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Chapter Three
Summary[]
April wakes up the next morning with a hangover. No matter what choice she made last night, Zack is pissed off at her, either for standing him up or for slapping him because he groped her, and he tells her in no uncertain terms that he's going to make her sorry. April leaves the Border House and heads for Hope Street to look for Warren Hughes. She goes into the Cathedral and meets Father Raul, who tells her where to find Warren, just down the street.
Warren is sitting on the stairwell inside Building 87. He refuses to help April unless she helps him first - she has to break into the NPD Archives, and delete Warren's criminal record. His father sold-out Warren's family, and he also wants to know what has happened to his sister. The Archives should also contain information on the Vanguard for April. She agrees, and heads for Metro West. Unfortunately there's no easy way in or out of the NPD that day - so April braves the rats and hides in an automated garbage truck. Once in the NPD station, April takes a moment to call home. Her mother pleads with April to come back home, but April refuses.
After some bureaucratic wrangling, April manages to sneak into the back corridors of the station to take a look around, and finds Frank Minnelli in the toilets, suffering the effects of April's candy. Impersonating a female NPD officer, April manages to get not only Minnelli's password but his synthetic eye so she can get past the Archives' retinal scanner and use the computer. April finds Warren's criminal record, and discovers that his parents are dead but his sister has been adopted, before erasing his record. She also searches for the Vanguard and finds a folder with a data cube in it.
April takes the information back to Warren, who - pleased with her efforts - tells her about a friend of his who lives on the Newport Docks, Burns Flipper. April heads down to the Docks, and finds 'the Flipper' is a computer hacker who rides a grav chair and lives in a warehouse. He's a fast talker with a foul mouth, but he agrees to help April by opening up the data cube.
This contains almost everything April needs to know about the Vanguard. Their cover is the Church of Voltec; a supposedly peaceful, meditative religion, but in fact the Vanguard are extremely powerful, running the enormous Malkuth Technologies Incorporated. Their leader is a man called Jacob McAllen, also known as the "White Cardinal", a charismatic speaker with few scruples. Burns Flipper also tells April that the head of the Vanguard secret police is a man called Gordon Halloway. He was intended to be the next Guardian of the Balance, but the Vanguard got hold of him and began experimenting. Now Gordon is "split in half in some spiritual way": half pure logic, half pure chaos, and is extremely dangerous.
April decides to get to the MTI headquarters, which are on Grendel Avenue, but first she needs a fake ID. Burns Flipper can make it, but scorns her meager offer of money. She then offers to obtain a replacement anti-gravity unit for his grav chair taken from a crashed shuttle near the NPD station, and Burns Flipper accepts. It takes a few days to make the ID, though, so April decides to find Cortez and tell him what she's discovered.
She finds Cortez back at the Cathedral, talking to Father Raul. As she listens, unseen, she hears them having a serious talk. Raul asks "What about the girl?" to which Cortez replies, seriously, that she doesn't know even half of what is going on. When Raul leaves, April reveals herself and tells Cortez what Burns Flipper found on the Data cube. Cortez congratulates her and says they will meet tomorrow, at the Cathedral, and go together to find out what Jacob McAllen knows.
April goes home, only to find Zack Lee eavesdropping at her bedroom door. He disappears into his room before she can tell him off, though. Inside she finds Charlie and Emma waiting for her. They're worried about how she's been acting lately, and they want to know what's going on. April can choose how much she tells them, but either way they finally leave to let her get some rest.
During the night, April dreams that a group of soldiers break into Cortez's home. While they corner him with guns, a pale young man in a long coat strides in - Gordon Halloway.
April wakes at midnight, and an eerie blue glow can be seen emanating from her wardrobe. Bewildered, she opens it, only to be pulled through into Arcadia.
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Themes & References[]
It's obvious.
| Chapters in The Longest Journey |
| Prologue: A Lion is in the Streets | Penumbra | Through the Looking Glass | Friends and Enemies | Monsters | There and Back Again | The Chaos Storm | A Deep Blue Mirror | Reunification | Shadows | Rebirth | Kin | Dreamland | The Longest Journey | Epilogue: Threads |