The campus of the Consortium Zone: South in Durham, North Carolina has been completely reconstructed, and work continues at the facility under the direction of the ghost of Dr. Roy Worthington.
Yuri James had killed him. It didn’t surprise Worthington. He’d only met Yuri a few times through his then-boss, Dr. Thomas Eakran, when Worthington was a spy for the COHH at the IBF. Worthington was rewarded with the CZS in Durham for successfully obtaining Eakran’s medical records at the IBF so that the COHH was always aware of the work he was doing. But Eakran became a new man following the resurrection of his former business partner, the very secretive man known only as Darker. Eakran stopped his radical experiments that seemed to defy conventional science of the day, even the most cutting edge work known to humankind, and Worthington’s spy work came to a halt when Eakran abruptly left with some of his patients. He would later learn that Eakran was from another planet and he had left Earth completely.
Worthington tried to fill the void that Eakran had left as a scientist with knowledge and resources to manufacture new drugs for the criminal organization that had been run by Darker, before Yuri took his place. But rather than accept the new partnership, Yuri killed him, or a woman had killed him. She was very angry that he had been able to find her.
Worthington has been able to continue his stewardship of the CZS as a spirit because among the board members of the COHH is a very powerful medium named Tin. When he was made aware of Worthington’s death, Tin searched for Worthington’s spirit that had not traveled very far from the sport of his death, and Tin said an incantation that summoned the spirit back to the campus of the CZS. Worthington wasn’t aware of this, but Tin had actually bound him to the campus of the CZS and he was unable to leave the premises. If he dared to venture past the bounds that Tin established, his soul would be evaporated and he would meet the final death.
Tin did this because he worked for the COHH reluctantly. He loved the information available to him in their ancient collection of books, but he felt in his soul that the organization was not good. He’d helped Wendy and her friends when they attacked the CZS because he saw amazing strength in her; she would be able to perform First People’s magic that he had not been able to do. And he was eager to see it, even if he couldn’t wield it.
The CZS is just as it was, and it is hard to tell that anything has changed at all.
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