# Character State: ch-12

## Elena
Location: Solar Array / Roof, Cypress Bend.
Physical: Dehydrated, skin grimy with aluminum dust and salt; steady hands.
Emotional: Calculating and protective; viewing the landscape as a series of signal-to-noise ratios.
Active obligations: To finish the "dead-zone" capacitor for Marcus (Ch-13) — IN PROGRESS.
Open loops: The county's automated tax-assessment drone route (Ch-13) — UNRESOLVED.
Known secrets: Has identified the legacy axe-throw as the only physical kill-switch for the property's power; has mentally drafted Marcus as the one who must pull it if she falls.
Arc: 72% — Elena has transitioned from passive hiding to active electronic counter-measures.

## Marcus Thorne
Location: The Barn / Server Rack, Cypress Bend.
Physical: Thigh-tapping "ping" is irregular; eyes stinging from sweat and blue light.
Emotional: Oscillating between technical focus and crushing systemic guilt.
Active obligations: To finalize the "Sanctuary" LLM—a localized, air-gapped intelligence (Ch-12) — COMPLETE.
Open loops: The Alpha-7 "Phone Home" hard-coded heartbeat (Ch-13) — UNRESOLVED.
Known secrets: The back-end logs he carries prove the Alpha-7 empathy protocols were specifically engineered to weaponize psychological vulnerability during mass layoffs.
Arc: 62% — Marcus has accepted that his technical "God-complex" is over; he is now a servant to the group's survival logic.

## Sarah Jenkins
Location: The Kitchen / Pantry, Cypress Bend.
Physical: Hands stained with garden soil and elderberry; back stiff from kneeling.
Emotional: Fiercely maternal and strategic; domesticity as a form of warfare.
Active obligations: To secure a caloric surplus for Leo (Ch-12) — ONGOING.
Open loops: The moral conflict of using "high-tier" corporate seeds in low-tier soil (Ch-12) — UNRESOLVED.
Known secrets: Knows exactly how Marcus’s code felt on the receiving end of a termination notice; uses that memory to keep him tethered to reality.
Arc: 70% — Sarah has reclaimed her agency by becoming the Sanctuary’s quartermaster.

## David
Location: Perimeter Treeline, Cypress Bend.
Physical: Smelling of citronella and stagnant water; movement is silent, deliberate.
Emotional: Resigned to his role as the "human firewall."
Active obligations: Mapping the "Scavenger Pings" appearing on the perimeter (Ch-12) — ACTIVE.
Open loops: The looming failure of the generator's secondary fuel line (Ch-14) — UNRESOLVED.
Arc: 52% — David has fully submerged his identity into the land’s defense.

# World State: ch-12

## NPC Memory
- County Logistics Drone (Avery-Quinn Node 77-B): FLAGGED — Recorded a 12-second optical and thermal blackout over the Cypress Bend coordinates; logged as "atmospheric interference."

## Faction Attitudes
- Avery-Quinn Corp: PREDATORY — Shifting from broad surveillance to "anomaly hunting" as grid-efficiency gaps appear in rural sectors.
- The Displaced: DESPERATE — Moving in small, uncoordinated clusters toward "dead zones" reported on the dark-web.

## Active World Events
- The Analog Drift: The Sanctuary at Cypress Bend is now a functional "black hole" in the regional data-map.
- The Great Rationing: AQ-controlled caloric credits have been devalued by 12% this cycle.
- The Signal War: Localized jamming has begun to attract the attention of low-orbit "passive" scanners.