EPISODE 5: THE FALLOUT ## CHAPTER 1: THE RAID Three days after the barn. Maya watched the FBI vans pull up to the Patterson residence from across the street, hiding behind a mailbox like a character in one of the spy movies she used to watch with her brother. Mr. Patterson emerged in handcuffs, his face a mask of disbelief. Behind him came his wife, also cuffed, and his adult son who had driven down from Indianapolis when the investigation began. The Pattersons weren't the only ones. Across town, similar scenes were playing out. The Hollingsworth family patriarch, a retired bank president, arrested at his country club. Two members of the Carmichael family, including the current town councilwoman, taken from their homes. The Thornes—Coach Thorne among them—removed from the high school in front of assembled students and teachers. Helen's evidence was devastating. Fifty years of documentation: financial records showing money laundering through local businesses, witness statements from elderly townspeople who had seen things they couldn't explain, photographs and letters and diaries going back generations. And the physical evidence at the barn itself—what remained of the device, the organic growths that scientists were now studying with growing horror. The Society of the Signal was finished. But the fallout was just beginning. --- ## CHAPTER 2: THE QUESTIONS The FBI wanted...