FILE Nº CRB-03★ CLASSIFIED — EYES OF GILEAD ONLY ★YEAR OF OUR LORD
SUB ✚ OCULO ✚ DEI
UNDER HIS EYE
CERBERUS
— A CHRONICLE IN THREE HEADS —
An Operation Of The FaithfulPROJECTCerberus
█████████COMPROMISED
“Blessed is the signal that beareth no falsehood, for the airwaves shall be made
clean, and every tongue that speaketh against Gilead shall be silenced.”
— BLESSED BE THE FREQUENCY —
COMPROMISED
I. The Brief
Three handmaids. Three heads of the hound. Ofcolin. Ofrhys. Ofcom.
One of you bears the Programme’s name and the Programme’s rot. The Lattice
has found its way inside one of you ,
and what Cerberus sees, the Eye now sees also.
Find Commander Com before
does. Burn what built. Get one true word
out by dawn — or the wall grows longer, and another name is added to it.
II. Field Notice
Operation
Cerberus
Status
Compromised
Head I
Ofcolin (Goldie)
Head II
Ofrhys (Gwendoline)
Head III
Ofcom (Aramynta)
Curfew
21:00 — by the Eye’s grace
Penalty
The Wall
III. Dramatis Personae — Sealed By His Grace
Aunt
Chloe
Scout
Finch
Keeper
Marta
Contact
Sparrow
Operative
Cardinal
Foundry
Hannah Carter — at the wallrecovered, the Foundry
Sentinel
name withheld by the Lord — terminated
Office
Brother Aldwin — named twice
Engineer
Commander Com — missing
Seer
Madame Morwen
Architect
Priest
Father Thomas — dormant
Commander
Aldric, of The Adam
Mayday
UPDATED
IV. Addendum — After the Foundry FILE Nº CRB-05
The Foundry is ash and silence. A Purity Sentinel of this district has been returned
to the Lord without his name, and the four of the faithful sent to keep that place
did not send word — because there was no one left to send it.
Recovered from the Foundry floor: the handmaid Hannah Carter, whom
this file recorded at the wall. The file was wrong, or the wall came to her.
Nailed to her dress, a note in another's hand: SHE TALKED FIRST.
Taken from the dead, by persons the Eye has not yet named: sealed orders addressed to
Brother Aldwin. A notebook in which one of the three heads is
flagged . And a schematic, folded against a dead
woman's ribs, drawn in a hand that one of the three knows better than any other —
her own.
Two Eyes stood at the north door when it was done. The one in front said it changes
nothing. The Programme respectfully disagrees.
UNSEALED
What the Lattice has not yet told you
The Programme was never meant to be cured. It was meant to be carried.
The host the Lattice now rides is not the first to bear it, and will not
be the last. The previous vessel walked into a chapel two winters past
and did not walk out. The Lattice was not buried with her. It was
collected.
One of the three has been flagged. Her name sits in a dead Eye's notebook
with a single word beside it, dated three days before the Foundry burned.
She was seen at the keeper's table with a forbidden manual. The Eye that
flagged her is dead now. The flag is not.
Node Eastern is being hardened on the Architect's own instruction. Two
hundred metres of exclusion, in his hand, in his script. Look again at
the names sealed in this file. The Architect is not a stranger to the
hound. He raised one of its heads.