to an even more secret underground layer to groan, to protest. This one doesn't. It descends like it's done this a thousand times. You expect something damp, something rotting, maybe a cave with barrels sweating neon sludge. Instead, what we find is almost municipal. After a tense minute of surprisingly smooth descent, we arrive at the bottom. A set of no-nonsense industrial elevator doors blocking whatever is out there. Before anyone can do anything about it, the doors slide slowly open on their own. Whoa, shit! Shit! After a terrifying moment of uncertainty, we saw where we had ended up. That is just, this is just weird, man. Roads, concrete lanes, painted arrows, clean drainage. The kind of lighting that says liability coverage. It feels less like a secret lair, and more like an airport parking structure for a government that doesn't exist. Lights hang in intervals. Each one creates a small island of clarity. Between them, shadow, long stretches of it. As we step out of the elevator, our footsteps echo, and the sound paints an intuitive shape of the space around us. It's impossible to be sure, but it feels as though the tunnels, the spaces, they stretch for hundreds of feet in different directions.

Holy shit.

This was engineered.

How do you even build something like this without the whole county noticing?

Money, power, time. And people paid to see only their piece of it.

This is under the falls.

Secret or not, this is county land, not council.

Threshold is on Osprey Island, which is technically Nausicaa land.

That's different. If this network connects to the island, then they were careful where they dug. We don't police sacred land. That's the point.

Who can say? They did this secretly under the town and the county over who knows how long.

I'm definitely calling a council meeting for first thing tomorrow. What? What the fuck do I even tell them?

The ceiling disappears higher than it needs to. Enough clearance for trucks, enough clearance for ambition.

Look, there's a little building over there.

It's like a way station?

Let's check it out. Stay close, move slow, stick to shadows.

Door's locked, electronic access.

Let me check the window. It's got like an office inside, some lockers. Oh, a coffee maker, like with the coffee pods. That's nice.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, something's coming.

A vehicle?

Get down.

Did you see that?

Like some kind of like little electric maintenance cart.

That was a droid, Mags. Let's not be cute, okay? They have fucking droids down here.

Stay in the shadows.

Where did it go? The droid or whatever?

Over that way. It looks like there's another road over there, like an intersection.

Signage.

What's it say?

Points in different directions. Eagles Creek. Holtwood Access 1. Holtwood Access 2. Fern River Station slash Osprey Island Access.

You're kidding.

No.

Other points beyond Avalon Falls.

This isn't a tunnel. It's a network. There are miles of roads down here.

Oh. Yeah. Wowsers. Yeah. That's just great. Great. Super, super great. This is a lot, man. Way larger than I budgeted for.

Hey, hey, I know. Stay with me, buddy, okay? We don't have to solve the whole whatever the fuck this is right now. And then we see it. Across the weird underground street, we could never have imagined existing. Chain link fencing in the middle of all that polished concrete. Warning placards layered over older warning placards. Concrete that looks like it was poured in a different decade.

That's it.

Primary containment.

The core looks 70s. Brutal. Panic built. Around it, generations of patch jobs, steel bracing, plastic sheeting, modern filtration rigs humming like they're embarrassed.

So they just, like, they just built a cement garbage dump full of medical waste down here?

Then built all this around it. Yes.

They put a fucking chain link fence around a toxic apocalypse?

Also, yes.

Inside the fenced area, portable filtration units, large sealed containers on wheeled pallets, hoses feeding somewhere unseen. Tractor trailer beds loaded with the same shipping crates I saw stacked five and six high in the threshold facility on Osprey Island.

They're actively cleaning this up.

No. They're actively covering this up.

I'm taking pics.

Focus on the core and the cleanup. The rest is just distraction right now.

Copy that. Somewhere deeper in the tunnel, something shifts. Not loud, just mechanical.

Lights.

How far?

Not far enough.

Shit, shit.

Where do we eat?

There's nowhere to hide.

Shadows. Now.

Headlights bloom, approaching from around a distant corner in one of the nearby tunnels. Slow, methodical, not searching, just arriving. The filtration units hum. The concrete sweats cold. Somewhere above us, the falls keep roaring for tourists who have no idea what they're standing on. And as it turns out, the town being poisoned by the very landmark it named itself after wasn't even close to the strangest thing we discovered tonight.