Issue 5 (also known as Part 5 and Book 5) of Murkoff Account was released on April 28, 2017.[1]
Plot[]
The comic opens up with Anna Lee, otherwise known as Jane Doe, running from Temple Gate with another man. It then cuts to the residence of Paul Marion, with his daughter, Alice Marion, noticing Simon Peacock leaving the coordinates to Temple Gate in Paul's mailbox.
Paul then decides to investigate the coordinates. He takes a plane to Arizona, calls Pauline Glick on arrival and lies about his whereabouts and intentions.
He then rents an all-terrain SUV, which breaks down on him, and he is stranded in the desert. While trying to get to Simon's coordinates by foot, he gets hit by the bright light from Radio Towers, which sends him into a flashback of the day his wife died.
After waking up, Paul is met by Anna and the man, who have stolen Paul's gun while he was unconscious. The man doesn't show any hostility at first, but when Paul, while trying to start a conversation, swears heavily, mentioning Jesus Christ, it infuriates him and he attacks immediately. During the fight he severely injures Paul's hand with a knife and gets ready to shoot him down, but Paul is managing to use that knife to deal a fatal stab in the neck. He then tries to convince Anna he won't hurt her, but faints in the process, and Anna runs away.
When he wakes up again, he starts following Anna's footsteps through the desert while repeatedly seeing hallucinations of his dead wife. Eventually he catches up with Anna, only to see how she hitched a ride with somebody. He then notices how his phone got back in the range of signal and calls Pauline to get help. But, a family finds him on the road first and takes him to a hospital.
When Pauline arrives, and Paul tells her about everything, she gets pissed and reprimands him heavily. After Paul puts on a new suit, they both go talk to doctor, who tells them that Anna's brain scan is showing some anomalies, which Pauline recognizes as the same ones seen at the brain scans of people who have been exposed to Morphogenic Engine at Mount Massive. She is frustrated to hear that scan copies are already sent to the lab, worrying that this, together with Anna Lee being found and treated in the hospital, may cause unnecessary containment issues and eventually do harm for the company. Then they both come to see Anna herself, since she was admitted to the same hospital as Paul.
When investigating Anna, they notice she has a tattoo on her chest: a cross with two intertwining wheels, which is the symbol of the prophet, Ezekiel. She wakes up suddenly upon hearing the name, and starts screaming hysterically about how Papa is not going to take her baby. Her hysterical state quickly turs into a epileptic seizure. Pauline tells Paul to get a doctor, but when he comes back, bringing doctor with him, she tells them both that Anna had died. What she doesn't tell, however, was that while no one was looking, she strangled Anna before snapping her neck.
Paul and Pauline get out of the hospital, and Paul goes home to see his daughter, only to find her bedroom empty, save for a message written in blood on the wall, "You work for us now." and a severed finger in a puddle of blood in front of her bed.
Meanwhile, Pauline tries to find the body Paul left in the desert, to get rid of another piece of evidence. But to no success, because the night before, Marta found the body and dragged it back to Temple Gate.
Characters[]
List of characters in order of appearance:
- Anna Lee
- Paul Marion
- Alison Marion
- Simon Peacock
- Joanne Marion
- Pauline Glick
- Joanne Marion (hallucination)
- Marta
Trivia[]
- Interestingly, the cover shows Temple Gate, while the actual location is never mentioned or shown within the comic's story.