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God Alex is tired. She’d thought, perhaps naively that her sleep would end up getting better when Strand returned from wherever he had fucked off to this time (Charlie. And Alex doesn’t blame him for that truly. His daughter deserved to hear what had happened to and with Coralee in person. It was why when Strand had reached out to get the full file over email—the only time he reached out actually—Alex had sent all of the unedited footage even if there had only been a few more words that were basically a promise for later that didn’t come. She just wished that he had told her where he was going or had answered the call when Trump had been elected. It’s kind of hard thinking you may have started the end of the world and had that happen honestly.) but so far it hasn’t. Alex had spent the last two weeks at Howard’s house going over every Black Tape that he’d never shown her before. In the episode she had said that there were maybe a hundred of them that she’d not seen before and Alex had been wrong. There were 133 of them and each one of them was a fucking nightmare. It was so bad that Alex had ended up just passing out on his couch from sheer exhaustion and making the briefest of pit stops in her apartment for a shower and clothes and so that she didn’t arrive at the same time that Strand did. Nic gave her enough shit already—she doesn’t need anymore.

But given that the episodes were back and that Alex had an early morning interview tomorrow. (Thomas Warren. That should be fun, especially considering how Strand became a sulking child who slumped in his seat and crossed his arms whenever the man was even mentioned!) She actually headed home to her own apartment to try and sleep at least where she wouldn’t end up with a crick in her back. Maybe the shadows in her apartment would be familiar enough that she could actually sleep. Of course Alex isn’t holding her breath, but she does always try to have hope even when it seems fucking impossible to do so.

Ordering in dinner from her favorite pizza place (the one Strand hates because it’s too greasy and unhealthy and Alex Reagan really doesn’t cook) and opening up a bottle of cheap and too sweet wine, she’s got her feet up in the warm and slightly mismatched and cluttered apartment. Her couch is vastly superior to Strand’s and her tv is too even if Alex doesn’t want to admit that she actually does miss his company. The lights of the city are bright behind her curtains and it’s probably too late for dinner, but Alex really doesn’t care. When you don’t sleep like she doesn’t sleep time is an illusion and pizza is amazing.

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Alex shouldn't be surprised that Simon is amused by his celebrity status but she is. Honestly, it's just one more way that he and Strand are alike then. Cause she knows that Strand liked it too, or did before she started peeling back all of the layers of his armor to get at the secrets that he kept below his chest. Strand liked it when he was still Dr. Richard Strand of The Strand Institute, alpha skeptic and the one who disbelieved so strongly that he'd offered a million dollars for actual proof (even if he didn't have it.) It was about narrative and who controlled them and Strand always wanted to be the one who controlled his. Alex does understand that, but that still doesn't mean that she's going to end up letting him get away with trying to mess with it as much as he did during the first two seasons of their show.

She still hasn't forgotten the way that he'd curated his tapes into the things that she'd found the scariest and most fascinating so that she couldn't end up leaving things alone.

But she frowns at her paranoia being just right, and Alex can't help but to ask him a question that she'd never ask anyone else--not even herself on the sleep notes or in the context of the show, or to Strand himself. "Do you think that I ever could have really left this alone, Simon?"

It's true, Simon has had the liberty of controlling his own narrative. Presenting the character that he wants for this international espionage game he's playing. Even when he first started acting out to try to gain their attention at the hospital he was in control, if a little less... exactly how he wanted to be. He was pretty quick to flip that narrative into one he liked better. More true to who he wanted to be, rather than what he was perceived to be. If he were in Strand's shoes he'd probably be a whole lot less amused by it.

Simon considers her question for a time. A long, long time of silence while he thought about it. Even took the time to finish another slice of pizza before he answered. "We've all made choices, Alex. Whether we knew what we were choosing or not, we all made them." That's not really answering the question, but at the same time it was. "Pursuing the black tapes was yours." And there it is. Had she left them alone, had she accepted what Strand had to offer to her on their first interview... maybe. But after that, after she decided to dig even that first bit further there was no turning back.

It's an answer that Alex had expected. If she had chosen not to accept Strand's call after she'd hung up on him. If she'd not turned the show from something that was just about interesting people with interesting jobs into focusing on Strand, if she hadn't sent him the pictures of the things on Simon's wall that ended up bringing him back into the narrative. But then again, that might not have mattered at all other than Strand not meeting Simon directly, considering how the Sheriff had called both Alex and Strand down into the investigation when Sebastian Torres had been kidnapped. It was probably too late by then even. So there was no bothering to entertain not going to Chicago after Strand to drag him back into the world of the living, or everything with Amalia and Coralee. Alex's own words come back to her, from when she'd been fighting about not wanting a vacation ' But there's just so much happening lately, and if I slow down... I dunno, it feels like the paranormal black tapes train is set to leave the station with or without me. And to be frank, I've put in too many hours. I really need to be on that train.'

But also in some ways it felt like the choice hadn't entirely been hers either. When everyone had first mentioned Strand when she was doing interviews with the various ghost hunters for that first episode of the show Alex had been interested, but it wasn't until she'd heard him at the panel talking about the Sagamore that she'd needed to leave him eleven messages and go bother his publisher to get an interview. Or how she'd lied to get back in to see Strand afterwards. Even then she'd not been able to explain why she'd been so intent on it, not even to herself. It was just another oddity with everything else. Which reminds her:

"That's why you warned me so early...about how Strand wasn't who I thought he was. As soon as he was in Seattle on my home turf and stuff. That was you trying to give me an out, wasn't it?" Even if it had only backfired spectacularly.

Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. The could have, should haves, didn't matter anymore. There was no turning back, choices or not. The same arguments could have been made for Simon that he never truly had a choice in the matter. It started with his parents, when he was but an infant in a crib. From there his life had spiraled out of control, there was never any choice, and yet there was. What would have happened had he not killed them?

They'll never know.

As Simon had told her before, there are mechanisms at work greater than any of them. Mechanisms thousands of years old, set in motion against them. They are but specks against an army, and yet here they are still trying desperately trying to hold the line.

"I wondered if you'd realize that was me," It had been pretty garbled. He'd not tried to leave messages like that before so it wasn't nearly as clear as he could manage later. "It may have been futile even then." Yeah he realizes by now that definitely hadn't helped matters.

"I suspected earlier on. It only became really clear after you started talking about Amalia and escaped from Three Rivers." If it's just the two of them (or three if Richard manages to get his head out of his ass) at the end of the world, then Alex will have tried her best in order to stop it. Unfortunately, for all of the talk about her being a force of nature, Alex is just one normal human who for the most part only is able to weaponize empathy and bad decision making, neither of which is going to do much good against a thionic chaos goddess, demons and whatever the sound of her show has set into motion like a virus.

The proof that Simon was right has been all around them in the first few weeks after the season had ended and had only intensified from there. Of course Alex doesn't go around telling people that this is her fault, but people who listen and believe know it's real.

The people who don't are probably better equipped to handle it at least.

"Alright then Simon, what do I do? I mean other than slowly trying to peel this back layer by layer in hopes that somewhere there's actually an answer to stopping it even if Strand who's supposed to be 'The Mantle of the Dragon' with stuff in his DNA doesn't even believe it?"

"You believe me." He's glad for that, questioning someone's friendship is always one of those fiddly subjects people don't like. But Simon doesn't give warnings just for the hell of it, Alex should know that by now. As for Strand, he's going to have to pull his head out of his ass eventually. Right? Her weaponized empathy does come in handy, that and her uncanny intuition. Even if everyone else likes to question her on it.

Sorry, Alex, you set something in motion here. But she can't take all the blame, she was being led around by cunning players.

"Find Warren's machine," He repeats from his last recommendation. "When I'm done tonight we'll know more." Simon can't give her anything concrete until he has the Horn. Once that's secured they'll at least have something in their corner. Rather than a rag tag team of reporter, lunatic, and skeptic.

"Of course I believe you, Simon. There's just too much not to believe at this point." Even if there's not enough evidence for Strand. Honestly, Alex is fairly certain that there's never going to be enough evidence for Strand. The two of them could literally be standing in a swirling mess of an apocalypse and Strand would still waste time in an effort to disprove it. But Alex is going to do everything that she can in order for things not to get that far, even if it's not something that it's possible to do with everything.

The mention of Warren's machine makes Alex sigh and she just rubs one hand down her face. "I've spent six months trying to actually get a copy of Warren's machine or something with the blueprints for it, Simon. I mean short of actually asking him for one, I don't know what else to do there. I've got people who had been hooked up who don't want to go on the record, and I've got another delivery person who took something like the machine to another Daeva Corp building." But then there's more, and Alex admits it because she's pretty sure that Simon already knows it. "I'm scared to death of Thomas Warren, Simon. I don't want to get any closer to him than I already have."

And she knows that he's only targeted her because she was the one who was able to drag Strand out of the worlds that he hid in: first the one of the skeptic and then the one of the crazed husband trying to find his wife. Well, with that however he corresponded with Coralee probably helped too. "Are you doing something with Warren and Daeva tonight?"

"Good." He's honestly glad she's come around. It took some doing but he knew he could at least show her enough. Strand could be staring a dragon goddess in the eye and would insist she wasn't real. Alex was right on the money when she referred to him as an Evangelical Skeptic, that's exactly what he is. She was also correct in calling it a waste of time. They didn't have the liberty of that time anymore.

Evidently Simon had decided he was going to hang around a little longer as by now he'd taken to perching on the arm of her couch like some kind of awkward gargoyle. All the easier to perch that plate on his knees, you see. Was there a possibility they could intercept a machine? He may have to keep an eye out. "You have an interview with him soon, don't you?" That's awful close to be to someone she's terrified of. Not that he blames her.

Still, her fear was justified. And that also fed into why he had to do tonight what he had to, not that she would know or understand at this juncture. "No. I can't get close to Thomas Warren." Which might be an alarming confession. Because if Simon's tried then she likely knows exactly what he intended to do if he could. Warren was too careful to let Simon catch him. Alex on the other hand... No. He'd never ask that of her. Just the machine.

When he says that he can’t get close to Thomas Warren, Alex isn’t an idiot and she knows that if it was an option Simon would have killed him already. She wouldn’t blame him for it considering everything that they both know and suspect about him. But it also does make her a little bit worried about that interview because she hadn’t realized until this very moment that she trusted Simon to help if the entire experience went south and the fact that he’s not going to be able to is a little bit worrying.

Taking a breath and holding it for a moment, Alex just admits softly. “Tomorrow morning. Richard is coming with me so it should be fine. And it’s in public. Definitely not going to walk into a trap.” Again. She doesn’t say it but she thinks it cause they already have once. And god knows what would have happened if Coralee hadn’t shown up in that moment honestly. Probably one more disappearance in the vein of the Hochmans. Even if Nic did know where they were going and even if her recorder did end up uploading things to the server automatically. Just in case.

God she really doesn’t want to think about all the just in case protocols that she has at the moment.

“What do you think the machines are for, Simon? Because we know they’re like taking demons out of some people and everything but why. Warren’s entire purpose seems to be infecting them. Like. I have a theory and I know it’s completely insane.” Which is why she hasn’t said it aloud before.

It would have been too easy, wouldn't it? Their problems mostly solved if only he could cut off the head of the beast. But no, so they're just going to have to see this through the front door, rather than the back. Which means Alex is going to have to see it through. He can watch her back elsewhere, but Warren is out of his reach.

"It's too early for him to take a risk against you, he wouldn't be that brazen with public attention." The popularity and publicity stirred up by her podcast was something of a shield. Not permanent, but enough that Warren wouldn't want to cast any suspicions on himself by kidnapping Alex or Strand outright. So at least she'd probably be fine this time, for now. Her first attempt to walk into a trap had been bad enough.

"I'd like to hear what you think they're for." He has ideas, they're probably just as wild as her own. Once more the inability to get close to him made it hard to discern.

Alex has wondered why it felt like there were so many...understated attempts on her since she'd started getting too close to the story. Not attempts on her life, not obviously but there had definitely been attacks on her sanity and her wellbeing, starting with the first time that Thomas Warren had pretended to be someone who had known Trevor when he worked for Strand (before he'd died, obviously) and had told her that she'd had an imagination and stole Strand's coffee cup. Then there had been the countdown timer and Amalia and Gloria Cohen and everything else ramping her anxiety up to a thousand. They'd been subtle of course, in their own way and they'd not only been attacks on Alex's well being but also her credibility as well. Who'd believe a reporter who was so obviously losing her mind?

Alex wouldn't admit it, but The Black Tapes, a show that she'd thought would have only amped up the prestige in her career would end up costing her it. That fact is something that Alex hates, obviously but she's not ever going to be able to look away from the end of the world especially when she's been so obviously keyed into it.

But there wasn't anything that she could do about all of that now, and Alex knows it. The only thing that she can do is be productive until Warren doesn't care about public attention. (She's not an idiot, she knows that day will come. It's just a matter of when.) Instead Alex focuses on the theory that she has that she's aware sounds insane. So, she qualifies it with her reasons for it first.

"When Strand and I met with Warren last year, and he gave Strand Howard's journal, he talked about him as if he'd known him. And not in the way that someone would talk about their mentor. No, it was like...It was like he was sort of a subordinate or something. Thomas Warren isn't that old, definitely not old enough to have that kind of relationship with a man who died twenty years ago. And it was similar when we started going through the journals, and when he called back today." Alex just pauses, and she breathes before she admits it. "I think that Thomas Warren is a hell of a lot older than he looks, and I think he may be using the energy that he's sucking out of the people he's putting on the machines in order to keep himself alive or something like it."

Simple, Thomas Warren had to protect himself. Alex Reagan was still a respected reporter, though that respect has been thoroughly undermined with the concerns raised in the making of this podcast. The more it can be made to look like she lost herself and went off the deep end the better, for him. Lose her career, lose her credibility... it wasn't quite at that stage, not yet. People still looked to her for a voice of reason. Once she was discredited in the court of public opinion, however, he'd be free to strike.

In the end, if she's going to save face, she may have to play it off as some kind of radio drama. But that's a call she and Nic will have to make in the future. Simon's not fixated on preserving images, just on staving off the end.

"So you believe Howard Strand has been working for Warren, and not the other way around?" Simon furrows his brows thoughtfully, that's definitely not an angle he'd considered. Demonic fountain of youth? People have done worse for less. That almost seemed... too simple. "It's possible. Or he's jumping bodies." He doesn't know if that's something that's even doable but at this juncture who's to say? Most would say it wasn't possible to be in two places at once but Simon managed it with ease.

"To what end?" Now that's the big question.

"I do. I mean, do I think that Howard Strand is sketchy as hell? Yeah, of course I do. Considering how he raised Strand and Cheryl and like how he was sort of raising him to send him off to a cult in Turkey and whatever he's terrible and I'd like to slap him for all of the things that he'd caused Richard to be. But I don't think Warren was working for him. Warren definitely is the one who's holding all of the card here, and if it was Howard then he would have been the one with the multi billion dollar company." There was logic to it, considering how Alex was following the money, but it was more than that: it was about who was alive versus who had been murdered. Warren had said that Howard had been murdered, and Alex can't help but to think it was the man himself had been doing the killing.

But the question about ends gives Alex a little bit of pause, and she just bites her lip because there's been something that her gut has been yelling at her to connect that she's been avoiding attempting because it just sounds like it's so far out there. It sounds out there, but it's also something that seems definitely to at least have some legs on it. "To bring Tiamat back. Or at the very least to rip the world open and release the shadow people in on it. We've been looking at the Order of the Cenophus and Thomas Warren as two separate things, right? But what if they aren't? What if they're two branches that are working towards the same goal with different angles?"

Simon nods his agreement, these were similar conclusions to what he'd come to but he wanted Alex to put the pieces together herself. She's a damn good investigative reporter, he knew she'd get there in time. She's getting close, so very close, they only need the last few fragments to fall into place before the greater picture will become apparent. "Howard wouldn't be presumed dead." Simon echoes the thought she hadn't put voice to, funny that he used 'presumed' however.

Again Simon nods. "They've been opening small doors all over, for years, centuries even. To prepare the way. They're connected, it's all connected." Not that outlandish, this is all part of something so much bigger. Far bigger than they have any genuine hope of stopping and yet... Simon isn't backing out. He doesn't think Alex could bring herself to either.

Alex can't help but to blink when Simon mentions 'presumed'. After two years of attempting to dissect the things that Simon Reese has said like codes during World War II Alex is very aware of how deliberate he is when he choses words. For him to put that in can only mean one thing: "you think Howard Strand is alive?" That's a possibility that Alex had never considered at all, even if Coralee had been missing and presumed dead for twenty years. Howard had died before she'd gone to ground, and while Alex hadn't been there herself, she knows that he was buried next to Strand's mother in Summerville. Or at least someone had been. When she was so hyper focused about a boy in the river, Alex had paid someone to take pictures of the important to Strand sites in Summerville: the house where he had grown up, the school, the place where Bobby Maimes' body had been found and of course the gravestones of his parents even if Alex hadn't asked for them.

There are steps that they could take to check, but they're the sort of thing that Alex would definitely need Strand's approval for. Considering how much wheedling she'd needed to do in order to get him to simply just read the passage from Howard's journal, and how even a year after living there (well, minus the time he'd been in Italy) he still referred to it as 'my father's house' there was no way he was going to let her do it. Just none. And Alex doesn't know how to go about doing it without Strand's permission.

"If he was working for Warren, and Warren wanted the location of the Horn of Tiamat, it could be that Warren is holding him. I mean, if he is still alive. I can't imagine Warren giving up on that no matter what else he has going on." But, and Alex knows that there's a butt, and she just sighs softly. "Or he's working for him willingly and trying to find the Horn is a smoke screen for something else."

Pausing with a frown, Alex just rubs her forehead with her hand and softly mutters: "Jesus how is this getting more insane and out there considering all the stuff we're already dealing with?"

Over time Alex has become an expert at Simon-speak, a valuable and necessary skill. She was right, he was usually very deliberate in which words he chose, especially when he was stating something just a little bit off. Such as suggesting Howard Strand might in fact be alive. "You're sure he's dead?" Sure, there's a grave, but things regarding the Strands have been highly suspicious for a while now. Coralee, Richard, Cheryl... Charlie's about the only one who didn't reveal anything particularly suspicious about herself. Yet. Simon wouldn't be quick to rule anything out at this stage.

Of course investigating the grave any closer was not going to happen under Richard Strand's watch, nor was it necessarily high on the list of importance at the moment. If Howard were alive he was likely still under Warren's thumb, somewhere.

"No, I don't think he will either," And that's exactly why Simon's about to go steal it. Which Alex has reminded him he needs to get around to doing but maybe he's... stalling. Picking off old monks in the woods and unsuspecting nannies is one thing, stealing into where he thinks he's located the Horn down to is an entirely different thing. Is Simon actually worried about something? At least he'll be going in with some food in him, thanks to Alex. "I don't think the Horn is a false goal."

That does get a chuckle out of him. "I should be going." The rabbit hole is only going to get deeper going forward.

"I'm not sure of anything anymore at this point." Well, other than the fact that there's so much more that she needs to uncover and that she's not going to stop until everything is solved--no matter how long it happens to take. Alex Reagan has already invested everything into this show: three years of her life, her professional reputation, all of the friendships that have either fallen to the wayside in general or the ones that she's blasted into smithereens over the fallout from her show (Nic and Amalia), and she's gone too far to stop now. And that's even before one happens to get into all the emotional stuff that Alex doesn't even know how to qualify in her own head never mind talking about it with someone else. Even if she could, there's no one that she can talk about it with. Strand would run away again and he'd only just come back, Nic would either fire her or murder her, Amalia is...complicated and she's definitely not going to talk to a teenager about a crush like she's one too.

Alex knows the Horn of Tiamat is important. She's known it since Strand had shown up in the studio like a hurricane and he'd explained the myth of Tiamat. In her mind's ear Alex can hear his anger and resignation: I know. Believe me. I've had just about enough of the Horn of Tiamat to last me a lifetime. But it looks like it's back. She knows that if it was important enough to cause Howard Strand's murder or disappearance or whatever.

One thing that Alex is good at is making connections that may or may not be proven to be right, but they are more than they are wrong. She also tends to make leaps of logic, and given what Simon and her were speaking about and the chuckle and him going makes Alex think: "you're going after the Horn aren't you? Something to do with it?"

In Simon's opinion being not sure and open to new information is vastly superior to being certain with the wrong information. Yes that is absolutely a call out to Dr. Strand. That aside, Alex really had gone all in at this point so how could she even think about stopping now? Even so, Simon was still going to do his part to try to protect her in what ways that he can. They might be roundabout and unconventional but he's still going to give it his all. Like her, he had nothing left. Leaving Three Rivers the way he did, confessing to what he has on a podcast that could be heard by anyone... He had no future, but he would make this sacrifice for the future of others.

Are there any therapists trained in supernatural bullshit?

Finishing off his last slice of pizza Simon moved to set the plate aside on her coffee table. As he straightens he offers her one of those infuriatingly mysterious smiles like he knows something, like he knows she knows something, but he's not going to say it out loud. He's going to be insufferable and keep his secrets the way only Simon does.

"Goodbye, Alex." And the very same infuriating phrase that always signaled she was probably right, or right on the edge of knowing, but he's not quite ready to give her that last piece. As predicted all it would take is a blink, or looking away, and Simon's gone. The only evidence he'd even been there a now empty plate.

She'll be getting his mysterious phone calls for her show later.

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