From the Journals of Agents Caleb Sale
SPOILERS for the scenario VISCID now collected in the book A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.
These notes were recovered on August 12, 2024. The medium on which the notes were transcribed has been classified TOP SECRET.
Dramatis Personae
- Cooper – Dan
- Palmer – Doug
- Sale – Hisham
What a waste of three months
From Caleb Sale’s journal: After the massacre in Chicago, I returned to my hometown to regain some semblance of peace. I ended up camping out in the hills of Boulder for three months away from people. The damn Chicago mission. I wished for peaceful sleep. Instead I was gifted flashes of horrible visions and waking up feeling even worse. I don’t remember what the visions are. Not any more. But I do remember waking up naked in my old associate Elizabeth Kane‘s Dumpster. She chased me off her property, like the loyal friend she is. I felt like shit.
Then all of a sudden I was activated once again. I found myself in Seattle for Delta Green business. I spotted the Scottish academic Gloria Palmer – the other survivor from the Chicago mission – and wondered what did she do in the last three months. An FBI man who introduced himself as Brian Cooper, showed up, and we warily greeted each other.
Finally Agent Solomon appeared and started the briefing.
Two days prior, the body of retired geneticist named Dr. Tibalt Grieves and his girlfriend Amanda Griffin was discovered in Mill Creek, Washington, with neck and face wounds. When the police arrived, the bodies decayed rapidly and unnaturally into blue goo. But their hands and feet remained. The police also found bloody footprints that resembled an infant’s at the scene. A homicidal baby? Why not.
Then the police found a hidden biohazard lab under the house. CDC has been called, and a Delta Green contact Roberta Kane (no relations with Elizabeth, at least I don’t think so) alerted them and quarantined the house and the lab.
A sample of the goo was sent on a flight to CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia but disappeared and was found to have crashed near Clearwater National Forest, Idaho. Agents were on route to investigate.
After the briefing, Cooper went to the zoo. I heard he used his FBI credentials to acquire a video cam, a cage, shock prods, tranq guns, nets and a van. But he was rude to the zoo officers, so they threatened to report Cooper to his superiors. Weird.
Also, Cooper obtained FBI jackets for us. I feel happy — and safe — wearing it. There we were Cooper, Palmer and I in a car, headed from Seattle to Mill Creek.
En route, Cooper received the files on Tibalt Grieves from his FBI office. Grieves, 60, was born in Ithaca, New York. He was recruited for R&D by DARPA in 1985. But there were no records of his activities there.
Then I browsed online forums about Mill Creek. There were a slew of reported pets that went missing in the past couple of days — since the death of Grieves. Was it this creature that we were hunting?
Foundry VTT screen of the team
Counting crows
We arrived at Dr. Grieves’s cordoned home.
The cops had left but the police tape reminded folks that they had been here recently.
We then decided to split up so we can do more damage. I walk the house perimeter talking to neighbors who complained about missing pets. A neighbor told me that they saw a woman who surveilled Grieves house from a parked car. The woman fled when approached.
Meanwhile, Palmer & Cooper entered the house and eventually found invoices for the construction of Grieves’ hidden biohazard lab.
Later, we spotted crows flying & behaving strangely. I recalled the report of crows feasting on Grieves’ remains. In full PPE that we brought in the car, we went for a crow hunt. I almost feel normal again. We tranqed 2 crows. Upon closer inspection we found something extraordinary. There were strange biological growths or tumors on their avian bodies under their thick dark feathers, including human fingertips.
We sent the prints off for identification & Cooper tried to get the CDC to help them with this “infection”. Soon the prints came back. I was sure it would be Grieves, but no. It was a USAF test pilot who crashed and perished in 1992 named Daniel Ulee. What was Lieutenant Ulee’s biomatter doing in a crow’s body? How did it get there? Why was it there?
Also, we had yet to find out what made those strange bloody tracks where Grieves body was found.
Strange crows
In the woods
Before we investigate Daniel Ulee, we decided something else was more important: the containment of this pet-eating creature. What was it? Perhaps this was another lead to solve the strange deaths in the Grieves laboratory. We drove across the Mills Creek suburbs. finding more clues & missing pets. After at meal at a Subway, we stake out Grieves’ home.
Overnight, Palmer was disturbed by a loud cat-fight and woke us. But we saw nothing in the CCTV network we had set up around the Grieves home.
Armed with Beretta pistols, tranq guns and a net, we investigated the park before sun up. We found an old abandoned RV, a dead cat and something feeding on it: a dog-sized unholy creature. This close to the Grieves home? Was this the thing that escaped?
The aberration leaped at Palmer but missed. She struck back with her flashlight — it was still the early hours. Tranq shots were useless. The wounds our Beretta shots inflict healed swiftly, despite the dripping blue biomass. The horrific creature tore through the net I hurled at it. We kept shooting as it runs for the woods.
And then it was sunrise!
Touched by early morning rays of the sun, the thing shrieked & melted into blue goo. Just like Grieves had.
Dead serious
In the morning, we made an appointment to meet the coroner Dr. Louis Stubbs. He was to inspect the gooey remains of Dr. Grieves’ girlfriend Amanda. Beforehand, we bought sun lamps and steel wire nets as precautions, seeing how difficult it was to kill the thing in the woods without the sun. A grotesque hand-thing emerged from Griffin’s body. It attacked us. We dropped the sun lamp and fled outside, leaving Dr. Stubbs behind.
We crept back into the coroner’s office after some fresh air and found that Dr. Stubbs had been killed by the thing. We hunted the creature in the dark corridors of the morgue. I was sure I had seen this part — looking for unnatural hand-shaped murderous creatures — in a movie once. With the recovered sun lamp to weaken it, we gave it lead poisoning with our Beretta M9s.
Then we called our handler Agent Solomon who got the CDC to lock down the coroner’s office, keeping the staff away from the dead thing which melted into a pool of goo… and Stubbs’ exsanguinated corpse.
A flight to Montana
The next day, we learned that a private investigator named Evelyn Wells who was also investigating Grieves had been shot. We headed to the Seattle hospital.
Meanwhile, Palmer contacted Belton, Wells’ partner, for a talk. Belton told her Wells had been investigating a company named Potentia Holdings who was bankrolling Grieves — and undoubtedly his research as well. He paid guards to monitor Wells at her room, just in case.
Cooper talked with the police officer guarding Wells outside her hospital room. Officer Barrera told him that Wells was not killed by the headshot because she was at the time reaching for her dropped phone.
While everyone else talked, I went out to buy some surveillance gear & covertly set them around and near Wells’ room.
It was then Agent Solomon informed us that the CDC aircraft that carried the Grieves samples had crashed. No survivors. According to early crash reports, the biological containment case had been broke open from the inside in CDC Flight 191. Did something emerge from the sample? Something deadly? And brought down the plane?
We decide to split up.
Palmer and I flew to Billings to look for Daniel Ulee’s wife, but they had moved years ago. Meanwhile, in a Seattle hotel room Cooper investigates Potentia’s Aaron Silverman & Robert Justin Ortega, a tech bro whose company Ancile, Inc made hi tech body armor for the military. Were they using Ulee’s remains for genetic experiments?
We found Isabella Ulee’s house in Billings and set up an outdoors camera — but for some reason a dog stole it. We waited til 11pm to set up a new one. I overheard a single phone call to the house that weirded out Mrs. Ulee. Next morning, we briefed Cooper.
The former Mrs. Ulee's home
Back in Seattle
As Palmer & I continued our surveillance of Isabella Ulee’s home, Cooper monitored Wells at her hospital room while looking into Potentia Holdings, Ancile Inc and the tech bro Ortega.
We decided to install more webcams in Ulee’s home. In disguise, Palmer began to fog the neighborhood for a bug infestation. Under the cover of the “insecticide”, I crept inside to plant the webcams. A neighbor left a message complaining about the fogging. I promptly deleted the message before leaving.
Soon another surveillance team from the local FBI branch — requested by Cooper — came to relieve us. We returned to Seattle to rendezvous with Cooper in Seattle the next morning. (I had failed to secure tickets that night.)
At the hotel, we planned an 8-hour watch for Wells. Palmer went to bed exhausted while I took a shower, had lunch, then met with Cooper at the Swedish Medical Center.
After a couple of rotating shifts, Cooper came in early to relieve me at the hospital just after midnight. While we talked shop, I notice via the phone monitor that we were about to have guests sneaking onto the floor via the emergency stairwell.
These guests were armed.
Exchanges
Everything moved as if a dream where time slowed down. I saw a grenade rolling into the hospital waiting room. The blast took a pound of flesh from Cooper and I. I was a USAF mechanic. What am I doing here? A firefight began with four private bodyguards (paid for by Belton), Cooper and I against three armed gunmen with M4s. I perceived deadly bullets shredding the walls, ceilings, furniture of the waiting room. The bodyguards had to defend their comatose witness, Evelyn Wells.
I pushed the sofa toward the gunmen drawing their fire. The guards tried their best but the gunmen were better. I was shot twice (losing my sanity too) and collapsed. The cop Barrera who was on guard duty rushed into the room to help but he too fell. One gunman was hit & fell.
Cooper had to withdraw. He ran downstairs to find their getaway vehicle but he took too long. The gunmen escaped. He went back, found me dying in a pool of my own blood. The FBI agent tried his best to resuscitate me but failed.
I, Caleb Sale, died then.
I perceived all four guards, the cop and Evelyn Wells were dead. Police and emergency services arrived. So did Palmer — from the hotel. Cooper, wounded as he was, handled the aftermath of the firefight. When it was done I saw Cooper debrief Agent Solomon.
Who sent the gunmen to kill Evelyn Wells and why? Why was it so awkward for Cooper to ask to see his estranged son Daniel, a doctor at the hospital? Where am I? Why can’t people see me?
The Cherry Hill Campus of the Swedish Medical Center
Beyond the bullets
I saw that Army Sergeant Isabel Luna from Taos, New Mexico had been activated by Delta Green. She was dropped into the team by Agent Solomon right after the hospital firefight.
I noticed that she brought a go-bag that is almost as tall as her, filled with army infantry gear. She expressed her condolences for my death halfheartedly. Cooper tried to request additional gear from the FBI in vain so all the team had to go was whatever they had on hand.
Then after Cooper bought a fresh solar-powered battery for the team’s UV lamp weapon, I saw the three of them drive to Billings. Twelve hours later, they arrived to rendezvous with the FBI stakeout team, monitoring Mrs. Ulee at her home.
Before Cooper, Palmer or Luna could knock on the door, I heard police radio chatter of a semi truck crashing into a house. It was Mrs. Ulee’s previous house, the first house Palmer & I visited when I was still alive two hundred years ago. They rush for the nearby accident site. Cooper talked to the cops and fire department into hanging back. I see them sweep forward with Luna on point. The crashed truck — in the living room — had no signs of life, but Cooper found traces of blue goo within. Someone, something tried to drive the vehicle, but lost control. A coincidence Mrs. Ulee lived nearby?
Meanwhile, I saw my replacement Luna sneaking away from the lights in front of the house to check out the back yard. She was looking for clues. I spotted inhuman, perhaps even unnatural tracks heading towards the direction of the former Isabella Ulee’s current house. Whatever creature that was in the truck was now foot mobile. Cooper, Palmer and Luna headed back to the Ulee home.
Cooper & the FBI agents plead Mrs. Ulee to evacuate her home, but she refused to go.
I saw Palmer & Luna sweeping the back yard with their weapons. Suddenly something monstrous, huge and barely human roared and emerged from the woods in the back. Was this the truck driver? Or was this being conveyed by the truck?
Palmer lit it up with the UV lamp, sunburning its skin severely. The creature attacked Luna but its claws failed to pierce her armor.
As Palmer tried to keep the UV lamp on it, I saw Luna unload her M4A1 into the beast, burst after burst. Gooey blue splash after gooey blue splash. Cooper douses it with gasoline in tank he found on the premises. Luna’s flashbang grenade lit it. There are flames. The creature roared in pain — perhaps with excessive emotional outburst — and eventually melts into a puddle of blue goo as it burned.
After, Cooper talked to the cops. Palmer & I cleaned up the site, leaving no trace of the creature. Why did the creature come to Isabella Ulee’s house? Was this what broke out of containment in the crashed plane in Idaho? What about Ortega and Ancile? Why do I even care?
I’m so tired. I need to rest.
