The bomb squad eventually left after no bomb or other nasty surprises were found, leaving the package to the scrutiny of Copeland and Fields who began immediately to rummage through its contents. What they found immediately confirmed their suspicions: a Noh theatre mask, crumpled, waterlogged pagged, and a typed manifesto in a ziploc bag. The manifesto was long and deranged.
"....AT LAST THE WOOL HAS BEEN LIFTED FROM THE EYES OF AMERICA. THE HEBREW CONSPIRACY, ITS JUDEO-CHRISITAN CONTROL MECHANISMS LAID BARE FOR THE EARTH TO SEE. TAKE THIS NOT AS WARNING, FOR YOU HAVE HAD PLENTY, AND HAVE TURNED DEAF EARS TO THEM. NOW IS THE RECKONING, THE SWEEPING ASIDE OF THE PIECES, THE CASTING OUT OF THE GAME ENTIRELY....."
V-Cell paid the ramblings little mind, what caught their attention were the other elements of the manifesto. The allusions made to "warn-torn Yhtill and its decadent royalty" and "The masked Emperor". They confiscated the contents of the package and immediately notified their cell leader, VIRGIL. Someone in the Karotechia sent a manifesto containing excerpts of the King in Yellow to a news station. VIRGIL's response was curt: find out if other news stations have been targeted, sanitize what you find, await further instructions.
John Moss Federal Building. 7:38PM.
At a briefing room, Lt. Fields and Copeland met with VIRGIL and the other gathered Delta Green agents who had been mustered for what A-Cell was now dubbing "Operation HOI POLLOI".
The briefing materials were all very familiar to V-Cell. STATIC Protocol was active, they would be monitored by a shadow team with whom they were forbidden from making contact. All traces of the King in Yellow, the Yellow Sign, and affiliated works and materials were to be quarantined from the public and eliminated at the earliest opportunity. Agents caught making use of 'prohibited materials' would be eliminated by the shadow team. V-Cell was going to cover Northern California, meanwhile Southern California was being assigned to M-Cell. Agent WOLFGANG from W-Cell would be attached to M-Cell for support, and his partner, Agent WAXER would be assigned to V-Cell. WAXER was an old friend of Lt. Fields and Copeland. A fellow agent of PATCON who had participated in the 1995 undercover operation that introduced all of them, including WOLFGANG, to Delta Green.
by that point in the evening, V-Cell had already visited the home of the first shooter, Francis Drinkwater. They found a filthy house in disrepair. They found a gunsmithing station in the basement and copies of The Review, a Neo-Nazi publication which Drinkwater apparently subscribed to. They decided that they would split up, WAXER would go to Earl Wither's house, while VICTOR and VERDANCE would go to Walter Wyatt's apartment.
At Wither's house, WAXER spoke with Amelia Burnett, Wither's live-in-girlfriend and the mother of his child. WAXER spoke and found little helpful from talking to Burnett, though while she went to attend to her crying baby, WAXER found a great deal of... disturbing material. On the kitchen counter, Burnett had been working over a bowl of what she said was "homemade baby formula" that was an unappetizing grey. Upon closer inspection, WAXER found that there was paper in the batter, and not just one of two little pieces. Burnett must have mulched an entire book into pulp and put it in the baby formula. Waxer took a scoop of the formula and spooned it into an evidence bag, though looking at it, she was disturbed to see the letters from the paper spelling a phrase.
“THE A U THO R & P UB LISH E R”
When Burnett came downstairs, she immediately excused herself to the bathroom, which WAXER used to sneak upstairs and check on the baby, finding that it had been vomiting up bits of greyish, pulpy baby formula on itself. From downstairs, Burnett could be heard vomiting into the toilet. When questioned, she claimed not to know what WAXER was talking about. WAXER then left and called VICTOR. Burnett and her baby were likely exposed, though she wanted to confirm if the baby would have to be taken out. VICTOR deferred to her discretion, obviously unwilling to make the call himself, though he advised that a baby cannot read, so the likelihood of exposure was minimal. An obvious rationalization for something that behaved totally irrationally. A rationalization that WAXER was willing to accept. She resolved to return later that night and kill Burnett to cauterize the infection. She looked at the bag again, the letters had rearranged to what seemed like gibberish.
"K U O P K X J Z K V P R"
At Walter Wyatt's apartment, V-Cell found uniforms and photographs in his closet that indicated he had worked a rotation in Ciudad Juarez with Aktion HARUSPEX, likely guarding Site HOTEL B-1 or B-2. Additionally, they found a sigil carved into the floor of his room and a book under his bed. Fields identified the seal of IPOS, listed in the Ars Goetia as one of the many Great Dukes of Hell, able to discern the future and the past. Under Wyatt's bed they found a book, a plan paperback titled "The Land of the Midnight Sun". Reviewing it, it appeared to be a moment-by-moment recounting of the last two weeks of the Wyatt's life until the eighth of June, the day before the shooting. Unsure of what to do, but with privacy to conduct some of their business, Fields and Copeland agreed to conduct a ritual they had learned in New Orleans for some answers. Copeland stood guard while Fields conducted the Preliminary Invocation of the Primeumaton, beckoning for ASMODAY.
That was when Reinhard Galt entered the room.
Copeland drew her sidearm and shot him point blank in the head. Fields watched as Galt wrenched the gun from her hands and tossed it across the room. For a moment, Fields wanted nothing more than to leap out of the circle to her aid, but he remembered what he learned. Once the ritual begins, you can never leave the circle, no matter what, and so he didn't. He stayed still. He stayed still even as Reinhard Galt wrestled Copeland to the floor and began to stab her with an enourmous, seven-inch long bowie knife, promising that he would "only take the choice cuts". Tears streamed down Fields' cheeks and he stared at the ceiling, hollaring the incantation to ASMODAY to train out Copeland's screams for help, and eventually, her gurgling death rattle. At last it ended, and Fields stood silent, staring at the ceiling.
"You okay, boss?" he heard Copeland say. He looked and there she stood. It was an illusion, just as he had been warned. A trick to tempt him to break the circle. Fields was shaken, and threw his arms around Copeland and wept for a while, trying to explain what he saw. Fields took a moment to gather himself before they left. In the parking lot on the way to the car, he had a visitor.
There sat a police officer in full riot gear atop a horse. His and his horse's gear were labelled "SACRAMENTO POLICE", and although they didn't hear any reports of a riot, Fields and Copeland both thought they could hear the pop of flashbangs, the breaking of glass, and the screams, somewhere way out there. "Evening, Lieutenant" the horseman said. "I come with a gift, courtesy of Bael. Keep it close, Lieutenant. You'll be needing it". The horseman then produced a bloodied backpack and from it drew a copy of the infamous book, instantly familiar with V-Cell. The King in Yellow.
Fields thanked him and put the book in his breastpocket, though he only thought to ask the man's name until he was gone. That night, they drove back to meet with WAXER and compare notes. On the drive back, Copeland started thumbed through the pages of "Land of the Midnight Sun" before she got a call from WAXER.
Earlier that night, WAXER returned to the home of Amelia Burnett and knocked on the door, and although Burnett was hesitant to let her in, Waxer invited herself in. The fight was short, but brutal, and ended with WAXER strangling the woman on the floor of her living room. As she got up, a van pulled up outside, an unfamiliar one, and four men got out. She crept to an open window to listen.
"You see her car?"
"No, don't matter. She's here. Has to be."
She saw a few of them tuck handguns into their wastebands. One produced and loaded an AK-47.
"Remember, they want her alive. We taser her, cuff her, get her to cabin. That clear?"
"Clear as mud".
WAXER realized then that it couldn't be Amelia Burnett they were talking about, because her car was parked in front of the house, while hers was four blocks away.
"Fuck".
WAXER chose speed over stealth and crashed through the backdoor and across the yard. By the time she had climbed the fence, one of the men had circled around the house and was levelling his AK-47 at her. She dove over to the other side of the fence just as she heard a round crack past her, and she ran. Once she was back at her car and speeding back to home-base. She called V-Cell. On the phone, they resolved to regroup at John Moss and debrief.
At John Moss, they shared what they knew. They deduced it couldn't have been a Shadow team sent to liquidate WAXER. She wasn't showing signs of an infection, and her assassins were all white skinheads in bomber jackets. It was the Bear Flag Republic. Somehow, the Republic knew she would be there and sent a hit-team to take her out. How they knew this was anyone's guess, though Field's first guess was communion with Goetic demons, a suggestion that Copeland found plausible - but which absolutely baffled WAXER. It was in the early morning hours by then, so they decided that whatever planning they want to do, they should wait until they're rested to do it.
11 JUNE 2000
The next morning brought good news. Copeland had finished analyzing The Land of the Midnight Sun and found out the stations that the Bear Flag Republic had sent the manifestos to:
"91.3 KUOP, STOCKTON, CA. 90.9 KXJZ, SACRAMENTO, CA. 89.3 KVPR, FRESNO, CA."
And as they were eating breakfast, a call from the FBI forensics lab reported they had successfully traced the guns used during the shooting to a store in Modesto, California. "METTLE Munitions and Survival Gear". V-Cell immediately got to planning. They decided the move would be to notify VIRGIL of the Fresno station for M-Cell to quarantine before they moved to sanitize the Sacramento and Stockton stations. Once that was done, they'd go to Modesto and hunt down Ronald Pringle, aka "Horst Jaeger" who the FBI had long ago identified as the leader of the Bear Flag Republic. Pringle would know about the manifestos, where they were being written and printed, and how to stop them. They resolved it would be best for them to travel as a unit as well, so that if another Karotechia hit-team turns up, they have the numbers to take them on. Before they leave, they request the FBI to notify all radio stations in California not to open any letters not sent by the government of California until told otherwise.
Privately, Fields and Copeland feared the radio stations would be little Macallister Buildings of their own. They were relieved then, to find that the "infection" was still relatively benign at their first stop at 90.9 KXJZ in Sacramento. It had begun to spread to other pieces of mail in the radio station's mail room, but once the letters were collected (citing fears of anthrax attacks by the Republic to the radio staff), the infection was contained. For a moment, it seemed things would be smoother sailing than they feared... Then they got to Stockton.
91.3 KUOP, the NPR member station in Stockton, had apparently been evacuated by the station manager, Barbara Pickett. Pickett was a no-nonsense but cordial woman that escorted the agents to the station's mail room. Small talk with Fields revealed that Pickett was an armed forces veteran, having served in the US Army Signals Corps before mustering out and taking a job with NPR. The station was immaculately clean, and Pickett assured the agents that no one had opened any letters, and that as a precaution, Weinberg, the mailroom worker, went to the emergency room to get looked at. Fields did note that the station halls reeked of chlorine bleach, which Pickett brushed off as the cleaning staff using too much.
Things seemed to be going smoothly for the most part, though notably, the room had a different smell, metallic. They located their letter and stuffed it away, but as they were digging through heaps of mail, something caught Field's attention. One letter felt wet to the touch, but appeared totally dry. When she scratched it with his finger, something rusty and flaky fell from it, which Copeland and WAXER immediately recognized was dried blood. He tried another, and another. Then he heard the voice.
"You're not looking at them right" it said, coming from a mail chute. He looked inside to see
A clown with a painted porcelain mask jammed impossibly into the chute. It reached out and poked him on the forehead. "Look now, cowboy" it said. Fields withdrew and looked around the room in horror.
All around them was blood. In a box beneath the sorting table was assorted human offal and a severed foot, and against the far wall was a corpse with its head blown apart. The nametag on the shirt read "Weinberg". Immediately, Fields flipped out, but quickly realized his cohort couldn't see what he saw. Unsure of how else to convince them, he guided Copeland to feel Weinberg's hands. When she touched the corpse, the illusion fell and she saw the room. He tried to do the same to WAXER, who refused. Manic and running on a boost of adrenaline, Fields simply tossed the severed foot from the box to WAXER, which in her eyes looked like a crumpled piece of paper. It was only when the paper struck her on the arm that she saw what it really was, and what the room really looked like.
"The Bleach" said Fields, "She was cleaning up blood. Jesus Christ, she might have killed everyone in this building". They took a moment to gather their wits and confront Pickett. If it was her, she'd have to be put down. In her office they found a limp, human-sized marionette made of metal and porcelain behind her desk, and a bound human being in her supply closet. The man claimed to be her assistant, Robertson, who she had been keeping bound in the closet for days. While Fields went to find the man water, he spoke to Copeland, asking her if she'd ever seen the Yellow Sign. Copeland threatened him not to talk about it, to which he complied, but after he'd been given his water, she turned back to him and remarked.
"I never told you my name..." Before anyone could react, she had shot Robertson in the knee, and in a flash of smoke and light, the illusion faded and Robertson was really Pickett. A second shot sprayed her brains across the supply closet just as the marionette at her desk rose up and began to try to tackle and impale Fields. After a brief fight, the human-sized doll was disassembled, and the group went about setting fires to burn down the station to remove any evidence, and to cauterize the infection. On their way across the parking lot to their car, another van came screeching in. V-Cell knew what was coming and drew their guns before the van's occupants could disembark.
The fight was brief, as they were more interested in withdrawing from the ambush than toughing it out. Fields isolated and killed the one assassin wielding an AK-47, and started the car while Copeland and WAXER laid down suppressing fire against the BFR hit-team. After a quick escape and a notification to the police, they heard over dispatch that the hit-team was later killed in a running gun-battle with police. Not wasting any time, they drove to Modesto an hour away for the next stage of their operation: Locating and capturing Ronald Pringle. After arriving in Modesto late in the afternoon, the cell resolved to treat their wounds, eat, discuss their strategy, and sleep.
To be continued...
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