October 21st, 1997. North Platte, Nebraska.
The Agents of J-Cell convened in North Platte's FBI field office a few months after the St. Louis incident. With the heat still on them for killing Ronald Valiant, A-Cell had assigned other cells to continue investigating Enolsis. In the interim, the conspiracy had a job for J-Cell. Senior researcher at the Great Plains Cruciform Array (GPCA), Stan Arnold, has been flagged for seeking out a copy of the 10th volume of the Revelations of Gla'aki. Some astronomer looking for a tome wasn't necessarily cause for concern, at least if Arnold hadn't just stabbed his girlfriend to death and committed suicide-by-cop.
Suitably alarmed, A-Cell dispatched the Agents to Hayden, seat of McPherson County and home to the GPCA, a large radio-telescope array capable of receiving electromagnetic signals from deep space.
JENKINS and JOSEF poured over transcripts of Arnold's emails to academic institutes on the car trip across the American midwest. He didn't fit the profile of an occultist, it was clear he'd just heard about this specific volume somewhere, possibly even seen a copy in person. The man was obviously terrified of some unspecified evil, thinking the dusty tome would contain a solution to his fears.
A fierce thunderstorm broke over State Route 97 as the investigators approached Hayden. Lightning struck the plains around them as high winds howled and thunder boomed. Scanlon glanced up from the driver's seat at the raging storm. An eye stared back at him. The trucker checked himself before he swerved off the road from shock - an arc of lightning had briefly traced the shape of an eyeball across the sky. It would've been easy to pass off as an hallucination, if not for the afterimage burned into his cornea. Realising no one else had seen it, Scanlon kept the ominous vision to himself.
Hayden was a small settlement of around 850 souls, located 45 miles outside of North Platte. Surrounded by open plains, the landscape's monotony only broken by hog farms, cattle ranches and hay fields, or the occasional copse of white cedar and oak. J-Cell grimaced as the storm intensified, reports coming in over the radio of flash-flooding in the Dismal and North Platte rivers. They only relaxed once they'd pulled into the garage of Hayden's combination sheriffs office, town hall, courthouse and jail.
The Agents met with Sheriff Kaufman in his office, introducing themselves as a team investigating Arnold for financial malfeasance involving federal research grants. The sheriff bought their excuse, giving them the run of the county to conduct their investigation. Kaufman was visibly relieved they weren't here to investigate his officers. The shooting was probably dirtier than his incident report had claimed.
McPherson County lacked the resources for a proper autopsy, so Scanlon volunteered for driving to North Platte to transport their medical examiner and his equipment to Hayden. Meanwhile JOSEF and JESSE linked up with Deputy Bob Horner to search Arnold house. After examining the grisly crime scene - Stan had used a screwdriver to do the deed - the duo cracked into the scientist's personal computer. There was evidence of his search for the 10th Volume, but no explanation for his motivations.
Arnold's work email from the GPCA did contain mention of a confidential project codenamed NEMESIS, but it was mostly technobabble nonsense. The Agents deduced it was probably something to do with the position of a distant celestial body.
Meanwhile, driving along State Route 97 with the Lincoln County medical examiner, Scanlon spotted a car blocking the road ahead. Slowing to a safe stop, he realised the driver was standing *on top* of the vehicle, screaming into the lashing rain. Grabbing his gun with one hand and his radio with another, he radioed for backup as he kept an eye on the madman. Before J-Cell could arrive, another car came tearing down the opposite lane. Thinking quickly, Scanlon stepped out and lit a road flare, alerting the driver before he plowed into the crazy guy's parked truck.
The motorist leant out of his window and began screaming at the man to get his car off the road. The lunatic screamed back about "fingers of god coming down from the sky". Scanlon tried to defuse the situation, asking the man what was wrong. He babbled something about the "sky and earth singing" before Deputy Horner, JOSEF and JESSE pulled up. The deputy raised his shotgun and shouted for the man to come down. The madman produced a tire iron and raised it over his head as if to throw it.
With an almighty crash and explosion of sparks, a bolt of lightning lanced down and struck the length of metal. The man toppled from the car and struck the flooded road with a sizzle, body reduced to a pile of crackling jerky. The other driver puked. The Agents searched the madman's car, but only found a trashed radio, beat to shit with the same tire iron the man had committed suicide-by-storm with. The deputy bagged the burnt corpse and pushed the truck off the road before anyone else got hurt.
Arthur Boyd
The Agents observed as the Lincoln M.E. autopsied the corpses of Arnold, his girlfriend and the dead motorist (at their request). It was obvious Arnold had been shot twice, once at medium range and once point-blank, execution style, completely contradicting the police report. The examiner "forgot" to mention this in his report, ruling it had been a clean shoot. But the Agents weren't interested in fighting the thin blue line, instead focusing on a strange swelling present on both Arnold and the madman's corpse. Both men had inflammation across the entirety of their bodies, something the M.E. wasn't able to (and couldn't be bothered to) explain.
With the autopsies complete, J-Cell left to interview Deputy Donny Carpenter, the officer involved in the shooting of Stan Arnold. Finding him at home on administrative leave with his wife and young daughter, the Agents received the expected lines that he "feared for his life" and only "shot to disable the threat". Once they assured Carpenter they weren't here to investigation him decapitating a man with a shotgun, he explained Arnold had been yelling about someone or something "not shutting up", similar to the ramblings of the electrified madman. As they moved to leave, Carpenter's wife gave him a double dose of ibuprofen. On a whim, one Agent gripped his hand in a firm handshake, producing a visible wince from the deputy. Seemed he was also suffering from the mystery inflammation.
As J-Cell stepped out of the sheriff's office and into the rain, they heard the distinct whirring of a helicopter overhead. Flying through the raging storm, an unmarked black helicopter soared over Hayden in the direction of the Great Plains Cruciform Array. Exchanging a worried look, the Agents hurriedly piled into their vehicle and followed the aircraft to the installation.
They arrived as the helicopter, visibly armed with twin GAU-19 miniguns, was taxiing into a large storage warehouse on the outskirts of the research facility. The GPCA's staff were converging on the main administrative building. The Agents pulled aside Harlan Bennett, the array's chief technician, and asked him what was going on. He explained an Air Force team was holding an emergency meeting with the staff, before brushing them off and entering a conference room. The Agents moved to follow, but were blocked by two familiar faces - Agents Picton and Wentzlauf of the AFOSI. Except this time, they were dressed as Air Force blue berets and heavily armed. The men in black were equally surprised to see the Agents, but quickly composed themselves and told them the meeting was strictly classified. Despite JENKINS' best efforts to threaten them, the MiB were unmoving.
As the rest of the cell argued with the goons and tried to eavesdrop on the conference room, JOSEF split off to talk to one of the men maintaining the rail-mounted satellite dishes littering the surrounding area. Chief of maintenance, Gary Wilson, greeted the marshal over the roar of the rain and walked him into his covered workshop. He didn't know what the Air Force was doing here, they'd never deemed the GPCA's discoveries worth a visit before. When asked if he'd noticed anything unusual, he hesitantly mentioned "mystery" repairs to the array's machinery. According to him, the array was both suffering an unusually high level of wear and tear, while also receiving repairs that Gary couldn't remember applying. He jokingly referred to brownies helping him out. He'd tried staying up late to catch them in the act, but always found himself falling asleep before noticing anything.
Back at the admin building, the Agents gave up on arguing with the MiB or trying to burgle one of the offices, instead waiting for the meeting to finish. JENKINS managed to overhear mention of the "NEMESIS" project, but couldn't discover much else. As the staff filed out to their cars, the Agents noticed a man in a military uniform flanked by Picton and Wentzlauf. The suit introduced himself as Dr. Antony Correlo of Air Force intelligence. He offered any and all assistance in the Agents' investigation of Stan Arnold, while subtly threatening them to stay out of his way. While the doctor and his men requisitioned one of the spare staff apartments, J-Cell departed back to Hayden to find lodgings for the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment