May 22: Fifth trap. Arranged a power outage to strand Mycroft in office while they were interviewing Masami Mitsubishi. Can confirm that Masami covertly informed Toshi Mitsubishi and Yuki Ōoka (former personal assistant to Chief Director Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi). [Must remember to investigate Andō’s lines of communication while they are in custody.] No sign of any attempt to kill or kidnap.

May 23: Evidence that Sniper is alive. On April 23rd (nine days after Sniper’s disappearance but well before we knew of it), Mycroft Canner sent a written request to O.S. specifying details for the chapter Sniper was to write for their history, which was supposed to describe what happened to Sniper during the hours they went missing on March 27th. Now, one month later, the requested chapter has appeared. It was sent to Lesley Saneer through what they described as “one of several secure channels used by O.S.” The chapter details a rather bizarre encounter involving Sniper being kidnapped by Dominic and Conclave Head Julia Doria-Pamphili. Doria-Pamphili denies all knowledge of the incident, but Dominic has, in confidence, hinted that the narrative is approximately accurate. Sniper’s chapter contains no hint of cypher or secret messages. Linguistic analysis suggests that much of the prose is likely Sniper’s, though key paragraphs have been heavily edited by another party. Unfortunately, the writing samples are not long enough to identify said interfering party from syntax alone.

ANALYSIS (May 24): If Sniper’s chapter is real, the fact that it was edited suggests that Sniper is being held prisoner by some party or parties who permitted them to write the chapter, but censored it to remove hints about Sniper’s present circumstances. This makes kidnapping definitively more likely than the other possibilities, i.e. that Sniper is dead, has been injured and trapped somewhere, or has vanished for their own reasons. If such a captor exists, the fact that they received Mycroft’s request that Sniper write the chapter implies privileged access, either to O.S., to Papadelias’s office which transmitted Mycroft’s message, or to Mycroft. I am completely unable to guess the motives of a captor who respects the human species enough to release Sniper’s chapter, and thus facilitate dominus Jehovah’s attempts to disseminate the truth, yet who still holds Sniper prisoner despite the threat of global catastrophe. Similarly, it seems wildly irrational that anyone would try to kill Mycroft, but then facilitate the completion of their book by releasing Sniper’s chapter. I must face the growing probability that Mycroft’s assailant is not the person holding Sniper, though the assailant may still have witnessed something.