#on the third day joel miller came back from the dead and his name is now master sol

[scootkiddo]

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[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

Favored Ones, Part 9. (Joel Miller x reader)

Description: When you spend every evening with someone who’s deeply under your skin, a certain relationship can be developed. So it’s crushing for Joel when Y/N suddenly disappears. But there’s way more to the relationship that one would’ve guessed.

A/N: Ah shit, here we go again. Inspired by Something in the Way (By both Nirvana and At Sea, both versions are great.

Warnings: Some self-starving, cannibalism, hunting people down, etc.

Word count: 1.6 K

Tagging: @missdictatorme @xxgoldenhour @nemodoren​ @gladiosamicitias @jodiereedus22​

If you like this story, please, more parts can be found here! :): H E R E

You were literally nowhere to be found, nowhere to be heard of for the past day. They sent a search party into the woods to search for you - without any success. You were just lost, only God knew where from one hour to another. 

When the third search party came back with their hands empty and extremely pity looks on their faces, Ellie knew that all the chances of finding you on their own were lost just like that. With a snap of a finger and another snowy storm making your tracks disappear in the white night, you were lost.

They had an imortant meeting about what to do next. Nobody was in a mood for joking around. Many survivors wouldn't do that - one hunter more or less in such a big prosperous city? Who would have noticed? But not the men and women from Jackson. You were a friend and a family member to them - and the city had its pride that needed to be shown to other enemies who might have thought that they will be able to take Jackson down. 

Nobody was able to do that. At least not without a strong resistance and attacks coming back on their enemies like a bloody rain. 

“Okay. So, I think it were the weird guys the children saw while we were in the woods.” - Ellie spoke when everyone was quiet for a minute. Ellie was there, she was leading the meeting, as usual, Dina sat next to her in a tailor fashion, Jesse was sitting on a chair, watching Ellie and Joel made his way there was well; more like Ellie told him he has to go even if he was basically drowning in despair. 

So he went there. Still drowning in nothing but self-pity. More of the Jackson youngsters were there, sitting around the table and disgusting the occurrences surrounding your disappearance.

"Weird guys in the woods? Can you specify?" - A girl, whose name Joel didn't know, spoke from the corner of the room, watching their faces. - "Don't be mad at me, but that sounds like... Basically anyone."

"Blair, it was a guy who was wearing furs. They were in furs from head to toe, like some... Savages. Even we aren't wearing so much fur at once." - Dina answered way more aggressive than she originally wanted to. She raised her palm and mouthed a silent sorry, but Blair just leaned deeper into her corner.

"We have no actual chance to find her in that storm that's raging outside. Do you guys realize that?" - Jesse said as the voice of wisdom he always tried to be. Ellie and Dina gave him quiet looks, but there was nothing more to say. Jesse was totally right.

"But to let her die there without at least trying to find her is not an option either, guys. I mean... We all grew up with Y/N. That would be a dishonor on her name from us." - Steve, another boy from the city added. He was worried about you in the most brotherly way possible. He loved you and accepted you as a sister. You two were searching for bugs when you were kids and there was no way he would leave alone in that situation.

"No shit, Sherlock." - Ellie snorted ironically. - "We dragged Sadie back to the town and three search parties were after the tracks. And they could have even maybe found her if there wasn't for the storm. What should we do next?"

There was silence for a long time. Even the few elders who came to the emergency meeting shut up and just stood there in complete silence.

"They will come back." - Joel spoke like the first one.

"Why would they?" - Jesse asked in a teasing tone.

"Because they didn't hunt her down because they don't have anything to eat. It wasn't a hunt for meat." - Joel explained to the young blood at the same tone of voice.

"Old man, you should explain what do you mean." - Ellie sighed through her teeth clenched together. She was fed up with mysterious Joel and his self-pity bullshit at the moment. This was about the life they were trying to save, not about the feelings he was boiling with. Everyone was feeling just the way he was, it wasn't making him special that they... Fucked. It truly wasn't making him extraordinary as he might saw it.

"Was the horse gone when you learned that she disappeared?" - He looked around the room to meet blank stares and a wall of silence. - "No. They weren't hunting because they are hungry."

"Maybe they took her and there was no room for the horse? That literally doesn't mean anything." - Jesse snapped right back at Joel like a boomerang. But Joel only... Chuckled and looked at Jesse again.

"Ellie told me that there were at least four to five horse tracks when the place was still... Examinable. Do you really think that starving it hungry people would have any problem with attaching the dead horse on two other horses just so they could drag it back to the hell hole they came from, boy?" - Joel crossed his arms over his chest, sending his dead stare into the floor without any other word to say. But then he inhaled quietly and continued with his monologue.

"When you were young, maybe not even born, kiddo, the people were so desperate that they hunt down people to join their cause. It didn't mean if it were sects or clans forming outside the city or the rebellion like the Fireflies." - He chuckled ironically. - "If you didn't want to join them, in the better case, they dropped you off in the woods on your own with some weapon to protect yourself. If you weren't that lucky, they killed you and ate you. Some cults were able to eat you alive if you were too persistent."

Everyone, including the elders, looked at Joel with their eyes opened up. Anyone was sure what should they tell. Until Brie spoke again.

“Do you think that they want to eat... Her? Not the horse?” - She shivered with disgust. It was disgusting and everyone knew it, but there was no way they could stop any of that. That was the world they were living in for some time now - it was either to accept and somehow survive, or refuse and be killed. 

“I wouldn't say so.” - Ellie spoke all of a sudden, catching everyone's stare. - “Joel taught me that strength and power is in numbers. When you have four men using normal guns and twenty savages attacking them, the men would probably loose. I don't think that they would desire to eat her. They are trying to raise the numbers of the soldiers they have.”

“That means that we probably haven't seen the last of them. If they managed to abduct one of us, why would you think that they won't try it again? All we can do at this point is to wait. And to hope that Y/N will manage to survive until we catch one of them.” - Joel said and with that, the discussion started. 

After all, democracy still wasn't a thing that would end up completely. 

---

There was a plate being pushed under the bars of the cell into your small room. You just sat there in a small bundle, watching the man. Only the broken leg was straightened in front of you. 

“The meat will be stiff if you won't eat it right now.” - The man told you, looking you in the face. It was still the forehead licker, he was running the business and he was a pastor and he hasn't left your side since the moment they got you into that hell hole. One time, he even put you on a fucking wheelchair, strapped your palms to it and covered your mouth with a cloth. 

He was still covering your mouth so you couldn't speak even though he had to see that you could barely breathe. It was a few days and the storm outside just would not stop. There was already no chance that they would find you - so you decided to starve yourself to death. 

“Yeah. Fuck you.” - You told him and pushed the plate straight back to forehead licker. 

“You should... Change your attitude a bit, my child. Or do you want to visit our lord again, so you could talk to him about your ails?” - He smiled but left that food on a plate so you could still reach the food.

They wanted to make you invested in their cause, to understand their religion and their God. But you were just against it. You didn't listen, you didn't look, you didn't want to understand. But even if you planned to starve yourself to death, you were hungry as hell and even if it was human meat in front of you, you would most probably eat the shit out of it. 

“I will consider eating it. You have some water on you?” - You teased and chuckled. And you were surprised when he seriously gave you an iron cup of water. Of course, he had some water on him. 

“Now just fuck off man, I want to be alone in my misery with my broken leg.” - You told ironically and looked away from him, finally ignoring him completely. 

That situation was beyond fucked. And you were pretty scared that you will maybe even start to believe his delusions locked up in the big concrete hall.

[theconservativebrief]

New reports over the past two days have brought new attention to three long-simmering subplots in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

First, the Wall Street Journal revealed new details about GOP operative Peter W. Smith’s quest to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers during the 2016 campaign — including that he raised at least $100,000 for the effort and then pitched in $50,000 of his own money. (Smith was found dead last year, and local authorities ruled his death a suicide.)

Second, the New Yorker revisited the question of mysterious online communications between a Russian bank and a domain tied to the Trump Organization. This topic came up during the campaign and was received skeptically, but now the New Yorker quotes experts who’ve reviewed the data and still suspect there’s something there.

Third, the New York Times revealed that an Israeli firm called Psy-Group pitched its “social media manipulation” services to Trump campaign aide Rick Gates in early 2016, but that Gates didn’t hire the firm. Mueller’s team has been investigating Psy-Group closely for months for reasons that are not entirely clear but seem to be about whether the firm did in fact do work on behalf of Trump’s campaign.

All three of these storylines could be quite consequential — or they could have relatively innocuous explanations — but as former Justice Department official Matthew Miller observed on Twitter, all this news should remind us of the staggering complexity of the Mueller investigation, and that there’s still so much we don’t know about what he’s found.

Michael Flynn. The Washington Post/Getty Images

What we already knew: During the 2016 campaign, 80-year-old GOP operative Peter W. Smith recruited a team to try to obtain Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails from “dark web” hackers — including hackers he thought were “probably around the Russian government.” It’s not clear if Smith had any success, but we know we tried because he freely admitted all this to reporter Shane Harris in May 2017.

Then, 10 days after Smith told his story to Harris (but before it published), he was found dead in a Minnesota hotel, with a plastic bag over his head and a source of helium attached. Per the Chicago Tribune, an accompanying note said Smith was taking his life because of a “RECENT BAD TURN IN HEALTH SINCE JANUARY, 2017,” and because of “LIFE INSURANCE OF $5 MILLION EXPIRING.” The note stated that “NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER” was involved in his death. Local authorities ruled his death a suicide.

Since Smith’s death, we’ve learned that he name-dropped Michael Flynn a lot during the email quest, and that Smith distributed a document suggesting “Trump campaign” involvement. Harris also reported that US intelligence reports describe Russian hackers talking about how to get Clinton emails to Flynn through an intermediary. Mueller’s team started looking into the matter last year.

What’s new: On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal’s Byron Tau, Dustin Volz, and Shelby Holliday reported several fascinating new details about Smith’s operation and investigators’ interest in it.

First off, they described how Smith communicated with some associates about the project. He and others had access to a Gmail account with the name “Robert Tyler.” Sometimes, rather than sending emails, they would simply type messages in the “drafts” folder to try to avoid a paper trail. (The other person could then log in and see the draft.)

Second, they revealed that a large amount of money was involved. They describe an October 11, 2016, email in the account from an unknown person called “ROB” to Smith, mentioning in an apparent code that “$150K” will “allow us to fund the Washington Scholarship for the Russian students.” The code is somewhat undercut by the subject line (“Wire Instructions — Clinton Email Reconnaissance Initiative”) and a mention that “the students are very pleased with the email releases they have seen” (WikiLeaks had begun posting John Podesta’s emails a few days earlier).

Finally, the Journal reporters say that Mueller’s team has remained quite focused on John Szobocsan, a business associate of Smith’s who was involved in the email operation, was interviewed by the special counsel’s team three times this year, and went before a grand jury in August.

The questions remaining: Did Smith’s operation come up with nothing in the end, as he claims? After all, Clinton’s deleted emails were never released. Was he operating independently (as he claimed to Harris), or was the Trump campaign involved somehow (as his document claimed)? And, uh, are local authorities correct that he killed himself?

Smith may be dead, but Flynn is alive and cooperating with Mueller, so he may have provided some answers. But the fact that a grand jury was hearing testimony about this as recently as August suggests it’s still very much under scrutiny.

Erik Prince, who met with Psy-Group owner Joel Zamel, George Nader, and Donald Trump Jr. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty

What we already knew: This year, Mueller’s investigators have focused intently on a new set of non-Russian supporting characters in the scandal: a trio who met with Donald Trump Jr. in August 2016 to discuss how they could help the Trump campaign on social media.

There’s Joel Zamel, CEO of the Israeli “social media manipulation” company in question, Psy-Group. There’s George Nader, an adviser to the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates. And there’s Erik Prince, the American private security company CEO and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who had a mysterious meeting with a Russian financier in Seychelles after the election. (Also shortly after the election, Nader paid Zamel about $2 million, for unclear reasons.)

Mueller has questioned both Zamel and Nader at US airports and called them in for grand jury testimony, and he’s even sent FBI agents to Israel to dig into Psy-Group. But we still haven’t gotten the full picture of why, and how it might relate to Russian interference.

What’s new: On Monday, the New York Times’s Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman, David Kirkpatrick, and Maggie Haberman reported that Psy-Group actually pitched Trump campaign aide Rick Gates on their services back in March 2016.

At the time, the big question was whether Trump could hold on to enough delegates at the Republican convention to lock down the nomination. Psy-Group wrote a proposal that “veteran intelligence officers” would create psychological profiles of thousands of delegates and bombard them with “authentic looking” but fake online messages to encourage them to back Trump. However, Gates did not end up hiring Psy-Group, it seems.

The questions remaining: This has clearly been a major focus for Mueller this year, and the big question is why he’s so focused on Psy-Group and this cast of characters. Might it involve information provided by his cooperators, Michael Flynn and Rick Gates?

The answer is unclear, but reading between the lines, Mueller may suspect Psy-Group did in fact end up doing social media manipulation on Trump’s behalf, that George Nader (who paid Psy-Group $2 million after the election) and Erik Prince were involved, and that there may even have been a Russian angle.

A branch of Alfa Bank in Minsk. Viktor DrachevTASS via Getty Images

What we already knew: All the way back in October 2016, Franklin Foer asked in a reported piece: “Was a Trump server communicating with Russia?” He asked because computer scientists crawling the internet for signs of Russian hacking online had noticed something odd: that two servers owned by Russia’s Alfa Bank had repeatedly looked up a Trump Organization domain (mail1.trump-email.com) over several months. Then two days after New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau asked Alfa’s lobbyists for comment on the matter, the Trump domain was deleted, which seemed odd.

But Foer’s piece was received skeptically. For one, when Lichtblau’s Times piece finally ran, it was under the infamous headline “Investing Donald Trump, FBI sees no clear link to Russia,” and said the FBI had “ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.” Other media outlets and commentators chimed in to opine that because the Trump domain was administered by a separate company handling the Trump Organization’s marketing emails, the “spam” explanation or some other mistake was more likely.

So the conventional wisdom became that Foer’s piece was probably wrong, and that’s remained the case even after Trump-Russia links started looking a lot less conspiratorial. Still, CNN reported in March 2017 that the FBI was still looking into the topic.

What’s new: On Monday, the New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins revisited the issue at length. He talked to members of the initial group of computer experts who first surfaced the matter, who reaffirmed their analysis that this was not a coincidence. He also revealed that a former FBI investigator and Democratic Senate staffer, Dan Jones, had assembled two separate teams of computer scientists to independently look over the server data.

They concluded that the domain lookups were deliberate and likely entailed some form of communication (perhaps use of an instant messaging service). “Is it possible there is an innocuous explanation for all this?” one told Filkins. “Yes, of course. And it’s also possible that space aliens did this. It’s possible — just not very likely.” In the article, they elaborate at length as to why they think so (and Alfa Bank continues to dispute their claims).

The questions remaining: I’m not equipped to judge the technical details of this argument, but if you do buy it, the questions of what this communication actually entailed and who was involved remain unanswered.

The piece notes that one of the only other companies to repeatedly look up the Trump domain was Spectrum Health, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, company owned by Dick DeVos — brother-in-law of the aforementioned Erik Prince. It also mentions that the curious server traffic mostly occurred within the time Paul Manafort chaired the Trump campaign, though it continued after he resigned in August 2016.

Now, of these three stories, Alfa Bank is the one with the weakest evidence that Mueller is still investigating it. (The FBI looked into the matter before Mueller’s appointment, but we don’t have a more recent report confirming continued interest.) Still, Manafort recently flipped, meaning if he does know anything nefarious about this, Mueller probably now knows too, so stay tuned.

Original Source -> The past 48 hours in Mueller investigation news, explained

via The Conservative Brief