Dr. Agent David Trentmen - FBI Agent and former Medical Doctor
Juan Estevez - DEA Agent and former Undercover Cop
Victor Blue - FBI Intelligence Analyst and Hacker
and introducing...
Jack Plisken - CIA Agent and Cleaner
20/12/19 A New Case
Victor received a message through the proper channels from someone he didn't know: a corner in Tuscon, Arizona named Abraham Meyer who had a case. After verifying that everything seemed above board, he learned that seven people had died suddenly on 11/12/19, with no easily identifiable cause of death. Autopsies revealed that the victims had all suffered extremely powerful seizures bad enough to fry their brains. With that out of the way, Victor called up David and Juan and told them to meet up in Tuscon tomorrow. Juan drove out in his DEA SUV, while David and Victor flew in. David then rented "the biggest truck I can get", which ended up being a Toyota Tundra.
21/12/19 An Unbalanced Breakfast
The party met up at an IHOP in Tuscon, Arizona (David ordered 9 pancakes, hash browns, toast, and bacon, while Juan ate his usual MREs and beef jerky; Victor had something normal) and went over the details of the case again. They decided that the first order of business was to go meet with Meyer and have David do another autopsy in case anything had been missed.
Victor had already set a meeting for that afternoon, and Juan, ever the Workaholic, split off from the others to go do some of the DEA work he was using as an excuse for being in Tuscon. David and Victor had nothing else to do, so they shrugged and went to the Denny's across the street for "second breakfast". Both managed to pass their HT rolls for eating a disgusting amount of breakfast food, and the party reconvened at the coroner's office.
A Really Bad Headache
The secretary in the front office stopped the party and asked what they were doing, but Meyer called out from the morgue to let them through. In the morgue, Meyer and another man were waiting beside seven bodies, one on the surgical slab, the others on carts. The other man introduced himself as Jack, and, after a brief exchange of code phrases (and the secret Delta Green handshake), the party were satisfied that he was also a member of the Program.
It turned out that Jack had been the one to point Meyer to Victor, as Meyer was more of a "hobbyist" when it came to this thing than the others. Meyer helped get David started on the autopsies of three bodies and then let him take over. Once he was finished, David confirmed Meyer's info, and discovered both that the times of death were all within 1 hour of 23:00 on 11/12/19, and that the brain tissue's scarring emanated from the pineal gland, indicating that it had been caused by focused psychic energies. Meyer grumbled that it was "those damn aliens", and Juan muttered his agreement.
Victor brought out his Gamer Laptop™ and pulled the relevant case info of the deceased from local cop databases, but, other than witness statements describing lights flickering, were unable to find any links among the victims. David asked if any had been professional psychics while alive "just to be safe", but none were. Victor gave his contact info to Meyer in case anything else came up, and the party headed out with Jack, debating over what hotel to stay at.
The Arizona Inn
David found a place to stay because "it was only 2 blocks away from McDonald's", and, after getting checked in, Victor realized that he would be here longer than the weekend. Unlike Juan, who was technically here for work, and David, who had time off for an extremely real relative's funeral, he hadn't made any arrangements for time off. Juan wrote him a quick bullshit email to his boss, and then everybody got to work.
Victor started looking through the victims' Facebooks for any general weirdness, while Juan checked for any more info on the power surges, and David tried to narrow down the time of death even further. Victor didn't find anything related to the victims, but did stumble across a missing person's report for one Angelina Lucas from the 11th. Juan figured out that the electrical disturbances originated in the town of Sierra Vista several hours to the south, which suggested there might be more victims down there. David pinpointed the ToD to 11:25. Jack, meanwhile, pored over the crime scene reports, but failed to turn up any new info.
Sierra Vista
Victor started lining his hat with tinfoil, and suggested the others do the same to keep out the psychic aliens. Juan said that he was being ridiculous, and went back to eating his MREs and breef jerky The team still had some time left before going to sleep, so they drove down to Sierra Vista to try to find the source of the electrical disturbances by mapping out damaged electrical infrastructure, while David stayed at the Inn and did more research into Angelina Lucas.
With Juan navigating and mapping and Victor inspecting power lines for age, they were quickly able to find the source of the disturbances: the Raytheon Fields research office. That done, the party drove back to the Arizona Inn in Tuscon, and when they arrived, David informed them of the results of his research; it turned out that Angelina Lucas was a former security guard at the Raytheon Fields research office in Sierra Vista.
22/12/19 Recon
David, Juan, and Jack rented an electric car and drove back to Sierra Vista, left the car "charging" at a charge port a block up the street from Raytheon Fields, and then walked around the area, scoping out the office's security. Victor stayed back at the Inn, doing more research into Lucasvia her social media presence, including hacking into her accounts.
The field team headed over to her place and Jack broke in to snoop around and hopefully steal her security badge and uniform to aid in getting into Raytheon Fields, as well as anything else that might be useful. Instead, Jack found nothing and realized that the place had been cleaned by a professional. He checked the fridge and examined the expiry dates on the food inside to determine that the house had been swept on the 12th (one day after her disappearance).
Jack then looked around the neighbourhood and found a neighbour with a porch cam, broke in, and went through the camera files only to find that it had been wiped on the 12th. With that, he headed back to the rest of the field team. Victor, meanwhile, had finished his research on Lucas. Her missing person's police file had been tampered with to mark it low priority, but the only other useful info he got was her address and that she had worked nights.
Another Body
Just after the field team called in to say they were driving back to Tuscon, Victor got a call from Meyer, who said that another weird body had come in that they might want to check out. The body, formerly Corey Edwards, had been mutilated beyond recognition, limbs torn off, and organs splayed out on the ground around the body. Even stranger, there was almost no blood spilled, and several of the organs were missing.
Victor notified the others (Juan: "So we're dealing with Chupacabra aliens...") and starting looking into Corey Edwards while they headed over to the coroner's office for David to do an autopsy on the corpse. Victor turned up that that Corey had been an events organizer, but wasn't related to any of the other victims or Raytheon Fields, and had died outside his work. The police report said that it looked most like a wild animal attack, and noted that the lack of blood was weird.
David's autopsy revealed that the organs had forced their way out from the inside, and the brain lacked the scarring similar to the other victims. Victor recalled that the "organs jumping out of the body" had something to do with the Mi-Go (Juan: "I knew it was aliens!" Jack: "Wait, Mi-Go are aliens?"). Victor suggested we pretend to be cops investigating Lucas' disappearance to get inside Raytheon Fields, but Jack shot him down, worrying that the people there might be involved in her disappearance, and the party might get cleaned up.
Crime Scene Investigation
The party split up, with Jack and Victor driving back to Sierra Vista to break in to Raytheon Fields that night, while Juan and David went to check out where Corey Edwards' body had been found. Local PD had roped off the area, but a quick flash of Juan's badge in conjunction with David's beauty got them past the cops.
They weren't able to find any new clues at the scene, but they did discover a CCTV recording in a 7/11 across the street from Edwards' office. Playing through it, they saw Edwards walk outside for a smoke break, and then hunch over and writhe in pain for several seconds before his internal organs leapt from his body. Shortly after, the recording became heavily obscured in static and a person with a mutilated left arm with something sticking out the end walked into view, picked up some organs, and left.
A quick examination determined that the "tentacle-armed person" couldn't be Angelica Lucas, as they were the wrong height, and didn't look female, though you could never be sure with aliens. Juan made a copy of the footage then deleted the original, while David attempted to mess with the CCTV system to hide their tampering. Some questioning of the cops revealed that they didn't know anything else, so Juan and David headed back to the Arizona Inn for the night.
Breaking and Entering
Jack and Victor waited several blocks away from Raytheon Fields for a couple of hours, then went in. Jack was able to trick a card reader and got them inside, and from there, they made their way to the security office without any interruptions. From the doorway, they could hear someone cheering, and snuck in. The guardwoman was on a couch with her back to them, watching old football games on a TV on the far side of the room, so they both snuck up behind the couch, getting ready to put her in a choke hold.
Jack grabbed for the woman's throat, but she jumped up and cheered at the last second as a player on the TV ran in a touchdown, and he brushed her arm instead. Victor panicked and tried to get her in a choke hold, but crit failed and jammed his fingers into the wall and muttered "I'm not a field agent!". Jack fast-drew his pistol and told the guard to freeze, followed by Victor more shakily readying his pistol.
She put her hands up, and Jack told her to get on the ground while Victor took her gun and then started hacking the security computer to remove them from the camera footage. After a few minutes, Victor realized it would take him several hours. Jack smacked the guard on the back of the skull with his pistol butt and knocked her out. As they settled in for the next couple hours, Jack unplugged a phone to tie the guard up with the cable, only to realize while he was tying her up that she had died.
After a while, a call came in over the radio for everyone to check in. Jack tried messing with the radio to simulate it malfunctioning, but failed and broke it entirely. At that point, they panicked and ran to the server room, Jack broke in, and Victor overloaded them with an electrical surge that set several on fire. From there, they were able to make it out without running into any more guards, ran back to Jack's car, and drove back to Tuscon.
Back at the Arizona Inn, Jack explained that they'd "failed to get the data", and the party settled in for the night, not sure where to go next.
Notes:
At one point the GM slipped up and said that we knew the victims weren't themselves psychic because of their "skull shape". This campaign now officially endorses the science of phrenology.
When David's autopsy couldn't reveal whether any psychic energies had been involved, Victor briefly suggested flying out Lucia Yepez, the psychic child from the El Paso Case, to look for "psychic juice", but we ultimately decided to save her for something more important.
By destroying the severs, Jack and Victor won't have to worry about their identities being exposed, but also destroyed the data we were looking for. They might have off-site backups of super secret conspiracy data, but either way, this has put a big hitch in our plans.
No comments:
Post a Comment