Oh you pretty things/storysofar

Story so far+

This is the first entry in what should me a monthly update on a British-based CoC campaign. I hope you enjoy it.

CHARACTERS

Haifa Nabulsi, second generation Palestinian female living in Bayswater, London, aged 30, single. Highly educated, paid for by her father's successful UK medical career. Cambridge graduate and postgraduate. History doctorate, specialising in Islamic history.

Was offered a high profile history fellowship at at Oxford but turned it down to remain close to her brothers and mother in London, following her father's death. She now works instead as deputy director of research at the Islamic Centre London. Attends and speaks at various events throughout the UK and occasionally internationally. Collects rare Middle Eastern historical texts and first editions. Lives alone, with a cat, but makes friends easily based on shared intellectual and historical interests.

Not overtly political despite her background. Rather an extremely bright but studious personality. Has a calmness and confidence built on religious belief and an excellent education. Has come across Joseph in his recent visits to the Centre to further his research in understanding the Islamic culture.

Has recently started to invite him to attend various UK events to hear her speak and meet others that can help him in his work to understand thus prevent fundementalism, hence why they may be travelling together on the motorway.

Joseph (Joe) Boyes, British citizen, lives alone in Whitechapel, London, aged 48, single. Spent ten years in the Army Intelligence Corps, most in N Ireland as an NCO during the 1980s - did a lot of (often unpleasant) undercover work. Passed over for promotion a couple of times because of depressive nature, gave up applying.

Bought himself out of the Army in the early nineties and moved to work for the Home Office to work in their terrorism unit where he has expanded his expertise recently into Islamic fundamentalism.

An expert in theory of terrorism - though his practice (of anti-terrorism) is rusty. Has a police firearms licence.

Met Haifa while researching Islamic culture - in which he has become interested through his work. Generally a loner however who spends a lot of time making up for a poor education (joined army at 16). Small circle of friends - mostly connected with his involvement in a local historical society. Pays little attention to his appearance.

NOTE: Spoilers for ‘Victim of the Art’

Oh you pretty things: Chapter one

‘I look out my window what do I see A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me All the nightmares came today And it looks as though they're here to stay.’

January 2008

It is a cold morning as Joe and Haifa drive up the M1 towards a conference on Islamic studies in Leicester. Haifa is a keynote speaker, her friend Joe has taken time off pushing paper at the Home Office to tag along.

At 11.43am, a Fiat Punto going south veers across the carriageway squeezing through a gap in the barrier, it crosses in front of their car and slams down into a field. They can see a line of police cars which were following the Punto brake hard but miss the gap. Haifa sees two black Porsche four by fours brake hard as well.

Without pause for thought, Joe steers their car off the motorway and towards the now stalled Punto. On the radio, the news reports a high speed chase of a stolen car on the M1.

They pull up 20 yards away from the car. The man inside seems to be naked and is shouting widely into a mobile phone. Joe steps out of the car, just as the man throws open the door and lurches out, still yelling. He is covered in scratches.

Joe notices the man has an odd pudding bowl haircut and seems to have an inflamed, semi-erect penis.

The man tumbles towards Joe and says to him: ‘The army has to act now or it’ll be too late……..I don’t know who you are but look for miles’ Or is it Miles? Or Myles? Back in the car Haifa hears a radio report of a major crash on the M1; all drivers are advised to avoid the motorway or get off it.

Suddenly the man’s head explodes from what Joe thinks is a high velocity rifle, showering him with blood and brain matter. He can hear sirens approaching. He hesitates, then picks up the mobile and pockets it (it looks like a woman’s phone).

As Joe moves away from the corpse, three police cars pull up in the field. He notices a black Range Rover parked on the hard shoulder 100 yards away, the back window down.

Over the next few minutes, the pair are questioned by police and their identities taken – Joe’s past jobs help smooth the way. The policeman tells him the dead man is thought to have stolen the car from a woman, now missing, east of Worcester. With that they proceed onwards. There is no more mentions on the news of crashes on the M1….

Back in the car, the mobile phone rings and after a little debate, Haifa answers it. ‘Where’s Kenny,’ a voice asks. Haifa asks who it is and is answered by swearing and hang-up.

An hour later, Joe’s own rings, and Haifa answers. It turns out it is Toby Knight, an old colleague from his Ulster days he hasn’t heard from in years. He says he works for the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Toby seems to know all about the dead man on the motorway, and indeed the pair’s plans – ‘it’s really important, I need to speak to you. Don’t worry I’ve talked to your boss and it’s ok to take a few days off. And tell Haifa another replacement speaker has been arranged. Meet me at the Little Chef at junction 30 in 20 minutes…’

After the pair both checked that their working lives were genuinely being screwed with, they pull into the Little Chef. Toby is inside, looking like his nascent drink problem has got steadily worse – he looks nervous behind a veneer of control.

He tells the pair he needs some help with something that Joe’s Northern Ireland background will help with. It’s just a simple little job, won’t take long, then they can get back to their jobs. He is unclear about why Haifa is relevant but says he has a mutual acquaintance in Jenson Wu at the British Museum (Haifa has met him twice in his office, while she was working on some Ancient Arabic documents). He is vague about what job he is doing now apart from being ‘seconded’ from the Met a few years ago after leaving the army in the 90s.

Toby reminds the pair about a current murder hunt in High Wycombe – a dentist was murdered just after Christmas, followed by another murder of a school librarian a week ago. Joe reveals that last night a girl went missing and an hour ago her body was found on top of a power pylon. The bodies were hugely mutilated and dropped from a great height. No leads apart from a grey substance in the wounds. The papers are calling them the Chiropractor killings because the victims’ spines are missing.

‘The local cops are clueless. I’ve got a couple of colleagues looking at it but they need to be somewhere else. I just need you to observe, see what turns up. You don’t need to solve the crimes or anything.’

‘What’s that got to do with Northern Ireland?’ asks Joe.

‘Well, there’s the thing.’ Toby shows them what looks like CCTV stills of a man and women talking to a scruffily clad man in a multistory carpark. ‘These were taken three days ago in London. The scruffy guy is Frank O’Hara. As you know a Real IRA cell tried to carbomb the American embassy last month – the papers said all the terrorists were killed in Grosvenor Square by an SAS sting. That’s not true – one escaped. O’Hara. The others are journalists from Lobster TV, that weird X-Files/UFO/grassy knoll satellite TV programme. Producer Frank Carencola and Journalist Sonia Dewey. Yesterday they turned up in High Wycombe, started asking questions. We don’t know what’s going on but if they can lead us to O’Hara, it would be pretty useful. So maybe you could see what they are doing and what connection O’Hara has to these murders, if any.’

The conversation turns to the dead man. Toby tells them he was Kenny Robson, an all-round troublemaker who might have been a member of the Army of Third Eye. Toby reminds them about the anti-science/capitalism domestic terrorist group which was active a few years ago, thought to be responsible for unsolved kidnappings, at least one murder and two brain injured victims, including an MP.

Toby tells the pair to go to the High Wycombe Travelodge and wait for his colleagues to get in touch. With that he stands up to leave.

‘Oh by the way, you didn’t pick up a mobile phone at the crime scene did you?’

‘No,’ the pair say simultaneously.

+++++

Later at the hotel they have a few minutes for research. Joe seaches the phone and finds calls to two numbers made half an hour before the death. One of these numbers called back, which was the voice Haifa heard. He calls a contact at the Home Office and asks them to get info on both numbers (it’ll take 24 hours).

He also calls some people about the IRA bombing – seems no-one had heard of the dead terrorists – clean skins. And no-one has heard of a Frank O’Hara

Meanwhile Haifa hits the net and finds out a little about the Army of the Third Eye, set by American Lee Coleman in Britain in the late 90s. It targeted scientists, senior businessmen, politicians and civil servants. The entire group was though killed in a SAS raid in a farmhouse in the Severn Valley. The two injured survivors were Mp Julia Charnwood and Wade Colyn of BAA. Three still missing were a Stuart Grayson, Richard Roland a MoD engineer and Karyn Carter neurologist. Both the injured people appeared to have been trepanned. Haifa ponders the odd one out -the neurologist.

A quick call to Wu at the Museum about trepanning gets a suggestion about certain ancient beliefs about letting out demons…. ‘Oh, and my child, please let me know if you find anything I might be interested in….’

The news says the owner of the car stolen by Kenny Robson has been found stabbed to death in woodland east of Worcester.

A little later they get a call and meet PO Colin Codridge and behavioural analyst Sandra Lewis in a Little Chef across the road. They are given some files on the murders and some paperwork which gives them both authority to access any information the police have. Codridge says, as he leaves, ‘We’ve got some more important stuff to do. Just observe. You don’t need to do anything like solve the crime. It’ll be simple.’

+++

They spend the rest of the day meeting the local police chief and being paired up with DC Lewis. They sit on the autopsy of the dead girl and lose their Little Chef lunch….The strange polymer remains strange. Their best idea is to request, amongst other things, telephone records from all the victims. While they are waiting for the results they head out to the third victims house and have a look at lots of broken glass.

As they leave, the results arrive and they realise that they is a link. A phone number called the dentist’s office the day he was killed – the same number called the girl’s house the evening before she disappeared. Aha!

As they head for the owner of the phone number, local estate agent Mr Dengler, they are accosted by the Lobster TV crew so they run for it back to the car. Over at the Dengler house, the main of the house protests his innocence but is brought in for questioning. Turns out the son was a patient of the dentist, and went to the same school as the librarian and girl – but hey, he’s only a kid.

Back at the station, said questioning of Mr Dengler by the DS Lewis and Joe reveals little more. But they begin to suspect the son. As they take a break, a call comes in. The police car outside the Dengler house has been attacked in some way, men down. Several policecars leave the police station to investigate.

Upstairs Haifa is alone working at her laptop when there is a tremendous crash of wood and glass from further down the building. Popping her head into the corridor long enough to see a police officer run past in the direction of the noise and be snatched by a what looks like a mass of black claws and teeth - she legs it downstairs…..

….Joe and DC Lewis are running up from the interrogation room in the basement in response to the noise. Joe’s phone rings.

‘Hi it’s Toby, how’s it all going down there.’

End of chapter one

Chapter 2

"What are we coming to No room for me, no fun for you I think about a world to come Where the books were found by the golden ones Written in pain, written in awe By a puzzled man who questioned What we were here for."

Spoilers for Victim of the Art and Love’s Lonely Children (both much modified)

Reprise from chapter one – Joe And Haifa have been introduced via an old friend to a slightly mysterious quasi-government agency and asked to lend a hand with a police investigation of some murders in High Wycombe (and on the side look for a renegade Real IRA man….oh and they witnessed the apparent shooting of a member of something called the Army of the Third Eye. At the end of chapter one, some kind of monster had broken into the police station where they are working…their ‘handler’ Toby has called for an up date…)

Joe is to the point: ‘we’re at the police station and there’s some kind of trouble upstairs.’

Haifa rushes breathless down the stairs and into the groundfloor lobby

Toby says: ‘Listen to me. There is a box my guys left in the basement. Lewis knows about it. It’s green. There’s stuff that will help you in it. I suggest you get it and barricade yourself in somewhere…I don’t know what you’re facing but someone is controlling it. That control is probably based on some kind of object they are wearing….

…whatever the thing is might be looking for someone in particular. My advice is don’t all get in the same place – it might cut your chances of survival.’

‘Great. Thanks.’

‘Almost forgot why I called. Haifa speaks Ancient Arabic, doesn’t she? Good, we can talk about that later.’

A sortie into the basement with Lewis and six of his constables finds the green box and inside it two shotguns, two handguns and some grenades – and a big bag of Kit-Kats. The weaponry is divided (amongst the men, that is…). They unlock Dengler and a debate ensues about who goes into what cells.

The sound of a severed head bumping down the stairs from the floor above helps to settle any disputes. Lewis and our investigators cram into one cell with two constables with the rest dividing up in the other two.

And they wait.

An almighty blow cracks against their celldoor, followed quickly by another that bends the top inwards. Joe manages to pop a grenade through the opening but is partly caught in the blast. The detonation puts out the lights in the corridor outside.

Another blow pushes open the door completely and the cell occupants are faced with a stygian awfulness of a monstrous creature filling the doorway, mighty claws to the fore. It is black with folded wings and a hooked, bloody maw. It does not appear to have any face as such. It shrugs off a shotgun blast from Joe (the other copper succeeding in shooting into the ceiling from a yard away) and slashes at DC Lewis who manages to dodge backwards. A lucky hit from Joe shatters one of its claws as it reaches again for Lewis.

And quite suddenly it folds in on itself, its angles compressing bizarrely and disappears from existence…not dead but unexpectedly withdrawn

Dazed, they free their colleagues from the other cells and regroup. Lewis gets a call that the rest of the Dengler family have been picked up and are being brought back to the station. The policecar outside has been crushed, as if from a gigantic weight falling from above.

When the other coppers return with the Denglers, Joe and Haifa decide to split up – the former to check out the Dengler house for clues, the latter to interview wife and daughter.

Joe brushes aside a Lobster TV crew on the way out, but recognises Frank Carencola’s voice as the same man who rang Kenny’s mobile (see chapter one). He drives out to the Dengler’s house to look for clues, only to find several black Range Rovers parked outside.

Two men are loading one of the vehicles with boxes, obviously taken from the house, while Toby talks intently to a slight, gaunt man who looks like he in charge. Toby hears him call him ‘Mr Cotton’, before he breaks off the conversation and hurries over to Joe. Cotton stares after him and then climbs into one of the cars.

It does occur to him that his ‘friend’ rushed to the Dengler’s house for swag rather than sending help to the station.

Toby says: ‘I hear you guys had some trouble at the station, but everyone’s OK. We’re going to need to look at all this stuff – we’re going to get it to Wu. Where’s Haifa?’

Back at the station, Haifa’s gentle questioning leads the boy into admitting he called the girl’s house to ask her on a date. But he didn’t do anything. He just keeps having these terrible dreams about dark monsters with huge claws….

…in fact ever since he started looking through his recently deceased uncle’s gear from his Peruvian travels. There’s dairies and of course the pendant he wears all the time. Mrs Dengler, being from High Wymombe, seems to assume Haifa is from the council’s ethnic diversity team.

Despite a certain amount of fear that the boy will turn into a monster if she goes for the pendant, Haifa decides to simply ask for it. The boy gives it up willingly, just as Joe and Toby get back to the station.

Toby deftly takes the pendant (and its stylised rendering of a human and clawed monster interwined) with a promise to get it to Wu right away.

But Haifa and Joe require a bit more of an explanation than that so they retire to a conference room.

Toby says: ‘There’s a bunch of people seconded to a group which look at the kind of thing that can’t easily be defined….er, or explained. We talk to people who are useful, have useful skills. And you’ve both got useful skills. Truth to say, we’ve got a problem back in London.

‘We look out for certain documents, a lot of them really old books, some of them software programs. Well, an old book turned up at an auction and luckily one of our friends got there quickly and bought it. You know him, Haifa – Habdul Khaizan.’

Haifa is surprised to find out that a reasonably infamous islamist firebrand does freelance work for the government…

‘Well, Habdul went missing two days ago before he could get us the book and turned up this afternoon wandering round east London, out of his mind. Without the book. It’s a diary of a 15th century Arabic scholar Al-Hassis. Very interesting. We want it back. His car has turned up in a car clamping pound in Hackney.

‘Now our guy is unconscious in a Hackney hospital. And it looks like his bones are breaking under their own volition, at a rate of about one an hour. Seems to me we need to find out who took the book, get it back, and y’know save our guy’s life and everything…’

Over the next 10 minutes Joe and Haifa receive some encrypted ID cards, two new phones, two credit cards – and the address of a hospital in east london. Joe doesn’t mention he’s kept one of the handguns. Toby promises to clear up any problems at the station with some good cover stories.

Joe and Haifa return wearily to their Travelodge – and Haifa finds a note under her door.

‘Trust Toby – he knows nothing. The old man buy the sea can help you. And look at www.youtube.com/4398309356, make it quick before it’s taken down. Leave a message in the Guardian Soulmates column with a code for your mobile. Turn off the phone you stole until you need it. I’ll contact you. ‘O’Hara’

A look at Youtube reveals a strange video clip on an anonymous site which says only ‘The army is coming’. The clip shows what appears to be a torture scene, with Kenny tied to a chair, half-drugged, and surrounded by two men and a woman (and presumably another person with the mobile), their faces shadowy but visible. One carries a powerdrill. Half way through, the clip jumps and suddenly everyone is wearing motorcycle helmets. They close in, the clip blurs and ends.

Joe hears back from his colleague – the first mobile phone number is indeed Frank from Lobster TV. The second one is so heavily encrypted and re-routed that it appears, to all intents and purposes, to not exist.

The next day back in London our friends visit the hospital in Bow and find Habdul in a private room guarded by a man with the kind non-definable job they are getting used to (in the meantime the morning news mentions a bad car crash in High Wycombe with three policemen killed – the Denglers aren’t mentioned.

Haifa goes into to talk to the Islamist and finds him babbling in Ancient Arabic. She can understand little of it apart from the repeated use of the word ‘masks’. Playing it down the phone to Wu elicits a few sentences talking about ‘the messenger behind the masks’ and ‘the end of the path’. Habdul already has a cast on one arm and one leg and while she is there, she hears two of his fingers break. She notices he has strange tattoo-like writing wrapped round his torso. It is an unknown language.

Outside Joe finds out that Habdul came in with a sprained ankle and glass in his clothes. His wallet contains a cashpoint receipt from the day before yesterday for £40, and £40 in cash. There is also an Oyster card which Joe gives to the ‘guard’ to get scanned.

A visit to the car clamping pound finds not very much, apart from a slip of paper in the car with a mobile phone number on it (Whatever phone it is is turned off). However talking to the two Nigerian gentlemen who staff it is more fruitful. They tell the pair that they picked up the car yesterday parked in an illegal place – but saw the same car parked nearby the day before, clamped by someone else. With a bit more convincing, they say it was probably two ‘bad, racist’ men who run a cowboy clamping outfit from an office in Poplar. And indeed a closer look at the car shows traces of a clamping sticker on one of the windows.

The pair are nervous and call Toby for back-up – he promises some colleagues will be close by if they get into trouble.

They find the dingy mechanics yard and office in Poplar and wait. Presently two thirty-something men with tight Tshirts and close cropped hair emerge and drive away in a 3-series BMW. Following, the pair see them arrive at a second hand car lot, Hammond’s Used Cars. The skinheads go and talk to someone who they assume is the owner, a little, wan man who appears very anxious and gives them an envelope of what looks like money. The skinheads return to their office.

A debate produces the theory that whoever has the book hired these thugs to clamp the car and therefore lure him into some kind of trap, thinking he was going to pay the fine (and then presumably escaping).

Joe approaches (Haifa elects not to alarm anyone with her non-whiteness). One of the men answers the door and is resolutely uninterested in helping ‘the police’ with their inquiries. An offer of a substantial bribe does not move him (in fact Joe detects an undercurrent of fear to his profane bluster). Suddenly the second man appears behind his brother and slams the door…..

End of chapter two

Reprise…

Haifa and Joe are working for their shadowy new employers, looking for an ancient book that has been bought at an auction by a ‘colleague’ and then gone missing. They have traced a path to a couple of sinister East London skinheads who run a dodgy car clamping service and appear to have clamped the colleague’s car in a bid to lure him into a trap. A rather sad attempt to intimidate the skinheads has failed…

Chapter three

‘…Look at your children See their faces in golden rays Don't kid yourself they belong to you They're the start of a coming race The earth is a bitch We've finished our news Homo sapiens have outgrown their use…’

…Joe steps away from the portacabin as the door was shut in his face. He walks back to the car and debate ensues about the next course of action - suggestions included ramming a burning truck into their office as a distraction ploy….

Before any of these fabulous plans can be put into effect, the younger skinhead emerges and got into the BMW. He seems to make a phone call and then drives out of the yard. Joe and Haifa follow. Their calls to their ‘back up’ go through to an answer machine.

They follow the guy for a few streets before he pulls up at a greasy spoon and goes in. Being unknown to him, Haifa cases the joint – the skinhead drinks tea at the back.

Her phone rings. The caller eventually identifies himself as Hammond, the used car salesman they saw being apparently intimidated earlier in the day. He sounds scared. ‘I don’t know what you want with those men but I can help you. They are dangerous; they’ve threatened me once today and I’m frightened they will come back. It’s just me and my wife here.’

Haifa is cautious but agrees to meet Hammond. He wants them to make sure the skinheads are out of the way first but Haifa insists they visit him first.

Haifa and Joe drive over to Hammond’s used car lot. He skulks in the yard keeping watch outside while she goes in alone. Hammond is a thin, nondescript man, anxious. Haifa hears his wife busying herself in the kitchen.

At his request they go up to his office on the first floor, it is heavily cutained and gloomy.

Hammond sits behind the desk. ‘I sell cars for them. They’re local gangsters and sometimes they need to get rid of things for me. So they brought a car in and I sell it the same day – then they came back to day and were really angry. They had your phone number and wanted to know if I knew anything about you. I remembered the number so I called you. You’re something to do with the police, right. Maybe if you can find who bought the car, you can find out why they’re so angry. I don’t know…’

He offers a box of receipts – may be she can find the one that shows who he sold the car to. Pretty soon she finds a receipt that suggests that Habdul’s car was sold to someone called Morrison, but with no other details. Hammond thinks maybe he has his business card, somewhere.

A rough female voice calls up the stairs. Hammond is needed on the phone. He leaves.

Haifa notices a photo, framed on the desk. It is a polaroid snapshot of Hammond and a beautiful blond young man – both apparently naked at least from the torso up. They look ecstatic, grinning at the camera, frozen in harsh flashlight glare but surrounded by darkness. Hammond has an arm round the younger man’s shoulders, a pair of long surgical scissors in his hand…

A quick search of his desk unearths a padded envelope, a business card holder and a box file. The envelope has material from what looks like a corporate management course, from an organisation called the New Frontiers Institute, including a mousemat embossed with the slogan: ‘Mind, body, soul: Take the path, rewrite the rules’. The box file seems to contain a lot of driving licences and other photo ID, all from different people…

Meanwhile Joe gets a call himself in the parking lot. It’s the younger skinhead. ‘I thought you wanted to make a deal when you came round earlier? Well, my brother’s out the way now so what you got?’

The two negotiate a £7,000 payment for information on Habdul’s abductor. Joe texts Haifa to say he is going and drives round to the greasy spoon.

Joe enters the café. The younger skinhead is still at a table near the back, with a cup of tea in front of him. At a gesture from the man, the owner and other patron get up and leave.

Joe sits down. ‘What took you so long? Where’s the money?’ the skinhead asks. Joe says: ‘Before we talk about money I’m going to need to know what you’ve got for me.’

‘This.’

Suddenly the older skinhead is upon him, bursting out from a storeroom door at the back, swinging a heavy bat. It catches Joe a glancing blow in the shoulder before he could react.

Pushing himself back he draws his gun and fires once into the ceiling, shattering a light. His attacker swings the bat again, striking him hard in the chest. Joe hears one of his ribs go.

Stumbling back, he again fires wildly wild. The man senses his advantage and swings again, but this time misses, breaking the table in two. Finally Joe has his eye in – his next shot blows the top of the skinhead’s skull away and he drops.

The other skinhead is away on his toes, out into the storeroom. Joe fires but his gun jams. Chasing him, he catches the man by his heels as he pushes out through a fire escape. Being the only one aware of his useless gun, Joe sticks the barrel against his forehead and pulls the brother back in….

Haifa is pondering the contents of the boxfile when her face suddenly goes cold and she can feel a light sweat on her forehead. She knows from experience that there is danger near. Listening she hears a stealthy step on the stair outside the office.

Quickly she grabs the stuff and pushes open what looks like a fire escape door. In fact it leads to an enclosed set of stairs which seem to run down the outside of the building. There is a bolt on the inside of the door which she makes fast behind her.

Stepping gingerly down the dim stairs, she realises there is plastic lettering haphazardly stuck to the descending walls. On one wall: ‘Be full of joy for here is the path.’ On the other: ‘Be ready for truth is behind the mask.’

At the bottom of the stair she can see through an open door that it continues down, presumably below ground. Very frightened now, she calls Joe but it just rings. She leaves a text message: ‘I’m in trouble at Hammond’s. I’m going underground. I need you now.’

Above someone shoves against the fire escape door…

The skinhead is very ready to talk. All they did was get rid of cars for Hammond, who was a right lunatic and would kill anyone without blinking. He’d told them to clamp this guy’s car a couple of days ago and then Hammond had rung in a panic and told them to unclamp it and get rid of it. Well, they probably should have had it crushed but they just left it a few streets away and hoped someone would steal it. When they went to see Hammond for their money today, they’d never seen him so scared. And yes, there is a backdoor to Hammond’s place.

Joe takes the skinhead’s phone and tells him his colleagues wil kill him if he moved from the storeroom. Then he notices he had a text from Haifa and a missed call…she must have called when he was dodging baseball bats…cut to screaming tires and a highspeed drive to the used car lot.

Haifa steps into a large cellar, with earthern walls and floor, dimly lit with a single bulb. She can’t see the far walls clearly. Running down the centre of the floor is some kind of path laid with pale shapes, ending in a shadowy sculpture. On either side of it she can see a box or table like thing. The far wall has a rough opening.

There is another thump at the door above her.

Moving into the room carefully, she realises with horror that the path is a shallow trench filled with bones in various stages of decomposition. The sculpture is of shiny black stone or plastic, a hideous cubist mockery of a man, clutching and pulling its face apart. From its broken face, emerges a long red flame or tongue.

Haifa’s mind reels. Behind it she can see crude letters painted on the wall: ‘When laws are gone and man is free, happy, laughing, killing.

Stumbling, she approachs the object on the right, a wooden school desk and chair combination and pulls up its top. She pulls out a book with the face of a bearded man etched into the strangeleather-like cover like a watermark (surely Toby’s book…), four rough sheets of papyrus bound with string and an ordinary notebook. There is also an ornate dagger, with a leather handle and stone-looking blade. As she puts the objects in her book, she realises there is a light banging coming from the other object, a low hinged box.

With trembling hand Haifa opens the lid, to reveal the semi-butchered body of a man, missing both legs at the thigh and one arm at the shoulder. An IV bag is attached to the other emaciated arm. Strange writing rings his torso, similar to that on Habdul’s body. His eyes are closed.

As the corpse-like man opens his mouth, she leans closer.

Instead of a voice, a stream of static comes out of the man’s mouth, a radio message, as if from across a great distance, an American voice shouting urgently, panic-stricken. . ‘…..dark and horrible shapes moving over the ice…something huge behind…drop the bombs…press the button…kill us all.’

The man’s eyes open and focus for a moment. ‘I see you, Haifa, dying alone on the ice.’ His eyes blur and his tongue lolls.

Above, she hears the crack of the fire escape door finally giving way. Scooping up her bag, Haifa runs into the rough opening and finds herself in a roughly excavated oval tunnel. Wire runs along the ceiling and she can see a bare bulb a few metres ahead as the tunnel branches.

Behind she hears Hammond’s voice, calling. ‘You better not be stealing down there, you dirty thief.’

Haifa takes the left hand turn, hoping for an upward incline but finding only a further branching into three after a few metres. What looks like a human thigh bone is propped against a wall.

Behind her, Hammond begins to scream, his voice distorted and high. ‘EDITH! EDITH!’

Haifa bolts down the far left tunnel but almost immediately has to double back from a dead end. She next takes the middle tunnel and after a few metres comes into a large room of some sort. Against the far wall, she sees a jumble of ragged clothes and bones.

Behind she hears a horrible squelching and turns to see something massive, white and rubbery squeeze its way past the fork and down the one tunnel she hasn’t tried…

Joe arrives at the used car lot and creeps down one side of the building, stepping over broken glass that seems to have come from the heavily curtained window on the first floor. He cautiously moves round to the back and finding the back door open, creeps in. All is quiet as he moves up the stairs and finds the office and the broken fire escape door.

Moving as quickly and quietly as he can down the stairs, he emerges into the basement just in time to see a figure go down the tunnel on the far side.

Hastening across the sinister room and pulling his (now unjammed) gun, he sees Hammond in the tunnel, paused at the fork in apparent indecision. He is dressed in a transparent full length raincoat and has stripped down to his underwear. He carries a heavy hammer in one hand and a long set of surgical scissors in the other.

As Hammond makes his decision about which tunnel to take, Joe shoots him once in the upper back. He falls forwards and as Joe runs up to him he can see a long roll of red cloth come streaming from his mouth. He is breathing heavily. Joe shoots him in the face.

He looks up to see Haifa running down the tunnel towards him. Behind her he can see a terrible sight – a huge worm like thing pulling itself forward at speed, filling the tunnel – a woman’s snarling face bubbling across its front. There is no room to get off a shot past Haifa.

He hears voices and the sound of arms brought to bear in the room behind him. As he backs into the basement and Haifa reaches him he is suddenly surrounded by wiry men in t-shirts, jeans and body armour. They have some serious weaponry and tear gas. Toby Knight is there, with a shotgun. ‘Get up stairs and stay there.’

Haifa and Joe run back up the stairs and proceed to thoroughly search Hammond’s office. They dig up more material from the New Frontiers Institute and a file of grisly photos of amputations. They also find a business card for a Robert Belial of the New Frontiers Institute. Gunfire rings around the basement downstairs.

Fifteen minutes later, Toby emerges and ushers them down to the parking lot which now boasts four Black Land Rovers. 'Time to visit the dark tower.'

In the car, Joe calls the hospital to check on the condition of Habdul. Except the staff say he has been transferred...and his file seems to be missing...there'll need to be an inquiry...

Ten minutes later they are sweeping through east London and over Blackfriars Bridge and into a parking spot outside a gloomy 20 storey towerblock on the south of the river by Southwark tube. Few lights are on. An elderly black man behind a security desk asks them to sign the book and issues passes.

Up in the lift and out on to an apparently deserted 12th floor. Haifa thinks she hears someone screaming somewhere but may be she imagined it. Toby takes them through a door into a large open plan office. It is unlit except for two men who are grouped round a desk at the far end looking at a PC screen; they stand up as the Haifa, Joe and Toby come in.

Toby takes them through into a conference room where they meet Mr Cotton, a pale sweating man with a thin smile.

They hand over the book ('I hope you didn't read it, its quite deadly'), and everything they found in Hammond's office. Mr Cotton seems only mildly interested in what might have happened to Habdul.

Toby and he look at the photo of Habdul. Cotton says: 'The other man is Robert Belial, chief executive of the New Frontiers Institute. They are a research organisation and thinktank specialising in group psychology, corporate culture and mental health a a societal level. They work for big companies and the government. They're actually based just north of Blackfriars in what was the Unilever building.'

Haifa demands to know why the book is so important looks through her. 'These people are tired, Mr Knight, I think they need a rest. We have a situation with the deaths on the Underground but that can wait.'

Joe and Haifa take Toby to a pub acros the road and ply him with scotch. He doesn't know much about Hammond and less about his wife-thing. Clearly they had been murdering people for some time and the link with the NFI suggests they might have ordered the kidnapping to get the book. The skinheads ran a local branch of a little known neo nazi group called British Triumph.

He doesn't know much about the book but says it will go to Scotland for safe keeping. May be Habdul will turn up.

Toby says there have been two murders on the tube in the last week and another person is missing. They've kept most of it out of the papers. His colleagues think there might be something worth looking into: both bodies were slashed and a lot of blood seemed to be missing.

But they need rest - he's checked them into the local Travelodge for the next four days to recover and then they can report to him at the dark tower.

On the way back to the hotel Haifa realises that she hadn’t surrendered the papyrus pages, the notebook or the strange antique dagger...

Credits: to those we have sampled: Delta Green Countdown, Nocturnum, Delta Green, original, All Good Children from The Unspeakable Oath, Fade to Grey in Tales from the Miskatonic Valley, Curse of the Bone from White Dwarf. Spoilers beware.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Look at your children See their faces in golden rays Don't kid yourself they belong to you They're the start of a coming race…’

reprise

Having been given R&R leave by Toby Knight for the next few days before looking into the murders on the tube, Haifa and Joe spurn the offer of free rooms at the Blackfriars Travelodge and return to their respective homes in north London.

That night Haifa dreams….

She wakes up standing on a plain, black dust running to the horizon in front of her. Above her she can see a alien sky of acidic orange vapour, with two huge green stars. Behind her a strange undulating sea writhes against a coast wreathed in coils of purple tendrils, seaweed –like. As she approaches the shore, she sees with horror that the ‘sea-weed’ is creeping towards her, inch by inch.

She turns and sees for the first time a black spire in the distance, she can’t tell if it is manmade or natural. A faint path leads to it. She walks towards the spire, as she gets close she can see some kind of opening at the base. She thinks she can hear a faint piping.

Several yards in front of her she suddenly notices to figures on the path, coming towards her. A dwarf with shiny black skin and tight plastic-looking clothes is leading a naked man on a leash. The man’s face is a blank of skin, his hands clutch at his head. As Haifa gets towithin a few yards of him, the dwarf looks at here with a smile. ‘Do you like my pet?’

Haifa wakes up.

At the British Museum

The next morning the pair rendevous at the British Library for research purposes.

Haifa examines the knife first- it is made of something that looks like extremely hard volcanic black rock, being sharp and being etched with strange runes. Putting it aside she looks through the papyrus document, a task that puts her Ancient Arabic to the test.

After a number of hours she can work out that it is three separate documents, one a ritual, one a poem or prayer and one some kind of historical account. The details of the second two portions allude her. But the first she manages to translate as a prayer to summon the spirit of the ‘Bloated Woman’ into the body of an enemy. She keeps a copy of the prayer, in the original Arabic and translated into English…

Joe spends an unpleasant couple of hours reading Hammond’s rambling, boastful diary. He had kidnapped at least 15 people in the past few years, eating portions of them with the help of his wife as part of a ritual to a being he variously calls the masked messenger or the crawling chaos – the victims are blessed with prayers and writing on their body (the same writing that Habdul had) before being eaten over a period of weeks and then dispatched with the knife.

There are allusions to growing up in Africa in the 20s and knowledge of something called the Cult of the Bloody Tongue – clearly Hammond was much older than he looked. His wife had made a ‘bargain’ at some point – which presumably explains her ability to transform into a huge bloated worm…

Interestingly there are references to the ‘institute’ and the staging of ‘games’ under its building. A Richard Hyder is mentioned in passing, an associate of the institute who has lent Hammond a book he calls ‘My Triumph’. Hyder also has another ‘very important’ document about Antartica.

There are various references to National Socialism, a group called British Triumph that Hammond sometimes uses for strongarm work and some sly mentions of the ‘Bolivian Branch’ and a man called Galt who even Hammond seems afraid of.

Joe also puts calls into Home Office contacts to see if they can tell him anything more about the NFI or British Triumph.

As the afternoon draws on the pair decide to split up for the evening – Haifa calls the British Museum to set up a meeting with Jensen Wu and Joe goes to a nearby NHS dropin centre so he can have his cracked ribs looked at.

Deep in the basements of the British Museum, Haifa is shown through the ancient world exhibits until she comes to an unmarked door, next to a statue of a headless horse. It’s Wu’s office, she is told. Haifa notices a faint etching on the door, a flame within an eye within a star – she recognises it as an ancient symbol of protection.

Professor Jenson Wu, a small Anglo-Chinese man in a cardigan, is inside in a small office , the walls filled from floor to ceiling with a semmingly random selection of books, statues, stone fragments, files and boxes. Haifa gets the distinct impression this is as much a home as an office – there is a kettle, cups, a toaster and a small fridge.

‘Ahh my child. You have some things for me to examine. I hope you have not been putting yourself in danger.’

Asking about the book recovered from Hammond’s lair, Haifa is told it has been relocated to safety in Scotland –‘it is good you didn’t look at it too closely, a very dangerous book indeed; one volume of a series that I am very pleased is not in the wrong hands.’

Haifa hands over the swag.

Wu gazes at the knife with watery eyes for five long minutes, turning it carefully over with a teaspoon before flicking quickly through the papyrus sheets.

Wu says this is a knife used in sacrifices – ‘I recognise the runes as alluding to the Black Pharoah, a mythical ruler of Egypt in the 8th century BC who was eventually ousted by a group of warrior priests. The documents are a poem to the Bloated Woman, a god worshipped in certain parts of Africa; some kind of ritual; and a fragment of a longer narrative. I will need to study these in more depth.’

He glances through Hammond’s notebook and confirms that he seems to be sacrificing his victims by eating them once ‘blessed’ with the tattooing, finally killing them with the knife.

Talk turns to Nazism and Antartica.

Wu says: ‘There are persistent stories that Hitler survived the war and escaped to South America to build a Fourth Reich – there are connected myths that a book exists called My Triumph that he wrote as a sequel to Mein Kampf. They are other stories of a group of SS sent by Himmler to the Antartica in the last year of the war in Europe in a bid to find ‘war winning weapons’. Apparently nothing came of it.’

Haifa asks about Galt, the man mentioned by Hammond. Wu looks at Haifa carefully. ‘If you ever meet Galt, or think you might be meeting him, do everything you can in your power to get away.

Wu knows little about the NFI that Haifa does not already know. He has heard of Belial who is well connected in government circles and has heard of Hyder who he thinks is Austrian and sometimes deals in historical artefacts. He knows that the NFI was involved years ago in a badly managed trip to Antartica with British Army personnel, which resulted in a number of deaths.

Haifa asks about the meaning of her disturbing dream and Wu listens curiously and asks if she knows if anyone else has had similar visions. She wants to know if it may be caused by something she has had in her possession – he does not know.

Thanking him and leaving the items with him, Haifa gets a call from Joe – he has been contacted by O’Hara after they left his phone number in a coded lonely hearts in The Guardian. They agreed a meet in Soho.

Meeting O’Hara

The man on the other end of the phone had an East coast American accent. ‘Thanks for leaving the message, soulmate. We should meet.’

Joe arranges to meet ‘O’Hara’ in the Nellie Gwyne pub in Soho. Haifa is to lurk in the background as ‘muscle’. They sit in separate parts of the noisy bar for a few minutes before Joe’s phone goes again. ‘I’m in Subway down the street’.

Joe walks over while Haifa sits in another café opposite with a view of the entrance.

O’Hara is a tall man with the bearing of military training. Joe sits.

‘Well my name’s not O’Hara, I’m not an Irish terrorist, I didn’t try to blow up the American embassy. Apart from that everything you know about me is true. You can call me Gene.’

Joe learns that Agent Gene is part of a group based in the US and similar to Pisces. He was part of a team sent over to the UK at the end of last year to investigate the background to the near meltdown of a nuclear power station in California the year before. The group believe the power station’s staff were infiltrated by an unknown group who attempted to blow it up in some way. They suspected links to a company based in the south west of England which had recently bought a decommissioned nuclear power station to create a medical research facility.

The company is called Cormed, run by a local millionaire Richard Corvan based in the town of Brichester – the power station is near Berkeley. He inherited the company from his grandfather. Last year he hosted a conference at the Savoy on nuclear decommissioning that attracted speakers from the US and the former Soviet Union – and also the attention of Agent Gene’s group.

‘Something went wrong, we were compromised and being hunted. We tried to get out, to get into the US embassy but were ambushed in Grosvenor Square. Everyone else in my cell was killed; I managed to escape. Some of our attackers were wearing UK army uniform. There must be a rogue element at some level in the British state.

‘Anyway,’ Gene says, ‘we knew before we came over, there would be complete deniability on our side. I’m on my own now. Surprised I’ve lasted this long. I don’t know who the hell you are, really, but Christ knows how long I can keep afloat – and I need someone to keep going on this. They tried to kill millions of people.’

‘How do you know about Pisces? What can we do – can you help us,’ asks Joe.

‘The old man by the sea helped us – Major Thomas Balfour. He used to be in Pisces and some of our old guys knew about him. He’s on side. He lives out in Norfolk but he doesn’t like visitors. He’s very careful – I only met him once.

‘And you know about Kenny. Or you know he’s dead at least. What you don’t know is he worked for Pisces – he was one of you. They sent him into infiltrate this cult called the Army of the Third Eye. Last year he disappeared, looks like he must have switched sides. Then he suddenly turns up in newspaper photos of student protests of the Cormed Nuclear facility – there is a group called SANE down there run by a guy called Greg Mansley. That’s when we get interested in Kenny. Then he disappears again, turns up on the M1 and gets shot.’

‘How do we contact Balfour – do you know his number?’

‘You’ve already got it – Kenny called him just before he died. He must have kept in some kind of contact with the old man after he disappeared’

Outside Haifa notices two men are standing outside her window, dressed as tourists and photographing the café with Joe and Gene. She recognises one of them from the Dark Tower. She texts Joe to warn him.

Alerted, Gene scribbles down a phone number and releases the safety on a concealed handgun. He slips out a back exit as Joe walks to the front of the café – just as Haifa sees the two watchers break into a run down a side alley. Joe calls out to a nearby special constable that he has just seen a car being broken into by two men. Following the men, Haifa sees them standing at the other end of the alley – apparently Gene has escaped for now. Joe calls off the cop.

They retire for the evening.

Haifa wakes up on the same plain of black dust, on the path to the spire. She continues her trek towards it and soon the same dwarf and man come into view and approach. This time, something in the back of her mind tells her she recognises the man, despite his lack of face.

Haifa asks: ‘Do you come from the spire over there.’ The dwarf smiles: ‘No, but are you going there, I can show you.’

Haifa nods but before she can move, the dwarf produces another leash and leaps forward, catching it around her throat and pulling. Haifa pulls back hard and manages to pull the dwarf off its feet. It lets go of both leashes and the faceless man jumps forward towards Haifa like an attack dog. She turns to run but the man grabs her ankle.

Haifa wakes up.

The next day

In the morning Toby calls Haifa and says they are setting up a briefing the next day on the London Underground killings. They have some witness statements to look over.

Haifa asks him if he has had any bad dreams and it turns out they have both had similar dreams of black plains and dark spires. In fact he started having the dream a day before Haifa – no dwarves though…

Joe’s research uncovers a little more information about the NFI, using some Home Office contacts. It is a private sector thinktank that works for various branches of the UK government. It specialises in mental health, mass psychology and its affects on social change.

After being set up by a Cambridge academic Louis Strater in the Sixties as a early research group into data analysis to inform social engineering, it almost closed after a disastrous involvement in an Antarctic expedition in the 1974. An experiment in social interaction under isolation ended in several deaths of army personnel - strater also died.The NFI lost all of its government contracts as a result.

The NFI was bought out by a Valentine Krogan in 1975 – he died in an apparently botched bugulary a year later. The current chief executive Robert Belial joined in 1997.

Research on British Triumph using Home Office contacts and anti-fascist group Searchlight shows they are a small London-based group of hardcore Nazis who provide security and intimidation for other far right groups. There is a single reference in Searchlight article to ‘far-fetched’ claims that it gets funding from sources in South America.

Joe notices there is an invite only seminar in two days time at their HQ on ‘Trauma therapy and techniques of purging’. He emails pretending he runs a mental health advocacy charity in an attempt to get an invite.

Some research by Haifa shows Reinhardt Galt, listed as Swiss nationality, is wanted by Interpol on suspicion of a number of assassinations in maindland Europe.

Joe finally calls what he now believes to be Major Balfour’s number. Eventually the phone is picked up a man whose voice is delierbately distorted. They have a guarded conversation in which the man alludes to the fact that he was once involved in secret government work although he does not admit to running Pisces. He does seem to know Agent Gene and Kenny but says he will call Joe back later.

While they are on the phone, Toby leaves a message. ‘I think I know what’s going on with the dreams. Its worrying. There is a book I have found which I need to show you. Come round to my personal office as quickly as you can – make sure you aren’t followed.’

All good children….

The groundfloor door to Toby’s office is open and when they go up the stairs to his door, they can see it’s also been forced. It is small with a desk, PC, wastepaper bin and shelves of files. A quick search finds the password to the PC taped to the underside of the desk.

Haifa does a quick digital search and turns up what looks like Toby’s home in Highgate, and a list of local braches of the Plymouth Brethren church. There is also a physical description of a tall man in dark old fashioned clothes with a short beard and a list of times and places – they guess that it is a record of when Toby has seen the person following or spying on him.

The wastepaper basket has the address and number of a safety deposit box.

The pair leave the office….

Some interesting reading material Haifa and Joe have come across in the last day or so....

Brichester Herald

Brichester police are investigating the latest vandalism of a Gloucesteshire cemetery after local people reported a break-in to the town's main churchyard yesterday afternoon.

Several graves were damaged in what is the third attack on local graveyards in as many weeks.

Police report that the resting place of local councillor Martin Helverson was particularly badly damaged and his family have been informed.

Cemetaries in nearby Mercy Hill and the village of Temphill have also been vandalised this month.

Listing in Prospect magazine

Learning new fears

Wednesday, xx February 2009, New Frontiers Institute

The latest NFI seminar in its series on developments in social psychology features a presentation from Dr Lostalus Black of the University of Massachusetts who will discussing his new book ‘Learning new fears: societal reactions to 21st century dread’, chaired by Robert Belial. 6pm-8.30pm (drinks afterwards). For more information email r.hyder@nfi.com

Evening Standard….

The family killed in a helicopter crash in northern Scotland two days ago have been named as Richard and Dorothy Dengler, and their teenage son Mark.

Mr Dengler was an estate agent in High Wycombe and was apparently on holiday in the Highlands with his family.

The pilot and copilot of the helicopter, which went down in bad weather sixty miles west of Inverness, have not been yet named but are thought to run a local travel company.

Brichester Herald

Reactor back on line despite protests

Amid the chanting of anti-nuclear activists, at 10.23 this morning Berkeley’s nuclear reactor went back online.

Spokesperson Sheila Peterson said it would be a few weeks before the plant runs at full capacity, and that it is currently running at 10% capacity.

‘Part of the plant is still being modified and this we cannot run at an optimal level at this time but the final adaptations could only be made once the reactor was onlie, she said. ’We hope to begin final work on converting the plant to medical research within the month.’

Antarctic exhibition opens at British Museum

The golden age of exploration will be opened up again this month when the British Museum hosts the first comprehensive exhibition of the ill-fated Starkweather-Moore expedition to the south pole in the 1930s.

The American group was perhaps the last example of the amateur investigator of unknown lands and was such a tragic failure that it effectively ended academic fories in the great icy wastes.

The exhibition includes equipment from the expedition – and the similarly disastrous one from the US which preceded it – plus journals of the surviving members.

Email to the Blackberrys of Joe And Haifa...

Dear Niece and Nephew

You will be aware that your uncle has asked you to look into some unusual deaths that have occurred on the London Underground in the vicinity of Temple tube station.

Two weeks ago, an Italian tourist disappeared while travelling clockwise on the Circle line – we know that he got on at Cannon Street and was supposed to exit at Embankment. The police found blood in the last carriage and haven’t been able to find him. That is still on the books as missing persons.

Last week a City Worker, again on the last tube of the evening, was stabbed to death in an otherwise deserted carriage. The closed circuit camera was working this time – film is attached [it shows a 20 second jerky clip from the far end of the carriage. It appears to show a dozing man attacked by a figure who appears to enter by pulling open the sliding doors. The clip ends with what looks like blood pouring onto the floor].

Three days ago a woman reported seeing a figure in the tunnel when the train slowed outside Cannon Street tube – she was drunk and the police did not put much credence to her story – her details are attached for follow up.

I attach maps showing access tunnels and maintenance facilities surrounding Temple tube station - these are as accurate as we can obtain although there are almost certainly unmarked tunnels which either do not belong to London Underground or are very old. There have also been reports of strangely excavated tunnels that exit some lesser travelled areas, although these do not appear to go anyway.

Your liaison is your Cousin Jimmy who is on the murder squad after we made sure he was reassigned from elsewhere on the Met – his contact details are attached.

Your uncle has been out of touch since yesterday, unlike him – if you hear from, please ask him to give me a tinkle.

…..‘Tonight on Lobster TV! Alien abductees off the Orkneys. What’s behind three bodies washed up on Scottish islands in the past two years, all unidentified but with strange burn marks deep in their skin. Drowned fishermen? Why ere two wearing plastic handcuffs. Also on tonight’s programme, do the police really believe the High Wycombe murders have stopped or did outside government agencies step in to cover up the truth. Plus Heather McCartney: alien lizard or just plain loon?”….

The Guardian xx February 2009

The Warwickshire Police have defended themselves against claims that they called in armed officers too quickly in the stand-off with Kenny Robson. Robson, an anarchist on the fringes of a number of radical groups, is the prime suspect in the murder of a Gloucestershire school teacher last week. A spokesperson said: ‘The suspect was armed and dangerous, and had proven his willingness to kill.’ He dismissed claims by satellite broadcaster Lobster TV that Robson had worked for MI5 during the hunt for anti-capitalist terror group The Army of the Third Eye, despite apparent support for the theory by outspoken Conservative MP Eleanor Myles….

Spoilers: To those we have sampled: Goatswood and other unpleasant places (including Third Time’s the Charm); Dust to Dust from Dead Reckonings; All Good Children from the Unspeakable Oath; Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown; Delta Green: Alien Intelligence.

'Burn all your notebooks. What good are notebooks? They won't help you survive.' Talking Heads 'L:ife during wartime'

Reprise Haifa and Joe are pausing before an investigation of murders on the London Underground when Haifa has started having a terrible series of nightmares. Their Pisces handler Toby Knight has apparently been having similar dreams and leaves a phone message that he may have found their source. But coming to his office, they find it burgularised and Toby missing….

The pair leave the office and split up, Haifa going to Golders Green to check out the safety deposit box they have found a code number for, and Joe to the Hampstead home of Knight.

At the private bank, Haifa hands over her Pisces ID to a man behind a high counter. Scanning it he remarks that the box may be empty, someone has only just been here to inspect it – a man dressed in strangely old fashioned garb. Haifa is led into the secure vault and left to open the box.

Inside the finds no trace of the mysterious book promised by Knight. But she does find some interesting items: a manilla folder labelled Magonia, a oceanic (and annotated) map of an island and a scrap of paper clipped to it (the paper has co-ordinates on it, plus some words including words ‘Wilbur (American Books), Crampton); two pages of what look like a typewritten journal, and a plastic ID card that looks like it would be used to open an electronic door.

Filling her bag with the swag, Haifa returns to the lobby and asks to see CCTV footage of the previous visitor – viewing it, she sees a dark haired man in his late forties dressed in a bulky dark suit.

Meanwhile Joe cases out Knight’s two storey home near the heath. There are some lights on but no sign of movement inside. Approaching from the back, he scales a fence (pausing to wonder at an architect who designed in huge windows facing a six foot wide alley…) and starts trying windows. Looking in the kitchen window, he spots blood on the floor and overturned furniture in the living room. He texts Haifa to get over pronto.

Sliding open the glass doors at the back (with a crash loud enough to wake up Karl Marx in Hampstead Cemetary), with gun drawn, he enters the house and realises it has been well and truly turned over and searched. Moving into the kitchen and now able to see into a pantry at the top of basement stairs, he sees the body of a woman, face down in a large pool of blood.

He checks her pulse; she is dead but warm. Suddenly he is alerted by a foot scrapping and looks up to see a wild-eyed man rushing at him from up the stairs, bloody knife drawn…

He swings his gun at the man’s face but misses and the man catches him in the shoulder. Stepping back Joe shoots him squarely in the leg, only for the man to keep coming, this time missing with a stab to the face. Joe shoots him again in the other leg and, bleeding copiously but still swinging, the man collapses. Haifa rushes into the fight scene just in time to witness a daring shot by Joe that sees the knife fly out of the attacker’s hands and down the stairs.

Together they tie up and gag the snarling stranger and Haifa binds his wounds as best she can. Leaving Haifa to search the downstairs study, Joe quickly searches the upstairs rooms, working out that Knight has no wife or partner and finding nothing of interest.

Except a framed photo of Knight, Mr Cotton, an unknown man – and Kenny Robson. They are all dressed in unmarked military fatigues, heavily armed and are apparently in a jungle of some sort. From the faces of the men, it looks like it was taken about five years ago. They look exhausted but triumphant.

In the study Haifa finds a notebook of Toby’s which includes a photocopy of a painting of a man, a young girl with her face obscured and a bizarrely grinning Sun. It looks like the cover of a children’s book.

Downstairs, the man is trying to speak, so Haifa ungags him. He immediately screams ‘Demon’ at her and spits in her face. ‘The End Times are coming. You, and I, and Her will all meet again in Hell!’ He then starts cracking his head against the floor with tremendous violence. Haifa and Joe restrain him and ask him who ‘Her’ is. The man snarls: ‘She was dead. She waits. She will live again. She is the Bridge.’ And then lapses into silence.

Joe’s phone rings. ‘Hello. This is Mr Cotton. How is everything?’

Joe decides to come clean. ‘We’re at Toby’s house – we think he’s missing. His maid’s been murdered and there was a man here. We’ve got him subdued.’

‘Indeed. And have you found anything which suggests where Mr Knight might be?’

Joe decides not to come clean. ‘No we haven’t had a chance to look round.’

The phone goes dead. The doorbell rings.

Haifa makes sure all her swag is out of sight and walks over to the door. Looking through the spyhall she can see two tall men in suits. ‘Yes?’

‘Open the door, Haifa.’

Haifa does so and two men walk in. They are holding bulky suitcases in both hands and have plastic bags on their shoes. One goes upstairs while the other walks through and inspects the prisoner. He opens his case and starts pulling out bags and equipment. Joe attempts conversation but is told to go outside in no uncertain terms.

Outside two Porsche Cayennes sit at the kerb. One has a light on inside and opening the door, they find Mr Cotton sat in the back, smoking a cigarette. He doesn’t invite them inside.

‘Colleagues, Mr Knight has not been in touch since yesterday which is most unusual. The two men inside will hopefully find out where he has got to. Someone, we do not know who, has obtained ID that does not belong to them and taken some material from a secure facility that does not belong to them. That is unfortunate.

‘Meanwhile we still need you to look into this trouble on the Tube. You received an email earlier today – please act on it. Now, shut the door.’

The pair drive away from the house and park up in a secluded spot on the side of the Heath, to examine their swag.

The diary that Haifa found in the safety deposit box looks to be two pages of a much longer journal, one contains a date in 1941, the next seems to be at least two years later. It is in English but it appears to be a copy of a copy of a copy of typewritten version of a diary kept by a German officer. In a number of places, words have been blanked out and someone has written the name ‘Galt’ in the margin.

The diary is obtuse but appears to record a secret mission by the SS in Antartica in the last years of the second world war. They appear to be searching for a lost civilisation and the war winning weapons the underground city contains. His team find some kind of powerful machine of unknown origin. The diary does not give any idea where this city can be found.

The map meanwhile appears to be of a small island off the north west coast of Scotland, called Hirta. It seems to be a Ministry of Defence base. A google search on Haifa’s phone confirms that the island is owned by the government and has been since the 1950s, when the local population were moved to the mainland. Only a few small buildings are marked, along with what looks like a small beach. Someone has marked a spot on the west coast of the island with the note ‘alt entrance?’ The notes attached to the map refer to it as Magonia.

A further detailed Google search uncovers a single reference to an adult bookstore called 'American Books: bought and sold' in Brichester, Gloucestershire.

The notebook of Toby’s is a long series of notes kept over many months. It would take a number of hours to read, but Haifa skips to the end and find’s Toby’s notes on his recent dream of the black spire, his discussion with Haifa about and his discovery that a new children’s book contains story elements and illustrations.

A google search shows that Scott Carr has been published many times by an established publisher but this latest work has been produced by a small company that specialises in self-published books. It is called Sunny Day. The author is called Scott Carr and he lives in Stoke Newington. More searching reveals the surprising news that the offices of Sunny Day in Southwark burnt down the night before in what the police believe is an arson attack.

An early evening visit to the Sunny Day offices shows a bored looking community support officer watching a plump bearded man softing morosely through some blackened and soaking stock in the front yard. The building looks resolutely gutted. Flashing their Pisces-provided all-puporse ID, the man tells them he is the owner Morrison Forbes.

In the fruity tones of a former stage actor he confirms that he was about to publish the new Scott Carr book, in fact he had just had the books delivered from the printer the day before. Sadly it looks like were all destroyed.

But no matter he is insured and the plates are still at the printers. But it will certainly delay publication and Mr Carr will be disappointed – except he hasn’t been able to get hold of him. There is no answer at his home and his mobile is switched off….

Joe guesses that the printer will still have copies of the book in the form of printing over-runs, as well as possibly the original plates.

The printing works is small, squalid, one storey building on a small, squalid industrial estate on the Isle of Dogs. Pulling up fifty yards from the front, Haifa and Joe can see a white van and a battered Ford Fiesta in the small cark park at the front. They can also see a small amount of smoke escaping from a side window.

Blocking the parked cars with their vehicle, Haifa checks that they are empty (and makes a 999 call to the fire brigade) while Joe hastens to the door. He can immediately see the lock has been forced. Entering cautiously a small waiting room, he turns right into the main printing area where he immediately sees a fire has been started in one corner. It is quickly filling the room with smoke and a quick search of shelves does not reveal any daemonic children’s literature.

Next door he searches the bosses office with no more success before finding a room of finished material. He finds a packing crate which looks like it has been hurriedly emptied of material and spies a slim volume which has slipped unnoticed down the back. Its primary colours and illustration of a grotesquely grinning star means he has found his quarry.

Meanwhile outside Haifa, sheltering by her car, sees two men appear from behind one side of the building. One is carrying a petrol can. She can hear them start to sing in odd, fractured voices and almost immediately the smoke increases. Suddenly a blueish fireball bursts out of the window, arches back over roof and smashes down into the building – half of the building is now in flames. She runs.

Inside Joe hears the crash and immediately feels tremendous heat pressing on him. He runs out into a loading bay area and kicks open a fire exit into an alley. Almost colliding with a fleeing Haifa.

The crouch beside the building as the two men jump into the Ford Fiesta, shunt their car out of the way and roar off. They can hear fire engine sirens in the distance. They wait until the men have disappeared before retrieving their car and driving back to central London, passing two fire engines on the way.

Frightened and concerned about the nature of the book they hold, Haifa and Joe call Professor Wu at the British Museum (of course Wu is in his office despite the late hour) and he agrees to take a look at it. A security guard shows them down into the basement, past the statue of the headless horse and through the strangely marked door into Wu’s room. The wizened academic is enjoying a cup of Green tea.

Flicking slowly through the book, Wu tells them the story it narrates. A tale of a girl who lived in a strange black spire with her father. With no-one to play with, she sang every night to a star, she called Tee Tok. One night her father was away and she was so lonely that she called the star down to play with her [Wu points out the details of the dance and song the girl uses]. But the star burns the village and all the people living there. The girl’s father comes back and reverses the sang and dance routine to send Tee Tok back to the sky. But in the final scene, Tee Tok kills the father with a huge gout of flame.

Haifa asks if the book is something they could use to protect themselves, or is it dangerous. Wu says: ‘I cannot tell for certain. But the author, and you and Toby, seem to have overheard the desires of someone or something. I don’t think you were supposed to. Someone else wants to make sure that no-one reads this book. That would suggest they fear it. It would be an act of boldness to use this knowledge yourself, but it may be that you will need to be bold.’

Haifa and Joe decide to stay with Wu that night (he produces sleeping bags and indicates he has his own campbed in an adjoining room) Joe asks him about the Stark-Merriweather exhibition at the museum. Wu says he doesn’t know much about it – only that it was a disastrous attempt to collect fossils from an uncharted area of Antarctica in the 1930s, in which a number of the explorers perished. He offers to show Joe the exhibition when the museum opens tomorrow…

That night, both Haifa and Joe ‘wake up’ in the same dream; they stand on the plain of black dust directly outside the black spire; they can see a narrow crack in the base which appears to serve as an entrance. But mightily afeared, they choose to walk round the base of the structure to see if there are other entrances.

There is indeed a small (but Haifa ascertains not dwarf-size) wooden door in one side of the spire. Opening it, they step into a English country road. There is a refreshing breeze and a brisk winter morning, the bright sun low in the sky. They can see across, the road, the back of a sign.

Coming round to the other side of the roadsign, they see it reads ‘Severnford, County of Gloucestershire’.

Suddenly they realise a man stands behind the sign, dressed in now familiar garb of the Plymouth Breathren. Haifa recognises him as the same man as on the CCTV footage.

The features on the man’ face blurs and distort like an old TV set, sometimes blanking out completely (like the man led on a leash by the black swarf in a previous dream). His speech comes out slurred and fractured. ‘Come to this place,’ he says.

Haifa asks him who he is and why he needs them to come. ‘I have lost myself. I find it so hard to remember…There is blood on these hands, this flesh – some before and some after.’

Haifa asks about the book. The man says: ‘She is the gate, the book is the key.’

Before they can ask anything more, his features blur and disappear leaving a blank expanse of skin. The man turns and goes through the door back onto the plain of dust.

Suddenly the wind picks up and the sky yellows. A storm is coming. They run back through the door and wake up in their sleeping bags.

Cuttings…

Hansard xxx February 2009….

Eleanor Miles MP: ‘Can the minister respond to TV reports this week that British security services have approved the use of Ministry of Defence facilities for so-called ‘rendition’ flights of alleged terrorists on at least three occasions in the past two years, and that in each case, the home secretary was only informed after the fact….’

The Home Secretary: ‘My right honourable friend is perhaps spending too much time watching daytime TV. There is no absolutely no evidence of any such flights have taken place, having used MoD facilities, for any purpose…’

Email to Pisces phone…

Dear Nephew and Niece

Your uncle has now been out of touch for more than 24 hours. Do please encourage him to call. …

Pirate radio broadcast that broke into BBC Radio 4 wavelengths xx February 2008-08-02

Woman’s voice: ‘Wake up people! The army is coming. Your leaders wear masks – but we know their secrets however deep they bury them. The army is coming. They used to hide in the woods; now they hide behind CCTV, behind corporate literature; behind national security. The army is….’

Broadcast ends...

Evening Standard xx February 2008

A housekeep stabbed to death in Hampstead yesterday was the victim of a burglary gone wrong, a police spokesperson has said.

Police were called to the house last night by neighbours after they heard sounds of a violent struggle. The victim was discovered in the kitchen of the house – she had been stabbed at last five times.

Maria Pevaski, 32, had been working in the UK for four years – her two children are currently being looked after by social workers.

The owner of the house is believed to be out of the country.

Police said they had no suspects and appealed for witnesses.

Metro The sole survivor of the ill-fated Moore-Starkweather expedition to Antarticia in 1933 was the star attraction at the opening of an exhibition at the British Museum on Monday. Avery Giles, 96, was assistant palaeontologist on the US expedition – the only Briton - which was seen as the death knell of the era of the amateur explorer.

Several members of the team perished in their fossil-hunt and a rival team led by US millionairesss Acacia Lexington was lost completely. He told reporters: ‘If you have never been there, you will never know what it is to learn a new way to fear. The pitiless ice. I have never left Suffolk since."

Brichester Chronicle A rash of vandalism in Glouctestershire graveyards has reached new depths this week with the theft of a corpse and desicration of other graves from the Gypsy Hill area of the city. Police believe the same criminal gang is behind all the attacks over the past month. They said they are trying to contact living relatives of the deceased affected.

A police spokesperson appealed for witnesses and said that a prowler has been reported in the vicinity of two of the vandalised cemeteries – a man in shabby clothing and a pronounced limp.

SPOILERS To those we have sampled: Delta Green and Delta Green Countdown; All Good Children (The Unspeakable Oath); Fall of Cthulhu (Boom Comics); Beyond the Mountains of Madness; Dead Reckonings; Third Time’s the Charm… (Goatswood and other less pleasant places); Nocturnum; Black Seal, issue 3. ‘An item of mutual interest’ from ‘Alien Intelligence.

‘We dress like students, we dress like housewives, In a suit and a tie. Changed my hairstyle so many times now, Don’t know what I look like.’ Talking Heads, Life During Wartime

Reprise: having been caught up in a secret part of the British security services and making clandestine contact with an American agent and a number of other ambiguous characters, Haifa and Joe’s handler – Toby Knight – has gone missing apparently hunting down a devilish children’s book. They also have some murders on the London Underground to investigate. Sleeping in the office of the British Museum’s Professor Wu for safety, they have both shared a dream which seems to direct them to the Gloucestershire town of Sevenford…

Haifa and Joe wake simultaneously in the gloomy warmth of Wu’s office, to find the kindly professor brewing tea and making toast. Invigorated Joe’s request to visit the museum’s new exhibition dedicated to the Starkweather-Moore Antarctic expedition is met – he is escorted round by Wu’s assistant, the lornlorn Ms McAllister. Meanwhile Haifa stays with Wu to discuss matters dreamlike.

Upstairs Joe tours the small exhibition. It tells the story of the ill-fated expedition of American aristocrats, explorers and academics that attempted to find fossil beds deep in the unexplored snowy wastes of Antarctica. They were racing against rival expeditions from US millionairess Alecia Lexington’s and Germany’s Barsmeier-Falken group. The former were lost without trace (their two planes are thought to have crashed during heavy storms) and the latter made it back, having found and named what are now known as the Falken Mountains.

The Starkweather-Moore expedition hopped from camp to camp by plane before an advanced party established a base at the foot of mountains. The exhibition reports that a storm cut off thise base from the others for a week during which time madness, sabotage and the elements claimed the lives of all but one of the explorers. Both Moore and Starkweather died. A rescue party managed to reach the camp and buried the dead.

In the end the fossil beds were relatively unremarkable, underlining the futility and failure of the expedition.

The various displays show a number of diaries, maps, photos and newspaper clippings, as well as examples of their equipment. Joe doesn’t notice anything unusual about the equipment the expedition took although clearly they were inexperienced to be taking such an ambitious journey. Amongst the fossils, Joe notices something which stands out – a roughly star shaped, vaguely green stone about the size of his hand. The exhibit reads, usefully, ‘Unidentified stone’.

On the way out Joe notices a display of photograph of the visit of Avery Giles, the only member of the party, still living, earlier that week. The old man looks weary and ill.

Back in Wu’s office, Haifa raises the subject of the island of Hirta off the coast of Scotland (she and Haifa have found maps suggesting there are secrets to be found there). Wu says he knows nothing about that, except there was a Ministry of Defence facility there at some point. He seems concerned about the questions: ‘What has this to do with murders on the Tube, child? Mr Cotton is a serious man and he demands a strong focus from the people he works with. Perhaps you should concentrate on the matter in hand?’

Haifa takes the hint, for now. They talk a little more about Toby knight and where he might be. Wu repeats his view that the book may be, although dangerous, a weapon against whoever is trying to ‘bring something over’. They also talk a little about the diary entries they found which appear to be from a Nazi expedition to the south pole. Wu says, if genuine, they would confirm the myth that Nazis attempted to unearth strange, forgotten weapons from Antactica.

Although ‘Galt’ is written in the margin of one of the pages, Wu thinks the diary is unlikely to be him. ‘This sounds more like a scientist than a soldier. Anyway Galt is probably just a myth anyway – why else would a man alive during WW2 still be blamed for political murders in the last five years? His name is such a bogeyman every skinhead with a baseball bat will borrow it.’

While Wu busies himself in the office, Haifa settles down to look in detail at Toby Knight’s notebook. A quick look through the night before had shown he had been having similar dreams of the black plain and the strange tower. A closer look shows this book is probably only the latest of a series of dream journals kept by Knight. It begins with what seems like a familiar set of dreams involving Knight’s dealings with a being he calls ‘the harlot’.

A series of sketches shows a grotesque parody of a Victorian prostitute, who trades obscure information for a price that Knight only hints at. She is forever tempting him to ask questions for which the price is more taxing... she has some boxes she would like him to look into.

Despite her sinister appearance, Knight has an ambiguous relationship with the harlot, keeping her at enough at a distance to do business without too much risk.

Midway through the book, Haifa comes across a series of complex diagrams and instructions which together look like some kind of metaphysical mathematical formula. Obscure and difficult to decipher they look they would benefit from further study…

Waiting for Joe to return, Haifa remembers the press reports about shadow defence minister Eleanor Myles who has raised questions about British security services and Kenny Robson (the apparent fanatic who they saw lose his brains to a high powered rifle bullet only a few days before). She calls the Houses of Parliament and gets through to Miles’ researcher Natasha Moore. Telling her she is doing research for the London Islamic Centre on possible abuse of human rights amongst suspected terrorists, she manages to get 15 minutes with the Conservative MP.

After the Museum Joe pops into his old office at the Home Office and tries to see if there is any information to be garnered from the chip on the plastic card Haifa obtained from the bank deposit box.. He also manages to easily get Scott Carr’s address from feeding his phone number into the system.

He calls his Pisces number and speaks an unknown man, telling him he needs a list of equipment – guns, flashlights, grenades etc etc. The man doesn’t comment but says whatever is permitted will be waiting at the tube station.

Picking up Haifa from the museum, they drive to Carr’s Stoke Newington home. Watching from across the road, the place looks quiet. Waiting until a lull in foot traffic Joe puts a protected fist through a basement window. A bit of latch-ery and they are in Carr’s living room and kitchen. Haifa snatches a laptop and a quick search turns up a downloaded map to Sevenford from the AA website and a internet story from a Gloucestershire paper about a dig going on in caves outside Sevenford. It is dated four days ago. They also find a jacket they recognise as belonging to Toby Knight.

A search of the rest of the house shows it is empty. An upstairs study has walls covered with sketches and paintings that look like variations on the pictures in the book ‘Tee Tok, the happy star’.

Next Joe heads over to Hackney to interview a witness to the rube maniac while Haifa goes to Portcullis House next to the Houses of Parliement to see Eleanor Miles MP.

Veronica Soames is a PA in City bank and returning home from All Bar One by Liverpool street, found herself vomiting through the open window between two tube carriages, temporarily stopped in a tunnel between Temple and Blackfriars (close to the NFI HQ, muses Joe).

Befuddled, she caught sight of a figure looming from the darkness dress in what looked like a plastic mac and carrying some kind of blade. It tried to rab hold of the carriage door but the train started forward and it lost its grip. Veronica’s last glimpse was of it disappearing through what looked like some kind of door in the tunnel.

‘He was right funny looking, mate. Like he some kind of grotesque mask on. Course the cops thought I was just pissed off my tits…’

Haifa is met in reception by a frosty faced Natasha who brings her through to the coffee shop to meet Miles. Haifa owns up that its actually Kenny Robson she wants to talk about, his links to the security services and possible links to Severn Aerospace. This group was set up 10 years ago following the privatisation of certain parts of the Ministry of Defence and seems to specialise in high-tech engineering.

Miles talks about her belief that the privatisation of government work has led to a lack of scrutiny of what is going on and control of government spending. She says that Severn Aerospace has seemingly single-handedly re-started the European space exploration vision and has had huge success at lobbying both within the UK and EU government (not even the scandal of a suicide by a lobbyist linked with it three years has dented its abilities).

Haifa asks about Carmed, the Glouctestershire based company which has recently bought a defunct nuclear reactor, and Miles tells her that whether or not they have financial links, they both seem to have close ties to government and do work that would normally be part of the public sector.

Miles is less keen to talk directly about her knowledge of Kenny Robson, saying only that he may have been used as an agent provocateur….She seems to reluctant to say more in a public place with someone she has only just met.

That evening, while Haifa returns from her visit and prepares for their tube trip afterhours, Joe ventures into ‘the heart of the Beast’, or rather the headquarters of the New Frontiers Institute to attend a seminar by one Professor Black from Massachusetts University, and to generally have a sniff round. Disguised as a policy wonk from a mental health charity.

Signing in a palatial reception area, he is directed in a loift up the third floor. He finds himself in a room of about 30 people, enjoying a glass of warm Pinot Grigio. Working the room and finding a range of NHS types and thinktank wonks, he eventually introdues himself to Samantha, a young, sleek woman who says she is a NFI researcher. She points out Robert Belial, a golden haired alpha male currently talking to the night’s speaker, a genial looking academic who looks he might be Egyptian. She also points out Richard Hyder, an NFI consultant who would ‘be really interested in talking to you about the NFI working with some more NHS mental health trusts. Perhaps you can talk afterwards…’

The seminar itself is a relatively routine argument from Black, based on his new book, about trends in societal attitudes to progress, faith and mental health. The audience is reasonably appreciative and there are questions which Belial chairs.

Afterwards Samantha introduces him to Hyder, who suggests they retire to a quiet area. ‘My office is being decorated but we can use of these rooms.’ They sit in what looks like a disused office (even the PC is unplugged) and talk a little about NHS mental health policy. Hyder says he doesn’t work directly for the NFI but consults for them, introducing them to new partners and stakeholders. He is reasonably enthusiastic about Joe opening some doors for them.

Joe takes a business card. Hyder says, somewhat meaningfully, ‘Well you know where to find me and I know where to find you, Mr…er..Carlisle. I’m interested in the people you work with; I’m sure there will be work of mutual benefit.’

As they leave Joe notices for the first time a large print on the wall behind him – it is Francis Bacon’s Head VI…

Back in the main room only a handful of people remain. Joe take his leave and checks to see whether any of the floors are off limits or need a security card. They don’t.

Outside Joe decides to take a few minutes getting his bearings of the local area, seeing where the tube murders would correspond to above ground. As he walks away from the NFI building he suddenly feels his face go cold and his legs become heavy. His vision blurs and his limbs become like lead. As he fumbles for his gun, he can see a hazy figure approach. He hears ‘Are you ok mate?’ before blacking completely….

…and wakes up apparently three hours later in the A&E department of Guys and St Thomas hospital on the south bank. Haifa is leaning over him while a junior doctor fills in some forms. Joe is told that he is apparently recovered from a fainting spell, that may have been caused by low blood sugar. Haifa take a blood sample just to be on the safe side.

An hour later they enter Temple tube just as it closes to the public and are taken by the station manager through into the closed area.

Left in what looks like a staff changing room for a few minutes, Haifa and Joe are soon joined by a knackered looking middle aged man and a super-efficient looking younger woman, both in heavy duty black overalls and carrying large bags in both hands. They introduce themselves as Andrea Steele and Michael Corder, colleagues from the Ministry of Defence and Metropolitan Police respectively. Michael is on the murder squad for the tube murders though its clearly Andrea in charge.

She tells Joe: ‘We brought most of your shopping list – but you must be joking about grenades. Take this stuff, get kitted and come next door and meet our friend Mr Toombs.”

She unpacks a pair of black overalls and boots, head torches, night vision goggles, smoke grenades, a ‘lady’s pistol’ for Haifa, ammunition for Joe, position locators, flares and cuffs. Themselves, they carry handguns and shotguns, and bags with unidentified swag. Andrea carries a strange device that looks like a handheld PC.

After getting kitted up, Haifa and Joe join the others in another room and meet Maurice Toombs, night attendant, a rather gaunt man of about 50.

Steele shows them some photos of crime scenes (lots of blood), the CCTV video of the attack and listens to Joe’s account of the interview with the drunken City worker. She also shows them some DNA samples which suggest the assailant’s DNA has been morphed in some way.

‘Sounds like what we thought – there’s a door that leads into what was the old Strand tube station closed in the 1940s. He or it must be holed up in there. Although the attacks look they are spaced out, we think they are actually all within a couple of hundred yards of that door. And right next to our pissed PA’s account. Looks like it could be a dangerous character – hence the big team.’ Big?, think Joe and Haifa, there’s four of us…

Toombs talks them through their maps, pointing out their route through some tunnels and maintenance supply rooms, over an active tunnel and to what they assume is the door to the abandoned station. As they go through the door Toombs offers: ‘There were some Tubelines maintenance workers down there somewhere but they should be out by now. I’ll be watching you on the CCTV. Should be a walk in the park. In the dark.’

Through the door they are immediately in the dusty, dirty, non-public part of the Tube network, the corridor bringing them into a single track tube tunnel, across and through another door. They come into a small supply room with a door in each wall and a cctv camera in one corner of the ceiling.

The door they need is unexpectedly locked.

The map shows that taking the left hand door will take them round on a longer route to the same tunnel. Haifa and Joe are immediately suspicious that they are being herded into a trap. They urge Andrea to call Maurice for the key – but a call reveals that Morris works in ‘surveillance, not security, darlin’. Don’t have keys.’

Reluctantly the pair follow Michael through the left hand door and down a badly lit corridor, naked bulbs stung out every couple of minutes walk. Almost immediately Joe spots a hammer dropped on the floor. The business end of it is coated in a tarry, black substance. Origins unknown.

After a few hundred yards, they come to a shaft descending about 10 feet, which was marked on the map. Michael climbs down, makes sure it is safe and the others follow. The corridor continues, the walls slightly rougher. Coming up a corner they realise that a tunnel seems to have been gouged into the side of the corridor, earth, wood and tiles spilling onto the floor of the corridor.

As they approach the tunnel the stench of rotting flesh assails them. Looking in they see it only goes back a few feet and seems to have caved in.

Leaving them to poke cautiously at the cave-in, Michael ventures further round the corner and shouts a warning. There is a door several yards done which looks like it has been twisted and broken inwards. A broken metal pole is jammed in the doorway, dripping with the tarrish substance. Andrea pushes past Haifa and Joe and the two agents disappear in to the room, guns drawn.

Haifa and Joe and follow suit and find their companions examining the body of a man. Dressed in uniform for maintenance firm Tubelines, he has deep tears in his face and chest and his left shoulder has been completely dislocated. He is very, but recently, dead. Two doors lead out of the room, one open and one closed. There have obviously been a number of small but fierce fires in the room which still smells strongly of fuel and smoke. There is broken glass on the floor. Poking about, Michael discovers some containers of diesel, one of which has obviously been clumsily siphoned.

‘Why didn’t Maurice see what was going on,’ asks Haifa, immediately noticing a broken CCTV camera in one corner. Andrea calls up Toombs who assures her that he has only just noticed that the camera was out. ‘Keep an eye out though – those guys work in teams of three. The others must be round somewhere.’ Haifa and Joe exchange looks – does Toombs know more than he is saying?

Exiting the room, they almost immediately get to a shaft upwards ten foot, with a metal ladder. Scorched earth suggests another petrol bomb has been thrown down it recently. Again Michael climbs, scouts and calls the others up. As Joe gets to the top of the ladder, he sees Michael a couple of dozen yards further up a corridor. Suddenly, a shape appears between him and the nearest bulb, blocking out his view of Michael. Bravely, Joe lets go of the ladder and drops back down the shaft, hitting the bottom just as there is a hideous scream and gunshot from above. Andrea disappears up the ladder, with Haifa and Joe following – more slowly.

They find Andrea covering a protrate Michael and pointing her shotgun at the opening of a tunnel that seems to have been dug into the roof of the corridot. Michael has a deepish gash in his left shoulder but is still operational. He throws Joe his shotgun and unholsters his handgun. ‘I didn’t get a good look at it but it was quick, strong and kind of human-shaped…and hands like huge f**kin’ chisels…’

Steele takes out her handheld PC and explains it’s a motion detector. It doesn’t show anything close by. ‘Trouble is its not very good at accurately showing things above and below you. I know, I know…’

Moving quickly past the tunnel entrance they press on and come out into a tube tunnel proper. According to the map the disused door leading to the Strand station is 50 yards away. And sure enough, it is, almost opposite the maintenance door they should have used if their way hadn’t been blocked by a locked door. Nervy now, Haifa persuades Andrea to affix some of his plastic explosive to the maintenance door in case they need a fast exit. The disused door itself is not in need of explosive, having been forced open at some point.

Switching to night vision goggles, they go through the door and come up against a ladder going down into the darkness. Twenty feet below a short corridor opens out through a broken door into an old public corridor, the tiled walls bearing the London Underground Logo. Left or right, left or right, Choosing right, they come to a broken metal staff door and enter into a large room blocked with floor to ceiling machines of indeterminate nature.

The group split into pairs, moving slowly round the walls in search of another door. Moving left, Joe sees a sudden movement and lets fly with his shotgun, deafening all and sundry. ‘There goes another Tubelines employee,’ suggests Haifa, hurtfully. The come on a doorway out of the room, with no body but some blood on the floor. Joe hit something, though apparently not enough to slow it down.

Andrea and Michael join as they go through the doorway and emerge into what must have been once a public Tube corridor – ‘Strand’ is tiled into one wall. Turning left, they almost immediately come to a security door that seems to have been forced open recently.

Peering through they see a large room, caked in dust and grime and partially lit with a powerful, modern flashlight placed on one of two heavy upturned tables. They see a body laid out on set up low cupboards in one corner and a body propped against one wall. Next to it is prone figure, swathed in a translucent and bloodied plastic mac. Switching off night vision and guns drawn, the main group approach the propped figure and Joe immediately realises he is badly wounded but still beathing. He is dressed in black paramilitary gear with a machine pistol, Joe confiscates the machine pistol.

Haifa examines the body on the cupboard. It is seemingly of the missing commuter. He has deep gashes in his face and chest although there is almost no blood. He seems to have been dead for at least a couple of days and there seems to have been some post-mortem mauling of the body – one arm is partially removed and his skull has been bashed in. Then she sees out of the corner of her eye that as her companions attend to the wounded man, the plastic-clad figure has twitched…

Haifa shouts a warning as the plastic clad maniac leaps to his feet and slashes at Michael, missing. Everyone lets fly and misses, narrowly avoiding taking out each other. The human-beast swings again at Michael, connecting with his torso. Haifa draws her first ever blood, winging the attacker before Joe puts it on its back with a shotgun blast to the stomach. Struggling to regain its feet, Joe shouts: ‘take it alive’. Andrea obliges with a shotgun butt blow to the head, knocking it unconscious. It drops a strange black knife.

They cuff the thing and realise with horror that the naked man though normal in most respects is absent one lower jaw – oh, and his thick red tongue lolling out of his slack mouth is at least a foot long. Joe’s mind reels.

The group gather round the badly wounded mystery man in paramilitary gear. The man is deathly white and has obviously lost a lot of blood from a stomach wound. He has a bag round his shoulders. He is only semi conscious and ignores questions about his identity.

Suddenly they hear movement from the far end of the room which seems to contain some partitioned off cubicles. A man shouts: ‘Is that the cops?’

‘Sort of,’ replies Joe. Two men dressed in the uniform of Tubelines maintenance workers emerge from the cubicles. One carries a iron bar and what looks like a patrol-filled flask. The other seems to have a broken arm. They explain they were attacked in one of the corridors by a number of shadowy assailants and barricaded themselves in a room. They defended themselves with self-made petrol bombs but their mate Steve held them off while they ran into the tunnels, finally taking refuge here. They heard some kind of fire-fight 20 minutes ago but were too afraid to reveal themselves.

Getting a chance to quickly look around them they group see there is another security door exiting the room plus what looks like an old lift door. Before they can search the area more, there is suddenly a loud banging on the farthest door. Joe points to the uninjured worker – ‘go and see what that is.’

‘You must be f**kin’ joking. I haven’t even got a gun and you’ve got two.’ Joe throws him the machine pistol but goes to investigate himself. Andrea’s locator shows only one individual outside. ‘Who is it?’

He recognises Toombs’ voice. ‘What the hell is going on with the all the gunplay?’

‘What are you doing here?’ asks Joe. Toombs: ‘I saw some of the workers on the CCTV – are they with you? Let me in.”

Some debate ensues but earlier suspicions seem to have disappeared. Joe opens the door and Toombs slips in quickly

The uninjured worker starts to scream. ‘That’s the f**ker that let them in. He banged on the door and we thought he was coming to help. When we opened the door, they were all out there waiting!’

Toombs raises his hands: ‘Hey, it’s all cool.’ Joe tries to get him cuffed but Toombs throws him aside with unnatural strength. He slashes at Michael, knocking him down before Haifa puts a bullet in his leg. Unaffected, Toombs (who now sports a much wider and tooth filled mouth than anyone noticed before) lunges at Joe and closes powerful jaws on his upper arm. The pain is blinding.

Andrea shoves her shotgun against Maurice’s head and finally registers a hit, spraying his brains all over Joe, who dimly notices the black, tarry nature of his attacker’s blood.

Andrea looks down at Maruice’s prone form. ‘Bugger, he was a good contact as well. Looks like he’s gone over. Who’d’ve thought…’

Amidst the gun smoke and ringing ears, Joe looks round. Michael looks semi conscious and is bleeding badly from three wounds. Of the two Tubelines workers, one is slumped against the wall with what looks like a broken arm; the other is coughing up blood. One of his own arms shoulders is badly blooded. Only Haifa and Andrea are unscathed. The plastic-clad maniac is still apparently knocked out. The paramilitary guy looks to be in shock.

Out of the corner of her eye Haifa sees some writing smeared on the wall above the dead commuter. ‘I have many secrets and she knows them all…The ones I murmur in my sleep, the ones I struggle so hard to keep…’

There is more writing below…

Chapter 7

SPOILERS To those we have sampled: Delta Green, Delta Green Countdown and Delta Green: Eyes Only; All Good Children (The Unspeakable Oath); Fall of Cthulhu (Boom Comics); Beyond the Mountains of Madness; Dead Reckonings; Third Time’s the Charm (Goatswood and other less pleasant places); Nocturnum; Black Seal, issue 3 ‘The Silent Service’; ‘An item of mutual interest’ from ‘Alien Intelligence.

‘Some civil servants are just like your loved ones. They work so hard and try to be strong.’ Don’t worry about the government, Talking Heads

Reprise Joe and Haifa are pulled away from the search for Toby Knight, their missing handler for Pisces, to investigate some strange murders on the tube. Although they have found and subdued the apparent assailant (missing a jawbone and with a foot long bloody tongue), they are now apparently trapped – with some Pisces colleagues and some frightened tube workers – in an abandoned tube station under siege from tunnelling, meeping beasties…

…As the gunsmoke clears, the group are left with a dead Maurice Toombs, a good number of injuries and a profound sense of unease.

Snapping themselves out of it, they block both sets of door with the heavy tables, uncovering a manhole cover in the process.

They notice Andrea taking photographs of the various bodies, including close ups of Toombs and the ‘chinless wonder’. Joe searches the semi conscious paramilitary guy and finds a two way radio, ammo and a security pass with his photo on it but no name. Haifa bandages up his colleagues as best she can and gives Michael a shot of morphine, cheering him up muchly. Haifa and one of the tube workers lever open the lift door enough to see a dark and dirty lift on the other side. The same levering at the manhole reveals a short drop and some kind of dark and cramp ventilation tunnel running off to the south east.

Andrea shouts a warning – her locator has shown up a group of dots gathering by the double doors they have fortified. Michael, Andrea, Joe and one of the tube workers take up position guns draw.

They hear a crunch from the other sides of the doors, which opens a few inches. They wait. Another crunch and the doors open more, leaving about an 18 inch gap into darkness. Andrea, Michael and the tube worker let fly, all missing wildly. Joe shouts to the Tubelines worker: ‘Get close and see if you can get the petrol bomb through it.’ The man edges closer to the door but then freezes.

Everything stands still for a couple of seconds before the doors burst open and two humanoid figures rushed through, sinewy, clawed and intent on violence. The investigators fire, this time with more success, Andrea hitting one in the shoulder and Michael catching the other one in the stomach. One beast continues running forward while the other turns to a stunned and motionless tube worker, throwing a claw but unaccountably missing.

At the same time, the cupboard next to Joe crashes open and another foul creature leaps out (Joe catches a glimpse of a rough tunnel opening in the wall behind). The beast to the front tries to decapitate Andrea, misses and is brought down with Andrea’s shotgun, Michael taking out the other one before it can have another go at the tube worker.

Meanwhile Joe fires a clip at the lurker from the cupboard as it closes on him, only succeeding in nicking his leg. It pushes him back but can’t get a bite in before Andrea turns and cuts it in half with a shotgun blast.

As the gunshot echoes receed and everyone reaslises they have escaped a near death experience without a scratch, Joe yells at the tube worker. ‘Get those doors blocked again and get the other table in front of this tunnel.’

Meanwhile Haifa looks down to see the other tube worker drop into the tunnel underneath and disappear. She shouts after him but gets no response. While the other worker reworks the barricades, Joe and Haifa lever open the lift door to reveal a dusty lift interior with a hatch in the top – they use the manhole cover to keep the door from shutting. Andrea orders Michael into the tunnel to retrieve the worker but he returns after a minute to report that there is no sign of him.

Haifa starts to treat the badly injured mystery man but she can see it is hopeless. He has lost too much blood. He beckons to her weakly and as she leans in whispers ‘Heil Hitler…’ in his ear. And dies.

Joe knocks open the hatch to reveal a shaft going up at least 30 foot into the darkness. Pipes and struts make it reasonably easy to climb. Andrea volunteers to explore and disappears up. They put the chinless wonder in a body bag that Andrea produces.

Suddenly Michael shouts a warning – the locator has picked up at least eight shapes moving rapidly towards the room they are in. They seem to be heading for the manhole! Joe drops a grenade into the hole and ducks as the resulting explosion blows a plume of dirt and debris up. Haifa pushes one of the heavy tables over the hole and they retreat into the lift, dragging the bodybag. The remaining tube worker was disappeared.

Haifa pulls herself up through the lift hatch and hears Andrea calling down that she has reached a heavy grill across the shaft but has found a service grill. She is going to blow it with plastic explosive.

Taking up position in the lift, Michael and Joe see the table being away from the hole and another of the travesties of humanity emerge meeping into the room. Joe brings it down with a full clip but another beast is already pulling itself through the manhole. As it speeds towards the lift, joe manages to push the manhole cover out and the lift door clang shut just in time. Joe climbs through the hatch, pulling the body bag up, with Michael following. Haifa has already scaled the shaft and found Andrea and the tube worker crouched in a small service tunnel at the top. She drops the end of some rope down and the three start hauling up the bodybag.

As the two men start to climb, they can hear the lift doors below being pulled slowly open. Half way up Joe drops a flare and sees one of the beasts, seemingly injured from the grenade blast climb up through the lift roof. It is climbing very fast. It also drops very fast when Joe catches it with another clip.

They keep climbing only for another beast to appear. Joe realises that although he can reach the escape tunnel in time, the injured Michael will not. Selflessly he stops climbing and tries to pick off the beast. Uselessly he completely misses. Luckily Haifa and Andrea do better and the whole group make it into the tunnel. Crawling through they quickly come to another shaft though this looks altogether older, larger and more filthy. There is also a gut churning stench in coming up from the darkness.

Across the shaft, they can see another opening and above another thick grill. With a mixture of derring do and safety ropes they manage to get across with incident and see that although there appears to be shapes massing in the lift shaft behind them, they aren’t approaching.

They are now in a steeply angled metal shaft, slick with indescribable deposits. Clambering upwards they come to the covered top, which Joe and Andrea manage to push out. To find themselves into a harshly lit, modern central area in what looks like a prison block. The shaft they have emerged from is the plughole in what looks like a large, shallow sink. A tap and hosepipe is installed in a nearby wall. The tube worker looks relieved to back in civilisation – everyone else looks distinctly uneasy.

Joe and Haifa peer through a cell window. Although they don’t realise at the time, they see different things. Joe sees an empty and featureless cell, painted white with a stripped bed. Haifa sees the same cell but with the mock up of an office complete with table, chairs and a Frances Bacon print on the wall.

Moving on to the next cell, they are startled to see Habdul inside, the missing agent from their run-in with Mr and Mrs Hammond (see chapter 2). He is sat at a door, talking animatedly into a phone. It takes a moment for Haifa to see that the phone is not connected to anything. Habdul is wearing a hospital gown.

Before they can do anything else, a voice behind them says: ‘Put down you weapons and lie on the floor.’ They realise that a group of seven heavy armed men have emerged from a staircase in one wall – they are dressed in the same kind of uniform as the dead

Lying the floor they are searched briskly by one of the guards who seem very interested in Joe and Haifa’s Pisces-sourced ID cards. A whispered phone call and they are marched up some stairs into a modern-looking office complex, albeit one with heavy security doors. They are ushered into a conference room and told to sit and wait. A beefy man stands guard.

After a couple of minutes the door opens and Richard Hyder strolls in, smiling broadly. Joe recognises him as the man he spoke to at the NFI seminar. He motions for the guard to leave and offers coffee and mineral water – only a relieved looking tube worker accepts.

‘I can only apologise for delaying you for a few minutes. You are going to be on your way in a few minutes. Normally these gentlemen take a dim view of trespassers in our basement. But when we realised who you worked with, that all changed. Joe – I thought you worked with the NHS, you should have said you were well connected. We can’t afford to be upsetting each other – these kind of misunderstanding can get blown out of proportion. And then no-one gets anything done.’

A brief conversation with a tight lipped Andrea establishes that the very broadest details about their mission and that they came across what appears now to be an NFI guard. Seemingly satisfied, Hyder raps on the door and a guard appears – ‘our friends are leaving, perhaps you can reunite them with their stuff – I think we’ll hang onto the bodybag. The contents belongs to us.’

As the others file out, Hyder places a hand lightly on Joe’s shoulder. ‘Do you have a moment’ he asks before shutting the door.

‘Do you think you know what the institute is? Or what your new employers are? Or whose side I am on? Do not presume.

‘I have certain debts and so for a while I do certain services for the institute. I’m a little like your friend Wu, perhaps - the old pawnbroker. I trade. In knowledge. And now you have certain debts you owe me – those gentlemen would have been sluicing you down the drain as we speak if I hadn’t come down. And there may be some services you can do for me. Some trades.’

‘What kind of trades?’

‘It is very simple. When you come across something – and you come across a fair few things, I suspect – that you think I might be interested in, all I ask is that I get ‘first dibs’, as you English say.’

Joe nods, cautiously.

‘Excellent, well let’s get your stuff.’

Five minutes later, the five of them are standing outside the NFI’s service entrance. Andrea makes a call and very soon two anonymous saloon cars pull into the car park. Andrea and Michael get into one with Steve the tube worker (‘Everything’s fine now, Steve, we just need to get you to the station and some warm clothes…’) and Joe and Andrea get in the other one and are taken to Joe’s home.

Discussing their fraught day before lights out, the two realise the anomaly in their perception of the cell. How could Joe have seen a blank walled cell and Haifa seen a mock-up of an office with a Francis Bacon print on one wall. Joe goes to sleep in pensive mood…

Uncharacteristically they both sleep well, untroubled by lucid dreams. Rising late, they pack and start the long drive down the M4 to Sevenford. Haifa charts their route on the map, noting that the recent reports of grave robbing are all within fifty miles of their destination – as indeed is the likely location the point where Kenny Robson is supposed to have murdered a school teacher and stolen her car.

Haifa spends a few hours in the back seat, running ove some of her documents. She is fairly confident that she could perform the ritual that send Tee-Tok back to the sky. She also pores over the ‘prayer to the bloated woman’ that she found in the lair of Colin Hammond - again she thinks she could perform the curse in an emergency. The diary of Toby Knight, perused at some length, shows details of certain metaphysical algarhythms that, according to Knight’s notes, were explained to him by ‘Wilbur’ anf that fold space in some way making it possible to travel from one site to another instantaneously. She will near to study them at greater length…

As they draw nearer Sevenford, both can detect a certain pressure in the air, a depressing fever pressing down, a sickly yellowing of the sky. Coming to within a mile and a half from the large village, on a narrow country road, they see a car parked on the verge, the body of a man lying in front of it.

Stopping, Joe walks cautiously up the body. Haifa keeps a look out for traffic - in fact she suddenly realises that she hasn’t seen any traffic at all for at last a mile. Joe examines the body – an thin, elderly man who seems to have collapsed in the road. His seems to have soiled himself before dying. A small dog barks feverishly in the car and, when Joe opens the door, bolts away. Joe searches the car and notes that the battery is flat – the engine must have been left running.

Worried, they drive away from Severnford and check in at a TravelLodge 10 mile away. Joe phones the local police to report the body who promise to investigate – he rings off without leaving a name.

Haifa calls ‘the old man by the sea’, the mysterious person who seems to know quite a bit about the history of Pisces and who knows both Kenny Robson and Agent Gene. He tells them Gene has called - he is still at large and is getting increasingly paranoid but has promised to get in touch with the pair soon. The old man also tells them he knows the Severn Valley very well and ‘best not to trust the locals, or local authorities, too much.’

Venturing back towards Sevenford, they come a different way in search of the cave complex that Knight and Scott Carr were apparently interested in. They come to a small car park that seems to serve some kind of hiking trail. There is a solitary car, with a woman standing next to the open drivers door. Haifa and Joe approach and find her in some kind of trance, looking to the sky with a fixed expression of awe. Crom the smell, she has apparently been in this state for a number of days. Manhandling the woman into their car and driving off, she immediately falls into a deep sleep.

Retreating to their hotel, they put the woman to bed and retire themselves. The next morning Joe drives to Brichester to visit the university where the professor works who organised the Sevenford dig. He finds one of the man’s colleagues and discovers that the professor occasionally takes off at short notice for ‘digs’ funded by a slightly mysterious patron. Joe manages to winkle out a phone number for the patron and finds it connects through to Toby Knight’s mobile…

Back at the hotel, Haifa gently prods the woman awake and finds out that she basically can’t remember a thing except ‘the terrible pressing down of a vast uncaring universe’ and the fact that ‘the time is close’.

On the way back to the hotel, Joe drives into Sevenford and finds a ghost town – dozens of men, women and children stand in the street, all gazing to the same point in the sky, in the direction of the caves. One old lady lies, apparently dead. Unperturbed, Joe ransacks a local camping shop, stocking up on rope, crampons, a big knife, flashlights and some stout boots for all….

…he feels an exploration coming on…

Radio Five xxx February 2009 'Tubelines has defended its safety record after an explosion near Charing Cross station killed one worker and left two missing yesterday. Alan Wall, 32, was carrying out maintenance with two colleagues when it is thought he was caught in a flash fire caused by diesel fumes. Police have ruled out terrorist involvement and say they believe two badly charred bodies found near the site are almost certainly two other workers, Steve Collins and Terry Fillimore….'

Hackey Gazette, xx February 2009 Council food safety officers are refusing to say what led to the emergency closure of a fast food restaurant in Mare Street on Wednesday night. Chicken Chow Chow was raided by plain clothes police in what is thought to be a response to a mysterious bout of food poisoning that has swept through the local area. The family who ran the restaurant, thought to be Vietnamese or Malaysian in origin, apparently fled before the raid….

Youtube video, xx February 2009 (removed after 2 hours) A woman in a balaclava speaks into a camera: 'The army is coming, people. We're going to blow up their secret prisons and tear down the fences that hide their secrets. We'll break the leash. The book says: 'Their hand is at your throat but you see them not - and their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold.' Hear us - you can hide behind the eyes but the army is coming for you....'

To those we have sampled: Spoliers: Goatswood and other unpleasant places (including Third Time’s the Charm); Dust to Dust from Dead Reckonings; All Good Children from the Unspeakable Oath; Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown; Delta Green: Alien Intelligence. The Silent Service (The Black Seal; Third Time’s the Charm (Goatswood and other less pleasant places)

Reprise

Joe and Haifa have driven to the Severn Valley in the hunt for Toby Knight, their Pisces handler - they believe that a group of, apparent, Plymouth Brethren, are attempting to use a ritual contained in a strange children's book to bring 'something' dangerous into the world. They are targetting a university dig in the village of Severnford and have found the entire population stuck in some kind of strange trance....

....Waiting for Joe to return from his foray to Brichester University, Haifa researches SANE, the protest group active around the recently reactivated nuclear facility run by Cormed Enterprises. The ambivalent Kenny Robson may have been a Pisces mole in the group at some time. She finds that Cormed's PR director is Sheila Peterson and that the previous week the facility started full operations again. She also finds contact details for SANE in Brichester and the name of a local journalist, Roland Thurman, who seems to be following the story closely. There is a major protest planned next month. Research into Cormed suggests that its activities, and the energetic involvement of Richard Corven, increased greatly about a year ago.

Leaving back in the Travelodge the woman they rescued from Sevenford the day before, Joe and Haifa set out for the dig site after lunch. Parking in the small car park, they advance cautiously down the dirt track that Haifa's map shows runs for about a mile to the cave entrance. About half way along they notice a white BMW parked off the track. It is locked. Continuing on they come across a car and battered van - Haifa recognises the car as belonging to the cultists she saw set fire to the book printers.

Stopping for a second, they both think they can hear a faint humming or moaning coming from further down the track. Deciding to be a little more circumspect, they veer off the track and into the woods. Almost immediately, Joe steps on a branch which cracks loudly. They stop and listen. They both hear a low chuckling from up ahead. 'Hello' shouts Joe. Through the undergrowth and dark, closely packed trees, a figure can be seen approaching steadily. 'Who's there' calls out Joe.

The man is dressed in a dirty cagoule and trousers, eyes blazing in a ghastly white face. He has a heavy hammer in one hand, which he lifts as he begins to run towards the pair. Joe fires and misses. Haifa hears a crash behind and turns to see another man run from the trees, this time carrying a heavy stone. As the two madmen converge, Joe fires again, hitting one squarely in the chest. The man falls. Behind him Haifa fires and, much to everyone's surprise, takes the top off the other attacker's head.

The shots ring through the silent wood.

A quick search reveals no personal affects - but clearly neither attacker has slept or eaten in days.

Haifa and Joe venture further into the wood, the humming/moaning increasing in volume until they reach a clearing. They can see the cave entrance on the far side with two huddled figures in front of it. Haifa creeps towards them while Joe covers her with his gun. As she reaches the figures she recognises the kneeling figure as Toby. There is a prone figure beside him with blood on the ground. She calls Joe over. They can no both see that Toby holds a large knife to the side of his face, his eyes staring towards the cave. There are already two deep cuts to his other cheek. They can sense the huge internal struggle preventing Toby from cutting himself any more. Examining the body they find it is the missing author Scott Carr – his face is a mass of cuts and his throat has been cut. He looks like he has been dead at least a day. Despite Haifa’s suggestion they knock him out with a hammer, cooler minds prevail and between them they wrestle the knife from Toby’s hands. He immediately falls forward into semi-consciousness. Leaning over him he manages to force out a few words. What….took…you…so….f**king….long.” Propped up and after a drink of water, he recovers slightly but is still very weak. “There is another one,” he tells them haltingly. Joe asks: “Where is he. Is he in danger?” “In the cave. He’s as good as dead.” Leaving him sat against a tree, Joe and Haifa venture into the cave. Almot immediately it narrows to a downwards sloping passage of total darkness. They walk 20 feet with thee torch on, and then stop, turn it off and listen. They repeat this several times with no effect. Then pausing in the darkness they hear a stealthy step ahead of them. And another one. Joe draws his knife and waits until the steps draw very close. Then he switched on the light and lunge forward. The light reveals a wild eyed and white faced man with a knife, not two foot in front of them. Joe manages to miss and the two men start to grapple furiously. Joe gets a stab in although it doesn’t slow his assailant down. Joe gets him again, only for the madman to stick in the leg. Finally Joe stabs him deep in the chest and he collapses. Leaving the body they continue on down the passage and can now hear distant chanting deep in the cave complex. In a few minutes they emerge into a large natural cave, lit dimly by two large torches resting on the floor. In the centre of the room, they can see the opening of a big pit, from which the chanting and more light emerges. Peering in, the pair see the pit goes down about 80 feet with a rough staircase cut in the side and winding down to the floor. There they can see a circle of men and women dressed in the now familiar garb of the Plymouth brethren. They surround a tall figure who Haifa recognises as the man who robbed the safety deposit bank – he stands next a young woman sat on some kind of chair, her long hair obscuring her face. As they watch he circle begins to chant louder and produce knifes. They begin to cut their faces, the blood shining in the torchlight. While Haifa covers him, joe ventures onto the stone staircase and descends slowly in to the pit. He gets about half way down when two of the cultists notice him and run up the steps to meet him. Drawing his gun he manages to fell one on second attempt but the second one closes on him. Haifa shoots into the crowd of cultists who now are gradually closing the circle around the man and girl. On the stairs, joe is in trouble – the cultist grapples him and stabs him twice. He’s losing a lot of blood, has one one shot left and another cultist has run onto the stairs. Below the leader of the cultist is wiping the blood from the faces of his followers and combing into the hair of the girl. Their chanting has become frenzied and the girls shoulders are jerking wildly. With the last throw of this dice, Joe finally manages to get a shot on target and gets his attacker in the face. He falls off the stairs, allowing Joe to scramble back up on his hands and knees. Haifa takes aim and shoots the girl. And for a moment, there is stillness. And the cultists begin to shriek and the girl writhes and Haifa catches a glimpse of what is behind her hair. The floor of the pit begins to crack, a yellow light seeping through from below. As Joe struggles over the lip of the pit Haifa drops her gun and opens her copy of Tee-Tok, the Happy Star. She has studied the ritual used to send tee-Tok back to the sky. She begin to sing. As Haifa releases herself to the ritual, the cracks in the universe fill with grime and deepen. She can hear an atonal piping that begins to fill her head. At the edges of her vision the girl’s long hair sways while he mind recoils from what lies between – only a sense of infinite, endless and meaningless chaos. l

The girl is no longer a girl. The floor of the pit has fallen away, the cultists tumbling screaming into the yellow void below. The leader is crouched on the first few steps of the stairs, his head in his hands. Later Haifa will think she saw something, in his hands - but she can’t remember what.

Her mind is not her own. It may never be hers again. Something has tasted it, savoured it.

Finally she ends the ritual and the yellow light in the pit begins to fade. The writhing mass of endlessly forming and unforming tentacles that was once the girl is moving away until it is a dot on an infinite horizon and disappears. The roof of the cave begins to crumble and collapse, as Haifa falls to the ground.

Joe hefts Haifa onto his bloody shoulders and staggers away from the collapsing cave and into the tunnel, stumbling over the prone but still breathing figure of Professor Drum and eventually into the light.

Picking up Toby en route they recover his car and drive out of Severnford. Within a mile they come to a army check point. A soldier with a gun motions them to get out of the car. The two men comply but Haifa stays in the car, playing with her hair until joe leads her out.

The group is excorted to a nearby private hospital – the soldiers tell them that the area has been quarantened after an unknown poison affected the whole village, with a number of deaths and mass hallucinations.

For days Haifa swings between sleep and delirium. Once she awakes to find herself standing in front of the mirror by the bed. She holds a pair of scissors and her black hair fills the basin. Another time she opens her eyes briefly to find Toby leaning over the bed, whispering: “What did you take? What did you see? You could destroy us all.”

Eventually after what must have been two weeks, Haifa’s insanity begins to recede – Mr Cotton had provided a counsellor who talked to her for two hours day, including some hypnotherapy.

Meanwhile Joe’s wounds slowly heals and he is able to begin moving around reasonably freely though still with some pain. On day six, Joe is rigorously debriefed by Mr Cotton at his bedside. He is especially interested in the sect’s leader, John Smith, his appearance, speech patterns and actions during the last few moments

For his part, Toby seems suspicious of Joe, and watchful of his actions. Particularly when Mr Cotton is around. However he does share an email from a colleague detailing the results of interviews with the cultist captured at Toby’s house.

Haifa wakes to the sound of her mobile phone ringing. It is pre-dawn. She reluctantly answers it. She can hear raspy breathes on the line, then a hoarse, urgent whisper. “Haifa, is that you? I’m frightened, I don’t know where I am. What am I feeling?” The line breaks. It was her father’s voice, a voice she hadn’t heard since the day he died six years ago. He was buried in a cemetery outside Brichester. She begins to scream…

Cuttings

Brichester Herald, xx March 2008

Police have found the bodies of the Brichester University team who went missing a week ago during an archaeological dig. Remains identified as belonging to Professor Kevin Drum, and students Bob Stokes and Cary Longhurst were discovered by tracker dogs in caves close to the site of their exploratory work. It is thought that a rockfall killed them simultaneously.

A spokesperson for the university said that it would be holding an inquiry into safety procedures for its staff.

Their disappearance is not thought to be connected to the mass poisoning of the water supply in the nearby village of Severnford in which two people died and dozens fell ill.

Professor Drum narrowly escaped death seven years ago when his plane crashed in the Congo while on the way to a dig deep in the jungle. He was rescued along with two surviving crew members six days later by local militia helped by SAS troops.

Email to Toby from unidentified colleague, shown to Haifa and Joe

The asset recovered near the Heath has given up some useful information re the man calling himself John Smith. Apparently he was the charismatic leader of a breakaway branch of the Plymouth Brethren who preached that God himself could be reached through so-called ‘active dreaming’. His doctrine was that heaven was reached not after death but during life and that a few chosen ones could transcend this temporary contact and establish a permanent presence at His side. The catch was that if you didn’t achieve it, you went to Hell.

At this point it seems the sect could not be classified as beyond a Yellow threat at most.

His teenage daughter, Janet, was the ‘best’ dreamer. But it seems that during a ’retreat’ near Camford a year ago, Janet died – for reasons unknown. Her father disappeared for a month but suddenly arrived back in the sect’s base. He said that he had been in the wilderness and that ‘the woods’ had given him insight. He came back changed, with new energy, saying his daughter was not dead but transformed and that she was the gate for all of them to touch the face of God.

They just needed to know how. God was speaking through her in some way but they could not make out His message. Then a month ago he gathered them and said that there were men, “Godless men”, who were hearing that message. [We believe these men to include […censored..] and you. ]. It was Smith who apparently cleared green box 2672 in pursuit of the book. Our asset was detained during another attempt near Heath. It has no more information and is now stored with the Faeries.

The sect is apparently 100% cancelled due to actions of N&N – It is believed that they prevented Red level threat including potential [censored] with minimal and explainable losses.

Lobster TV: xxx March 2008, preview

Was the Severnford Poisoning really a government-sponsored drugs test gone wrong? A witness found by Lobster TV says she was an eye-witness to the disaster – and the cover-up – and Severn Trent Water ain’t the villain folks! Ms X told Lobster TV that unknown agencies may have “put LSD into the water supply” as a botched experiment in mind control. She claims she woke from a vision-filled coma in an unknown hotel room, a day after the village of Camford was sealed by the Army, after being kidnapped by mysterious strangers. More next week on Lobster TV…

Email to Joe, xx March

Dear Pilgrim

I gather you are resting from that tummy bug in Severnford and just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten our arrangement. Time grows short and fatigue grips me. Be sure to call when you have something of interest to a sick man.

If you need more incentive, I’m guessing you know what happened to the contents of the green box in Golders Green –if you have some pages from a certain journal, I can add to your collection

The pope

PS Your friend in the museum tells me you were asking after Galt. Don’t meddle with that man – he’d have you for breakfast without breaking a sweat. And my sources tell me he has recently left his hideyhole and taken on a new job- let’s hope it’s nothing to do with you.

Text to Joe

The Army has broken cover.

Gene

Brichester Chronicle xxx March

Police still don’t know the identity of the woman found murdered in the grounds of Brichester Cathedral on Sunday. As reported yesterday the woman, thought to be in her early 30s, was so hideously wounded that she can not be identified visually. Det Inspector Brian Curtis told reporters that dental records were being checked and other forensic work done in an effort to name the victim.

He would not comment on reports that the murder is similar to the killing of Elizabeth Jenks in November. Ms Jenks, 23, was stabbed to death in the park next to the cathedral and facial wounds were also said to be severe. Her killer has not been caught.

ITN News, xx March

The police officer killed in an apparent carbomb attack yesterday has been named as Metropolitan Police Detective Constable Colin Codridge – his companion in the vehicle Sandra Lewis, a civil servant working at the Home Office, remains seriously injured in hospital.

The car exploded on a sidestreet in Clapham at about 8pm – the police have yet to confirm whether DC Codridge was on duty at the time.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack – it is the first apparent terrorist attack in the UK since an IRA splinter group’s attempted carbombing of the US embassy last year. One suspected member of that cell is still at large.

Intro: this is the latest chapter of the ongoing modern CoC campaign - one keeper, two players and a mix of published and home-brewed scenarios. All drawing heavily on Delta Green's Pisces back story...

SPOILERS:to those we have sampled….Delta Green and DG:Countdown; All Good Children (TUO), Dust to Dust (Dead Reckonings); Goatswood and other unpleasant places (including Third Time’s the Charm); The Black Seal 3: the silent service;

Reprise: Haifa and Joe have foiled a cultist plot to bring something from somewhere over there to over here….and almost died in the process. Haifa has cut off her hair, Joe has some maps he shouldn’t have and Mr Cotton is paying them a bedside visit……oh and Haifa has just a call from her (long time deceased) father….

After a shocked Haifa tells Joe about her mysterious phone call, they are even more determined to investigate the rash of grave robbings that have plagued the Severn Valley in recent months. Whether it not that was really her father on the phone (Haifa has her doubts) It seems certain her father’s grave in Camside has been plundered in some unspeakable way. It is Monday morning and they haven’t been given permission to be discharged from the small hospital on the outskirts of Brichester until Wednesday. Their handler Toby Knight has warned them to expect a full debrief from Mr Cotton – the mysterious apparent chief of Pisces - on Tuesday. Joe calls Toby who has also been recovering elsewhere in the hospital and they meet downstairs in the canteen (the hospital seems to be a normal facility but with a small secure wing). Knight looks the healthiest Joe has seen him – clearly separation from alcohol suits him although his eyes still betray a nervy fear. Toby and Joe probe each other for a little while but Joe soon admits that they did take a map and ID card from toby’s safety deposit box (he doesn’t own up to taking pages from a journal as well). Toby seems relieved but is immediately concerned with getting the material out of the hospital before Cotton’s visit. “This is dangerous stuff, Joe. If it was known we had it, neither of us would be sitting here chatting.’ They agree that Toby will pick up the items from him later that day. They talk a little more about events in Severnford and Joe gets the impression that Toby is not particularly eager to see the pair throw themselves into more adventures. Joe is also pretty certain that Toby believes there is some kind of plot within the organisation. They talk of ‘Frank O’Hara’, the alleged IRA terrorist who Joe has discovered is actually an American agent from a secret organisation with ties to Pisces. Joe admits they have met and that he is in phone contact with the person he now knows as ‘Agent Gene’. Toby gets Joe to promise that if Gene gets back in touch he will arrange a meet and then tell Toby. He also advises Joe not to lie about O’Hara/Gene if Mr Cotton asks – ‘in fact, think very carefully before you lie about anything to him…’ Leaving Toby, Joe sneaks round the hospital until he finds a photocopier, where he produces two copies of the maps and journal pages. Later he pops outside and buries the copies separately with a view to recovering them later. Meanwhile Haifa seeks out a nurse and asks about getting the blood sample she took from Joe weeks ago – this being a wing apparently run by Picses, she readily agrees. The results are less conclusive – the blood shows very high levels of adrenaline, but no real explanation of why this caused the blackout (joe and Haifa have yet to really discuss the fact that the blackout seems to be connected with them seeing visions in the basement of the NFI) Haifa calls Professor Wu at the British Museum – the kindly Chinese gentleman is relieved to hear she is relatively unscathed (he hasn’t seen her hair…) and they discuss matters occult. She talks of the use of ritual and incantation – he tells her “all these matters have grave risk, child, and you should only resort to them in the direst need. There is always a price to pay.” She also talks to him about the Pisces report into John Smith’s cult. Wu suggests that the group itself was relatively benign and seemed to have been turned to evil, perhaps unwittingly, by the sudden change in Smith a year ago following the death of his daughter and his journey into ‘the woods’. Wu confirms that, although he is no expert, the Severn Valley has had a dark reputation for hundreds of years and that its heavily wooded areas were particularly ill-omened. “There are many folk tales of people getting lost in the forests and emerging as changed and cursed….but almost all those woods have been uprooted centuries ago. But your friend Toby could tell you some tales of his predecessors and some of their adventures in that area in the 50s…” She also asks him about references in the Pisces report about ‘being with the faeries’ – Wu laughes uneasily and says this is a common euphemism used by colleagues to refer to people or issues best not talked about, or have been taken out of circulation. Haifa spends the rest of the afternoon doing more research. Many hours of hard study reveal little more than that the Severn Valley has very few wooded areas of any expanse these days. In fact one of the last remaining areas was the subject of widespread ecological protests nine years ago when the government sold a previously environmentally protected tract of wooded land to Severn Aerospace – the company’s main manufacturing plant is now located in about 10 acres of woodland near Temphill. She also looks into the recent murders in Brichester but finds little of note but comes across the name of Roland Thurman, a local journalist who also seems to be covering the protests at the revitalised nuclear plant owned by Cormed Industries. She calls him and arranges to meet in Brichester with the promise of some interesting stories.

Meanwhile Joe's researches reveals a phone number for Avery Gile's nursing home jin Derbyshire. A little bit of sweet talking and name dropping with the home manager gets the aged Mr Giles on the phone. He is very old and a little skeptical about Joe's claim to be researching his Antartica expedition. Joe asks him about the strange star shaped stone and Mr Giles says he only saw it once - it always seemed to be warm to the touch. He thinks it was cursed - like the whole trip was cursed. They talk a little about that illfated trip but it's obvious that it will need a visit in person to get any real insight.

As the afternoon draws on Joe and Haifa are in their rooms resting – in Joe’s case waiting for Toby to appear and pick up the documents (he has decided to fess up and give toby all the original documents (he is keen to keep copies of the journal to trade with Richard Hyder…) Suddenly he is aware of a silence in the room and Mr Cotton stands in the doorway, smiling blandly. Toby hovers nervously behind him. “Hello Joe. I was visiting a friend and thought I would drop in early for that chat. Mr Knight, why don’t you get Haifa…” While Toby fetches Haifa (“say nothing you can’t back up,” he hisses) Joe excuses himself into the ensuite toilet and despartely flushes the original documents down the pan. Momentarily flummoxed by a unflushable plastic ID card, he ends up putting it in his shoe. Returning to the room, he finds Mr Cotton sat on the only chair, examining his fingernails. As expected he probes Joe and Haifa about their actions during the take-down of John Smith’s cult and also brings up Frank O’Hara. Joe admits that they have met up and claims he was trying to lure him into capture. “really,” says Mr Cotton. “My sources thought it looked a little more cosy than that. In fact they got the impression you helped him escape.” Joe plays it cool, saying he had no way of knowing who the people casing the café worked and he was just taking precautions about his own safety. Mr Cotton doesn’t offer an opinion but suggests that if O’hara gets back in touch then arranging a meeting would be a good idea. He then takes up the issue of the safety deposit box with Haifa – was it empty whenh she got there, did she take anything from it. Haifa tells him it was empty when she looked in. Mr Cotton asks about the woman they 'rescued' from Severnford. He thinks she is the same woman who Lobster TV is quoting as a source on their stories of government conspiracy. Do they know where she is - Joe and Haifa say not. "She obviously saw important things, or things she thought were important. If you can find her, we would like to talk to her." Mr Cotton seems content and bids farewell, leaving Toby with them. Breathing a collective sigh of relief, they confer. While Joe ventures out to his hiding places to get Toby his copies, Haifa sets out to meet Thurman, the local journalist.

Seven pm finda Haifa in the Pizza Express branch of Brichester to meet Roland Thurman of the local paper. She suggests to him a connection between Severn Aerospace and Cormed and Thurman confirms that Richard Corman and Marjorie Rittingham, chief executive of SA, are occasionally seen at charity dinners in the area. For his part the journalist tells her a little more about the serial killings in the town – the faces of both women were so badly disfigured that the facial flesh was all but removed from the skull. Whatever the police are saying they are definitely connected. Most interestingly he confides in Haifa that one of the leaders of the anti-nuclear protesters of the revitalised Cormed facility disappeared about a month ago. SANE itself is keeping quiet about it and Thurman thinks he may have been involved in something more illegal than shouting slogans through a bullhorn. Thurman volunteers a photo the man in a crowd scene outside the nuclear plant – Haifa immediately recognises a heavily bearded Kenny Robson…. On the way back to the hospital, Haifa does a little shopping – some spades, torches, rope. There are cemeteries to be visited…. Meanwhile Toby has retrieved copies of the documents and the original ID card from Joe (he notes without comment that Joe has offered up more than he was prepared to admit too earlier) and also delivered a holdall with two handguns and some clips of ammunition).

The plan is to visit all four cemeteries, starting with the most recent attack. They park their car outside the picturesque village of Camside (haifa remembers it slightly from visiting her father there a couple of times) and reach the cemetery just after midnight. A few pieces of crime scene tape still flutter from the gates. A small cottage adjacent to the site looks like a caretaker’s residence – a light burns in one window They quickly find her father’s grave and her horror is confirmed by the neat hole in front of the headstone. No other grave looks like it has been disturbed. Joe is about to jump into the open grave to get a closer look when he hears a stealthy step in the darkness. Drawing his gun but keeping it hidden, he calls out ‘Who’s there?” A voice replies: “Who’s that there?” Joe replies that they are with the police investigation and an illuminated torch reveals a wiry man in his 50s brandishing a spade – he explains he is the caretaker. They allay his suspicions about the need to creep around in the middle of the night and agree to meet them at his cottage then they are done. A close examination of the grave reveals nothing but the fact that the hole is well dug, with spades. Talking to the caretaker a little later they discover he slept through the whole thing but did tell police he saw a white Transit van down the lane in the late evening. He also says a caretaker was attacked during the graverobbing at the Gypsy Hil cemetery three weeks ago. He grows more circumspect when questioned about strange goings-on in the Severn Valley more generally – “you’ll find people round here don’t waste a lot of time on business that don’t concern them. Them’s that chatter don’t know and them’s that know don’t say.” Haifa and Joe drive onto the ext crime scene, a closed municipal cemetery in the run-down area of Lower Brichester (Joe remembers this is the area where the adult bookstore American Books was/is located). The plain council graveyard is surrounded by tall fences. Haifa notices a 24 hour supermarket across the road – the Turkish guys inside tell them that although no policeman has bothered to ask, they saw a white transit van parked outside the fences on the night of the crime. Searching the graveyard they eventually find the crime scene – four adjacent graves which have been robbed. They have been apparently chosen at random (they are right next to a sidegate) – all the dead people died within about 20 years of each other in the mid 19th century. Nothing seems to obviously connect them. Their third graveyard of the night is in the affluent Gypsy Hill area of Brichester. Again there seems to be a caretakers cottage but they leave it and find the small Jewish area of the graveyard. It has been heavily desecrated with most of the two dozen of so headstones damaged in some way. Only one grave has actually been plundered though – that of local councillor Martin Helverson who died six years ago. As dawn breaks they head to Sharpness for what they believe to be the very first crime – about nine weeks ago. On the outskirts of the small town – set on the Severn estuary and a little down at heel - they find the church and graveyard and eventually find the grave. It seems that no body was removed or damage done and that relatively shallow digging has subsequently repaired by the authorities. The grave is located in the most secluded part of the graveyard.

Driving back to the hospital, they ponder what they have learned – Haifa offers that the grave robber or robbers started with cautious and aborted practice, become more ambitious but apparently generalised in targets, and then more specific in terms of particular graves. There may be other patterns to ponder…and so to bed.

After a late rising, the pair call and arrange a meeting with DCI Collins, leading the investigation into the grave robbing. Their Pisces passes seem to do the trick in terms of convincing his office they have a right to review progress – Collins seems unenthusiastic, though that appears to be his natural state. Collins runs over the inquiry so far, adding nothing but then offers that there was another apparent piece of vandalism in a graveyard in Brichester about four months ago – it was minor and wasn’t reported at the time. There seemed to have been some digging but very shallow and no real damage was done – in fact they don’t really know when it happened, it may have gone unnoticed for a week or more. Collins says he will get in touch with developments but the investigation seems to be going nowhere (he shows no interest in the suggestion that ethnic and religious minorities seem to have been highly targeted…) They pay a brief visit to the Brichester cemetery attacked four months ago and indeed find a grave where the soil has been disturbed and then replaced. The grave is next to a wall and secluded. They also visit the caretaker of the Gypsy Hill cemetery who tells them what he told the police – some kind of sound woke him up and when he went to investigate he saw a man digging in the jewish area of the cemetery. His only physical description was the man appeared to have a closely shaved head. He was then hit on the back of the head and knocked unconscious. He is pretty sure that none of the headstones were damaged at that point (“Sounds like they came to do a job and only had their bit of fun afterwards” muses Joe.)

On their way to see the wife of Martin Helverson, Joe’s phone rings. Collins tells him there has been another graverobbing – this time at the same Sharpness cemetery they visited last night. He says he will see them there. Arriving at the cemetery for the second time in 12 hours, they see Collins is already there with a group of coppers standing round, taking photographs and smoking cigarettes. They see the headstone by the open grave says Virginia Felder, who died four years ago aged 67. There are two sets of footprints clearly visible in the mud. They notice that the grave is neither secluded or near the entrance – it has been chosen. Joe and Haifa also both realise that the grave must already have been robbed when they visited last night – the perpetrators may even have still been there…

Collins tells them that the dead woman has a son living nearby and a brother who lives in Brichester. They agree to visit both, son first… On the way out Joe draws the police’s attention to some tyre tracks on the muddy verge outside the graveyard. A few minutes later, their cars pulls up outside a small two storey house nestled amongst trees and facing onto the sluggish river. A small boat is tied to a crude dock. Smoke rises from the house’s chimney. At Collins’ knock a man comes to the door – dressed untidily, he has the battered face and small of a heavy drinker. He blinks slowly and invites them in. The group sit in a small sitting room – Michael Felder picks up a glass of what looks like scotch as Collins breaks the news. A tearful Felder tells them he lives along in the house and has done since his mother died. He works at the hospital in Brichester as a pharmacist (he says he is off today with a cold) - his uncle was a surgeon at the same hospital before he retired) “I go to see her grave every week – what am I going to do now?” He drains his glass. They leave the poor man and drive into Brichester to see the uncle. He is a much more impressive man, a sturdy 75 year old who is suitably horrified about the fate of his sister’s corpse. He doesn’t have any ideas about who would do it. Joe notices the two large display cases of antique surgical instruments – the uncle explains he is an amateur collector. Joe looks for any evidence of recent use amongst the more deadly looking instruments but can see nothing.

A little later, they visit the wife and sister of Martin Helverson – two little old Jewish ladies, still numb with shock Initial questions reveal no obvious enemies but a little prodding reveals that, as a local magistrate, he was involved in drug dealing case a year before he died which featured a couple neo-nazis. “I remember it because he was very upset by it – they were very aggressive people…” She can’t remember the details. Leaving the house, Haifa’s phone rings and as she hopes and fears, she hears her father’s voice. “Haifa, Haifa, I am hiding. Please come and get me.” Where are you?” “I don’t know – underground I think. I don’t know where I have been….” Haifa hears a crash done the line and someone shouting in what sounds like a foreign language. The line goes dead….

Lobster TV, xx March 2008 Long distance and grainy ‘paparrazi’ shot of Haifa in Brichester branch of Pizza Express “More on the mass poisoning of local people in Severnford in Gloucestershire – this mysterious woman is thought to be a government agent injured during a weapons test gone wrong near the afflicted village. We tracked her to a private hospital in nearby Brichester but hospital managers claim no woman fitting her description has been a patient.

....

"…Don’t you know that the second world war really ended on 5 January 1946?...Ask the old man, he was there in the snow…" Text from gene

....

Xxx March 2008, Brichester Chronicle

….the murders bear uncanny resemblance to four killings in Lower Brichester in the mid 90s, although in this case all the victims were middle aged men. In two cases, the men were convicted sex offenders and it was thought for some time that vigiliants were at work- the other victims were apparently blameless. Each victim’s face was badly disfigured, as have been the two women killed in the past five months. The case was never solved although the murders stopped in the summer of 1997. DSI George Ramsey, who led the case, took medical retirement soon after, apparently badly affected by the pressure. It is believed he still lives in the area.

Spoilers: to those we have sampled: Delta Green and Delta Green Countdown; Dead Reckonings (Dust to Dust); The Black Seal issue 3;

“Sits like a man, Smiles like a reptile, Loves her, he loves her, But just for a short while…”

Reprise: Haifa and Joe are in Brichester torn between investigating a series of graverobbings (and mysterious calls from someone claiming to be her deceased father) and gruesome killings of local women….Note: first session with new Nemesis rules in play…

The pair’s immediate task is to follow up the lead on the two neo nazi drug dealers that Martin Helverson sent down four years ago. They follow up on a tip from Toby Knight that the super at Brichester police station is a friendly and arrange an appointment. That afternoon they meet George Winslade and tell him about the lead –he suggests they go to Collins for the files if they want addresses and photos.

They also ask about Ramsey, the detective who was in charge of the serial killer case in the 90s and was pensioned off sick as a result. Winslade says he can furnish an address although Ramsey hasn’t been in touch with anyone from the station for many years, as far as he knows.

Armed with Winslade’s blessing, the pair talk to Collins about the possible lead on the drug dealers. He is not too enthusiastic but manages to dig out the information in relatively short time. The two men, Alan Webb and Donnie MacDougall, were released 18 months ago – Webb’s last known address is with his Dad, Sidney, a fisherman in Sharpness. His colleague is listed as staying at a rooming house in the same dilapidated town. Haifa and Joe take copies of mugshots. They were sentenced to fours years for making and distributing crystal meth – although they were not charged for it, neo-Nazi material was also found.

With addresses, and after a bit of shopping for first aid kits and rooms at the Brichester Premier Inn (“Ask your waiter about our succulent sausages…”), they drive out to Sharpness under cover of darkness. They locate Sideny Webb’s place – a knackered looking place amongst many on the wharf. Boats are tied up against it. MacDougall’s rented room is on the other of town. The choose Webb and park up with a view of the front door.

While they wait in the darkness for something to happen, Haifa powers up the laptop and does some work. She establishes that all the men killed in the 90s were either convicted or suspected sex offenders. She also finds some low classification internal police documents that show the second victim of the latest killings has now been identified as Collette Chambers, a local assistant bank manager. A man who had a shortlived relationship with her has come forward after a TV appeal showing some jewellery he recognised. He met her through a lonely hearts column in the paper but was warned off by a threatening man a few dates in who he presumed to be an ex boyfriend.

Before she can search some more, Joe sees a man matching Alan Webb’s photo emerge from the shack and hop into one of the boats. They watch the lights from the boat disappear into the darkness.

On a hunch, they decide to drive to Martin Felder’s house. Coming off the main road, they park up on the heavily wooded road to the house. Haifa stays in the car while Joe sneaks off to get a closer look for signs of bad-doings…of which there is very little evidence. There are a couple of lights on and Felder’s small boat is tied up on the jetty.

Meanwhile Haifa sits in the car…in the darkness. Suddenly The back windscreen crashes inwards. Peering into the back with a torch Haifa thinks she sees something scuttling under the drivers seat. And exits the car sharpish, leaving the keys behind. Hearing the crash, Joe hurries back to the car, keeping to the trees and out of the headlights. All is quiet.

Haifa can see a light approaching from the direction of the house and stumbling steps. Martin Felder soon hoves into view, clearly drunk and curious. He seems to accept Haifa’s explanation that she was coming to interview him (by herself in the middle of the night) when something disabled the car. They both peer in through the window and Haifa thinks she sees something about the size of rat under the front seat. Joe squats in the darkness and listens.

At her suggestion, Felder goes back to the house for something to board up the back window – he quickly drives back in a battered Fiat with sacking and ducttape. And shows even less surprise when Joe emerges from the woods, having found what looks like an abandoned animal cage (clearly whatever is in the car was put there…). Having taped up the back window to trap the intruder, they persuade Felder to lend them his car to tow their hire car. Only to realise that the keys are still in the car and the hand-brake is on. They successfully encourage Felder to go back to the house…

Joe steels himself and opens the door, reaching for the handbrake. Something latches onto his wrist with a cold and deathly grip and lurching back, they see that a gnarled and disembodied (literally) hand is now attached to Joe’s arm. Tightly.

After some flailing, Joe manages to skewer it with his knife and push it, now apparently lifeless, into the metal box. He then calls Toby Knight and uncharacteristically gets through – Knight’s advice is to bring whatever is in the car to a friendly professor at Brichester University. He gives them a mobile, which they call en route and Professor Jarlett reluctantly agrees to get out of bed and meet them at his office. They meet him in the university car park and hand over the trap. “Be careful,” says Joe. “We don’t know whether its really dead. We’ll be be back in touch tomorrow.” Exhausted bruised and bewildered, they return to their Premier Inn..

In the morning they check back in with Toby to arrange a meeting. Joe warns Toby that Lobster TV have filmed Haifa at a previous rendevous with a local journalist and he decides against a public meeting, instead coming to their Premier Inn room. (in the meantime Toby rings Ramsey’s number and speaks briefly to a tired sounding man who accepts Joe’s request to come round and see him). When Toby arrives, the pair see he has clearly started drinking heavily again….

They talk about previous Pisces operations in the Severn Valley. Knight says a lot of it was before his time – the biggest operation was the effective complete dismantling of a small village called Goatswood in 1968.”It was the only time when the whole of the section came together for a single action – some pretty nasty stuff was going on down there and the whole place was caught up in it. They brought in Gurhkas for the heavy lifting, in case Brits had a problem with shoot to kill. Complete success as far as I know – three dead and the rest under quarantine. The village was closed down.” They talk a little about Severn Aerospace and Toby confirms that a few years ago the company brought up a large portion of the land where Goatswood once stood – is is clearly suspicious of them.

They move onto the more recent raid on American Books in Lower Brichester and Knight is more circumspect, revealing only that a valuable asset was recovered and is still in their possession. Although they admit that they have seen Toby’s notes on the Hirta facility, Haifa and Joe hang back from directly questioning him about who ‘Wilbur’ is but they get the impression he is a source of valuable information for the organisation. But they do ask him who Crampton and Toby says he doesn’t know – it is only a name he has come across who is connected to Hirta.

They talk a little about Hyder, the NFI consultant who is pressing Joe for interesting books and documents. Joe believes he has some kind of wasting disease and that may be why he is after some kind of helpful information for a cure. He advises Joe to consult him before handing anything over to Hyder but he is not adverse to a bit of trading in principle and tells him he got the fragments of the Antarctica diary from Hyder (and would value more pages if he had them).

After parting from Toby they go and see Brian Curtis, the detective in charge of the most recent pair of murders in Brichester.

Curtis is a different breed from Collins, the rather useless copper in charge of the graverobbing investigation. He is efficient though clearly still in the early stages of accepting there is a multiple killer involved. Haiga gets the sense that there is a lot of information that hasn’t yet been processed.

He confirms that both victims were severely mutiliated around the face. He also says that the only possible connection is that both women had been referred by Brichester hospital for treatment for depression and suicidal feelings.

Curtis seems convinced that the killer is finding his victims through lonely hearts columns, despite the scanty evidence pointing in that direction. He doesn’t have much time for parallels with the killings of four men in the 90s (although by the by he does confirm that all the murdered men were either convicted or suspected sex offenders).

As the conversation continues, Curtis becomes more and more uncomfortable, particularly when discussing the wounds the women experienced. Finally he offers to show them the body of Collette Chambers (Haifa demurs and stays to read the files in more detail).

Down in the morgue Curtis shows Joe the deeply disturbing sight of a woman dead at least two days whose wounds still ooze blood. “We can’t explain it and we’re keeping it quiet – only our doctor and the professor up at the university has seen this.” Joe sees that the body is completely unmarked, with no signs of a struggle – but the flesh of the face is almost completely missing and seems to have been bitten or slashed away. He takes a blood sample and swabs under the fingernails.

He then goes to see the mysterious Ramsey…

Back upstairs Haifa calls the super’s office and requests the files of 90s killings. She also looks through the files on Chambers and Jenks. She notices from the medical records that Jenks was referred to her GP for counselling and Chambers was referred direct to a private therapy centre. Looking through cash point records, she picks up that Chambers and Jenks both used the same cash point on a regular basis - Jenks used it every Wednesday at just before 11am for two months before her death, taking out between £30-50. Chambers used it every other Tuesday just before 9am, for eight weeks out of 10 in the run up to her death.

Haifa guesses they are both attending some kind of appointment near the cashpoint, located in Lower Brichester. But a search on licensed counselling services shows there are none in the area. Then she checks back to the medical records – the address of the therapy centre that Chambers was referred is in Lower Brichester and a quick search shows it is only three minutes from the cash point in Tynes Lane. The centre is called Transformation…

Haifa gets a call from Winslade’s office – the 90s files are classified and won’t be released to her.

Joe finds Ramsey’s flat – the top floor of a faded semi-detached house on the outskirts of Mercy Hill. He presses the top flat bell and is buzzed in. Ramsey meets him in the downstairs hall – a very tired looking man in his mid 50s in a grubby looking grey cardigan and jumper. He brings Joe back up to the flat, overheated and claustrophobic, crowded with books and old newspapers. Ramsey sits vacantly, waiting for the questions.

They talk about the series of killings in the 90s. Ramsey confirms they were all either suspected or convicted sex offenders and all had been savagely mutilated in the face and left within site of Brichester Cathedral. “We got our break with the fourth perv – when his body was identified, one copper remembered seeing him recently with a known police informant and known nonce Michael Bruton. We put Bruton on surveillance and he seemed to be hanging round this sex shop called American Books – we thought he might be luring perverts there and killing them.

“It was then that these guys suddenly turned up from London – vice squad they said which was obvious bollocks. This guy Cannon was in charge – that wasn’t his real name of course – a good guy, whoever he worked for. He died a couple of years later, read it in the paper…

“They wanted in on any action – seemed to know stuff about this bookshop. Anyway before we could get really organised, surveillance spotted Bruton with a suspected target. We tooled up – Cannon and three of his guys and me and two of mine – and went in at the shop.

“It was a f**king mess – there was a room at the back and the guy was already dead, blood everywhere, no face. Then everything went wrong…” Joe presses him. “I don’t know…we were attacked, I was cut really badly. Cannon lost two guys. We killed Bruton but there was somebody else there. I don’t know….I woke up in hospital.” Joe presses a little more. “I assume I was stabbed but no I can’t remember seeing a knife, I can’t remember much…”

They talk a bit about the aftermath. Cannon closed down the investigation, took the case files, set down the raid as an entirely separate investigation into sex trafficking, whoever else was killed or arrested was never recorded. Ramsey shows no recognition of the name “Wilbur”.

Ramsey doesn’t know anything about the current spate of killings but agrees there are some similarities.

Joe gets up to leave: “Oh, one more thing. If Cannon wasn’t his real name, how did you know the newspaper report was about him?”

Ramsey points to a clipping pinned to the wall by his chair. Joe sees it is a small Daily Telegraph obituary for a Commander Kenneth Codrington, an SAS officer killed in a training accident seven years ago according to the date on the paper. There is a brief resume of his career to date and the fact that he is survived by his wife, janice. The photo is a perfect likeness for Mr Cotton, albeit 10-15 years younger.

“You can have that,” says Ramsey. “But bring it back – he was a great guy. Saved my life, what’s left of it.”

Just after midnight, Joe and Haifa leave the Premier Inn and drive through the dilapidated streets of Lower Brichester. There are few people about on a rainy and depressing night.

After a few minutes they find the therapy centre, in a small row of shops, a newsagent on one side, a solicitor on the other – 14 Tynes Lane. Each of the frontages are open sub basements, accessed by a short set of steps. Although there is no obvious signage for the centre, they can see if was once a shop –the big front window is covered by a thick white blind.

They investigate the back and find a set of garages and alleyways – the centre has a firedoor and a small window. Joe jemmies the window without any trouble and they both drop inside. Torches on they find themselves in what looks like a therapy room, two chairs, a potplant, a cupboard and some tasteful prints on the walls. While Haifa keeps watch, Joe picks the lock on the cupboard and piles out an armful of what prove to be patient files. None of the dead women are amongst the 30 or so files – which seem to be fairly routine notes, all signed Dr W Bobbitt. Pausing to snap pictures of the wall prints, the pair venture out into a small corridor, ignoring a door to what is presumably the front office and creeping up the stairs.

The upper storey is one big room chairs and yoga mats stacked in the corners and two large cupboards covering one wall. A reversible whiteboard leans against another wall.

Fifteen minutes of attempted lockpicking gets them nowhere on one cupboard and they resort to jemmies. The cupboard contains a flatscreen TV, a DVD player and a stack of what look like homemade DVDs. Haifa notices the disks are each marked with two letters. And indeed six each have the initials of Elizabeth Jenks and Collette Chambers. They pocket these and one each of the other disks marked with different initials.

Meanwhile Haifa inspects the whiteboard and discovers some kind of prayer written in marker pen on the reverse. It says: “Beyond a gulf in the subterranean night a passage leads beyond the wall where lies Y'golonac to be served by the tattered eyeless figures. Long has he slept beyond the wall, and those which crawl over the bricks scuttle across his body never knowing it to be Y'golonac…”…

Her thoughts about this strange phrase are interrupted by Joe abandoning the jemmy in favour of a noisy fullout assault on the second cupboard. Finally wrenching one door off its hinges, Joe finds stacks of pornography – a cursory examination shows it seems to be mostly of the very worst kind and dating from the 70s and 80s.

They hear an approaching siren and without any hope of concealing their visit from the owners, they bag up the DVD and throw around a selection of the pornography in an attempt to suggest an ordinary burglary. As they about to leave the room, Haifa picks up an old paper bag that was inside one of the magazines – it has a stamp reading “American Books: Bought and Sold – 14 Tynes Lane”….

…exiting to their car unmolested by any police, Joe’s phone rings. It is Brian Curtis – “Come to the hospital, there’s been another attack and this one’s still alive!”

Ten minutes later the pair arrive at Brichester’s main hospital, a sprawling 60s experiment in concrete. The police activity quickly leads them to a small private ward crowded with medics and police. Still sensitive from the events of January, Haifa hangs back from the bed but Joe approaches and sees the patient around which everyone is hovering. The heavily sedated man in the bad ids a study in savagery – the bottom half of his face seems to be been ripped exposing the bone and teeth below, his jaw obviously broken. Medics are vainly trying to stem the heavy flow of blood. Joe cannot see any other obvious wounds.

Curtis says: “His name’s Philip Glaive, runs a shop called Fortune Books in the town. A member of the public brought him in 30 minutes ago – he almost crashed his car into them and when they saw the state of him, they drove him here. We’re towing his car to the station.”

Joe immediately distrusts the police’s ability (and perhaps willingness) to protect what is both a victim and witness. He withdraws to leave a message for Toby to see if he can get some help. While he’s making the call, Curtis gets his own call and reports that checks show that Glaive was questioned four months ago about the disappearance of a woman called Sophie Meakins, an occasional prostitute. He was apparently seen with her in a local pub the week she disappeared.

Meanwhile Haifa risks a look at one of the DVDs. The briefest of views shows what she feared – a homemade video apparently filmed in the group therapy room at Transformation on 16 October, about six weeks before Jenks was murdered. It shows Jenks having sex with six men in turn. It appears consensual but there is something about the functional coldness of it that nauseates Haifa. Whoever is filming the scene is not visible.

Putting aside her laptop, Haifa heads over to the police station to make sure that no evidence tampering takes place. She manages to get a look at the car and guesses Glaive wasn’t attacked in it – there’s plenty of blood but not enough - and he can’t have been in the car very long with that kind of wound without going into shock. She overhears one of the coppers say that their records have him registered for a different vehicle – he seems to have borrowed this one…

Back at the hospital, Curtis and Joe discuss the patient. Curtis points out that questioning is going to be difficult – the doctors say his tongue is missing. And the massive facial would keeps on bleeding.

Just then, Glaive stirs and motions for a pencil. Weakly but with his eyes firmly on Joe, he writes: “The feeding hand is always hungry…”. And dies.

Email: Professor Jarrett to Joe and Haifa, 6 March

Hello, I have examined your object in some detail. It has stayed inactive you will be glad to know.

The best I can say is "powdered eggs". You are familiar with the concept? You take eggs, you dehydrate them, then you hydarate them. What you have is not eggs as such but a sort of poor copy of them.

And so with your object. I think it was originally human but it looks like it has been reconstituted - the skin is almost all missing or hopelessly deformed and the sinew is very course.

There doesnt seem to be any chemical involvement. I have taken a DNA sample for what it is worth although I suspect it is damaged.

Please let TK know the results such as they are. I have no explanation for its awfully unexpected liveliness.

Jarrett

Brichester Chronicle, 5 March

The spate of cemetary vandalism plaguing the local area has hit new lows with the robbing of a grave in Sharpness last night.

The grave of Mrs Virginia Felder was damaged badly during the early hours of yesterday morning in what is one of the worst attacks so far.

Mrs Felder died in a boating accident three years ago and her son is reportedly inconsolible with grief.

....In other news a burnt out boat has been recovered drifting in the estuary just off Sharpness. Police are trying to identify the craft and are appealing for witnesses.

CHAPTER 12

spoilers; delta green and delta green countdown; Goatswood and other less pleasant places; Black Seal 2 and 3; Dead Reckonings (Dust to dust)....

"The only certain thing that is left about me There's no part of my body that has not been used And in these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything For $200 anyone can conceive a god on video"

Reprise: Haifa and Joe have been drawn into a mysterious government organisation called Pisces and are currently torn between investigating a series of grave robbings (including Haifa's own father) and a series of savage murders in Brichester....

Haifa and Joe decide to call it a night – it has been a long day and its already 3.30. Curtis says he has men out at the scene of Glaive’s accident and also at his bookshop – they are also trying to track down the owner of the car. Glaive’s body, which is still bleeding heavily after death, is being removed to the police morgue forthwith. The two repair to the Premier Inn for the night.

They get up at 9am; Joe finds a text from Curtis to the effect that they are searching Fortune Books but it doesn’t look like Glaive was attacked there. After leaving a voicemail for Toby Knight keeping him up to date with their work and asking for a stakeout on the homes of suspected graverobbers Webb and Mcdougall, Joe heads out to see for himself while Haifa settle in for some research.

Over the next few hours she finds out some pretty interesting things. Her access to Pisces’ database and its wide if fractured view of official information shows that Glaive was diagnosed as HIV+ two years ago. While his patient record shows regular appointments at the hospital for a while, these stopped about 12 months ago. She also finds details of the police record. He was questioned twice – the record is signed Hayes – because he was seen in a pub in Mercy Hill called the Campbell Arms with Sophie Meakins, in the week before she disappeared. However, there was no other evidence to link him to her so he was not charged.

Haifa also does some work on the doctor, W Bobbitt mentioned in the case files they looked at in Transformation – she establishes his name is William (not Wilbur as she thought…) and that he does seem to be a qualified psychotherapist. However Transformation is not mentioned and does not seem to be an official therapy service. She does get a home address, though, in a gated community in the north of the city.

Meanwhile Joe finds Fortune Books, a small antiquarian bookshop in a maze of small shops called The Alleys. Talking this way past the policeman on the door, he finds Curtis and two colleagues upstairs looking through an office and stockroom. Curtis tells him they have found nothing so far (but that they have found the car’s owner reported it stolen five months – someone has been sent to take a statement from him).

Joe leafs through some papers but doesn’t find anything of interest and drifts through to the stockroom where a lone copper is rather hopelessly sorting through piles of books. Joe notices a strange photo in a frame – it appears to be a reproduction of an old painting showing a headless robed figure offering his hand to a man who bends to kiss it [owners of Malleus Monstrorum, turn to page 239]. Intrigued Joe takes a photo of it and when he picks it up to secret it about his person realises it is bulkier than it should be and the back is loose. He decides to explore it later. Talking to Curtis again, he is told they have failed to get past the log in on his computer (Joe tries ‘the feeding hand’ and ‘Y’Golonac’ as passwords to no avail). He says he’d be interested when they their experts to break it open.

Back at the Premier Inn, Joe and Haifa gather to examine the photo frame. They find a folded piece of paper and a polaroid photo, both wrapped in plastic. The photo is a close up of a car window, probably taken outside and at night with little artificial light. A woman’s face can be seen, her eyes open and her expression unreadable. There is something else in the car, something indistinct but with an awful inhuman bulkiness.

Turning quickly to the paper they see it is a computer printed note, unsigned by addressed to Curtis. “The women all died in Mercy Hill Park –there will be more. But move carefully – one of your own coppers is involved.” Some pondering ensues – Haifa and Joe’s theory is that the women are somehow being sacrificed, after being prepared in some way by sexual ritual - either to Bobbitt in some kind of other form, or to something that Bobbitt has summoned. Either way they are convinced Bobbitt is dangerous and they need some help to bring him down….they make an appointment to see Winslade, the super at the police station at 6pm that night.

While they wait Haifa calls Wu at the British Museum and emails him the picture of the painting. Wu says it is 16th century Turkish and seems to be a folk rendering of Y’Golanac. When Haifa tells him about Glaive’s dying words, WU grows more serious and tells her this seems to be linked to the Pisces operation against American Books in the 90s and they should definitely tell Toby what is happening. Joe leaves a voicemail for Toby and also for Professor Jarrett, following up on the samples he took from the corpse of Collette Chambers.

On the way to the police station, Joe and Haifa decide that their hotel room is not secure and stash any gear they don’t immediately need in the train station left luggage box Knight gave they a combination for.

Just before they see Winslade, the pair ask to see the car that Glaive was found in – it is indeed a close match to the car in the photo. They also learn that Curtis’ team have found mud, leaves and human hair in the boot of the car which they are confident will match at least one of the murdered women. Curtis is working on the theory that Glaive is the killer and suffered some kind of car accident….

Sitting down with Winslade, Joe sets out the case against Bobbitt. He shows him a clip of the sex video they found which although not showing Bobbitt is clearly filmed in Transformation (Joe doesn’t tell Winslade about their ransacking of the centre and Winslade doesn’t ask). He also shows them the medical records and cash point data which strongly suggests the two women were patients of Bobbitt. They also show him the note Joe found in Glaive’s flat.

Joe says they need a warrant to either arrest Bobbitt or search his home and therapy centre.

Winslade grows grimmer as the meeting continues and says that in his experience – and given the note’s warning – it would be best to keep this within as tight a circle as possible. He also asks them if they are armed, and on getting an affirmative unlocks a cupboard and arms himself with a heavy handgun. He proposes that they drive to Bobbitt’s home and, when he isn’t there, search it. He’ll meet them there.

Half an hour later Joe and Haifa pull up outside the housing development where Bobbitt lives. Curtis is already there with a burly associate, both in plainsclothes. He tells them that he has called the apartment and got no answer and the security guard has told him that Bobbitt’s car is not there. He has also obtained a passkey. He tells everyone to be very careful. “Do you think Bobbitt is dangerous?” asks Joe. “Oh, I know that he is very dangerous…”

A few minutes they ring the apartment doorbell and getting no answer, the man that Winslade call Collins opens the door. They come into a tastefully design lounge and kitchen area, with a door to the right and a small corridor ahead. Sunlight streams in from a large window on the left. Collins heads for the door on the right, while Joe follows Winslade into the corridor. Haifa searches the room. Winslade has found two doors, one a bathroom and one locked. A couple of minutes of lockpicking from Joe is a success. The door swings inwards into a small room, painted entirely in black. If it has a window it has been painted over. The dim light from the corridor shows the only contents is a large black cushion in the middle of the room. Reaching where a light switch should be, he finds only a gouged out hole in the wall. Neither Winslade or Joe show any intention of entering – there is a disturbing vacancy about the space. On a logical level, Joe can see the parameters of the room, see the paint strokes (and the heavy gouges that mark the walls) – but he is also fearful of what would happen if he stepped inside and the door shut behind him.

Meanwhile back in the main room, Haifa’ search has uncovered a photograph on the mantelpiece. It shows a hugely obese man in his 40s, apparently naked though it only shows him from the navel up. He has hi arm round a much smaller man who, with a shudder, Haifa recognises as Colin Hammond. Both men are smiling happily in the flash of the camera.

Winslade calls for Collins to find a torch and suddenly everyone remembers they haven’t heard from the policeman for some minutes. Coming back into the main room, they see the other door (presumably to a bedroom) is shut – no-one can remember Collins shutting it after him.

Winslade and Joe move quickly to the door, guns drawn, and Joe pushes it open. It is indeed a bedroom. Joe pushes the door all the way open to flush out hidden assailants and rears back as a large dark-haired man appears, swinging an axe. Joe stumbles but the axe whistles harmlessly over his head. Winslade’s gun goes off with no apparent result as Joe again tries to back off out of range out of the axe. Again the assailant misses although winslade manages to punch him in the chest as they struggle in the doorway. Suddenly as Joe and Winslade step back, the man does the same and slams the door.

Catching their breath for a couple of second, the pair shoot the hinges off the door and simulatenously kick it in. As the door collapses there is crash inside the room and the bed erupts in flames. The man is in one corner with another petrol bomb, poised to throw it at the doorway. They both fire, hitting the man twice in the torso – he staggers and drops the Molotov cocktail at his feet, that section of the bedroom immediately catching light. Now on fire, the man runs at the door, still swinging the axe but Joe fells him with another bullet.

Meanwhile Haifa has found an extinguisher in the corridor and starts trying to put out the fire. Winslade drags the body of Collins out from under the bed – it looks like he has been garrotted. As Haifa continues to spray foam, Joe rifles through the cupboards trying to find the thing the man was so suicidally anxious to destroy. Almost immediately he finds a plastic folder containing about half a dozen pages of crumbling manuscript, with writing in a foreign language.

He stashes it, only to see Winslade pick up a piece of burning wood and rush out into the corridor. Following him, perplexed, Joe sees him kick down the door of the nextdoor apartment and start setting light to the carpet. The policeman shouts: “This is going to look like random arson rather than one flat being targeted – we’ve only got a few minutes so get what you need to get out of Bobbitt’s place…”

Back inside Haifa has put out most of the fire and they both go and have another look at the black room. Haifa’s reaction is even stronger than Joe’s – there is a claustrophobic evil about it. They find some still burning fabric and toss it into the room. As the cushion burns and sets light to the wooden floor, the atmosphere begins to lighten. After a few seconds, the heavy blinds blocking the window begin to burn and daylight seeps into the room. Haifa thinks that whatever power the room held has been destroyed.

They hear sirens below the window and help Winslade drag Collins and the dead assailant into the corridor just as firefighters appear. Joe pauses to photgraph the dead man’s face before Winslade’s urges them to go. “I’ll sort out this mess and we can talk later.”

On their way out Joe thinks to ask the security guard on the front gate if they have a photo of Bobbitt – indeed they do and it matches the fat man in the photo that Haifa found. They also give a description of the attacker and the guard says Bobbitt doesn’t have many visitors but he thinks maybe that guy was around quite a bit.

Singed, tired and a little confused, the pair drive back into the centre of Brichester. Cruising past Transformation at about 9.30pm they see that all the lights are off. How the hell are they going to find Bobbitt now?

Then Joe’s phone rings – it’s Winslade. “You’re not going to believe this but Bobbitt’s just walked into the station. He says his home’s been firebombed and his place of business has been burgularised. And he says somebody matching your description is to blame…”

To: all From: Uncle

Lobster TV has recently been airing some material which, while inaccurate of course, is suggestive enough to be inconvenient. It is possible that they are being fed information about incidents in the Severn Valley.

All friendlies should be treated as potential leaks so implement extra caution. Reasonable suspicions should be communicated up the chain of command immediately – failure to do so will be treated seriously

Brichester Chronicle 5 March

Search parties were on the river Severn last night after the burned out boat discovered yesterday was identified as belonging to a local fisherman who remains missing.

Alan Webb, 29, went out alone on the boat the previous night, his father Sidney Webb has told police, and has not been heard from since.

Police believe a kerosene lamp on the boat may have shattered, causing the fire.

The Guardian 4 March

The first British archaeological expedition to the Antarctic for more than 30 years will set off in July – led by the great grandson of one of the most famous tragic explorers of the 20th century.

The privately funded team will be led by Gavin Starkweather, the descendent of Morris Starkweather, who died during the disastrous Moore-Starkweather expedition to the Falken Mountains in 1934

Mr Starkweather, a former navy officer, told reporters: “It is a lie that all parts of the world are known and the age of exploration is dead. There are huge areas of the Antarctic that are effectively uncharted and the mystery only grows as global warming uncovers new land mass.”

The latest chapter in my campaign...

Spoilers; delta green and delta green countdown; Goatswood and other less pleasant places; Black Seal 2 and 3; Dead Reckonings (Dust to dust)....

Reprise Joe and Haifa are investigating a series of brutal murders in Brichester (and grave robbings near by) and are closing in on a Dr William Bobbitt, a sinister therapist. They have reason to believe he is involved in a cult connected to something called Y’Golonac…

Haifa and Joe get a call from Winslade that Bobbitt has turned up the police station to complain about numeous attacks on his property (his therapy centre having been broken into and his apartment attacked by arsonists)….

They turn the car round and speed to the police station in Lower Birchester. Enroute, Joe calls his Pisces number and gets through (unsually) to an unidentified man who agrees to supply a car tracker device, for delivery to the station in the next couple of hours. He also calls Toby and again gets through – Knight says he is tied up on urgent security matters but that he should trust Winslade to proceed with care and caution. He agrees with Joe that it would be safer to let Winslade handle the face to face interview, with Joe and Haifa feeding questions as appropriate.

Toby says he has got Winslade to put one of his men on the suspected graverobbers in Sharpness…

Toby also asks after Professor Jarrett – he has been unable to contact him and asks Joe to try and track him down. Joe’s call to Jarrett goes through to voicemail.

Meanwhile Haifa uses her laptop to see if she can find anything more about Bobbitt – there is very little on the system except to suggest that he used to live in London and moved to Brichester a few years ago.

Arriving at the station Joe heads off to find Winslade while Haifa decides to send a scan of the document they recovered from Bobbitt’s apartment to Wu. All she knows is that it is in ancient Latin and refers to something or someone or someplace called Glakki.

She calls Wu who tells her the book is probably extremely dangerous – she should scan it, email it through and then call again. She does so and Wu calls her after a couple of minutes. “Haifa, you were right to send me that book. Do not read it, do not even look at it. It’s very dangerous, even to me. And whoever owns it is very dangerous as well. I have put it under quarantine with the Section’s protection”. Haifa takes the document to the left luggage locker they have at the raiway station and returns to the police station.

Meanwhile Joe has been talking to Winslade. The DSI tells him that Bobbitt arrived an hour ago to make the complaint. Winslade thinks he is attempting to get a better look at the opposition.

After an initial interview Winslade decided to formally arrest him so they could do further questioning, with help from Curtis, “in a secure setting, which is being prepared now.” They will see what comes out from that and make a decision about a charge “but I think it will get settled either way without recourse to solicitors…”

Haifa joins them and Winslade brings them up to speed with developments. He says that initial tests on hair samples taken from the car that Glaive was driving match Collette Chambers. This suggests that it was used to dispose of the body.

He also says that Jarrett is in the police station, examining Glaive’s corpse and initial tests have shown that his wounds are still bleeding post-mortem, although removing the flesh around the wound seems to stop the flow. He says although Glaive’s NHS records show he was diagnosed two years as HIV+, they is no trace of the virus in his blood. Haifa and Joe speculate that there is some form of sacrifice going on in return for physical regeneration.

Winslade says that examination of Glaive’s wallet has found a till receipt for the early evening of the night he died. They have traced it to the Campbell Arms, the pub in Mercy Hill where he was seen with one of the missing women months ago. The pub is also close to the park where Glaive’s note suggested that murders were taking place. Winslade has dispatched some men to question the landlord.

Joe also asks about Hayes, the police officer who questioned Glaive ve the disappearance of one of the women. Joe is suspicious that he may be the corrupt officer who Glaive hinted at in his note. Winslade puts in a check call to see where Hayes currently is.

Winslade’s phone rings – the interview is ready to begin. He walks them down into the basement of the station and through two locked doors. A small suite of cells has apparently been cleared. A small reception area has been set up with a TV monitor, showing CCTV images of one of the cells. Inside Bobbitt sits relaxed, cuffed to a small table facing two empty chairs. He glances up at the camera and gives a small wave, then goes back to cleaning his fingernails.

In the reception room, Curtis is waiting for them with three policemen in full riot gear including heavy face guards. They carry shotguns and tazers. Winslade briefs them: “The fat man is a dangerous customer – we need to be alert for anything unusual in his actions and be prepared to use immediate and deadly force.”

Winslade and Curtis enter and the cops lock the door behind them, taking up positions in case of trouble.

Haifa and Joe take their places by the monitor, slipping on earphones and microphones which enable them to listen and input questions to Winslade’s earpiece.

The interview begins.

They start with some basic talk about Bobbitt who confirms that he is a qualified therapist who moved to Brichester in 2004 and has been operating out of Transformation since 2006. He has both private and NHS-transferred patients. He says at any one time he has about 20 patients, visiting him once a week.

The interview begins routinely as Bobbitt tells them of the burgulary of the centre and the arson attack on his apartment.

Her tells them a little about himself – that he moved from Brichester to London a few years ago and started up his therapy business. He is a qualified therapist and works five mornings a week, working with about 18 regular patients.

He tells them that his office at Transformation was broken into the night before and all his patient records were stolen (Joe and Haifa of course looked at the files but did not steal them). “Unfortunately my only other copies were in my flat and were destroyed in the fire.”

Winslade reminds him that he has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of two women, both widely reported in the local press. Does he have anything to share.

He tells them he is in fear of his life (though he looks far from afraid) and has heard that Phillip Glaive is dead and suspected of involvement in the murder. “I can confirm Glaive was a patient of mine. A most disturbed one, I’m afraid. I did everything I could to help him. Although I haven’t seen him for some weeks.

“In fact I was so worried about his obsessions with revenge on women (he told me he was HIV+) that I actually went as far as calling the police two months ago, your very own murder squad. Sadly no-one called me back but I’m sure if you checked your records they will be proof of the call. Perhaps if someone had called back this tragedy would have been avoided.” Winslade and Curtis both looked shocked.

He tells them Glaive was a patient of his for some months. “It looks to me that Glaive killed those woman in association with the man your police found in my apartment. Maybe the man killed Glaive in an argument and then was trying to cover his tracks by destroying my records. Because it is a terrible shame but both sets of records are gone – stolen from the centre and burned in my apartment.”

They talk about the “arson attack” on Bobbitt’s apartment. The fat man sticks to his theory that Glaive’s accomplice did it to try and cover up evidence in the patient files. “But I guess he’s dead now so that’s difficult to prove.”

Winslade asks him about the room with the blacked out windows. “Ah, my meditation space. Very precious to me. I find it a transporting experience to be in there with the door shut. In total darkness I could be anywhere. Tell me detective superintendent, did you try it? Did you go in and shut the door?” Winslade confirms that he didn’t.

He is shown a photograph of the dead arsonist and professes not to know him.

The policemen ask Bobbitt about the two dead women. He looks at the photos. “I don’t know the names. Don’t think I know the faces.” They show him the video of the women having sex in the upstairs room of Transformation. Bobbitt shrugs. “I still don’t know the faces. And what people do upstairs is nothing to do with me. I just rent the office downstairs from an agency. You can check if you like.”

The cops express disbelief but take a break to discuss with Haifa and Joe. The view is that he must be lying about not knowing the women - Haifa puts in a call to the hospital to see if they can find proof that either of the women did actually start therapy with Bobbitt.

Haifa suddenly claps her forehead and puts in another request – are there other women who have been referred to Bobbitt who are currently patients, and therefore may be in danger. They promise to call back. Winslade also gets a call fro upstairs – Hayes is out on business following up leads.

The two cops go back into the room and are locked in again. Bobbitt says: “Now I come to think about it a little more, I do recognise those women – I think they are two of my former patients but they used different names.” He shrugs. “What I do know is that the treatment was very successful. They started with strong suicidal impulses and left with a new purpose in life.”

Urged through the earpiece by Joe, Winslade bangs the table. “Do you really call engaging in emotionless group sex cured, Bobbitt? What kind of new purpose is that?”

Bobbitt responds calmly: “Your morality isn’t really relevant here, detective superintendent. Those women made huge progress. With my help they came to realise an entirely new attitude to their lives – what they were put her for, if you will. They were fulfilled.”

“Anyway as I say, both of these women stopped coming before you tell me they died”

Haifa notices that Curtis is taking almost no part in the interview and is looking distinctly queasy. Joe gets a call from upstairs that a package has arrived. He slips away and fits the tracker device to Bobbitt’s car, a 1970s Mercedes coupe in mint condition.

Meanwhile the interview continues for a little longer. While Curtis begins to look iller and iller (Winslade shows no sign of noticing), Bobbitt continues to answer questions. No he didn’t connect his patients with the dead women (“I am interested in their minds, not their faces”), no he doesn’t know how the women might have met Glaive (“but session times changed, they may have met in the waiting room”), no he doesn’t know what may or may not have gone on upstairs (“Call the agency, ask them”), no, he doesn’t recognise any of the men in the film (“the quality is rather poor though”).

Suddenly Winslade reaches into his jacket and pulls out a sheet of paper and puts it on the table. He tells Bobbitt to look at it. Bobbitt begins to read and the screen goes blank.

Haifa alerts the riotpolice who go to yank open the door only for Winslade to shout for them to keep out. Joe returns from his sortie and pulls open the observation hatch. He can see Bobbitt slumped back in this chair. Curtis lies on the floor, throwing up. He can hear faint sounds of a conversation and Winslade appears to be talking to Bobbitt’s apparently unconscious form.

Just as suddenly, Bobbitt comes to. Winslade staggers up from the table and unlocks the door. The guards haul Curtis out, vomit covering his shirt. Winslade looks pale but unharmed, and strangely calm. “Get him out of here. Release him. No charge. Get him out.”

Winslade goes to exit but Joe stops him. “What happened? Who were you talking to?”

Winslade looks at him. “Later. When Bobbitt is out of here.” Joe presses him.

“There was something speaking through Bobbitt. It knew me, it asked me how Ramsey was. My god, I think it was the thing we found in the bookshop! I don’t know, I feel confused right now. Get him out of here and then we can talk. I’m going to my office to look for something.”

Meanwhile Haifa takes Curtis to the sickroom and administers some medicinal aid. He tells here that he felt increasingly sick as the interview went on and felt a wave of malice sweep over him as Bobbitt read what Winslade had given him. “It seemed to smother me. All I heard was something whispering to Winslade. I heard the boss say how tired he felt. Before I passed out I thought I heard something whisper about being ‘buried behind glass’.”

While he waits for Bobbitt to be processed, Joe decides to find Jarrett. Downstairs in the mortuary, Joe finds an attendant playing Suduko listlessly. He asks about Jarrett. “Yeah the prof was here earlier examining one of the bodies. He had someone in there with him too which is against the rules without signing them in. I heard them talking. Anyway I think he must have left now.”

Curious, Joe asks to see Glaive’s body himself. It is immediately obvious something is wrong. The body is badly damaged, in a much worse state than when he last saw it in the hospital. The face has been badly battered, the jaw hanging off. Having a look round the room, Joe finds a damaged chair and surmises it was used to attack the corpse. Upstairs he checks with the front desk but Jarrett has either not left the building or left it without signing out.

Haifa and Joe meet up and begin to get a bad feeling. They rush up to see Winslade. His office door is locked. When they knock Winslade calls from inside “Come back later, I’m looking for something.”

Haifa tries to be her most persuasive but she just hears a weak sigh. “I’m sorry dear but it’s too late.”

Joe smashes down the door and rushes in, immediately seeing Winslade slumped behind his desk covered in blood. He holds a large knife in one hand and what looks a lot like his kidneys in the other. He is still breathing and his eyelids flutter. Haifa tries vainly to stop the bleeding but it is clear he is unsavable. Joe leans in: “What happened man. What else did he tell you? Who was it?”

“It was Wilbur. He said he was bored with his toys…” And Winslade dies.

As Haifa cradles the dead man, Joe scoops up the folder on the desk in front of him. The room suddenly fills with shouting police, an alarm goes off somewhere down the corridor. In the chaos they stumble from the room and find Curtis outside in the corridor.

Joe grabs Curtis by the collar: “This is Bobbitt’s work – I’ve got a tracker on his car. You coming?”

Five minutes later Curtis has found a car and shotguns and they are speeding through Brichester, Joe concentrating on the beeping red light on his PDA.

In the car Haifa looks at the folder that Winslade had on his desk. Along with the case notes and photos, she finds a photocopied sheet of Latin which looks a lot like the pages she found in Bobbitt’s flat. She is careful not to read it.

She calls Wu and goes over some of the details of the case. “It sounds to me, child, like your policeman took a rather large risk which failed to pay off. This doctor may be dangerous but you might be wrong in assuming he can transform somehow. He may well be a conduit but if he was going to manifest, why didn’t he in the cell?” She mentions the visit to Ramsey the day before, before ringing off.

Curtis half turns in the driving seat. “Ramsey? He’s completely mad you know. Has been since the nonce-killing case years ago. You know how I know? Got a call from HR a year back. They’d been contacted by the council. Seems Ramsey had been sending them letter after letter, all complaining about his neighbour. Saying he was kept awake all night, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think straight because of the shouting and banging from this neighbour. Anyway the council looked into – turns out not only was the other flat empty but Ramsey owned it himself. Nutcase.”

Haifa and Joe exchanges looks and sure enough the tracker has brought them to the street that Ramsey lives on. They can see Bobbitt’s empty car parked about 50 yards from the flat.

Joe scouts the area quickly and sees a car pull up outside the flat and two figures go in. He runs back to the car. “What ever’s going to happen is about to happen. We need to move quickly.”

Shotgunned up, they move round to the back of the houses. They can see Ramsey’s upstairs flat is in darkness but the downstairs flat has a backdoor. Although the downstairs window seems heavily blacked out, there is a faint glimmer of light coming through glass panels in the door. They listen and can hear some kind of muffled conversation. Or chanting.

Wasting no more time they kick open the door and move into a small dark passage. The noise is much louder now and seems to be definitely chanting of some sort. There is a door to their right and one ahead. Suddenly screams and shouts erupt. Curtis and Joe rush forward as the door ahead of them bursts open and a man runs out. Joe fells him with a blow to the head.

Moving forward they get a sense of a crowded room lit by many candles that seems to be a chaos of moving bodies. There are at least a dozen figures, some of them apparently covered in blood. At the far end in what would have been a bay window (but is blacked out somehow) is a bukly, glistening form too big to be a man. As they stand aghast, a man emerges from the shadows to the left, firing a gun and narrowly missing Joe.

At the same time behind them, the other door is pulled open and Bobbitt leaps out, pinning Haifa’s gunhand to the wall and painfully twisting it. She tries to punch the fat man in the head but misses. He reaches for her throat. “Welcome to the party.”

In the doorway Joe fires at his attacker and catches him in the leg – the man collapses screaming. Curtis turns and fires at Bobbitt, hitting him in the shoulder. Bobbitt releases Haifa.

Back in the main room, Joe watches horrified as the bulky form moves forward. It seems to be broadly human but at least eight foot tall, naked and obscenely fat. It drops two bodies it held in either hand. Joe backs quickly out and slams the door. Curtis fires again at Bobbitt and the man collapses into the kitchen, badly wounded but alive.

“Get out. Get out. And don’t kill Bobbitt, we’re taking him with..” There is a gunshot from the kitchen as Curtis settles the matter.

Joe backs away just as the door explodes inwards. The thing now fills the end of the passage, its grey-greenish flesh bulging against the walls. It reaches out and they can see the tooth-filled maws that fill each palm. Its head appears to have sunken into its vast shoulders. Joe scrambles back but the thing reaches out and grabs Curtis, one hand closing over his face, shutting off a scream.

For Haifa the moment stretches. She can hear a voice squeezing her skull, pressing down on her mind. “I am buried deep underground but my arms are long, Haifa. They come and ask questions and scribble down the answers and think they understand.

“An idle boy pokes an anthill with a stick – some ants try to kill the stick, some to build their nest round it. They cannot comprehend the boy behind it.

“Haifa, I know you have questions, questions about what is out there under the ice. Some of them think it is a prison, some a weapon, some an escape route. You should come and ask me.”

The moment ends – Haifa lolls back on the floor. The thing moves forward but is suddenly bathed in fire as something explodes behind it. Joe scoops Haifa up and staggers out the backdoor into the night. Stumbling round to the front, he deposits Haifa in the car and runs back to the house. He comes upon a man emerging from the front door of Ramsey’s flat. He wears a full face motorcycle helmet and carries some kind of large smoking grenade launcher.

Joe shouts at him to drop his weapon and he pulls off the helmet to reveal himself as a dirty and wild-eyed agent Gene. The American drops the weapon and pulls a handgun. “Been staking out Ramsey’s place. Thought you needed some help. We should go.”

Joe replies: “I’m going back in. Stay or come.”

They run up the stairs into Ramsey’s flat. It seems to be deserted. Joe quickly sweeps up some papers on a desk in the front room and Gene discovers a large hole under Ramsey’s bed which seems to have been gradually chipped away and opens out onto the flat below.

Together they move into the downstairs flat. The main room is littered with bodies, all men apart from one woman. The thredbare carpet is smouldering and the air is full of burnt paper – Joe realises there are hundreds of Polaroid photographs stuck to the walls. The man he shot in the leg seems to have gone. As has the thing.

In the passageway beyond they find the body of Bobbitt and Curtis, the latter now missing a face. A naked man is slumped against one wall – Joe recognises him as Ramsey. Weeping scars criss-cross his body. He seems to be out cold. They pick him and run to the car just as the sound of sirens can be heard.

As Gene speeds away into the night, Joe frantically calls Toby. “Everyone’s dead. Winslade’s killed himself. Curtis dead. Bobbitt’s dead. We’ve got Ramsey – he’s possessed or something. I think he’s killed everyone. Haifa’s in a bad way. What the f**k do we do?”

Toby calms him down. “The Section has a storage facility on the edge of town. It’s quiet. Come here.” He gives them an address.

Joe turns to Gene. “Do you want to come? Do you trust Toby?” Gene shrugs. “I’m all played out. What’s to lose?”

As their headlights sweep the carpark they can see two cars and a van parked inside. The lights are on in a small drab reception area, the only windows in the three storey featureless building. They can see Toby standing in front of the desk waiting for them. Looking blankly out her car window, Haifa sees a pair of glasses lying on the ground, their lenses smashed.

She stares at the broken glass. Her mind moves. She is crouched in some kind of metal tunnel underground – it is blisteringly cold and almost pitch black. She can hear a screaming gale above her.

She thinks if she touched the sides with her bare fingers she would freeze to them. On the floor in front of her she sees a pair of heavy snow goggles, the lenses smashed. Ahead she can hear a sound. Tap, tap, tap tap….

Clippings

Brichester Chronicle, 6 March

A family of five and a police officer were killed last night in a gas explosion in what police are calling a tragic but avoidable accident.

The explosion and fire happened at about 10pm last night at a house in Lower Brichester and has been blamed on a faulty boiler.

The four men and a women have not yet been identified but the police officer was named as Brian Curtis who had responded to a emergency call and was caught in the fire…

Unfinished letter found at Ramsey’s flat, dated 4 March

Dear Sir and Madam

I am forced to write to your department again in the vain hope that you will take action.

For the past two years I have been subject to intolerable noise from my neighbour. It is now impossible to sleep on many nights and my waking hours are filled with dread with what the dark will bring. Please take matters in hand. Hungry, tired and in pain from my injuries, I beg for some help to end this nightmare.

At night I can hear the voices, on and on and on. I leave notes for myself. He leaves notes for me. Sometimes I go down there. And those are the worst nights of all. My hand is on my throat, his voice is in my cuts, but I can’t see him.

Sometimes I find himself walking at night, with no knowledge of how I got there but knowing I am trying to escape something horrible that lives below. I am in the park and he is with me.

I can hear him now…

Evening Standard 5 March

A car bomb exploded in central London today injuring two bystanders and destroying several shops, the second explosion in as many weeks.

The two injured people were named as Jenny Baum, a hairdresser from Staines and Michael Serkin, a defence analyst working for Severn Aerospace…

The (possibly temporary) insanity of Haifa means the player will be taking charge of an NPC accompanying the original pair

BRIEFING: Agent Gene (Those we have sampled: Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown; The Black Seal 2; Third Time the Charm (Goatswood and other less pleasant places);

Your real name is Michael Elder. You served 12 years in the US navy, eventually working on national security strategy. You left the navy in 2004 and transferred to the federal nuclear energy agency, working on national security issues.

In December 2006 you were contacted by a group of men who identified themselves as FBI agents who said they were investigating a plot to infiltrate a nuclear power station in California. Over the course of the next five weeks you worked with the men, helping to analyse information and data that they had gathered and pointed to a group of scientists working within the plant who had apparently been recruited to being about a catastrophic accident.

Using your contacts you were able to infiltrate the FBI agents into the plant and crashed some kind of religious ceremony taking place. Readings from monitors suggested that some kind of truly enormous energy force was forming in one of the reactors. During a firefight, the four ‘terrorist scientists’ were killed. However you also saw one of the agents apparently implode when one of the scientists “directed” a chant at him.

In the aftermath, you were taken to a safe house and asked/told to sign a confidentiality contract. Although you had begun to doubt whether the men were really FBI agents, over the next six months you helped them track down the group behind the plot. You uncovered evidence that the plot originated in the UK and was possibly linked to a company called Cormed which had recently bought up a decommissioned nuclear plant.

A man you never met before but calling himself Adam asked you if you would be willing to be part of a group travelling in secret to the UK to determine whether there was continuing danger of nuclear disaster.

You were part of a four man team – your codename was Gene – you colleagues were codenamed Glen, Gerald and Gordon. They appeared to be experienced undercover operatives – you were obviously brought along for your specialist knowledge. Your mission was to make contact with a group working with the UK intelligence community who specialised in occult or paranormal activity. Your conversations with G Cell made you realise that there were dark and unexplainable forces at work in the world

In October your cell entered the UK on false passports. Over the course of a couple of months you quietly investigated Cormed, run by a local millionaire Richard Corvan based in the town of Brichester – the power station is near Berkeley. He inherited the company from his grandfather. You attended a conference organised by Corvan at the Savoy on nuclear decommissioning that attracted speakers from the US and the former Soviet Union. It appeared to be a subtle recruitment push.

The group also made contact with a retired intelligence high-ranker called Major Thomas Balfour, connected to an organisation called Pisces. Gene gathered that the cell was cautious of a direct contact with the UK group and hoped that Balfour would provide introductions. Gene met Balfour at his house on the Norfolk Broads in November but was not present at a more detailed discussion a week later (indeed you were generally kept out of important discussions within the cell).

At the beginning of December the cell begin to stake out the Cormed facility. Gordon successfully infiltrates a student protest group and meets a man you now know is Kenny Robson. Robson tells them at various times that he is working for British intelligence, that he is part of an underground anti-corporate movement and that there is a plot to create a nuclear explosion in the UK “and the explosion is not even the main problem, it’s just the beginning.”

Gene is sent to do research at Brichester University on a possible link between Cormed and a company called Severn Aerospace. Suddenly on 15th December the cell announce they are pulling out, their security has been compromised. Cell leader Gerald says their papers are useless and their best chance of success is to find sanctuary in the US embassy in London.

En route to London, they are ambushed but manage to escape, with a gunshot wound to Gerald. Arriving at the embassy, they are ambushed again, this time with much higher firepower. At last eight separate attackers, some wearing army uniform, peppered the car with bullets and although fire was returned all your colleagues were killed. You managed to escape in the chaos and have been on the run since.

That day you took out £1000 from a cell-controlled bank account and a bag of equipment from what the cell called a ‘green box’ (in this case a self storage unit in London). Since then you haven’t dared touch any of the official cell’s network of accounts or facilities in case you are being watched.

You contacted Balfour again a few days later and he warned you that there may be some kind of power struggle within Pisces and although they certainly weren’t behind the Cormed plot, individuals may have different agendas. The Major also told you that Pisces had worked over a number of years to frustrate the activities of something called the New Frontiers Institute, connected to some network or organisation called “the Crawling Chaos”. He said he was worried that NFI members had infiltratred Pisces and named a an called Richard Hyder as a possible middleman.

Balfour also told you that your colleagues were members of something called Delta Green, an alliance of individuals working within but unknown to the federal government. He said that Pisces and Delta Green had once worked together but that the last joint operation was on 5 January 1946 in Antarctica when renegade SS troops attempted to capture what Balfour called “the most secret facility of them all”. Balfour hinted that this facility was still operational

Balfour warned him not to visit him as he believed he was being watched – however he suggested that Toby Knight, an ex soldier and policeman and Pisces associate could probably be trusted if you found a way to contact him directly.

You attempted to get back in touch with Robson but he had disappeared – the next time you heard of him was when news of his death was on the TV. In the meantime you were a wanted man, listed as being an Irish terrorist.

Your only other option was to contact a journalist called Frank Carcincola who the cell seemed to have had some dealings with. On 11 January you arranged a meeting with him and told him that a renegade group of British intelligence operatives was behind the Grosvenor Square massacre and that the same group was involved in the so-called Chiropractor killings in High Wycombe. You didn’t think he could help you but he might be able to flush Knight out.

As it was you managed to track down Knight while he met with a couple you now know as Joe and Haifa. You tracked these two to High Wycombe and made contact. You later met Joe in London and narrowly escaped capture by unidentified men.

A month later, having spent most of the time holed up in a B&B, you read about a series of killings in Brichester. The details tallied with a case that your colleagues in G Cell told you about in Las Vegas and you guessed that Pisces might involve itself. Research suggested that an ex policeman called Ramsey might be involved and staking out his flat, you encountered Joe and Haifa again.

You are surprised you lasted this long. You don’t know who the hell you are, really, but Christ knows how long you can keep afloat – and someone needs to keep going on this. They tried to kill millions of people.

You do not know who you work for. You do suspect it is not part of any official government programme. You do know that no-one is coming to help you. You know the mission is not over. You know the mission is never over.

OTHER CUTTINGS

Email to Joe 5 March 2008

Dear Pilgrim

Some weeks have past now since we spoke. And I’m hurt that you haven’t been keeping in touch.

I gather you were looking into someone stealing things in the Severn Valley – but the trail gone a little cold. I would have thought you had plenty of incentive.

Anyway something tells me our thief has access to certain knowledge that he is best relieved of. Let me know if you find it.

The pope

The Guardian 4 March

The Starkweather II Antarctica expedition has set a date for its historic retracing of the archetypal exploration distaster of the 1930s.

Gavin Starkweather, the descendent of Morris Starkweather, who died during the disastrous Moore-Starkweather expedition to the Falken Mountains in 1934, will leave the UK on 2 July and is expected to be on the ice for at least seven weeks.

The group – which is still gathering private funding – is understood to be offering places to individuals who can demonstrate their capacity for the ordeal, and ability to contribute £100,000.

Email to Joe, 3 March

Hi Joe

I know you on secondment but I thought you might want to know about this. Devon police have found a couple of tonnes of fertiliser-based explosive in a barn just outside Appledore. It’ll be in the papers later today I should think but what wont be is the fact that forensics reckon at least a lorry lord had been removed from the site not more than 48 hours ago. Obviously after the Grosvenor Square attack we are looking at the Real IRA as possible owners but it might be connected to those car bombings in London in the last few weeks. It’s pretty basic stuff but could do a lot of damage. Anyway keep your ears open and let us know if you hear anything.

Barry

Lobster TV 5 March

Are a series of gruesome murders the work of a deadly sex cult that local police botched the hunt for 10 years ago? Sources within Brichester police force say that the deaths of two local women, and the disappearance of a third, could be the work of the same man or men who terrorised the town in the 90s.

And in a shocking new twist the same source claims that a secret government agency dedicated to occult crime has been called in to solve the case. Real-life X Files in sleepy Severn Valley. As we revealed last week, the bodies of the murdered victims are apparently behaving in ways unknown to medical science. There will be more after this break….

SPOILERS AND thanks to those we have sampled: Delta Green and Delta Green Countdown; Dead Letter (DG Countdown); Last Things Last (free); Third Time's the charm (Goatswood); The Black Seal 2 and 3

Chapter 15 In our last episode Joe and Haifa oversaw the interrogation of William Bobbitt, who they believed to be the leader of a cult involved with something called Y’Golanac. This resulted in the violent suicide of DSI Winslade, a Pisces friendly. Pursuing Bobbitt, they interrupted some kind of cultist ceremony in a flat owned by Ramsey, a retired police officer. Some thing was present, and very unpleasant. Their companion, DCI Curtis, was killed, along with Bobbitt and almost all the cultists. They escape with the help of Agent Gene, an American who they met previously and who is on the run from, well just about everyone. Haifa is driven temporarily insane by what she sees – but also establishes some kind of link with a person or thing calling itself Wilbur. She also sees a vision of some kind of icy tunnel.

As this episode begins Joe, Haifa and Gene are driving to a self storage facility apparently operated by Pisces on the outskirts of Brichester to meet their handler Toby. They have an unconscious Ramsey trussed up in the boot (they believe him to be possessed).

It is 4am. So far they have saved no-one and most of the people who have helped them are dead….

Joe can see the first grimy rays of dawn over Brichester as they drive towards an industrial estate on the edge of the town. Agent Gene is driving, his face tired and edgy. Haifa lies on the back seat, her eyes staring.

Joe and Gene discuss the meeting with Toby that is fast approaching. The American can’t think of many reasons why he should trust anyone working for Pisces, whatever Joe says to vouch for his handler. On the other hand, he doesn’t like leaving Joe to face possible dangers alone (after all there is, quite possibly, a god’s representative on earth in the boot).

They agree that Gene will be dropped off before they get to the storage facility and hide out, waiting to be contacted. “If I call and say everything is fine, then it’s all gone to shit and you should get the hell out. If I call and say everything is fine and you should come over, we are in trouble and you need to help us. If I call and say Toby says everything is fine…everything’s fine.”

Joe drops Gene by the side of the road, just as it begins to rain heavily.

A few minutes later, Joe pulls into the carpark of Yello Storage. He can see Toby and another man through the window of a small office – the rest of the three storey building is windowless and apparently lifeless. There is cheap Nissan and a white van in the car park. The man with Toby gestures to a loading bay door further down the building.

Joe drives round to the door which slides up as he approaches. He drives into a large loading bay. He notices there are wet tyre marks – a vehicle has been in here in the last half hour. There are various doors off the room and some stairs at the far end. As he gets out of the car, the unidentified man and Toby emerge from a corridor. Toby looks haggard and half-cut. Toby peers through the backwindow of the car and lights a cigarette. “Haifa OK? She don’t look it?”

Joe explains what happened at Ramsey’s house and that Haifa appears to have entered some kind of fugue state. They carry her out and put her under a blanket in a plain restroom, with a TV in one corner.

Then they return to handle Ramsey. Joe explains again what happened at Ramsey’s flat and his belief that the ex-copper is possessed by some being called Y‘Golanac.

The other man – Toby refers to him only as the caretaker – disappears into one of the storage rooms and comes back with a brace of shotguns and what looks like a homemade and oversized fire extinguisher. He goes back in and wheels out a large metal container – it looks to Joe like the kind of ‘freight coffin’ used to ship back the bodies of dead soldiers from overseas.

Toby grabs a shotgun, Joe reloads his, while the other man stands by with the contraption. Toby explains: “If he’s a big fat guy with no head, we all give him both barrels – otherwise the caretaker will sort him out.”

Joe flips open the boot and when nothing jumps out, the caretaker move swiftly forward and starts spraying the boot’s content with what looks like a thin liquid platic foam. Edging forward to get a better view, Joe sees Ramsey being cacooned from neck to foot in the fast-drying gum – his face is blank as if lobotamised.

Toby and the caretaker quickly load Ramsey’s body into the metal container, connecting him to various IV drips and an oxygen mask. They slam the lid with relief. Toby exchanges a few words with the caretaker and walks over to Joe. They discuss Haifa’s condition and Joe tells him his plan to lodge her with Professor Wu at the British Museum to see if she can make some kind of recovery.

But before they do anything Joe requests a private conversation. Joe smells whisky on Toby’s breath.

Toby agrees and they go up the stairs to the second floor and into the maze of storage rooms and lockers. Toby produces a large set of keys and unlocks one of the rooms. Toby shows Joe in a small room, with a couple of easy chairs and a cupboard. He produces a half empty bottle of Jamesons and two mugs.

Toby is generous with their measures.

Toby tells him a little more about the Pisces operation in Brichester in the 1990s – a number of agents led by the man known as Mr Cotton killed one suspected serial killer and captured another, a man called Wilbur Bromley, owner of a adult book store called American Books (and now housing a therapy centre called Transformation…). Toby says that Wilbur is being held in a secret prison and is regularly interrogated. He himself has visited twice – Toby intimates that it was a disturbing and dangerous experience, but also a rewarding one in terms of knowledge.

Joe tells him that Agent Gene, the man who Pisces claim is an IRA terrorist but who claims to be part of a cell of American federal agents, has come out of hiding – and is hiding outside. Joe asks for Toby’s word that he will hear Gene’s side of things and won’t reveal his presence to his Pisces colleagues. Toby seems trustworthy on the point (and knocks back another half mug of whisky) but says that Gene needs to get inside the storage facility and out of sight “before Corder shows up in about half an hour”. The name is familiar to Joe – he worked with a Lt Col James Corder in Northern Ireland in 1992 just before he left the army. He was rumoured to run a wetworks team lifting and disappearing suspected terrorists and their supporters. The last he heard Corder had been transferred to a desk job on medical grounds.

Joe calls Gene and they arrange to meet at a back entrance from the facility in a few minutes…(Gene meanwhile has been scouting the place, noting a fire escape on the east side of the building with doors on each floor)

Toby explains why Corder, who he describes as head of internal affairs, is visiting. Toby reveals that the leak within Pisces has been identified as Professor Jarrett from Brichester University, a section friendly but one that has apparently been supplying secrets to Lobster TV for the past six months. “Jarrett is old school but something has gone wrong. I picked him up a few hours ago and been given him the once over upstairs. He’s pretty out of it - it’s the only reason I knew he was the leak, he practically came right out and said it. Anyway it looks like Jarrett was already being targeted because I got a call an hour ago saying Corder was on his way to interview the prisoner.

“The thing is Joe, Jarrett and me go a long way back. I’ve always trusted him. Christ knows what I’ve told him over the years, specially the last few. When Corder gets here, Jarrett won’t be able to keep anything in. We’ve got to find out if he is a danger to us. I already know that Jarrett told Lobster some details of the Transformation case and the Sevenford operation but there must be more… Anyway let’s get Gene, I’ve got something he can probably help with if he is who you say he is. Then you can help me with the professor.”

The two men hasten down the stairs and out to a garage built into the back of the Facility. Toby pushes open the garage door and Gene steps gingerly in. Everyone keeps their weaponry handy.

From her couch, Haifa blankly watches a blank TV screen bolted to one wall. It clicks into life and she can seen a exterior shot of the storage facility, seemingly live. The ‘camera’ pans slowly round the building.

The trio go back up the stairs to the top floor and Toby guides them round to one of the storage rooms and unlocks the doors (Gene notices that most of the doors are locked with standard padlocks, a few have more secure defences.). The small, bare space inside has a table, with a large icebox on top of it. Beside the table is a small cardboard box with some new surgical gloves on top.

“We intercepted this package yesterday. We’ve got a standard watch on mail to Lobster TV and this looked too interesting to let through. I don’t know whether it’s connected to Jarrett. Have a look and see what you think. And stay in the room until I come and get you for God’s sake.” With that, Gene is left alone.

Toby leads Joe back down the stairs to the first floor. As he hurries he says: “We haven’t got long before Corder gets here; things might get a little rough. But you should be pretty comfortable with that, Joe…”

On the first floor, Toby unlocks a door and the pair go into a large room – empty accept for Professor Jarrett handcuffed to a sturdy chair, a large bucket of water and some towels. For the next 10 minutes the two Pisces men question a resigned but largely incoherent Jarrett. “Pisces has become corrupt, it’s lost all direction….but you know all about that Toby…I interviewed the father of the guy that set up the Army of the Third Eye…Cotton thought he might know more than he was letting on…he told me his son was “chasing ghosts from space”…I thought he was mad but I don’t any more…the body in the morgue spoke to me, told me things, I had to smash it, to shut it up…Kenny got so confused he didn’t now which side was which but ,you know, the same enemy can wear different uniforms…

Toby’s phone rings. “It’s Corder, he’s outside. We’re out of time.” He leaves.

Gene carefully examines the contents of the cardboard box. It seems like the original package has a senders address of a man called Tom Irons and an address in Berkeley, the small town near the nuclear power station. The package was addressed to Frank Carincola at Lobster TV. There is a note from a PC laser printer…

Dear Mr Carincola

This abomination was the result of experiments conducted at the Cormed nuclear facility in Berkeley – where the protests are. You’ve done stories about them.

I know you can be trusted to do everything in your power to expose this obscene perversion of science and nature.

My position here is precarious so I have to be cautious – they are even inside the government. I will contact you again soon.

Be careful of what is in the box. It lives still. There is much worse here.

…Apart from that the box contains some used surgical gloves, some unfrozen ice packs and the remains of the packaging the icebox came in. Gene can see the packaging has been stained blue in places – whatever was in it seems to have leaked, presumably alerting the authorities.

Gene hears a faint movement in the icebox. He has heard Joe mention the severed hand he and Haifa encountered in Sharpness and guesses a similar body part awaits in the icebox. Drawing his gun, he flips open the lid and shoves the box off the table, jumping out of range as he does so.

To his surprise, the head of a German Shepherd dog flops onto the floor. Despite being minus an eye, with half a skull and a broken jaw, the thing writhes horribly on the concrete, its remaining eye swivelling blankly in its socket. Joe can see its brain seems to be dyed a strange blue colour. He also notices the head has been neatly severed, rather than through blunt trauma.

Gene collects himself and against the advice of Toby, leaves the room. He plans to call Joe with his discovery.

Joe closes the door behind him. “We’ve only got a few minutes. What’s happening in Pisces – what can you tell me?

“Look in 3033.” Jarrett raises his voice. “It’s all up there, all the secrets I’ve been collecting. Except no-one wants them - Toby thinks he does but Crampton will change his mind for him. If you want them you can have them. You can take what you need – just destroy what else is up there. Whatever you find.”

“Why what else is up there?

“It was a mistake. I couldn’t make it right. Destroy it. Promise me.”

“What’s the combination?”

“1974. Promise me you’ll…”

Joe put his gun against Jarrett’s head and pulls the trigger. The professor’s body jerks backwards and crashes against the floor. Joe watches the blood pour onto the concrete floor.

In the silence that follows Joe realises that any story about Jarrett getting loose and going for his gun is weakened by the fact that he is still securely handcuffed. Quickly he starts to kick away at the chair arm, trying to separate it from the cuffed arm. On the third attempt chair and wrist shatter. Joe staggers out into the corridor and can hear footsteps on the stairs.

His phone rings – its Gene. “Room 3033. combo is 1974. Take what you need, destroy the rest,” says Joe and pockets the phone. He then flings himself to the floor, head in hands just as Toby and Corder emerge on the landing. “He tried to get loose, he was going for the gun. I didn’t have any choice.”

Joe can see enough of Corder through his fake tears to recognise the man he knew in Northern Ireland though the man’s hair has gone almost completely white in the 15 years since they last met. He is carrying a small case, a black plastic truncheon of some sort and a grim expression. He looks into the room, at Jarrett’s body stil pumping out blood. “Explain what has happened here. Exactly. And get those towels.”

In the TV room Haifa continues to watch the TV as the camera circle the storage facility. She can feel Wilbur’s weight bearing down on her mind. And the TV picture fades to nothing.

Upstairs Gene make his way over to room 3033 and unlocks the combination. Inside are three small boxes of files. Quickly looking through them, he sees one is named “Resolution Zero” and contains amongst other things some heavily annotated maps of Antarctica. The other is named “Pisces” and is a collection of photocopies of letters, emails and pages of books. There are also photographs. He third is empty accept for a round object wrapped securely in thick bubble wrap.

Gene is just making to move out with the box contents when something occurs to him – the room is much smaller than it should be given its position in the building. Cautiously he examines the wall and taps on it to see if there is a void beyond it. He jerks back involuntarily when something or someone taps back.

Steeling himself, Gene examines the wall and realises it is hinged with a concealed latch. Drawing his gun, he releases the latch and pulls open the wall. In the darknes behind he can make out a figure hunched against the wall. It shuffles forward and he can see it is a deathly pale woman, naked with long matted hair covering her face. “Arthur? Arthur?”

Revolted Gene prepares to shoot the thing but then remembers the others downstairs. As the woman shuffles towards him he clouts firmly across the head, knocking her off her feet. She tries to rise and Gene hits her again, snapping her neck. The thing is still wriggling as Gene slams the wall back in place – the last thing he notices is that her fingers are worn down to the knuckle…

Downstairs Corder seems to buy Joe’s story (though shows no sign ofr recognising him from the army). For the next hour they wrap Jarrett’s body in plastic sheets and the caretaker loads it onto a trolley and disappears. At Corder’s order, Joe cleans up the blood. The head of internal affairs then leaves.

Toby, Joe and Gene confer and they agree that Joe will take Haifa to Wu and then return to focus their attentions on the Cormed nuclear facility.

The next morning Joe drives to London with Haifa. She has a vague impression of walking through the British Museum before finding herself in Wu’s office in the basement. He puts the kettle on…she lies on a campbed, a cupboard box of documents about the ice, and a ball of bubblewrapped mystery beneath her.

Meanwhile Gene stays in the room at Yello Storage, a dog’s head twitching on the table, reading through the documents. Reading about Mr Cotton, about Corder, about all the jobs that Jarrett has done for them, all the secrets. Once or twice he thinks he hears movement somewhere in the building; perhaps it is Jarrett’s dead wife in 3033.

Chapter 15: cuttings [SPOILERS FOR 'Dust to Dust']

Sharpness man dies in fire, Brichester Evening Chronicle 8 March

A house fire has claimed the life of a 36 year old man after police found his river-side dwelling ablaze last night. Martin Felder, a pharmacist at Brichester District General Hospital, was pronounced dead at the scene after firefighters recovered his badly charred body from the building….another body has not yet been identified…

Section briefing: DA and AK, 8 March ….acting on initial work done by TK friendlies, we traced a man believed to be the father of Alan Webb to the house of Martin Felder. Given that the grave of Felder’s mother was amongst the robberies, it was our view that Webb and/or his son were blackmailing Felder in some capacity - or working for him. Our files suggest both Webbs are members of British Triumph, and have connections with [deleted] and Colin Hammond. The older Webb was photographed in London in 1995 providing security for [deleted] and other “Brazilian tourists” – he survived the section’s subsequent intervention.

While staking out the property we heard shots fired and decided to enter.

We have not had time to fully absorb the scene inside so will describe without comment or possible explanation. The interior of the house appeared to be empty but we discovered a basement, upon hearing screams. Descending, we discovered an underground cistern down a further flight of stairs and Webb in the act of being attacked and partially consumed by [deleted] apparently made up of a number of [deleted]. There was evidence that another man – possibly Alan Webb – had already fallen victim to [deleted].

We came under attack ourselves and were forced to retreat – the cistern had a heavy door which prevented the thing’s pursuit. In another room we found a man tied to a chair – apparently alive but showing abnormal physical symptoms. He was delirious and asking for a phone. In a final room we discovered Felder himself locked in combat with an unknown woman, naked and apparently in her 50s. Like the other man she showed certain strange symptoms such as [deleted]. If we hadn’t intervened she would have killed him but we had no choice but to neutralise her.

[deleted section] Remains of coffin wood and a large quantity of ashes suggest that the grave robbings were the work of Felder and the Webbs. Following orders we made sure that there would be no trace of the work or its results

Felder and the unknown man have been shipped. The documents we recovered are going to the curator.

Secure line voicemail from Tom Balfour, 7 March… “Friends. It is probably nothing but things are a little strange here. Agnes did not come today. There was a car parked on the hill all morning. An old man may have been noticed. I have my defences and am not easily spooked but perhaps I may not get the chance to show you hospitality. Crampton won’t get a chance to rod me, that’s for sure. If we don’t speak focus on Cormed – Gene’s friends told me none of the bosses there seemed to be making plans past 13 March…”

“Fireball tramp” is former Labour MP and kidnap victim

The homeless woman apparently set alight by muggers two days ago has been named as Julia Charnwood, the former Labour MP who was kidnapped by the Army of the Third Eye terrorists in 1998.

Ms Charnwood suffered severe brain damage as a result of her ordeal and apparently became a rough sleeper soon after. She had not been heard from for years but was interviewed by London Tonight two weeks ago after apparently making a one-woman protest outside the House of Commons against the government’s revived space exploration plans.

She was not identified or recognised the TV journalist and it is not thought that the protest is connected to a subsequent attack.

Police are appealing for witnesses to the attack and are seeking the driver of a black 4x4 who may have seen something. Evening Standard, 8 March

[spoilers for delta green:countdown and black seal: resolution zero]

• • • • papers rcovered by PCs in chapter 15

file one: pisces

A collection of emails, minutes of meetings, jarrett’s own notes, much of it obscure or seemingly irrelevant, all related to Pisces…this is what a couple of hours study pulls out….

Note by Jarrett….on dxxx the death of Commander Kenneth Codrington was announced by the Navy was listed as dying in a diving aciddent in Norway. Photo [attached] suggests this is the same man as ‘Mr Cotton’, director of operations for the section. Source Issac has told me that he worked with [deleted] on two projects, including the Congo evacuation in [deleted], previous to his death and was also present at a meeting at the Dark Tower in 2005 and saw Codrington who was referred to as Mr Cotton. Sources suggest he previously used other covernames

…Six months after Codrington’s reported death Mrs Janice Codrington was murdered in her home by one or more intruders. She was beaten badlybut died from strangulation. The police investigation appeared to go nowhere…

…..Interview with Mrs Carol Niles, May 2006 – “I wasn’t that close to Janice even though was a neighbour but after a husband died we used to have a coffee together sometimes, I invited her to my church…I had never really met her husband…he was away a lot with the Navy…Anyway about six months after her husband died she knocked on my door and she was really excited…more alive than I’d ever seen her…she said something amazing has happened, our prayers had been answered but it was a huge secret…she could hardly talk..she said she had to pack and leave straightaway…she was basically saying goodbye…then her phone rang and she ran back to the house and that was the last time I saw here…as far as I know she never left the house again…that night I woke up some time after midnight and I thought I heard a scream from Janice’s house…I went to look out the window and the house was in darkness….then I saw a face at the window, I think it was Kenneth, crazy though that sounds; it was a terrible face like a devil sick of sin…I never told anyone, I had a fear I couldn’t name….the police came but there was a man with them who didn’t say anything and something told me I should say nothing….by the way, did I tell you, it was a man’s scream I heard.”

…I met Toby in the Bull on 19 October 2008 – he looked worse than ever, very heavily off the wagon . He told me that he had been up in Magonia on research…later I found him in the toilets, sick down his shirt and scrawling on the wall…he said he’d been down to the ‘glass cage’, that Crampton had brought him down on Control’s orders to see what Wilbur knew about the NFI…except Toby said Wilbur had told him about something else, something out on the ice…He said Controls going back years have known about the machine…

….Toby showed me some equations that Wilbur had explained…he said Wilbur had almost tricked him…Crampton had gone crazy, said if Wilbur had established contact, he would have had to redbutton the base…

…Toby said there was more than one way out of Magonia, a cave out into the sea…

Transcript….Section meeting: laision committee

Control: “Thank you for that update. I want to move to item 3 immediately…er sorry, I have lost my place…sorry……. CH: Sir? Control: “I remember, I remember….” SA: “Sir, is there a problem? Control: “Can you hear the piping? I haven’t got the room in my head any more…it’s leaking out…” CH: “Stop the tape….we need to transfer to xxx sooner than expected” TAPE ENDS

Transcipt…Section meeting: liaison committee Control: We need to assess [deleted] for promotion to the board? Is he ready? Have we taken up all the references we need to? SA: He is ready for more senior duties, Ma’am. The mentor is ready too. Control: Good. There have been too many failures recently. You said there was a reliable mount in Norton and those terrorists almost got to the embassy. They must have been warned by him – it couldn’t have been anyone else. If Operation Charm is compromised, we will have to focus all efforts on the Construct.” CH: Coleman’s terrorists are taking their toll, Ma’am – their information is getting better…we believe cuthbertson is behind the technical aspects of their activities, with or without the woman’s knowledge. We have put all centres on code black. Control: Where is Norton now? SA: Resting at Magwood, he’s quite stable now, according to Dr Levin.

Transcript: Section meeting: operational executive committee

Cotton: We have lost contact with Robson – a rendevous two days ago was not kept and the contact group came under attack – we lost one operative. We have to assume that our colleague has been exposed by the Army and that Robson is free…

Section meeting: religious affairs executive committee – tape….

Unknown speaker “The operation in Sevenford became complex and we were not able to intervene in time to prevent partial contact. However, the heretic was punished and his cult destroyed. The blasphemy is healed. The woman says she saw Smith die and there is no evidence of transfer. We believe that error has been corrected.”

“We believe the woman introduced by Knight is a strong traveller – she was encountered on the dust road but she alluded our mount. We think she was blessed during Smith’s summoning..”

file two Resolution zero

A collection of maps and pictures, documents, some old some new – you have had less time with this batch so this is not everything

Transcript of a voicemail from a man listed as Kenny Robson, dated 12 June 2007. “Jarrett, I’m free. I may not live long but my head is free. Fuck it hurts….I’ve seen it, Jarrett, in my mind. I’ve seen it, the terrible machine. The skull wall reaching high into the air. They’ve been feeding it for decades….”

Point 103 Notes by Jarrett and in other hands reference documents recovered from a crashed plane in 1953 – thought to have crashed in 1945 – plane contained three bodies in German military uniform. Notes suggest a SS organisation called Hexengruppen was involved in an expedition under the ice that lasted several years during the war, and that this has evolved or is related to an organisation called the Karotechnia which is still active. Notes reference a report by Brig gen David Cornwall, a British soldier, into a mission at the beginning of 1946. Notes reference the wartime internment, torture and execution of Barsmeir, a scientist who led the Falken-Barsmeir expedition to the base of what are now known as the Falken mountains, by the SS in 1945.

The 1970s expedition Interview with Valentine Krogan, undated. Partial with large sections missing. Interview covers preparations and resolution of British Army expedition to the Baikal lake at the base of the Falken mountains. It is clear from accompanying notes that Pisces operatives were present secretly on the mission, although whatever information they have/had seems to be opaque • the pcyhe-experimental nature of the mission was a front for what was in fact a secret drilling operation.Although the NFI provided material to serve the false mission, their real role seemed to be analysing information which they expected to find. • The mission was made up of Army personnel (which included at least two Pisces operatives), NFI staff and a number of civilian staff who appeared to have been part of a complex and exhaustive recruitment process. Krogan and a man called Strater seem to be senior NFI staff. • There is a section missing which seems to cover the time from arriving at camp to after the first two weeks of drilling. Once the account resumes, references suggest that the group made a discovery of some sort and to have recovered something from under the lake. • There is a section missing which covers about a week – during this time there seems to have been strong dissent within the group and a split into two camps, pushing for further exploration and retreat respectively. Krogan seems to have initially sided with the side pushing for exploration but then for a reason not given become very afraid. • At some point the dissent spilled into violence and at least two members of the expedition were killed in unexplained circumstances and one group came under seige. Krogan implies that the man called Strater had brought something back from his exploration that was highly dangerous but the section detailing it is missing • Krogan radioed for help to a UN scientific station 50km to the west. Luckily the personnel had weapons and upon arriving at the base were able to restore order, at the cost of at least a dozen deaths. It is unclear what happened next as account breaks off

Starkweather Foundation Notes by Jarrett. Formed by the survivors of the original Moore-Starkweather expedition to limit polar exploration to only the most pressing scientific study. Has campaigned against large scale exploitation of natural resources.

• originally led by Willard Griffith from the expedition who died in 1969. It has since gone through three chief executives and is now run by Harvey Crawford
• Accounts show that it raises at least $20m a year from high profile supporters but it is unclear what it uses the money for.
• It maintains a small permanent base in Antartica.
• It’s only note of scandal was in 1995 when a man called Albert Stein was killed while attempting to prime a car bomb in Bolivia. The Brazilian chief executive of a bank based on Bolivia was the intended target. A police investigation found that Stein was a paid employee of the Foundation from 1991-93 although the foundation denied any criminal connections and it blew over.
• Starkweather’s great grandson has no connection with the foundation and in fact the foundation has criticised his expedition as just the some of amaterurish effort they campaign against.

Spoilers for Delta Green and delta green countdown; Dead Letter from DG: Countdown; Third Time the Charm from Goatswood and Other less pleasant places; Black Seal: Resolution Zero; Beyond the Mountains of Madness

Reprise: Joe has stowed Haifa with professor wu at the british museum to recover from her latest sanity blasting ordeal and is on his way back to Brichester. Joe and Gene believe there is a plot to create a nuclear disaster at the Cormed plant and have received a dog’s head in the post…

Joe drives back from London, Haifa’s sickness heavy on his mind. At junction 14 of the M4 he calls Balfour, half afraid that the oldman’s paranoria has already come true. But the phone is answered, the voice modulating effect giving no clue to the colonel’s state of mind.

Balfour says: “ No I’m fine, I don’ know, may be it was nothing. Am I under threat? Who knows – I’m an old man who has been hiding under hedgerows for too long. What do you need to know?”

They discuss Antarctica and the Construct. “Yes I was there in 46 under Cornwall. The Germans came onto the ice in one last desparate push – they’d tortured it out one of the old Dusseldorf set of polar explorers and tried to open one last front from South America. We were dropped in just in time, with the Americans. Not a moment too soon. The Nazis had over-run one of the old camps and got over the mountains. They knew what they were looking for.

“We caught up with them. Don’t ask me where, I’m not telling you. It was grim work.

“The Construct? My God, there are generations have died defending that secret. There are Controls who didn’t know about it. It has to be kept out of the wrong hands, Joe. They almost had it. I know the price we paid. No-one can imagine. I wouldnt talk about it now but I am afraid the old guard will die out and no-one will know the danger. It is very important and very dangerous. I fear it won’t hold. And the mad men in their haciendas are living long and growing stronger.”

Balfour refuses to say anything more. They move onto Magonia and Crampton. “Who’s Crampton? In my time Crampton was a gnat, I wouldn’t have put him in charge of a toad dissection. What do I know – it’s all changed now. He has his playset now. Magonia used to be a proper centre of science – God knows it was a dangerous place even then but we knew what we were about. Yes it was a prison but now Toby says it is a zoo at best, at worst the seventh circle of hell.

“Wilbur is there, Toby says. I don’t know personally but Toby says he is the most dangerous subject they have had. And someone like Crampton in charge, for God’s sake. There is a thin line between learning from your enemy and becoming your enemy.”

Balfour tells Joe that Gene’s gutted team left an equipment cache in Brichester before they were exposed - it might be an idea to have a look.

“And if they do come for me, Joe, it’ll be quick. I’ll try and get a message to you before I disappear into the system. It would be nice to meet one day.”

Meanwhile Gene sits in the draughty confines of the Yellow Storage Facility and researches the Cormed nuclear facility and the SANE protester group.

The package with the dog’s head had “Tom Irons” had a return address. It doesn’t take long to find out that irons is an activist with SANE (and a long history of anti-state action) who lives in Berkeley and is under surveillance from Special Branch. The file records him as living with a girlfriend Susan Michaels, who works for a local cleaning company under the alias of Sarah Connor. Oddly Gene finds that further details in irons’ police file have been classified.

Some work on Cormed finds that a nuclear waste train is due to visit the plant that night – and that a SANE protest is planned outside tomorrow. The same day a shareholders meeting has been called – there is no agenda but it lists participants as Corman, Turner, Corman’s finance director Roger Thur and Marjorie Rittingham, the chief executive of Severn Aerospace – and unknown names and numbers of shareholders.

In the afternoon Joe and gene meet up and they raid the Delta Green cache. They recover three radiation suits, a gigacounter and a collection of documents that add up to a partial operations manual for the Cormed facilty. There is also a listening bug disguised as a business card for “Michael Bingham, HM Government Nuclear Inspectorate”

Gene knows that the manual will be enough to tell him what has been going on, and perhaps how to stop it, if he can get access to the facility’s compueter network long enough. It certainly tells him that nothing in the facility, on the face of it, would have the power to create a nuclear disaster – they don’t have enough power. But he also knows that the California raid involved a huge and unexplained energy source.

His research tells him that Cormed made two purchases at the end of last year – one of processing equipment and one of nuclear fissile material. One purchase is in Berne and one in Madrid. Both are licensed although gene doubts the licences. Both purchases can be traced to a Bolivian finance house called Eagle Capital.

Gene’s research suggests that Cormed has used injections of money from Eagle Capital to finance its own work while also producing un-specified products for EC. The two projects seems tightly compartmentalised.

Gene scopes out the security, downloading floorplans (there is a large section on the ground floor that remains classified). He also gets a list of key personnel – the operations director Ray Turner, security chief Robert Daschiel and scientists, Metreaux, Crisp and Beauchamp. He finds out that the previous operations director killed himself nine months ago and Turner was brought in from elsewhere in Cormed. Two of the scientists were assigned to the plant in January, shortly after the plant was shut down for two days. A scheduled government inspection has been delayed from March until April.

Joe and gene have a plan. They call toby and arrange to be smuggled onto the nuclear waste train that is due to arrive at the Cormed facility at midnight that night. They discusss possible diverserions and Toby agrees to use his connections to arrange a rent-a-mob element to the SANE protest due to happen the next day. Toby says he has a man on the inside of SANE who might be able to help – otherwise he will bus them in. The plan is to create enough of a threat at the front gates to draw guards away…

They also order essential supplies via Toby – H&K machine pistols with silencers, knives and garrottes, plastic explosives, eletromagntic disruption devices, camera, cs gas, coshs, boltcutters, memory stick and body armour. Toby says he’ll see what he can do…

In the meantime joe cases out Ton Irons’ flat in Berkeley. He parks round the corner and calls the listed number. A woman answers – no she doesn’t know where Tom is. The conversation is short

Joe calls back. “Tom sent us a parcel. We want to talk to him about it” The woman says she doesn’t know anything about a parcel. But there is something about her tone that sounds more measured, more cautious. They talk a little more. No, she hasn’t seen Tom for a while. Yes he is involved in SANE – is Joe from the police?

There is a little more jousting and Susan agrees to meet in a café round the corner. A few minutes later she emerges, red hair and a demin jacket. Joe meets her at the café. She says she is afraid of what is happening at Cormed – “do you know what happened to Tom. Whatever you say, you sound like a cop. Those students at SANE say Tom was dodgy but he wasn’t the grass.”

Joe shows her a picture of Kenny Robson at a SANE protest at the Cormed facility the previous year.

Suddenly she seems to make a decision. “I don’t know who you are with but I’m on the job, undercover. There’s something heavy going on at Cormed.. I’ve been inside SANE for 18 months and with Irons for 12. I am signed up with a cleaning company working at the plant. Tom didn’t know who I am but I had passes and was going to get him in. But he jumped the gun and went in with Robson and two others using ID from Manning. I haven’t seen him since but the 24-7 camp clocked an ambulance coming out in the morning.”

They negotiate. If he can get into the facility grounds she agrees to get him into the building and hand over a cleaning uniform and pass. They agree to make contact once he is inside.

Joe leaves her and calls Toby. They discuss her trustworthiness. They decide to keep Gene’s presence as a wildcard. They discuss why irons apparently posted the package so long after he was last seen by Susan.

Joe and Gene discuss how to use the bug. After various options are discarded they decide to courier the card to Rittingham at the Cormed plant with a letter purported to be from the nuclear iknspectorate requesting an interview. They hope she will pocket the bug when she arrives for the shareholders meeting, giving them an eavesdrop.

Toby rings back – he has arranged to get them on the back carriage of the train – the driver and guard won’t know they are there. The train will leave a stationyard at 11.30, get to Cormed at midnight and remain there for 24 hours before departing. The pair rest.

Later at the station they meet up with Toby and pick up the gear. Knight says he will be bringing in troublemakers to spice up the SANE protest and create as much of a diversion as possible.

About 20 minutes later after speeding through the pitchblack countryside, the train stops for a few minutes on the edge of the plant. Then the train slides silently through a now opened gate and stops at the loading gantry. The pair can see two guards emerge from the loading entry attached to the main building and two drivers jump down from the front carriage. They follow one of the guards into the building while one guard remains.

They are far enough away for Gene and Joe to exit the train with little risk and move away from the track and behind one of the four 50 foot tall cylindrical reactors. Joe puts his hand on the concrete but cannot feel any heat or power. Crouching in the darkness they make out the fire exit. They notice that there are no windows visible on the ground floor though the first floor looks to be ordinary offices and all the lights are on. Joe texts Susan and gets a reply to wait for half an hour.

At about 1.30 the door suddenly opens and an ear splitting siren immediately goes off. Joe slips inside and finds Susan in a cleaners tabard and a floor polishing room – she gestures to a toilet door a metres away. Joe hurries in and quickly unpacks a handgun from his pack – he conceals under his tabard and stow the rest of his gear in the bin for later. He can hear Susan tell a guard she opened the door accidentally while cleaning and he seems to believe her.

After a few minutes she taps on the door and they sneak up some stairs to an unlocked office on the first floor (she tells him the labs and sensitive offices are locked at night but normal offices are accessible. Joe confesses that he has a partner still out in the cold that he didn’t want to reveal until he trusted her a bit more. She grumpily concurs with the logic but says she can’t get away with the dumb cleaner trick again. Joe calls Gene and together decide to lower a rope from the office window to get him in. Gene successfully shimmies up and they take stock – it’s 1.30am.

They know they will need access to the mainframe room and safety system room – Susan tells them both are secure at night. Their best bets are either to gain access after 6 when the first shift arrives or to wait until the shareholders meeting and SANE protest create diversions.

Gene gets onto the network using his access codes and for the next couple of hours scans interesting looking documents. There is no one hugely sensitive thing but he pieces together that an initial product was shipped to a company owned by Eagle Capital at the end of last year but since then two scheduled shipments in January and February were missed. Is this the reason for the emergency shareholders meeting.

Cormed’s own work is curiously product-free – the main activity seems to be getting the reactors online, which is due to happen any day. The work for Eagle Capital is more specific and appears to be producing a form of radioactive material that could repair severed nerve ganglia in brain-damage victims. However it is clear that a) Cormed is producing a product to specification and doesn’t fully understand it and b) from mid January secrecy around the product increased and was restricted to a small group of scientists under Metreaux.

While Gene reads, Joe sneaks downstairs to get his gear. A guard spots him but is fooled by his cleaner uniform.

The guard gestures at him. “You, tell the other cleaners, you all need to be out early. Be at the front desk with your gear at 5. No delays, understand.”

Joe nods dumbly and watches him go into the men’s room. He consider knocking him out and stealing his uniform but instead goes into the women’s bathroom and retrieves his gear from the bin. He goes back upstairs to the room where Gene is still working away.

Susan arrives and they discuss a plan. They decide that they will secret Gene in the supply room on the ground floor, and then Joe will join them before 5. Susan will then call the front desk and pretend that something has gone wrong enough to necessitate a visit by a guard to the supply room. Cue knock on head and steal uniform.

So at about 4am they sneak Gene down and into the supply room where Gene hides in a big laundry basket.

Joe pretends to clean the floor by the main reception where he can keep on eye on the security office. He sees on one of the screens a car arrive at the main gate and be waved through. It parks at the front of the office building and a tall, gaunt man hurries out and into the building. The guard greets him as Mr Turner.

Turner tells the guard that the plant will be shut that day with only a handful of senior staff arriving in the next half hour. “and make sure the cleaners are off site by 5…” he picks up the letter to Rittingham and pockets it.

He goes up to his office on the first floor. A few minutes later a woman also arrives at the plant and joins Turner in his office. Joe retreats to the supply room. They call Susan who says she is planning to leave and will call the guard to set up the ruse in an hour.

Turner and the woman talk hurriedly. Turner: “Eagle’s accountants are arriving at any moment. They are trying to catch us off guard – they suspect something – they might even know about the accident. We have to stall them until the meeting later. Corman cannot know anything is putting the core strategy at risk.

Woman: “You should have told him about your breakthrough – who knows, Corman might have…”

Turner: “Fool – it would have been a distraction at best, at worst a compromise of the core strategy. It could still be my trump card. When all is laid waste and the beast is rampant, then those with knowledge will be valued. Even Corman is on a leash. Quiet…”

Gene and Joe can hear others join the meeting – three others over the course of 10 minutes. Small talk ensues.

They can hear Turner bring the meeting to order. “I’m sorry to bring you all here at short notice but the shareholders have brought forward the meeting. They will be arriving by helicopter at any moment.” General consternation follows, interrupted by a male voice: “We must have been right about the leak. They must know something!”

Turner insists: “We don’t know that but we’ll have to be very careful. I’m not informing Mr Corman or Ms Rittingham about the change of plan and my hope is we can contain the problem. We will be shutting the plant so we have the minimum number of people onsite – the cleaners are already leaving and we will getting the word out to the workforce.”

A male voice (Gene notices it is slightly slurred): “How are we going to keep them away from Lab 6?” Turner: “They have never visited the plant before – we will set up lab 4 and 5 and explain they are offline because of problems with the equipment.”

The phone rings and Turner answers. The auditors are here. “Dr Metreaux, secure Lab 6. You two prepare 4 and 5 and be prepared to answer questions – I am told our guests are thorough, though I am sure ignorant of the finer workings of this kind of facility. Daschiel, come with me, we can show them the Sapphire unit to keep them occupied.

Joe and Gene can hear Turner walk down to the reception. “Gentlemen, welcome. This was short notice but will give us more time to show you our work.”

A man replies in a clipped German accent: “We will be requiring to do a full audit of the plant. We have missed two deliveries and your explanations have been inadequate. Two of my colleagues will need to run over your production records – please provide them with network access in a secure room. Meanwhile I will need a complete and immediate tour.”

“Of course. Where would you like to start, Mr…?”

“Galt. My name is Galt.”

From their laundry basket, in the supply cupboard, Gene and Joe look at each other. Joe textsToby….

Chapter 16 cuttings

To those we have sampled: Worlds of Cthulhu 6 (Frank Heller scenario); Delta Green and DG: Countdown; Beyond the Mountains of Madness

3am in the basement of the British Museum. Haifa can hear Professor Wu’s gentle snoring from his campbed in the next room. She has barely stirred from her own bed for 24 hours since being deposited here by joe.

Under her bed she knows Joe has left some boxes of files recovered from Jarrett’s storeroom in the storage facility in Brichester. Her thoughts keep returning though to the plastic wrapped object thatas with them. Wu studied it cautiously on arrival but hasn’t unwrapped it. Haifa makes a decision. Rising silently on unsteady legs, she reaches under the campbed and picks up the object.

In the soft glow of a nightlight, she carefully strips off the layers of bubblewrap to reveal a black teardrop-shaped object small enough for her to close her fist round it. She can’t work out whether it is metal, plastic or rock but it feels like very hard but greasy rubber. It feels warm to the touch.

As she holds it she feels some of the horror and unease begin to lessen – her thoughts stop racing. For a moment she glimpses in her mind a white landscape, a jagged tower in its centre. A storm gathers behind it.

Haifa places the object under her pillow and falls asleep.

Directive: surveillance of Wade Colyn – classification grey – Michael S

March 1 Surveillance routine

March 2 Surveillance routine

March 3 Target visits Brichester University and spends three hours in library. He attempts to make an appointment with a Professor Andrews [associate of retired friendly Drum] – Andrews away

March 5 Target sighted again in London, 24 hours later than expected. Speaks to mother [agatha wolyn] by phone. Transcript excerpt: WC “Look I missed the appointment, so what.” AC “Darling, I thought the sessions were helping, keeping you focused.” WC “I am focused, I thought I was getting closer…” AC “Wade dear, this is all the old talk – there are no ghosts in you head. It’s a chemical imbalance caused by your injury, like Dr Williams said. There is nothing to find. It will get betre if you keep..” WC “I don’t want it to get better. I want it back. I want to feel what I felt, I want to see what I saw. The dust plain, the terrible pyramids. A hundred worlds supplicant. Such pleasures….I’ve been looking for years and it came through my windscreen on a country road, can you imagine the chances of that happening. I know it’s there. I’m going back to Stanton Magna…” AC “I’m calling Dr Williams now..” WC “I need to go there, mum, I need to feel it again. I’m sorry..” Call ends

March 6 Surveillance routine

Surveillance curtailed March 7 – target downgraded

Haifa wakes again – she has no idea what time of day. Wu is at his desk in the other room. He is talking on the phone. “Mr Hyder, you ask too much... No you do. In any case the assets are not in my hands. The Duchess has been very clear on the subject…. I know your condition – and I know at least some of what you have done to earn it…. No this is dangerous talk…I have confidence in Control, I always have.” Haifa drifts off again…

[it's been a while since i posted for the campaign - i am missing one episode which was a run through of Dead Letter from DG: Countdown...i will post soon but meanwhile these are 'cuttings' for players] Memo to all cleared staff News channels today will report on an attempted break-in at the Cormed medical facility in the Severn Valley by agitators within the anti-nuclear protestors. This is a Jaguar-level situation that has now been contained but we have evidence of external forces operating in the UK without clearance – possibly with institute help. Operatives cleared for Operation Charm should consider it on hold. Mr Cotton BBC news “…..The prime minister told reporters this lunchtime that public panic at the thwarted break-in at the Cormed nuclear plant in the Severn valley was unjustified. He said a number of people had been arrested and blamed agitators from anti-nuclea groups which have been protesting at the recommissioning of the facility, bought by Cormed corporation two years ago. A spokeperson for the Department of Energy said there was no risk to the public and that the fire had not affected the reactors, which are in any case not operational. Cormed chief executive Richard Corvan is currently leading the clean-up at the plant and was unavailable for interview. A spokesperson for Greenpeace said….” Message from Balfour left on Joe's phone “Joe, they’ve come. I knew they would one day. They are going to bury me deep, so deep I’ll forget who I am. Magwood, Joe...” dead line London Evening Standard, Tory MP found dies in hit and run Conservative MP Eleanor Miles died yesterday after being hit by car near her home in Southwark. Mrs Myles, 51, was thought to be on a zebra crossing at the time and was struck by a car that did not stop. Police are looking for the driver of a black 4x4…. Haifa.... Tuesday is a bright morning and Haifa takes her first steps outside the museum since her arrival. The air is cold after the overly heated rooms of Professor Wu. The streets are crowded but there is a deadness about the crowds. She can feel the undirected hostility of the multitudes press on her. Stumbling, she retreats back to the museum. A piece of paper flaps in front of her feet and she stoops to pick it up. It is a photocopy of a photograph of her own face, a photo she owns – she can remember a friend taking it a couple of years ago. Above the photographs she reads ‘Have you seen this woman?’ Underneath is a mobile number. Numb, Haifa calls the number. The line is dead. She crumples the paper in her pocket and walks back into the museum, and down into the basement.

[In this session a new player joined with the character of Solomon Trescothick – a man with a background unknown to the other characters except he seems to be hiding out with Toby, appears to know Toby well and is slightly wild-eyed] reprise....in the previous chapter (which i havent written up yet), Joe and Gene infiltrate a nuclear power plant to foil a plot of some sort only to find themselves in the midst of someone else's plot..led by a very scary man called Galt and involving, zombies, runes daubed in blood and nazi auditors... Pulling over Joe calls Toby and confers. They discuss disposing of the undercover policewoman but Toby advises him to keep her where they can see her until they know more. Ten minutes later they pull into a farmyard to find Toby at the door with a cup of ‘coffee’ and a figure upstairs they don’t recognise. They quickly blindfold Corvan and transfer him into the house and down into the basement. The policewoman retires to the kitchen while Gene ties corvan to a chair and cuts off his hazmat suit. Joe and Solomon cautiously sound each out upstairs – both learn the other is ex-army and that Solomon met Toby in Aghanistan. Joe infers that him and Gene are working for Toby. Downstairs Corvan looks straight at Haifa despite the blindfold and says calmly: “You’re the one with the American accent aren’t you. What are you doing here? I think you’re mixed up in something you don’t understand.” Before the conversation can go on much longer, they are joined by Solomon, Toby and Joe. Joe questions Corvan about his plant, the plot that seemed to be going on there and how he managed to apparently appear out of mid air. Corvan gives nothing away, calmly suggesting they call their ‘bosses’ before it is too late. Gene cuts off Corvan’s suit and goes through his pocket – he finds a mobile phone and a wallet, with nothing of interest except for a blank card with a magnetic strip on it – it is identical to the one that Haifa found in a Pisces safe deposit box in London. Solomon hangs back from the interrogation, letting the conversation wash over him. Gradually the gaps between the words swell and then he is suddenly aware of a cold, unknowable hatred pushing down on his consciousness. Corvan’s face is turned towards Joe and he can no longer hear what is being said but he can feel a mind reaching out for him. The room fades and he is on a dust plain, bloated green suns hanging in the sky. In the distance he can see some pyramids etched against the horizon, their angles jumbled. He can hear piping. On the road in front of him a black dwarf is approaching though his legs do not seem to move. He is holding a leash holding a faceless man in a suit, crouching. With a lurch he is back in the room, hearing Joe and Corvan talking – Solomon has an overwhelming sense of dangerous and powerful intent. He feels like they are flies in a web with a bloated spider poised over them. Stumbling slightly, he pulls Toby out of the room and tells him they are all in danger. “We shouldn’t be here and Corvan shouldn’t be awake – we need to get further away from the nuclear plant. Now.” Toby considers a for a second and says: “I’ll need ten minutes to pack – see what you can get from him and then I can put him out before we go.” He disappears upstairs. Back in the room Joe has started to rile Corvan, his replies getting more and more aggressive. “You’ve got a small window before it’s too late to save yourself…you’ve made a huge mistake, too big for you to understand…phone your bosses and hope you can make it right…” Finally Corvan seems to lose his cool completely and cold anger seeps out: “For *****’s sake, call Cotton!” For the first time, the group have evidence that Cotton may be working actively against the interests of Pisces. Corvan immediately shuts up. By this time Solomon is back in the room and he and Joe discuss making some more immediate progress. Joe punches him a few times but with no effect. More imaginative tactics are called for… On Solomon’s advice, Joe grabs a biro and jams it into Corvan’s ear. The result is electric – Corvan screams, the first sign of fear he has shown. A stream of violent abuse fills the room. Joe repeats the assault and Corvan’s speech suddenly becomes jumbled: “You should be grovelling before me…before I was me…grovelling…Coleman begs every day for death…I know about the old man, I know where he’s been taken.” More threats with the biro elicit the information that Balfour is being held in a facility called Magwood in a new town called Stanton Magna, in the Severn Valley and near to the Severn Aerospace HQ. Corvan says that he has the biometrics to get access to the facility. Toby reappears and Joe discusses how to sedate Corvan – then they go upstairs to alert the policewoman that they are leaving pronto. Joe pushes open the door to the kitchen with Toby behind him. The woman is slumped on the kitchen table a pool of blood slowly spreading across its surface. “Down,” shouts Toby and they both dive for the floor. A bullet catches Joe in the left shoulder as he falls. The both scramble back into the main living room. Toby whispers: “I’m going down to the basement, we’ve only got a few minutes. Jaguar is here. Get upstairs and wait.” Joe stumbles upstairs and finds two large cases in one of the bedrooms. Looking out the window he can see no movement outside. Downstairs Toby bursts into the basement and warns the others. He gives Solomon a handgun. Gene and Solomon grab a cursing but groggy Corvan and pull him up the stairs. Solomon crawls into the kitchen and peeks out of the window, catching a glimpse of a man in plains clothes and a military-issue rifle. All the tyres in their vehicles are blown. Suddenly all the windows in the kitchen are shattered by gunfire. He crawls quickly out as a teargas canister clatters through one window and the kitchen starts filling with acrid smoke. As Gene drags Corvan up the stairs, Solomon retreats to the toilet to wrap a wet towel round his face. As he emerges into the main room, a man in gas mask, an automatic rifle and a Primal Scream t-shirt kicks down the front door. Both men fire simultaneously as Solomon sprints for the stairs – both miss. Solomon makes the stairs, firing wildly behind him to deter pursuit and rendezvous with the others in one of the bedrooms. The window has been blacked out and the walls whitewashed and covered with mathematical symbols. It looks as if Toby has just finished adding a few finishing touches with a thick black marker pen. He says to Joe: “This is a way out. Focus on the formula, try and find the pattern.” Joe concentrates for a few seconds. And then the others become aware of his absence – they can’t remember him going, just a vague sense of absence. Was he here 10 minutes ago or 10 seconds ago. Gradually under instruction the others do the same with Topby going last. For an endless moment Solomon is in a cavernous room, brightly lit with artificial light high up in the ceiling. It must be the size of an aircraft hanger. In the centre of the room is a large pyramid shaped structure, a dull black in colour and glistening slightly. It seems to be embedded in the floor. A few metres away from Solomon two men in hazmat suits bend over a stone cube. In a Travelodge hotel room somewhere in Brichester, Joe is aware of lying on a bed, the receiver of the phone by the bed in his hand. It is giving off a dead tone. Curled up beside him is Corvan, silent and staring. Solomon is sat on the floor cross legged in front of the TV, which is showing the shopping channel. There is a pool of vomit by his feet. Slowly he gets up. Toby is frantically painting over a wall full of mathematical symbols with a spraycan. “We should be safe for now. They wont be able to follow. The group discuss what to do next and what just happened. Joe suddenly realises that the Jaguar agents could have tracked Corvan’s location via his mobile phone – he rips out the sim card and stamps up and down on it. “We need to leave, the phone could already have sent a signal from this room.” They try to talk to Corvan but he starts to scream. They need to sedate him for the time being. As they bundle him into the bathroom and hold him down, gene makes out a few coherent words amongst the screams: “…Years…years on the leash…” Toby plunges the needle into his leg and Corvan slumps. Quickly exiting the hotel via the back entrance, they get into one of Tobys many rental cars and roar away. They debate possible plans and decide to check out Stanton Magna as soon as possible a view of getting Balfour out with as little sidetracking as possible. They are down to three handguns and a shotgun, none with much ammo. A shopping trip nets them three claw hammers, some plastic ties, rope and a crowbar. They also research Stanton Magna, a small new town (more of a village really) on the edge of the woods that now houses Severn Aerospace. It was built on the site of the village of Goatswood, apparently abandoned in the late 60s and later razed to the ground. It was recently in the news after four children died within a week of each other from an outbreak of swine flu. They make a base at a Premier Inn 10 miles from Stanton Magna and leave Toby with Corvan. They find the turning off an A road that leads to Stanton Magna and proceed cautiously into the town. It is not really much more than a large village but clearly quite new and constructed of a piece. A central square contains what looks like a community hospital, a pub, a neighbourhood watch office cum community hall and shop. They park up and split up. Gene checks out the hospital and confirms it the Magwood community health centre. A quick recce shows a camera up front and back but nothing which looks like overt security. Solomon approaches the church and finds a man of about 50, smoking in the porch over the main entrance. He introduces himself as a fellow of the clergy and learns that the man is the local priest. Some careful questioning elicits that the priest has been with the parish for about eight years and occasionally services to the spiritual needs of the patients at the local mental health facility. Solomon is also invited to a church service the following night. Joe wanders through the small town, noting that it was clearly built all in one go but that some houses seemed notably more unkempt than others. The more he walked the more he thought about 10-15% of the houses were rundown. He passes the small office of the severn valley digest, the local paper. He walks past a man on the street and is assailed by a stench of body odour. The man smells like a tramp and his clothes look dirty, and yet reasonably new. Joe follows him for a few minutes on a whim and sees him let himself into the pub – the pub is called the Goat in Boots. Meeting up they discuss the odd appearance of some of the people and some of the houses. Solomon and Gene decide to check out one of the unkempt houses, and choose one on the edge of the town. They notice the lush woodland that surrounds the town and indeed in some cases seems to encroach on it. Taking advantage of the thick foliage they approach their target house from the wood. With a sickening crunch, Solomon realises he has stepped on something organic. Looking down they see he has fatally injured a beetle at least a foot long that was concealed in the undergrowth. Yuck. They continue on and approach the house. Their knocking brings a slovenly looking woman to the door holding a baby. Behind her they can see the house is a mess. Solomon tells her his family used to live in the town and they are trying to find the house they owned. “Well, it’s not this one, mate. I’ve always lived here.” Well, did she know perhaps where Mr and Mrs Braithwaite lived. “Do I look like a f**king estate agent.” She slams the door. The group meet up again to compate notes. All that remains is to decide a coherent plan to liberate Balfour…

To those we have sampled: spoliers for and inspiration from: Delta Green and Delta Green Countdown; The Black Seal 3; Worlds of Cthulhu, Brood of the Beetle; Visiting Hours from 'Nocturnum'.With a gunshot wound and very little sleep for 28 hours, the group lay up in the premier Inn for four days, at the end of which Joe fetches a quiet but largely recovered Haifa from Professor’s Wu safekeeping in the basement of the British Museum. Convinced now that Mr Cotton is leading a faction with Pisces that is somehow behind the Cormed summoning plan, Toby says he has a plan. He has reported to his superiors that Joe and Haifa died in the Cormed fire. He takes and destroys their Pisces phones and gives them new ID – John Tynes and Shazeen Crowe. He says he created these persona some time ago as apparent friendlies – Pisces therefore believes they already exist and have clearance.Corman veers between a catatonic state and violent raving. They do learn from him that believes he has been possessed by some entity for at least a year and that during this time he took part in the planning of some kind of ritual at the nuclear facility to bring forth “the Centre, the Beginning, the End, the Black Static,..his coming would break the bonds of something precious held down…” he is vague about who else was involved. His ear still bleeds a kind of tarry goo that seems to evaporate when exposed to the air for a few minutes. He also confirms that Lee Coleman, leader of the Army of the Third Eye, has been held at Magwood for some years.Haifa has joined them with news from the smoke – feeling better as long as she does not let the curious black stone out of her possession. She has made downpayments on their inclusion on the expedition organised by Gavin Starkweather to Antarctica – the group will need to find £50,000 more for the meeting in two weeks. She has used false names, obviously – she just needs cover stories…She also brings news that Lobster TV’s Frank Carcincola has been reported as missing on the TV news – a man with a heavy Germanic accent is being sought. Professor Wu has examined the runes found by Joe at the nuclear facility and says they are in the Ancient, damned language of Aklo and refer to the summoning of “the blind idiot god, the Daemon Sulton, Azathoth”.Her further examination of the maps of Antarctica they found amongst the Jarrett papers seems to show some mountains beyond the Falken mountains that are under the ice – maps seem to show an old base and an existing base which is marked “Station zero”. They are about 100 miles apart, the latter at the base of the Falken mountains. Another location about 300 miles closer to the coast is marked “SevAero”. A location beyond the Falken Mountains is marked “William Moore”Their plan is to break into the Magwood facility and rescue Balfour, who they believe has been taken there. Before that a little recon is called for. During the rest days they use surveillance cameras in parked cars to film Magwood – later examination suggests only a couple of security at night. At one point an unmarked ambulance arrives and a patient apparently is removed.After four days, Gene and Haifa go to the church in Stanton magna and sit through an uneventful sermon. Mingling with the few other worshippers they learn that only a handful of people have been buried in the churchyard over the last decade or so, most seemingly opting for cremation or burial elsewhere. One of the few recent burials was one of the child victims of Swine Flu – they meet her mourning parents. The father works as a programmer at Severn Aerospace, like many of the people in the town. They also meet Dr Nash, the clinical director of the Magwood facility who invites them to visit the following day when gene explains he represents a charity for traumatised servicepeople.Joe and gene decide to recon the town itself and to spend the night at the hotel, with a deserted carpark, and go into the main lobby. A surly, scruffy and smelly man reluctantly identifies himself as Hornby, the owner. They tell him they are salesmen that need a room for the night and he gives them keys to two cabins out back. He is very rude. They take a peek at the signing in book and spot Wady Colyn’s name, noting his cabin number.Going out back they immediately Joe breaks into Colywn’s old cabin and searches it. It is empty but he find a mosquito the size of a humming bird squashed between the pages of a Gideon Bible. He also find a couple of huge silver fish scurrying around in the filthy bath.Gene hears footsteps and encounters Hornby snooping around the cabins. Gene covers his own snooping by complaining loudly and bitterly about the poor state of the rooms. They quarrel and Hornby retreats back to the hotel. Joe and Gene visit the local pub, the Goat in Boots. They meet some surly locals and a perfectly friendly local GP, Edgar Eastwood. He tells them about the recent outbreak of swine flu that killed a number of local children. He professes no knowledge of the poor state of hygiene of some in the town. He also tests their cover story to the limit.“So what is it that you sell?”“Em……..We sell…peanuts. Of many kinds.”Everyone regroups back at the premier Inn.During discussion about a way and the use of the gate ‘magic’ that Toby and Haifa know, they decide that it should be possible to secret the ‘exit point’ algebra somewhere in the Magwood facility when they visit Nash, and then go in via an entrance point at the hotel. This would give them an escape route as well. But how to get 90 minutes necessary and do it somewhere where it wouldn’t be detected? More planning gets them to doing it in advance on sheets of clingfilm with invisible ink – the use of a UV projector would make it visible and enable the reverse trip. The plan is to put the clingfilm up in a disabled toilet, pop an out of order sign on it to discourage visitors and then go in as early as possible in the evening shift to lessen the chance of discovery. Toby resolves to get the necessary gear the next morning and he and Haifa spend the rest of the evening ‘doing the math’.Meanwhile Gene and Joe return to the Hornby Hotel for a good night’s sleep. They go their cabins, Gene securing the door with a chair. And to sleep. About 2am joe awakes to a loud buzzing . Opening his curtains he sees a moth as large as his head batting against the window. His torch brings two others. Shutting the curtains he goes back to bed but is disturbed all night by buzzing and flapping around the cabin.The next day at 4.30pm Solomon and Haifa arrive at Magwood and are shown through a metal detector and security gate and into a small cafeteria. A secretary makes them coffee. They case the joint but the toilet is too public to hang an out of order sign on. They are shown into Nash’s office and discuss the facility for a while, pretending they are interested in referring ex-serviceman to Magwood. Nash is cheery and seemingly unsuspecting. He offers a tour of the wards and they go up in elevator to the first floor (they notice there is a basement button – Nash explains the generator is down there. They are shown the wards and identify a disabled toilet which is large enough and is sheltered from scrutiny by a door. Haifa complains of stomach trouble and repairs to the cubicle. She quickly pastes up the film, blocks the toilet with paper and exits, hanging the out of order sign as she does. They note that there is an emergency starirwell linking the two floors. They finish up, bid farewell to Nash and depart.Gene and Joe spend the day “shopping” with Toby, clearing out the last of his ‘green boxes’ for body armour, two ways comms sets, machetes and some heavy duty first aid kits.Gene and Joe have been discussing whether to take Corvan with them alive or to remove his hands (and therefore biometrics) to cut down on any histronics. They decide to keep him whole for the time being.As evening draws in they gather in their room at the Premier Inn and begin to focus on the algebra. At some point later, they come to in the disabled toilet, and with all their equipment on top of them. Joe has thrown up.They tumble out into the corridor, gather themselves and see that the elevator is on the ground floor. They summon the lift but immediately hear footsteps from the floor below. The lift is brought back down to ground floor, someone gets in and comes up. Solomon and Joe wait for the door to open and pile in, cracking a security guard on the head and doing it again til he goes limp. Tieing him up, they pile into the lift and go down to the basement. They come out into a small room with a generator. Searching reveals nothing until someone thinks to ask Corvan. He removes a panel from one of the machines and presses his palm against a small pad. With a click a door opens in one of the walls. Looking through Joe sees his is at the right angle of a corridor, with dim municipal lighting and a couple of doors along one wall. A small camera covers the corner. Trussing corvan up, the party of four venture into the corridor. A quick recce reveals a locked office door with frosted glass and another locked door. At the end of one corridor is a large metal door with no way of opening it.Further exploration shows the start of some kind of cell block. Looking in the barred glass panel shows a figure apparently asleep on a bed. Each cell is numbered.With a click, the door to the elevator room swings shut. An intercom comes on with a hiss, broadcasting Nash’s voice throughout the underground complex. “Apologies for the inconvenience, my dears. The supervisor will be here soon and she will know what to do with you. Now, sit tight and don’t break anything.”The group decide to do anything but sit quiet, Haifa hurrying back to the apparent office, the rest splitting up to search the cellblocks. There are at least a couple of dozen cells, about a third of which seem to be occupied. Over the next few minutes Haifa breaks into the office, finding a useful-looking PC and many shelves of files. She begins to attach the cling film with the gate formulae on the walls. Suddenly there is a muffled explosion from what sounds like the floor above. All the lights go off and they can hear the multiple clicks of a couple of dozen electronic locks freeing up. Then there is a hum and emergency lights come on, lighting the corridor in a yellow half glow. Solomon hears a stealthy step from down the passage and whispers a warning. Joe and Solomon move down the corridor and a gun goes off, the bullet biting into the wall above Joe’s head. Racing forward he sees a security guard with gun drawn and manages to put a bullet in his thigh. The man falls back and Joe puts another bullet in his arm. The two pin the man to the ground and Joe puts his gun against the his head. “Where’s Balfour? Which cell?” The man gasps “26”. While Joe trusses him up, Solomon finds the cell, which is now unlocked and ajar and finds a dazed looking man in his 70s or 80s lying on a bed with an IV drip in his arm. Solomon picks him up and carries him back to the office where Haifa has managed to position the Gate formulae on the wall. Solomon returns to the cells to round up the other patients – “Come with me if you want to live – you loons.”Coming round one corner, Solomon comes upon a man in a hospital gown but with terrible stab wounds in his torso. The man is staggering and looks near death. Solomon supports him and they walk back with the others to the office. Gene starts to work the PC to see if they can get a conventional exit route.There is a grinding and tearing noise from the elevator sound – it sounds a lot like something massive is climbing down the lift shaft. Joe goes out into the corridor and covers the elevator room door with his shotgun.Haifa now has a number of loonies: two old men (one apparently Balfour), a old woman, the man bleeding heavily, a young quiet man and an obese woman who Joe thinks he recognises but cant place.Haifa tries to talk to Balfour at the symbols and how they are used as a gate. The man looks at her and seems to remember something: “My name is Quinn.” Haifa pushes him aside and grabs the other old guy and asks him his name. Although he is clearly befuddled, the army accent is unmistakable. “Major Thomas Balfour at your service. You must be Haifa.”Haifa shows him the symbols taped to the wall illuminated by the UV projector. “You’re going through first…so concentrate.”“I’ll do my best, young lady.”Over her shoulder Gene finds something referred to as ‘Ship exit’ – any exit is good enough for him and he starts to override the security.Outside in the corridor, the door to the elevator room buckles and thick black tentacles start straining into the corridor, backed up by a ear-shredding grating shriek. Joe lets loose with both barrels and with a lucky shot blasts off all three tentacles that have snaked into the room through the forced-open door. Flush with success he charges at the door and throws all his weight into closing it. It budges not an inch.Back in the office, Balfour is not having any luck with the symbols. “I think there may be a problem with them, young lady..”One of the loonies, a old woman with wild eyes, grabs Haifa’s arm. She points out into the corridor where Joe is. “Your friend is marked by the Masked one. The Crawling Chaos is behind his eyes – the man with two sticks, the one who walked out of the desert and whose palms the beasts come to lick…”Her babbling is interrupted by Joe over the radio, who has just placed the obese woman as Mrs Hammond – last seen transformed into a worm the size of a tube train. “Shoot the woman, for God’s sake – she could kill us all.” Pause. “I mean the really fat woman.”Solomon pulls out both guns and catches Edith in the shoulder, Hafia following up but missing. Mrs Hammond falls to the ground and almost immediately starts to swell.Simultaneously Gene hears a deeply satisfying beep that appears to indicate that the exit has been unlocked. He stands up, rips out the hard drive, throws Balfour over his shoulder and shouts: “Everyone out!”Largely leaving the patients to their fate, the group run into the corridor and towards the metal door. It is now open and they run though. The elevator room door bursts open and the tentacled horror flows into the room. Nash’s face roams freely its form. Edith, now fully transformed flows into the corridor, cutting Joe off. He rushes round the cell block, and leaps over a questing tentacle and through the door, pullig it shut behind him. The group trot for at least a mile down the dimly lit, but well supported, corridor. There seems no sign of pursuit. There is Solomon carrying the heavily bleeding man, Gene with Balfour, Joe and Haifa and two men in pyjamas, one with a shaved head.The corridor ends with a metal hatch in the roof, which they open, emerging into a heavily wooded area with a jagged cliff above. They regroup. The heavily bleeding man is clearly close to death – they question him. Haifa notices he has terrible scar on his forehead like someone has taken a powertool to it.The man is rambling, half-mad. “My name is Lee Coleman. I remember that much. My mind is my own. My mind is my own. I took a drill to my own head. The ghosts from space, I found them in the woods…now I’m back there. She broke me. I think I saw Kenny down there – she had him with her on a leash. I’ve begged to die so many times and now I want to live.” He is clearly dying. Joe shakes him: “Tell me what you know, Lee.” “Even the ghosts don’t dare speak its real name. It’s all buried under the ice – they want to set it free, that which the old ones trapped.” He begins coughing up blood.“Some of the men are still alive out there, you need to find them…” And Coleman dies.Before they have a chance to digest the information, suddenly Haifa remembers where she has seen the quiet man before. She glimpses writing seemingly tattooed and snaking round his arm. She remembers a story in the newspapers a year ago about a man who was convicted of killing a number of people and eating them – it was a famous case because the authorities were never able to identify the man. “The Bury St Edmunds Cannibal!” they called him.Haifa shouts a warning and the man whips out a bloody shiv from his pyjamas. He narrowly misses her throat before Solomon fells him with a bullet in the forehead. They regroup again. Their phones don’t work but they think they are somewhere in the woods between the Severn Aerospace facility and Stanton Magna. There seems to be a path leading up the ridge to a rocky crag.They trudge up the ridge and come to an opening in the rock, which looks like it has been caused by some kind of landslide at some point in the past. They look inside and can see it goes back about ten feet and ends in what is clearly an artificial portal, a circular opening in a green metallic wall. Solomon immediately recognises it as the same greasy looking metal in the pyramids he saw in his vision. It is surrounded by a chemical smelling goo.Gene looks back down into the valley and can see three lights moving through the forest below….