Wednesday 28 June 2017

Fix's Log, Case 1: August, 2001

Fix is a legally non-extant Agent for an agency that doesn't exist named Delta Green, one of many such phantoms defending the world against things that shouldn't exist.


I shouldn't document any of this. I might not be one of their proper Agents, but even I can guess that it's against the rules. I'm sure Agents have killed and been killed for less. But I need to get it out of my head.

At work, I go by the name Fix. Everything else is need-to-know, and nobody needs to know. I'm a mechanic and handyman in general; of late, I've been called to fix things that aren't normally within my wheelhouse.

This last case started with a cold call. Duty's on the other end, and I'm to meet a team in New York, at Central Park for a night at the opera. For some reason, we're asked to have vipers / snake emblems visible to identify other Agents.

We arrive, in order:

Jacobs, an irish-descent military sort
Hans, an english professor
Fix, myself a general handyman and car mechanic
Zark, a german electronics scientist.
Emily, looks like a gym bunny

Lacking a snake emblem or stencil at short notice, I simply ask if either of them own the Dodge Viper about to be towed.

Our leader, Emily, quickly briefs us: Cell J, based locally, was doing some sort of investigation when they went missing. We have to find out what happened to them.

We head to their last-known location, which has a police perimeter around a large tent in a car park.

Jacobs takes the lead and gets inside the perimeter with his "crash analyist", myself.

We take a look under the tent; it's a stereotypical "pay no attention" black SUV with tinted windows. It certainly looks like it's seen better days from the outside, and on the inside is around 4 Agents' worth of blood coating the inside.

I clear my throat. This is *clearly* a rare case where the shock of an impact has just travelled straight through the car and straight into the people inside, like a newton's cradle. (But quietly, yeah -- definitely not natural.)

Jacobs frisks the car and finds a revolutionary data storage device; a mini-disc. Somehow the police forensics team missed it.

Outside, we tell the cops the SUV's definitely going to have to be towed to the lab for further analysis. (Read: We're going to take the car and destroy it with fire.)

Meanwhile, the rest of the team hits up a pawn shop which had a security camera looking outside. With the aid of Benjamin Franklin, Zark acquires the tape.

We meet at the Green Box where we stash the car for now; needing something to watch the pawn shop and MD on, we find a cheap hotel that has a VCR, rent a room, and watch away while Jacobs finds a Radioshack.

The tape is heavily degraded due to re-use, but we can see a man in dark clothes carry coffees past the camera in the dead of night, headed for the SUV -- clearly a member of Cell J. Moments later, he's sprinting as fast as he can the other way -- presumably he found the car and what was left of his team. He was running towards an intersection, so the cams there should have a better picture.

Jacobs returns with a MD player. An interesting video is within; footage from a camera in the SUV, watching some goth-looking people posing on rocks in Central Park. Directing them is some asian woman.

Jacobs, full of surprises, identifies her as Susan Xcho, pop choreographer. What she'd be doing in the park is a mystery.

We chase up our leads... or try to, anyway. With a bit of work, we get into the traffic cams and forensics that the police took.

The cameras are apparently useless; they never catch the running man at all, which means he somehow vanished within 4m of sidewalk with no trace, and nowhere to go... except up. It's safe to guess he's dead.

The cops had a similar surprising lack of evidence; despite the blood of three agents somehow coating the inside of the SUV, there was no other biological material. No gibs, no meat.

We destroy the evidence on the case anyway, just to be sure, and torch the car in a bad neighborhood before calling it quits.

We obviously haven't hit the end of the mystery, but that's not part of our job description, and while we might not be official military, the golden rule still applies: "Never Volunteer". We've done what we came here to do, even if there's nothing left but bloodstains to bury.

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