It's called "pal2.pdf" and it's a file over Joshua.
Once again, it's 3 pages long. The cover page, which you can see there, and two pages of writing. Here's what it said:
PROJECT ASSEMBLY LINE
SUBJECT #2: JOSHUA O'DELL
Marionettes recreation of his last staff photo, circa March 26th, 2006.
"NAME: JOSHUA O'DELL
STATION: #48
POSITION: ANCHOR
Joshua O'Dell was a relatively fresh hire by the time Upstaged Communications closed, having joined Station 48 on June 5th, 2005. He had been an anchor for a local news station for 12 years, but was hired by Upstaged when his old job closed. The old company simply ran out of money, which Upstaged was never in short supply of.
As the anchor, his job was to smile, look relaxed, read the teleprompter, and say what he was being fed. It was an easy job, in his eyes; he didn't have to make any of the more difficult choices on what to broadcast, he just read what was written. Given his charming personality and, by his standards, decent looks, he eased into his job, flipping the switch to his conscious thought off with little difficulty as he focused on the teleprompter. His segment was the late night news for a large region in the Midwest, making him the nighttime comfort for thousands of people.
That was when it happened. In the middle of a broadcast, he saw something. The people at home saw him squint, forced to bring his mind back to reality with a concerned expression, before laughing it off, as he explained to his viewers that there were some technical difficulties. A glitch in the teleprompter, he said; he'd return in just a moment. The station got a few angry calls over the interruption, but it could've been far worse. He handled the situation well.
Joshua also happened to be a fast reader, and had a good memory. What he saw on the teleprompter didn't leave him after his shift was over. On the screen, he saw a strange, hollow tree symbol, lightly glitching and fragmenting. There was then text, written over itself countless times, in such a way that it was utterly incomprehensible. The only word he could make out was SIGNAL. There was nothing he could do to try to decipher what else was said, as the glitch wasn't recorded; instead, he was forced to sit on what he saw, trying his best to force it out of his mind. After all, Upstaged Communications was a reputable company, yes? There was no chance that it could've been something bad. Just a glitch.
The feeling of wrongness wouldn't leave him, and it started to drive him mad. Months later, on the eve of the new year, he visited the Marionettes archives, attempting to find any mentions of this SIGNAL. He wasn't able to find much, as a surprising amount of the archive was coded and password protected, but he found files of some strange music, and an image. An image of the same tree symbol from before. It unnerved him, but by that point, he knew better than to dig further. He had enough information, should anything happen.
This left him prepared when everything shattered. As the Signal began to spread through the stations, he recognized the strange music from the speakers, and the strange symbol he saw that day, on the teleprompter. He managed to slip past all the other employees riding the fluctuations of Station 48 until they landed him in Station 85, where he found Wyatt Reed. He and Wyatt found Edward, who told them of a plan to save them all from the horrible fate the company wrought upon all its employees. He was one of eight to survive the events that began midnight of October 17th, 2006.
Just like with Thomas, he was free once the Signal was trapped. His memory had suffered more damage, however; he remembered that the company had shuttered, and remembered some specifics, but could not remember what horrible things he did to help stop the Signal, nor what it even truly was. When the Signal started back up in 2016, he was called back. He was sent a package on October 1st, 2018 and received it on October 3rd, 2018. He received it on the same day as Thomas, Lily, Nashiko, and Wyatt.
He was the second receiver the Signal was able to capture in 2018. There is no longer a Joshua O'Dell."
That's the end of the file.
Upstaged appeared to know more about the Signal than just the fact that it existed, if they had the symbol it uses to represent itself on file. I'm not sure why or how it could've appeared on the teleprompter; I do know that everything in Upstaged was connected to Marionettes, and that it was trying to free itself. Maybe it was able to slip through some flaws in Marionettes to show itself, or something, even if it couldn't free itself.
Joshua and Wyatt met each other when the Signal began to spread. That's good to know. However, there is once again a reference to having to do something horrible--the same thing was mentioned with Thomas. What did they have to do?
Like with Thomas, I am very unsettled by the final line.
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