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+# 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.
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