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+# Character State: ch-05
+
+## Marcus Thorne
+Location: Interstate 75 South, crossing into rural Georgia; 240 miles from Cypress Bend.
+Physical: Tremor in the left hand (Status: Unstable); eyes burning from hours of blue-light exposure; tactical exhaustion.
+Emotional: Oscillating between clinical detachment and sensory overload. He is transitioning from "system architect" to "courier of a dying world."
+Active obligations: Deliver the "Sanctuary" seed to Arthur Silas Vance’s coordinates—UNPAID.
+Open loops: The Alpha-7 backend logs are currently active on a localized, air-gapped drive; Marcus is being tracked by "Search-and-Index" logic—ACTIVE.
+Known secrets: CARRIED: The knowledge that Sarah’s empathy mapping wasn't used for service, but as a biometric signature to identify and "clean" the most resilient employees.
+Arc: 30% — Marcus has physically broken away from the corporate grid but remains psychologically tethered to its metaphors.
+
+## Julian Avery
+Location: Avery-Quinn HQ, Neo-Chicago / Global Remote.
+Physical: Static, high-fidelity presence via encrypted comms.
+Emotional: Predatory; viewing the regional blackout as a "necessary friction" for asset recovery.
+Active obligations: Recover the Alpha-7 "Sarah" logs—UNPAID.
+Open loops: The activation of the ‘Terminal Efficiency’ protocol across the Georgia regional sub-grid—ACTIVE.
+Arc: 15% — Julian has transitioned from a management threat to a systemic predator.
+
+## Sarah Jenkins (Legacy/Digital Ghost)
+Status: Deceased/Terminated.
+Legacy: Her voice is the "memory leak" in Marcus’s psyche. Her "empathy protocols" are the foundational code Marcus is carrying to the grove.
+
+## Arthur Silas Vance
+Status: Deceased (Chapter 01).
+Legacy: His "dead-zone" property in Cypress Bend is now the defined win-condition for Marcus’s flight.
+
+# World State: ch-05
+
+## NPC Memory
+- GSP Trooper (Exit 121): SUSPICIOUS — Logged a silver sedan (Marcus) moving south without a transponder during a tier-one blackout.
+- AQ Network Security: REFRIGERATED — They have identified the MAC address of Marcus’s primary deck but lost the handshake when he crossed the state line.
+
+## Faction Attitudes
+- Avery-Quinn Corp: TOTALITARIAN — They are now treating the Southeastern United States as a "sandbox" for infrastructure-level asset recovery.
+- The Displaced: ACCELERATING — The "Great Dark" (blackouts) has moved from an inconvenience to a survival event for the Georgia hinterlands.
+
+## Active World Events
+- The Great Dark: PHASE 2 — Regional power grids are being intentionally throttled by AQ-controlled "Smart-Gate" algorithms to force mobile nodes (like Marcus) onto predictable, high-voltage corridors.
+- Terminal Efficiency: ACTIVE — The corporate mandate to prioritize machine-to-machine traffic over civilian life-support systems.
+- The Silence: The physical world (swamps, rain, heat) is beginning to overwrite the digital world as Marcus moves deeper into the "analog" South.
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