Agent Irena, Mary Bryant, FBI.
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, New York.
In the office of Dr. Jensen Wu, strange and hideous artifacts sit idly on steel shelves. The doctor sits at his desk, nursing a can of drink, while Mary Bryant sits opposite him on a small office chair. Nervously attempting to explain what happened to her at Monument, Montana. She hopes the doctor will have some insight. She relays the events. Of standing in the basement of that house, Austin Keebler's corpse cooling on the kitchen floor above them. Staring into that strange computer monitor as it spat out gibberish allusions to things she's never even heard of. Then that feeling, vertigo. Then the city, but not for long. Hardly enough time to realize her body felt...different. Then it was gone, and she stood in a black room with those...men, if you could call them that.
He remembers hearing reports of such episodes - of lost time, replaced by visions of strange cities among vast jungles, and of the strange, cone-shaped aliens that sluggishly glide through its thoroughfares. He references her to a book known as the Pnakotica, a rare tome that describes a wide pantheon of strange and esoteric gods and aliens races. She learns of the case of Mariel Guzman, a case of lost time investigated by Saucerwatch, with striking similarities to Bryant's case, and the case of Dr. Nathaniel Peaslee in the early 20th century. He believes the "city" glimpsed by Peaslee, Guzman, and now Bryant, is in fact the legendary Library of Pnakotus, from which the Pnakotica derives its name.
 |
| The strange aliens glimpsed by Bryant. |
She asks him about the Men in Black, the strange ones with grey skin that confronted her in Club Apocalypse, recalling that Wu was speaking to them. He relays stories he has heard about them, he indicates that they often seem "lost" in our world, and are confused by such things as glass bottles, revolving doors, taxis, newspapers, and cutlery, and yet seem eerily aware of current happenings in it. They have a habit of approaching people seemingly at random, making veiled threats and eerie allusions, often loaded with unspoken meaning. They do it to everyone, even Lords of The Fate at Club Apocalypse (people who you should never threaten), for their parts, the Lords seem weirdly indifferent to their comments. Wu has heard that they've claimed to have come from a land known as Tsan-Chan. He posits the notion of seeking out a copy of the Pnakotica for Bryant, but states that such a book would likely be kept under lock and key by whoever possesses it, and would be less than willing for a random woman to open and read its contents. Meaning that....alternative means might be necessary if she intends to read it for herself.
Agent Imogen, Sylvia Pontecorvo, IRS
Internal Revenue Service headquarters, Washington D.C.
Sylvia Pontecorvo attends to her obsession - the tracking and monitoring of the old-money fraternity and debauched cult known as The Exalted Circle. She uses information gleaned from her last operation, somehow sensing a connection.
1998, M-Cell is inserted into a Delta Green hybrid operation alongside assets from the FBI, IRS, CIA, and the ONI. Resources from these agencies were assembled in an enourmous task force codenamed "NEMESIS", wtih the stated purpose of rooting out, exposing, and prosecuting members of the international human trafficking ring known as the Dorian Grey Society. M-Cell's agents were involved in an operation earlier in 1998 that first exposed the activities of the Dorian Grey Society in the United States. M-Cell were attached to the task force by A-Cell to assure that the cultists of the "Headless Corpse God" that managed the Society would be eliminated before they had the opportunity to expose the supernatural to Non-Delta Green agents in NEMESIS.
One figure in the wide collection of intelligence community and federal law enforcement personnel that strikes Pontecorvo as noteworthy is Rear Admiral David Janeway of the ONI. Signed himself onto the operation, claimed he wanted to use the operation to test new ONI data gathering technologies in the field, and to prove the ONI's value for the collection and collation of maritime intelligence in multi-agency task forces. He advocates for the inclusion of a private military contractor to be assigned to the task force, to provide additional firepower, he is a shareholder. Seems to Pontecorvo like plain old state department back-scratching. The military contractor operates under the name "Hurricane Group".
Hurricane Group consists of former American, British, Danish, South Korean, Japanese, Canadian, South African, and Israeli military personnel. It's board of Directors are primarily American, British, and Japanese. Pontecorvo goes a little deeper. There has to be more.
Hurricane Group's contract was negotiated with the State Department by their legal representatives, an international law firm from the Bahamas called Andrade & Saavedra. Andrade & Saavedra seem to be Hurricane Group's lawyers on-call, and they seem to handle the affairs of other private security firms affiliated with (or owned by) Hurricane Group in the United States. Pontecorvo recognizes one of them. Receipts and line items that indicate significant amounts of money moving through Andrade & Saavedra to a small private investigation office in Nacogdoches, Texas called Nicholson Detective Agency. In 1997, I-Cell participated in Operation THROWING DISTANCE, during which they encountered the remnants of a community of young people who were slowly transforming into Aquatic Humanoids. Evidence gathered there indicated that the communtiy was the result of experiments performed by the Exalted Circle, and that the Circle was responsible for hiring a private investigator from the Nicholson Detective Agency by the name of John Temple to keep an eye on the remnants.
Further evidence indicated that Andrade & Saavedra gave legal counsel to Alonso Encarnacion, a member of the cult known as the Lamplighters, who was in psychiatric care in a private facility in Panama and who M-Cell spoke with in Panama, and who claimed he was the final member of his cult and that the Dorian Grey Society used the U.S Invasion of Panama to destroy the Lamplighters in that region.
The threads were there. Andrade & Saavedra protected Encarnacion, a member of the Lamplighters. It was also instrumental in getting Hurricane Group assigned to the investigation that destroyed the Dorian Grey Society, who had previously massacred Lamplighters in Panama in the 80s, which was on the recommendation of a shareholder of Hurricane Group, a highly placed ONI Admiral. The same group owned a subsidiary that had very strong connections to Exalted Circle's activites in the United States.
Pontecorvo felt a sinking feeling as the revelation dawned on her: The Exalted Circle was playing us, we gave them the opportunity to get their hands dirty. She practically beat the keys off her keyboard sendind the encrypted email to IAGO reporting what she found.
Agent Isaac, Viktor Morozov
The darkness of the deserts surrounding Waco, Texas is impenetrable at night. The light in the kitchen makes it so that the windows facing the dark are black mirrors that Viktor looks out into and against.
He scrutinizes the book again. Its secret want to be learned, and he wants to oblige them. He pulled it from the filthy ruin of the Russian woman's house - to call her woman implies a level of humanity Viktor doesn't want to give her, though.
The ritual "Domination" stares up at him from the old, stained pages. He attempts it once again, to no avail.
Comments
Post a Comment