Volume Six: Department C

== Summary ==
An IT worker at DARPA is transferred to a secret government agency for the defense against the supernatural. When the entire population of the town of Grenada, Nicaragua vanishes, a team is sent to investigate.
== Cast Roles ==
* Damian Cross (Mike Ginn) - Ex-police officer, ex-FBI agent, now an agent at Department C.
* Roya Paley (Markeia McCarty) - Tech prodigy, inventor of the only device that Department C has ever successfully deployed in the field, the mini teleporter, which she invented at the age of 15. Believes that there is a scientific explanation for everything.
* Andy Aleck (Kate Elliott) - A little bit weird, but nice enough. Has studied myth and legend her whole, lonely adult life. Researcher at Department C, had a small website dedicated to the supernatural, then one day there was a knock on her door and she was drafted into Department C.
* Devon Blackberry (Ify Nwadiwe) - Ran I.T. for DARPA, worked there for 10 years total, transferred to Department C for snooping where he didn't have clearance. Attended DeVry for I.T. certifications. Likes conspiracy theories and enjoys proving them wrong, he's open to the supernatural but tries to find the real explanation.
== Chapter Summaries ==
=== Prologue ===
After being called into his boss'
office at DARPA for snooping where he didn't have clearance, Devon's
boss receives a mysterious phone call informing him that Devon is to
be transferred to a new department. When he returns to his apartment
Devon finds a note under his door instructing him to go to the
University of Iowa, an apartment has been set up for him there. Upon
arrival he is to report to Teaspoons, a small coffee shop, and await
instructions there.
	His new apartment is small and humble,
but a step up from his place in Arlington. From there, he heads
directly to Teaspoons and orders a coffee, giving the barista his
name. When he takes the cup, he sees Pentacrest, Schaffer Hall
janitor's closet is written in pen on it. When he looks up to ask
for directions, the coffee shop is empty.
	The janitor's closet seems run of the
mill at first, until Devon notice two clean spots on the floor where
feet have stood before. As he steps in to inspect further, the door
shuts and locks behind him. In the dark, a computerized voice asks
him to identify himself, then tells him that “any and all right the
apply to him as a US citizen are null and void if he continues.” He
responds, “What??” and the voice thanks him as the closet begins
to descend into the earth. He makes a note to revisit his 'janitors =
mole men' theory.
	The room stops descending and the door
opens, a logo on the silver wall opposite the door greets him, it
looks like a six-eyed octopus crawling through the outline of a red
shield with the letter C on it. To the left of the logo is an old,
wooden door. No one answers when he calls out. The computerized voice
tells him he has twenty seconds to exit before the room rises again.
He does and the door closes behind him, there is a ding as the room
lifts back up, revealing an empty shaft.
	Devon walks over and knocks on the
door. Inside, Damian, Roya and Andy wonder who could be knocking
before Damian shouts “Come in!”
	Devon enters, on the left of the room
he enters there are shelves of books and glass cases with
memorabilia. On the right side of the room are maps, posters and
printouts tacked on cork boards connected with red string. In the
center of the room, lowered down two steps, is a bullpen area with
five occupied desks, their occupants staring at him, and an office on
the back wall with a man inside pacing while talking on a phone.
	“Obviously this is Esme's
replacement,” says a gray bearded man.
	The woman nearest the door introduces
herself as Marla, combat expert. Devon tells them that he is an IT
expert and they scoff at an IT guy replacing Esme. The man in the
office calls out to Devon and tells the others that Devon will be
Esme's replacement, and that leaving her desk open won't bring her
back. He orders Damian to clean out Esme's desk and Andy says she'll
hang on to the pictures on Esme's desk.
	The man, Director Bunny, calls Devon
into his office. The office looks like a room fifty years in the
past, no computers, notes on papers are strewn everywhere, pedestals
around the room hold things Devon doesn't immediately recognize.
Devon learns that Esme died in the field, she was run over by an FBI
agent while undercover. Bunny reveals that he asked for Devon to be
transferred to Department C for his tech skills. He tells Devon that
he can't share anything he learns here outside of the Department, not
even with the president, if anything leaks out and can be traced back
to Devon, Bunny will be forced to end Devon's life.
	Once Devon agrees, Bunny reveals that
Department C is a defense organization for the occult, Devon asks
about his janitors/mole men theory and Bunny ignores that and tells
Devon the history of Department C. They were established in 1960 by
Dwight Eisenhower to develop supernatural weaponry to combat the
German developments in the occult during WWII. Eisenhower knew we
needed to start investing in the occult, he found documentation of
Hitler's device that channeled his demonic manna to be the mouthpiece
of the Gods of old. 
	Basically, he found a way to control
the minds of others by tapping in to their darkest desires using a
Charley Chimp toy that Bunny has in his office, or something within
the toy anyway. Hitler gave the device to his ally, Japan, when he
knew that all hope for world domination was lost. Japan put the
device inside the monkey toy and tried to use it to do mind control
on a mass scale in the U.S., but Eisenhower stopped it. He sets the
monkey on the desk and Devon tells him to put it away, Bunny says
it's more sensitive to people who have committed atrocities but puts
it away anyway.
	The idea for Department C came from
this incident, they've spent years working on weapons that, in
theory, could be used as weapons by the U.S., but most of the time
they see themselves as a deterrent to others gaining access to the
knowledge and devices they find. When Devon asks if there's a
thumbdrive or something with files on it that he could read through,
Bunny gestures at the books and asks if Devon is offering to digitize
them. “That's a team player right there, coming in the first day
and volunteering at least two years of your life like that,” Bunny
says, putting it on Devon's action list.
	Bunny tells Devon that Department C
has yet to develop any weaponry and that Roya is the only person to
ever invent anything that Department C has ever used successfully in
the field that they use on a daily basis, but he thinks they are
close to some other developments. He makes it clear that they are not
trying to develop world killers, but trying to keep others from doing
so. Devon asks if the best way to handle these things is to destroy
them, and Bunny tells him they do when it is safe to do so.
	The last president to know about
Department C was Reagan, only a few generals now know anything about
the organization and keep the checks flowing. At this point Bunny's
phone rings and he dismisses Devon back into the bullpen.
	Devon gets to know his new coworkers a
little better, Roya introduces herself as a tech genius/inventor of
the teleporter that Department C uses, but she hasn't invented much
new since then. Damian asks Devon if he has any field/combat skills
that would come in handy. When he denies it Andy suggests that
perhaps he has unrealized powers and Marla says he was probably just
brought in because Bunny has zero technological skills and Devon just
happened to come to his attention. Andy reveals that this is similar
to her own story, one day she had a small website on the
supernatural, then there was a knock on her door and now she is here.
	The people who work at Department C
are loners, working there prohibits getting close to people. The
bearded man, Jesse, who heads up R&D, came in with Director Bunny
in the seventies. Marla offers to train Devon as much as she can
before their upcoming mission and she trusts that Director Bunny saw
something within their new hire that lead him to bring Devon onboard.
Marla, the previous new hire, asks Devon if Bunny did the whole thing
where the coffee shop people disappear once the message was delivered
to him too and tells Devon that she's glad he is here.
	Bunny comes out and starts the
briefing with some fun by asking Andy to tell everyone what she knows
about Cthulhu. There's some debate about whether people have just
been lead astray by a good author or if the Elder God is real,
including Roya saying there is always a logical, scientific answer
behind everything, and Andy talking about unexplained events like
'the bloop'. .
	Department C has record of eight
actual supernatural events or artifacts that they have documentation
of, Bunny tells them. As of late, supernatural/unexplained
occurrences are on the rise. He brings up a slide of a picture of the
Amundsen-Scott research station in Antartica, Department C has gotten
a hold of photos from a camera found at the destroyed base. He clicks
the slide again to show a large, metallic creature in the snow.
Bodies of Synchroneity tech employees were also found on site and
they are denying any involvement, Bunny asks if Devon will be able to
hack their servers.
	When Devon responds in the
affirmative, Bunny clicks to a slide of a mutilated dead body that
looks like it has merged with technology and into the wall next to
it. Devon's visceral response to the photo leads Damian to remark
upon him replacing Esme and Bunny cracks down on him a bit, asking if
Damian could hack Synchroneity's servers. He clicks to another slide
of a map of the South Pole with a red dot, it's radiation appearing
out of nowhere and pulsing, he clicks through time-lapse photos of
the dot, there and gone and back. 
	At the same time this is happening in
Antarctica, the same pulse of radiation appears in northern Arkansas
as well, 100 consecutive pulses, each pulse exactly 10 milliseconds
after each Antarctic pulse. Then, the same pulsing bursts of
radiation appeared in Iowa, centered on the Charley Chimp toy that
Department C had in lock up. They have since tested the toy and there
is no residual radiation, the radiation appears and disappears, never
lingering.
	The northern Arkansas pulses coincide
with reports of three hikers going missing in that same location,
estimated disappearance time around that time that the pulses began.
One of the women reported as missing was the daughter of Gemma Baker,
who, unbeknownst to her, is on Department C's watch list as DNA
records of unsolved mysteries place her as a missing infant in the
1950s, then, she reappears as a five year old in southern Georgia in
the mid-1970s before relocating to London with a woman that there are
no records of existing in the US.
	Ms. Baker, as an adult, has no
knowledge of her heritage or that her family and her DNA was found at
her birthplace in the '50s nor does she have any knowledge of her
daughter going missing in that area during these pulses. 
	Bunny has reason to believe that more
locations should have pinged with the signal but it was demolished,
another slide shows a destroyed satellite dish. “Some good soul out
there, knew that whatever was happening needed to be stopped,”
Bunny says. He also believes that Kolob would have been pinged, but
Esme, God rest her soul, could no longer confirm or deny that
possibility, so they'll tackle that town another time.
	“Now, on to why we're here,” Bunny
says, “the mission today can no longer go as planned. I know you
were all excited to head out to Lawrence, Kansas to re-open the case
of the monkey with an actual field test, but something bigger has
come up within the last ten minutes. The monkey mission is handed
over to Agent Stagg now.” He believes that the signal has brought
the monkey back online and this round of tests will yield the same
outcomes and they'll get better data this time to understand what is
happening. “Everyone in this test group is a certified killer, who
has somehow not faced justice. Sometimes we have to operate outside
the law.”
	Bunny just got off the phone with
'that old bat Larienza', she told him that Grenada, Nicaragua is
empty, its inhabitants have disappeared without a trace. Local
government is claiming volcanic gas and is quarantining the city.
Marla will be in charge of the mission as the combat expert, she says
she'll come up with extraction plans on the flight over, time is of
the essence.
	Damian takes his kit which includes a
sidearm and two mags, a tactical knife, a tactical flashlight, and a
bulletproof vest. He additionally takes an AR-15 and extra mag. 
	Roya takes her messenger bag with
Metroid embroidered on it containing: electronics, a toolkit, a
tricked out smartphone (that she built), a hand-crank flashlight, a
lock-pick kit, a tool kit, a welding kit, random SD cards, a tricked
out taser, and a tricked out laptop. She puts on her shades that say
'fly' on one eye and 'AF' on the other. In addition she brings a
spectrometer, an Astral Being Entrapper (made by her and not field
tested), and one of her personal teleporters.
	Andy takes along her briefcase of work
papers, key cards, supernatural related items, EMF meter, garlic
pellets, silver wire, small cross, disposable camera with flash,
sketch/notepad, little book of monsters, conspiracy theory reading
materials, small candles, chalk and salt.
	Devon has his backpack of laptop,
tablets and computer peripherals. While he looks over everything in
the bag, he opens a drawer at his new desk and sees a Beretta with
Esme's name inscribed on it and two clips, which he also packs.
	In the janitor's closet elevator they
all don janitor's gear before exiting one at a time and then heading
for the airport. When they leave, a package arrives addressed to Sue
Bunny, DNA tests and samples from Amundsen-Scott have arrived.
	Damian asks Devon if he can have
Esme's gun, and he gives him his sidearm in return. As they travel,
Marla starts to go over basic gun safety with Devon. Andy goes over
her notes on mass disappearances while Roya stuffs her face on the
free food in the private jet while running some tests on the Astral
Being Entrapper on her laptop. Damian cleans and polishes Esme's gun
and Roya brings him a plate of food.
=== Chapter 1 ===
They arrive at the airport in Managua,
Nicaragua to meet their contact, Larienza, he's worked for Department
C for ten years collecting information on the occult in Central
America. He tells them they need to exit the area quickly as there is
civil unrest in the area, he leads them to a van that, when they
climb in, they see the outside of the panel van change to show the
logo for a plumbing company.
	Larienza informs the crew that they
will be arriving pretty late in the day, and gets them up to speed on
what he knows. Everyone in the town vanished in the midst of what
they were doing, televisions left on, cars crashing, and boats left
afloat in the lake. The city is an old Spanish colony that sits on
the largest lake in the country and a volcano sits nearby.
	They notice as they drive toward
Grenada, they pass by several large riots. Larienza, mentions that he
can't rule out government involvement, as they have recently been
shooting at some kids in a church, but he doesn't think that they
have the means to make this many people disappear. They talk a bit
about Roanoke, and how back then there were no records or technology
to use to trace the people that vanished from that colony like there
are now.
	Larienza asks Devon to find some
satellite images of the affected area and tosses him a bag of SD
cards. He discovers nothing odd outside the fact that all of the heat
blips representing the people and animals within the city all
disappear at the exact same moment. A radiation scan layered on the
heat scan reveals three separate radioactive signatures move quickly
among the citizens of Grenada, in the space of a minute, at least one
of the signatures has been near to, if not touching, every citizen.
	A large mob of people surrounds the
van, shouting about the government's treatment of the people. Damian
draws upon his experience as a cop and reads the crowd, telling the
others to remain calm, they don't appear to be in any physical
danger. Roya opens the access hatch on top of the van and starts
tossing flash-bangs into the crowd for some reason. The crowd starts
to scream and they hear gunshots in the distance. Devon hacks into
the van's system and transmits a message in Spanish that they are not
with the government and are here to help.
	Larienza crashes the van through a
barricade that the military has set up and brings the van to a stop
as soldiers aim their weapons at them. Using google translate, Devon
explains that they are with the US government and are here to help.
An individual presses his way through the crowd and asks what they
were doing with the flash-bangs, which they explain as a malfunction.
	The man tells them that none of his
men want to go into the city, they are superstitious. As they talk to
the man a gunshot sounds close by and he tells them to go and do what
they can in the city while he tries to keep things from escalating
here.
	They drive down a long stretch of
highway into the valley around Grenada, there are lights on in the
city but no movement and an eerie silence surrounds the town.
Larienza parks the van outside the city limits and Marla orders
everyone to stay on comms and start a sweep of the area. At the first
split in the road they see a sign for a hospital, they decide to
check it out together and Marla orders Larienza to stay with the can
and keep an eye on the quarantine around the city, if anyone gets
through, they need to leave. Marla will take the rear, the three
noncombatants will be in the middle, any sign of anything, call it
out.
	Roya fires up her Spectrometer and in
a brief flash as it boots up, hundreds of dots appear and then fade
out. Marla orders Larienza to find a bug or animal to establish a
perimeter for the disappearances. Vegetation seems to be unaffected,
only people and wildlife.
	As they arrive at the hospital, Marla
points her flashlight at a pile of clothing with a nightstick on the
belt lying just outside the entrance. Playing her flashlight into the
entrance reveals more clothing scattered about the hall. Andy wonders
if everyone is naked together wherever they are.
	As they move into the hospital, the
lights are flickering, Roya suggests checking the morgue to see if
any dead bodies have been left behind and Damian suggest checking any
security stations for CCTV recordings of what happened. Damian and
Devon go to check the CCTV angle and the others go to the morgue.
	Devon and Damian find the security
room and the only movement they see is the other team on the
monitors. At first Devon is unable to get his laptop and tablet to
synch with the Central American tech but then he tries password
in the prompt and he gets into the video files. There is one frame of
difference between people being within the hospital and then empty
clothes falling to the floor. They copy the files onto Devon's
laptop.
Roya
is keeping an eye on her spectrometer and Andy is watching her EMF
meter as they move down the hall. They hear a mechanical whir as the
generator kicks in and the lights steady. They push the morgue doors
open and see two black sheets over bodies, when Roya pulls the sheet
back a body indeed lays underneath it, tools and clothing are
scattered on the floor around it.
	 While they discuss what they have
found, Roya begins to hear a voice whispering 'ayudame',
no one else heard it. Andy takes out her camera and as soon as the
flash goes off, the power in the entire hospital goes out. Andy tries
repeating the flash, in the brief light of the camera the she sees
that the bodies appear to be gone. When Marla puts her flashlight on
them, they are still there.
Roya
goes to check the morgue's freezer for survivors, and the smell of
rotting flesh assaults them when the door opens. They all smell the
faint tang of blood and Marla's nose starts to bleed.
Back
in the security room, Devon's nose also starts to bleed. The file
transfer had not completed before the power went. As they pack up to
rejoin the others Devon hears a voice whisper 'help me'.
They all hear a loud pop outside and Larienza tells them it looks
like a transformer blew in town and all the lights in Grenada are
out. Marla tells Damian they are heading back to them, they tell each
other about the nosebleeds and Marla tells Andy to document
everything that happens in the order it happens.
Roya
checks her spectrometer and sees a single dot directly behind them,
Andy's EMF gets no readings and they see nothing. Sound starts to
warp for Roya, and her vision starts to close in to a tunnel. Roya
seems to be standing in a darkness, her friends are nowhere to be
seen. A bright, shimmering figure comes into view, it is not
recognizably human and its movements remind her of a feather as it
comes up to her and peers at her curiously. “Who are you?” it
asks, “Help. Are you here to help?” When she responds it asks
“Where am I? Who am I? Help, help, help.”
Roya
snaps back to her friends and tells them what she saw. The lights
start to flicker back on as the ground begins to shake and rumble,
they see a corner of the building start to crumble. The agents run
for the exits, the walls start to crumble around them and the sound
of the earthquake starts to reverberate in the air as if reality
itself is shaking apart. A piece of the building collapses on Devon
and Damian but the rest of the group makes it outside.
==== Truths ====
* Feeling: Andy is really, really missing Esme and no one can replace her. She doesn't hate Devon because she doesn't like to hate but she is not too keen on him for replacing her.
* Feeling: Andy feels she can trust Devon even though she only just meet him a while ago.
* Feeling: Damian doesn't trust Devon he believes he shouldn't even be here.
* History: Roya at a very young age was a very skilled gymnast, she almost made the Olympic team.
* Feeling: Damian is not happy about this nobody IT guy replacing Esme. Damian secretly had a thing for Esme and is filled with rage every time he thinks of Devon being a replacement.
* History: Damian specialized in religious phenomena. He has been distant at work ever since he worked the case of a vampire. The images still haunt him. Esme has been his partner since then and is the only one who knows of the nightmares they both saw. (Zac changes this one to ditch the vampire angle.)
* Discovery: All the players find a voodoo doll of another character. Damian finds Devon. Devon finds Andy. Roya finds Damian. Andy finds Roya. They each affect the players in different ways. Let's find them. (Zac changes this one as well)
* Discovery: Devon seems to have dropped his notebook. Fortunately Roya finds it but how curious is she?
=== Chapter 2 ===
Devon and Damian lie trapped under
rubble, tasting iron and hearing a ringing in their ears. They can't
see each other in the darkness but they can hear each other's labored
breathing. Devon finds hope by holding on to the fact that he needs
to find answers for the things he has seen. Damian calls out for
Devon and it takes him a second, but he answers. Damian pushes some
rubble off of his leg and sees that they are completely trapped in by
the remains of the hospital hall around them.
	Outside, Roya, Andy, and Marla are
standing outside of the destroyed hospital. During its collapse, they
saw parts of the building were disappearing, almost folding in on
themselves geometrically before they vanished. Roya spies a notebook
lying amidst the rubble and pockets it. Roya reprograms the
spectrometer to scan for heat signatures, and turns it to finding the
buried men. Roya is a little panicked, as she jerks the spectrometer
back and forth she almost misses two dim signatures under the debris,
they look to be buried pretty deep under the rubble.
	They manage to make contact with the
buried men over their comms, Roya brings up the idea of using the
mini-teleporter to move the rubble. Marla votes against using the
teleporter but the other two overrule her. She couldn't reprogram the
teleporter to teleport the two men out because the equipment to
receive what travels through the teleporter takes up a whole room
back at the base and they can't recreate it here.
	Marla tries to reach Larienza but
there is no answer, Andy calls Director Bunny as Marla goes to check
on Larienza. Bunny tells Andy that the inhabitants of Grenada are not
the only people to have disappeared, at least fifty more individuals
have vanished, people who had traveled to the city of Grenada two
months ago when the radiation spikes started. 
	Roya places the teleporter on top of
the rubble, activates it and scampers back over to Andy. Blue energy
starts to flash and pulse around the rubble, bits and pieces of it
start to float into the air and small holes in reality open up,
through which they can see parts of the Department C base. Devon and
Damian hold on for dear life so as not to be lifted into the portal
along with the rubble.
	Marla returns and pulls the other two
women even further from the growing portal and the rubble finally
vanishes and they can see they two men lying on top of each other.
Marla tells them that Larienza is gone. They hear rumbling come from
the other side of town as a plume of dust starts to rise.
Devon has lost this computer bag
somewhere, it's either under the rubble or back at the Department C
base.
	Larienza comms in to tell them that he
had to run, that they are not alone out here. He saw Roya, Andy and
Devon, which was strange because he knew Devon was trapped, they were
standing right in front of him though and he ran off. The riots have
stopped, all the people are standing stock still, looking towards the
town. Marla arrived at the van about sixty seconds after she talked
to him and there was no one there. She thinks it possible that
Larienza was seeing things.
	As they talk about their next move
Marla asks if they hear something, eventually they focus in and start
to hear the sound of footsteps, they sound close and wet. Damian sees
a footprint in the dirt on the side of the road, then another appears
next to it, and another, moving towards the center of town. Damian
approaches as the footsteps fade, there is nothing there as he passes
through the space where whatever made the prints should be. Devon
stands back as the others inspect the foot prints.
	Roya hands Devon her tricked out
laptop and puts a hand into her pocket to finger his notebook that
she found. While Devon tries to find more satellite photos, Roya is
standing off to the side perusing through his notebook. Devon finds a
small spot that appears a millisecond before the pulses started in
Grenada, it is located in the lake outside town.
	Roya discovers a list of theories that
Devon has debunked, at the bottom is the DARPA theory that is marked
unfinished. On the next page is a list of the people he has
interacted with: 
Roya: tech genius, kinda cocky, seems
like she has done a lot of great work though. 
Andy: real nerdy, kinda cute. Weird
obsessions, should pick brain on all the supernatural stuff. 
Damian: Watch out! handsome. can't be
trusted. 
Marla: strong, possible leader, keep a
close eye, don't trust her all the way but seems like she might in my
corner.
	Devon is looking at the local Twitter
feed from two months back for anything pertinent.
	Roya takes the journal over to Marla
to show her, she immediately gives it back to Devon. He tells them
about the spot in the lake. Roya's spectrometer starts to ping, she
looks down at the screen and sees text, which the spectrometer isn't
programmed to display. It says: The orphanage. The screams. We'll
never forget those young souls. The Gate. Damian reveals that this is
tied to a mission that he and Esme went on in the past, a priest
burned down an orphanage and he shouted that the Gate made him do it
and that 'it likes young souls'.
	Marla says she is going to go get
Larienza and the van, the rest of them should make their way down to
the lake and call Stagg and Bunny while they walk. There is no answer
when they call Bunny, but Stagg picks up. Damian tells him that they
think a lot of these events are possibly connected and he asks Stagg
if he has made any advances in his case. He doesn't know anything
about the Gate but his team has had some complications, it appears
that the monkey device is operating at a much lower threshold than
the last time. Its mere presence in the room has incited four people
to violence, the device appears to have become more powerful.
	Stagg also reveals that he hasn't been
able to get a hold of Director Bunny in two days. They worry a bit
about the rubble they teleported, but that should have gone to the
teleporter room. They hang up with Stagg and start to make their way
towards the lake again. Roya drops back and talks to Devon about what
she saw on her spectrometer, he asks her to draw out what she saw and
he sees that the digital display wouldn't be able to make those
shapes.
	Devon tells Roya that he is done
looking for the rational explanation and is down to deciding whether
it's spirits or aliens doing this. Marla calls in, the people at the
barricades have started moving, they are all walking slowly towards
the center of town, she and Larienza are in the van and moving in
their direction.
	Suddenly, as they are walking down the
street, the ground starts to rumble underneath them, they see a crack
start to form in the ground and water starts to rise through it. A
giant plume of burning hot water obliterates Andy, the others smell
brimstone and notice that no water is falling back to earth. Two more
geysers erupt in other areas of the town.
==== Truth ====
* Character: Andy was once a studious believer of science, until a mysterious encounter with a supernatural being convinced her: Science is NOTHING in the face of the Occult.
* GM: The next time the spectrometer is used, Roya sees something impossible (possibly a message... perhaps from Esme). Something seems to be reacting to the device.
* Discovery: While walking along a hallway, Andy notices graffiti of a Flying Fish. If the others look at it, they see a cracked smile holding a string leading to a balloon. (Zac shuts this down hard, and then softens a bit on it in the end)
=== Chapter 3 ===
Roya snags a few pages of Andy's
journal from the ground nearby and laments the death of her friend.
They see the headlights of the van coming down the street and they
tell Marla and Larienza what has been happening when they pull up to
them. They tell Marla about what Stagg said about not being able to
reach the Director for two days, and she reminds them that they were
with Stagg and the Director two days ago. They start to theorize that
they might be losing chunks of time like the subjects of the Charley
Chimp experiments.
	They call Stagg again and he tells
them that it has been two weeks since they all left Department C. He
tells them about the test subjects at his facility blacking out and
having no knowledge of time passing, is it possible that something
similar is happening with their team? Roya and Marla are certain that
neither of them have lapsed into unconsciousness at any time. Devon
gives Stagg the access information for his dropbox account that
contains his hacking programs and tells him to hack the satellite
information to track their movements.
	He finds no heat signatures enter the
town until three days after the disappearances, the signatures stop
at the hospital for two days. Their heat signatures have been steady
where they are currently standing for a day and a half. Stagg tells
them that he sent people to check on Bunny at Department C but there
has been no contact from them either, the last contact he had with
Bunny was the blood sample from the Amundsen-Scott station arriving
at Department C. Damian informs Stagg about Andy's death and they
hangup.
	The geyser nearby continues to rise
into the air and not come back down, the team starts to hear
footsteps approaching. Marla says it is time to go and they look back
to see the mass of people coming down the street. They pile into the
van and drive through town toward the lake. Coming around the side of
the geyser, Damian sees Andy in street ahead, looking around
confused. He stops the van and walks over to Andy calling out to her,
she calls out for him in an echoing voice, seeming not to see him.
Damian's hand passes through her as he goes to put a hand on her
shoulder.
	Damian turns to go back to the van and
comes face to face with himself, they are in a dark space and his
doppelganger speaks to him by echoing some of his words back at him.
His doppelganger seems to be learning as it speaks to him, it tells
him that it is grasping, searching. “I need more...” the
doppelganger says. “More what?” Damian asks. “More...you,”
his doppelganger answers.
	Damian snaps back to reality to Marla
shouting at him to get back in the van, he looks over his shoulder to
see the crowd of people approaching them again, a few of them walk
mindlessly into the geyser and are annihilated. He jumps back into
the van and peels out. At the next turn he sees a large group of
people coming down the street towards them, he turns down the next
side street to the lake and tells the others what he saw in his
vision.
	As they tell Damian he sounds crazy,
this time Devon finds himself face to face with a doppelganger. Devon
asks what his doppelganger is and it responds “Unable to define.”
It raises a hand, looks at it, then says, “Finger. Best I can
explain, I am one finger, an appendage, with the other two I grab,
pull, squeeze.”
	Devon asks about the Gate, do they
need to open it so the entity can come out? Is the door in the lake?
It speaks more about being a part of the whole, they are stuck, they
have to close the loop, they don't belong. Devon asks what happens if
they don't close the loop, the entity repeats the word 'again' over
and over again.
	Devon comes back to the real world and
tells the others that he has seen it too. Damian, driving down the
street, sees himself, Roya and Devon standing in the road. He pulls
up next to them and rolls down his window. Larienza leaps out of the
van and runs off, then Damian gets out of the van and Marla keeps her
gun aimed at the doppelgangers who look at all of them and point out
to the pier and the lake beyond. The people behind them start to
disappear as they walk forward.
	The surface of the lake starts to boil
and shimmer as something massive rises from the waters. An enormous
wave hits the van and they are tossed about and they all lose
consciousness. As the wave pushes them about, hundreds of fish start
leaping out of the water, some of them perhaps flying fish.
=== Chapter 4 ===
Roya, tumbling through the water in the
van, manages to get her head above water for a breath before the three of
them are tossed out the back of the van and break the surface. As
they leave the water, they dry off in a moment, they are on land, and
it is day time. A small Hispanic boy helps Devon to his feet and he
sees that there is no sun in the sky and standing around them are
hundreds of other people. The city itself stands, no geysers, no
crumbled buildings, life seems to be going on in a somewhat normal
way here. Devon asks the boy what day it is and he says “No
English.”
	Pulling his phone from his pocket,
Damian discovers that it is still wet and shorting out. They
speculate that they are now with the people who have disappeared in
another dimension. Roya's spectrometer no longer works, none of their
electronics do. They are standing in a town square asking people
what's going on, a church bell in the town starts ringing, Damian
grabs one of them and rifles through his pockets, all the other
people stop and stare at them. He releases the man and he scrambles
off cursing in Spanish.
	A man comes out of the crowd, holding
his hands up to the people and saying “They're new.”
	The man introduces himself as Aaran,
he was vacationing here from Montana. He doesn't remember much from
before being here, and he doesn't remember anyone else here asking
him about the time before they arrived here. They hear the sound of
barking dogs and Aaran starts getting nervous, asking them what
they've done and telling them they all need to leave. They duck into
an alley and hide behind some refuse.
	Looking out into the now empty town
square, they hear the dogs and see a figure across the way, making
its way down the steps of a church. It stands at thirteen feet tall,
draped in black and a protrusion of white sticks out from it's hood,
there's no sign of any dogs. Roya thinks she has seen this figure
before, when she was a kid, she got lost in a park and a thing was
there, scary and tall, emitting white from its face. She thinks this
thing might be it, but that was a nightmare, it shouldn't really
exist.
	“You've seen Seren?” Aaran asks,
“You grew up? You aged?” 
	He tells them that if anyone here
messes up or gets out of line, Seren comes and they disappear. Roya
reveals that this thing appeared to her around the time that she was
almost finished with her teleporter designs, it almost made her
abandon them. As the figure approaches their hiding spot, they hear
the tympanic thumps of his footsteps over the barking of the dogs
they never see, but he appears to be hovering above the ground. Roya
freaks out and goes to run, Damian tries to stop her, swinging a fist
at her, she ducks under it but he catches her with a reverse elbow,
knocking her to the ground.
	“Stop!” Aaran hisses, “he's
gone, the dogs are gone.” 
	Silence drops over them, they hear no
wind, no animals, nothing. Roya feels a chill like an ice cube slowly
rolling down her back. She puts her hand behind her and feels a
finger upon her back. It grabs her and she turns to face Seren, its
face a blank shape of white with no end nor beginning, she can only
see the edges that form the shape of a face with high cheekbones. She
propels herself at the figure and comes back to reality as she raises
back to her feet form where Damian knocked her down. Damian and Devon
calm her down.
	Damian threatens Aaran with his gun to
keep him with them. Aaran begins to tell them more about the
mysterious figure, “Seren is the nameless one, the faceless one, he
has no temples, he doesn't need your worship.” Roya tells the man
to stop talking about Seren. “You've never heard of him but he's
always been there,” he continues until Roya punches him. Her fist
collapses his lower jaw and blood pours from the wound and he
collapses to the ground.
	Devon freaks out about them killing
people and then stalks to the end of the alleyway where a green
parrot like bird lands and looks up at him. He starts to talk to the
bird and it hops up onto his shoulder. He hears a voice whisper, “You
let me die, you were supposed to protect me, I was the weakest and
you let me die. I didn't make it, but you did. Maybe I can save you,”
it finishes and flies off of his shoulder, landing down the street
and looking back at him. Devon follows the bird. The others look up
to see Devon leave the alley and they chase after him. When they get
to the mouth of the alley Devon is gone.
	Following the bird through the streets
of the town, Devon sees people looking at him from their windows and
then some other on the streets.
	Damian and Roya start to hear the
booming of footsteps again, they cannot tell the direction which they
are coming from, the two of them look around for a form of
transportation. As they look, people start coming out of their homes
and looking at them, they seem to have garnered the full attention of
the town. 
=== Chapter 5 ===
Damian and Roya find themselves back at
the bay, having wandered through the town looking for transportation.
Behind them a mass of townsfolk have gathered, watching them and
whispering about them.
	They talk about what to do next before
a couple people move out from the mob to throw rotten fruit at them.
Damian pulls his gun and fires into the air, the fruit throwers drop
back into the mob and all of them point off into the lake. The mob
begins to move toward them step-by-step, in unison. Roya searches the
shore for a boat, she sees one, and hops into it, but it's motor will
not turn on. Damian stands on the shore, gun at the ready, as Seren
rises from the water, gliding towards Roya. Damian's shots have ho
effect on the creature as he empties his clip into it. The hand of
Seren reaches for Roya and as it touches her, she disappears from
Damian's sight.
=== Chapter 6 ===
Roya awakes in a park, sitting next to
herself as a small girl, she is sitting cross-legged in front of
three other people. One of them says they've been waiting for her,
that they've spoken before Roya just doesn't remember. “I am
cepoin, and these are my friends, we are THIS, and you are you. But
not as you remember yourself. You have a choice to make,” one of
them tells her.
	“What's the choice?” Roya asks.
	“To continue...or to not. For the
loop to spin, or to close it.”
	“Are you giving me a choice between
living or dying? Because I know what I'm gonna choose.” Roya tells
them.
	“That is not the choice, that is out
of your control.”
	“So my choice is to continue, or to
stop, which will close your loop or somethin'?” Roya asks.
	“You are the door. Upon opening,
there is a choice. To enter, or to remain on the other side.”
	“It's always best to move forward
than to be stagnant somewhere. Never lived my life in a limbo or
purgatory so I've always moved forward.” Roya states.
	“The choice will be yours.”
	She asks the people about them talking
to her before. It was when she was this age, Roya looks at her
younger self, playing with her hair. After some inspiring words to
her younger self that she hopes she remembers. Cepoin tells young
Roya that it is time to go, the three people lead young Roya off into
a white light and she begins to remember this as she returns to
Damian's sight seconds after she vanished.
	She tells him about the choice offered
her.
	Devon follows the green bird to the
police station, there are no cars out front, the inside is dark as
the bird flies in. Devon walks up the steps and sees a dusty waiting
area with a set of footprints in the dust. HE makes his way to the
back of the station towards the cells, there's a collection of
weapons on the wall, covered in dust. Devon starts to hear heavy
breathing and the flapping of wings. Before he turns the corner, he
calls out.
	“Who's there?” a voice answers.
Devon tells the man that they are there investigating the
disappearances of a whole town. The voice asks, “We disappeared?”
Devon tells him his alternate dimension theory, and that they've been
gone for two weeks but time is weird around here. The voice tells him
it thinks they're all dead, but Devon isn't so sure, they are
breathing and talking. The voice talks to him about being trapped in
a closet that never opens, you slowly dehydrate and starve, would
that be someone's hell? Devon talks to the voice about hope, it tells
him he needs to leave.
	Devon tells the voice that he is
trying to leave, and will not stop trying to get back to the real
world. He hears the man stand up and the bird flies back around the
corner, followed by a man with a gun drawn, “I'll help you leave,”
the man says, “but can you leave?” he asks, pointing the gun at
Devon.
	The man begins to shoot at him,
hitting the wall behind him, as Devon grabs a pistol form the wall
and ducks out the door. He sees hundreds of people standing in the
street staring at him, the green bird circling above them. He tells
the crowd he intends to get them home, he will find a way for them
all to get back. The ground starts to shake and the building above
him begins to crumble.
	They all hear a high-pitched scream
mingle with the booming rumble as reality begins to vibrate around
them. Some of the people begin to blink in and out of existence, they
can see the geysers blink in and out as well as the light of this
realm starts to flash in and out. Towering over them in the lake is a
slimy skinned figure that glows orange, the light pulses and starts
to overtake the town. Then, suddenly, it stops.
	About half the people that were there
with them are gone, and those remaining start to panic. Underneath
the boat, the water has turned from blue to a gold-orange, Damian
reaches out to it and feels water.
	They head back into town to search for
Devon and this time the people part to let them through. They talk
about what is going on, perhaps the energy of the people who
disappeared from this dimension was used to power something.
	Devon no longer sees the bird, the man
who was holding the gun asks him what he did. The shaking didn't
start until the man started shooting, Devon tells him maybe HE was
the one who did something. The man dabs at a head wound he got from
some rubble falling on him, “I feel like I'm dying,” the man
says, “that means I was alive,” the man smiles as he dies in
Devon's arms.
	Devon starts to hear the sound of dogs
barking and he walks out into the street to face whatever is
happening, his vision starts to tunnel and he hears the sound of
drums in the distance, moving closer. Seren hovers over Devon, his
long arm reaching out, Devon reaches for his hand. As they touch,
Devon is transported to his home, in the room he sees a young boy
playing with toys on the floor. A voice behind him, the voice of his
long dead mother, brings tears to his eyes. On the other side of the
room, three figures sit down in front of the boy.
	“Devon,” they address his older
self, “Have a seat. You have a choice to make, Devon. The choice is
yours.”
	“What's the choice?” he asks.
	“You are a lock. You keep the door
from opening.”
	“What happens if the door opens?”
he asks.
	“Another choice needs to be made.
But it's not your choice.”
	“I'ma be real with you, I don't know
if that door opens, it's a good or a bad thing, if it's a good thing
I will happily open that door, but I can't live with myself if I let
something bad happen.”
	Devon's young self taps him on the
shoulder and holds out an action figure. The two start playing.
“Devon, it's up to you. To. Or to not,” the three tell him.
	“Is it...is it good or bad?” he
asks.
	“That is not for us to say. THIS has
no input on that matter.”
	“How do I unlock and open the door?”
Devon asks
	“You can't. It's your choice, when
the time is right, it will be up to you. Well a part of you anyway,
we believe that's how it works, as far as we can tell. We hope you
know when the time is right. Either it goes on, continuing to spin,
or the loop closes. And we won't be stuck again.”
==== Truths ====
* GM: The group discovers 2-3 members of THIS (The Hopeful Investigation Squad) in the city. They're well-intentioned. but will their actions really be helpful? (cepoin and I (loganpars) gladly sacrifice ourselves for the story)
* Feeling: Roya begins to wonder if all her actions were just to bring her here for this place, this moment, as if she were driven to be here. The words "We are" keep ringing in her head.
=== Chapter 7 ===
Devon comes to, standing in Grenada
alone at night, geysers reaching the sky around him, the entire town
has crumbled. There are cracks in the earth, pieces of the road
around him have been pushed up five feet as the earth shifted.
Towering over the town in the shape of an upside down 'u' in the bay
a figure can be seen in flashes of lightning. Devon moves down to the
bay to find a boat, he has to climb over rubble in a few areas as it
begins to rain, with every flash of lightning Devon sees a flash of
the world he left.
	People stare from their windows as
Damian and Roya approach the police station through empty streets,
they look inside and see a dead body in a pool of blood and no sign
of Devon. The world goes dark around them as the boom returns, Damian
draws Esme's Beretta, within a flash a white face appears in front of
him and begins to stretch itself open, forming a mouth that is an
abyss with in an abyss. Roya sees the mouth envelop Damian and he
vanishes as she snaps back to the police station.
	Roya walks over to the wall of guns
and takes one.
	Damian is in the dark, he sees nothing
but eternal blackness. Within the darkness, he sees a light in the
distance, he moves towards it, not necessarily by walking but by
realizing it exists. The light materializes into stars and planets
that he doesn't recognize. He sees a ship, it is long and slender, on
the side is printed Synchroneity.
He is
pulled from that moment into another, he hovers over a crowd of
thousands, turning and shifting, flowing as if they are in a drain.
He sees a flash of light, the 'u' that he saw before pulses with an
orange glow, one side of the 'u' starts to lift and turn, revealing a
tip that looks like a tentacle, it dips into the well of souls and
they begin to circle around it and up into it.
He is
pulled into his office at Department C, Esme sits across from him,
smiling and asks if he is ok. “I think I just had a really bad
dream,” he answers. “Was it the fire?” Esme asks. “Yeah, ever
since that case...” he starts to respond.
He is
transported into the middle of a burning fire, he hears the screams
of young girls crying for help. He sees himself outside the church
trying to get in without being able to as they burn.
Back
at his desk Esme asks again if he is ok. “I'm not ok in the worst
possible way, I dont even know where I am right now. I think I'm
going insane. The only thing that makes me feel good right now is
looking at you.”
“I
like looking at you too,” she responds, as her face begins to melt
away, revealing the bone underneath, “What's wrong Damian?” she
asks.
“I
think I'm going insane...I'm having a meltdown,” he mumbles.
Damian
feels a hand on his shoulder, Director Bunny asks if he is ok. Bunny
tells him he is taking Damian out of the field for a while. He
clearly can't keep himself together. Damian argues that he just needs
vacation, some time away. Bunny sits on his desk and begins to open a
package as Damian tells him not to take him out of the field or he'll
put a gun in his mouth.
“Blood
samples,” Bunny says, reaching in and pulling a vial from the box,
“from the Amundsen-Scott station.” The vial shatters and the DNA
inside latches onto the director's face.
Damian
is standing in front of Roya in the police station. She thinks maybe
she can cobble something together to get them home with the
technology in the police station. Teetering on the brink of madness
she shows Damian her machine.
Damian
sees that she has pulled apart the dead body into a schematic of
bones and organs on the floor.
==== Truths ====
* GM: Everything goes dark and silent as ghostly faceless figures appear floating around Damian and Roya. One reaches for Damian getting inches from his face. It's mouth opens wide screaming. Every thing returns to normal but Damian is gone. GM decides fate. (Zac incorporated this one immediately)
=== Chapter 8 ===
The giant 'u' glistens in the light of
the storm above Devon, organic in its imperfections. He swims toward
it through the lake. Below him, beneath the water, the hands and
faces of the townspeople reach out to him, their bodies line the
bottom of the lake. He reaches the base of the 'u' and mutters that
he need to open the door. He reaches out to try to climb the 'u',
when he touches it he feels a living warmth, and golden orange light
spreads across it from his touch, a deep ominous sound echoes out
over the water.
	Devon begins to climb, with each touch
of his hands, it feels as if the 'u' is helping him climb. He looks
down to see hundreds of thousands of bodies lining the lake bed. He
sees in the water, the reflection of the arm of the u continues into
a tentacle that moves among the bodies, absorbing them into itself.
	Distracted, Devon loses his grip and
falls into the water, the tentacle reaches for him and he fades away.
=== Chapter 9 ===
Damian stands over the schematics that
were once a body, trying to shake Roya back to some sense. Roya feels
like she has been here before, that she just needs to figure this one
last thing out. Damian tells her that they should take her 'device'
to the water's edge. He checks her gun while she gathers her parts
and sees that it is empty, he returns it to her. They leave the
station to see the people standing and staring out at the 'u' shape
that has appeared over the lake.
	As they walk to the lake, they see
Aaran, his jaw hanging off his face, he speaks into their minds.
“It's time, we're done here. It's time for us to go.”
	“Back to the real world, right?”
Roya asks, putting a bloodied hand on Damian's shoulder.
	“Whatever helps you, whatever makes
you feel better.” Aaran says.
	They follow Aaran down the street,
Roya apologizes for hitting him, but he tells her he came here this
way, she didn't hit him.
	“What if I don't want to go?”
Damian asks.
	“You don't have a choice,” Aaran
tells him.
	“What if I shot you right now?”
Damian asks, pointing Esme's gun at Aaran.
	“Whatever makes you feel better,”
he says.
	Roya tells Damian that the trio she
spoke to said they had a choice and Aaran stops in front of them, the
others stop as well. “Who said you you have a choice?” Aaran
demands.
	Damian asks her who she was talking to
in her vision, what she means.
	“There were three of them, and
apparently all of this has happened before nad I didn't realize until
now. I have to stop or go forward...”
	“You have no choice!” Aaran
shouts.
	Damian prods her for more.“We have
to stop or go forward, we have to close the loop. I'm the door.”
she says.
	“You have no choice!” Aaran's
voice deepens.
	“What did they say in terms of
opening or closing the door? What was the choice you were given? How
did you take that choice?” Damian presses.
	“You have no choice!” Aaran's
voice now booms.
	“Close the door, close the loop,”
she stammers. Aaran places his hand on Roya's head and slams her to
the ground, “You have no f***ing choice!” Aaran shouts as he
slams her face into the ground repeatedly, Roya feels her face start
to cave in.
	Roya's world goes white and she is
back with her younger self. “It's not for you to chose. They don't
understand. They don't understand how we work. We'll chose,
but not yet.”
=== Chapter 10 ===
Roya's body lies in the street in front
of Damian, not moving. “There is no choice,” Aaran repeats.
	“Yeah I heard,” Damian says, “lead
the way.”
	“Thank you,” Aaran says, as they
all start to head down to the lake again.
	Damian watches one side of the 'u'
lift from the water and become a tentacle. At the front of the group
Damian sees Seren float and he makes his way through the crowd
towards the floating figure. Just before he reaches Seren, a figure
stops Damian. It is almost the reverse of Seren, it's the same size
as Damian, he can see remnants of a face but it is shrouded in
blackness. Unlike Seren, this figure speaks, “You are not permitted
to touch him. The Nameless. The Faceless One. Concealed. The Silent
God.”
	“Andy would have a field day right
now. Yeah, what does he want with us?” Damian asks.
	“We are merely the messengers, the
shepherds, the pipers.” it says, “We are the arm, you are the
nails.”
	“The arm of what? The Cthulu thing?”
Damian asks and it looks out toward the tentacle in the water. “So
what? You make all these people disappear from earth and become its
fingernails.”
	“We are the arm, we reach out to
collect, we need to become whole. You are now a piece of this
puzzle.” It tells him.
	“And we have no choice,” Damian
says.
	“You're already dead, your soul
belongs to us. The great rebuilding.”
	“Rebuilding of what?” Damian asks.
	“The Gate.”
	“What? The Gate that you have little
children killed and burned for? The Gate you have priests of a church
burn little girls for their souls?” Damian demands.
	“Others interpret the message as
they wish. Humans are funny like that. The Arm reaches out, the
message. It is up to you to interpret.”
	“When this thing becomes whole, what
is this thing?” Damian asks.
	“It has no name, it wants to be
whole.”
	“And to come through this Gate? Is
that what it wants?”
	The being laughs, “It IS the Gate.
We are the Gate.”
	“Then what happens? You gonna
destroy all of humanity? Destroy the whole universe?”
	“Why do you assume that we even
care?” it asks.
	Damian shakes his head, “What do you
care about then? Besides becoming whole? Is that it?”
	“Self preservation is quite powerful
is it not? This is something even we can relate on.” It tells him.
	“So your self preservation is...”
Damian begins.
	“By any means necessary.” the
being finishes.
	“Exactly,” Damian continues, “and
the 'means' are humanity. So then it is in human's self preservation
to stop you becoming whole. Stop this Gate from becoming whole.”
	“That is exactly what led us into
this mess in the first place.” the being says.
	“Good,” Damian says, clutching
Esme's gun close to his chest, as the tentacle hovers over him, he
feels himself lifted off the ground with the other denizens of the
town.
	Damian feels whatever was left of him
that made him what he was begin to slip away, he looks at Esme's gun
in his hands. He decides to end things on his own terms and puts the
barrel of the Beretta in his mouth.
	Post credit scene: At Department C
headquarters, Agent Stagg re-materializes in the middle of the office
amid debris. He looks around at the rubble, not sure what has
happened here. He calls out for any of them, no one answers. He moves
into a hallway streaked with blood, in the main room, the glass of
Director Bunny's office is shattered and the entire office is
destroyed. In the middle of the room is a package with a paper inside
with the results of the tests on the blood that was sent out, but the
blood is not there.
Category:Core Volumes