xp_journal | Answers

I should apologise for not posting this sooner, but I've been getting bullet wounds treated and making phone calls. I sure many of you will be amsued to see that yes, once again, I've coped it in the leg, and will be leaning on a stick for a bit. But aside from that you all deserve answers, and I'm best placed to provide them. So here's the deal:

This latest attack on the school was because of me. As many of you know, I used to work for a division of the British Intelligence service - a special division of SIS, created in the early eighties to deal with "extra-normal affairs", which is how I first met Charlie, but that's another story. Last September, in response to a lot of things, culminating in a row over the future of Doctor MacTaggart's Muir Island facility, I was fired, and came to work here. I'd taken a variety of measures against reprisal, but, obviously, there's been a shift in policy at home that rendered them, well, moot, and yes, my former employers decided that they wanted me dead, and authorised an incursion into the school.

I've spent the last few hours on the phone, and I'm now as confident as I can be that we won't see a repeat attempt on your saftey (and my life) in this manner. It's only as good as the blackmail material I've been able to find on the new administration at my old department, but mercifully, I've been able to find some pretty horrible stuff, both on them, and on their Whitehall masters, so barring a complete change in the nature of the British establishment, we should be safe enough from futher direct assaults.

To address another rumour that will doubtless be doing the rounds at the moment: the sad, sick, truth is that as well as being the target of this operation, I wrote a large chunk of the manual for it while I was still employed by the British government. To answer Mr Summers', and doubtless the rest of your, perfectly reasonable question as to why I never said anything about that document, well, the answer is twofold. At the time I was asked to write it, I didn't say anything because the document's basic idea remains something that there is very little we can do anything about - that the staff of this school will do almost anything that is asked of them in order to protect its students, and that the single greatest difficulty in assaulting the mansion is the high number of resident telepaths. Subsequently, I said nothing, because, in all honesty, I forgot about it. Those of you that were here in late June, early July last year will remember the state of me when I showed up here on pysch leave. Without going into details, immediately after writing that memo, I spent quite some time of a variety of traumatic assignments I'd really rather not have been on, and in all the stress and confusion, it slipped my mind. Which is a shit excuse, but, well, it's true. Until the other night, I forgot I'd written it.

So to all you, most especially those of you that were trapped in that ballroom, my deepest apologies for endangering your safety. I've done what I can to stop that threat for now, and I regret not better anticipating it.

I am available to talk about it in whatever regard any of you need, or be yelled at about it if it'll make anyone feel better, or y'know, whatever. I can't exactly run away very fast at the moment, though. so if you're looking chase me down and do violence upon me, I'd appreciate it if you could wait until my leg has healed enough to at least make it sporting.