My Waves

So, in order to keep things from becoming too much of a wall of text, I’m splitting this up into three parts. Any of my higher-ups reading this should go through all three if they want the full report.

The Towerborn escaped in a roughly northeastern direction from our establishment. After getting the necessary Newborn-hunting supplies, I checked to see where he could have run off to hide and discovered one town quite a distance away. It was either hiding in that town or it had escaped into the Tower proper, in which case I was screwed until he decided to pop up again.

A quick flyby confirmed what the map had told us, that this town was the closest thing to our base, and that if the Towerborn was hiding anywhere in reality, it was here.

I parachuted outside of the town, and walked in armed with my cane and a small, Spiderman-esque acidthrower. The plan was to search the area for a place where an injured Towerborn was likely to rest and restore itself, and then wash it with acid until it was dead or immobilized.

The first thing I noticed was that while this town looked passable from the sky, it wasn’t very big at all. After a quick walk around, I found a town hall, a bar, a church, and a lot of squat, featureless buildings. It looked like a set from those old westerns, down to the empty streets and hostile atmosphere.

I figured the hall was the most likely place to find enough technology for a recovering Towerborn, and so I searched it. I checked every room, from the offices on the first floor to the mayor’s room. Not only did I find the place untouched, I found it completely deserted. The entire building was teeming with evidence of inhabitants, the seats were warm, the computers were running, but there was neither hide nor hair of the workers. Even the mayor’s office was deserted, a stack of papers half-filled out. Needless to say, I left the town hall as quickly as I could.

I did another sweep of the town, trying to find some sort of warehouse or storage facility, but I had given up by the time the sun had begun its descent.

My next idea was to check the bar, if for nothing else than to ransack it and enjoy a little drink while figuring out how to explain this to the bosses. The bar, however, was not empty. The tables were filled with people who eyed me silently at my entrance. These were working men, blue collar workers, and for the first time I realized how out of place I looked in my uniform. It was no longer clean or perfect, but in comparison to the trappings of the people around me, I must have looked like a CEO. A CEO who just walked into a bar in the middle of a hick town in Texas. A shudder ran down my spine as I took one of the two open seats at the bar and signaled the barkeeper for a drink.

I don’t know how long I sat there, just staring at the liquid. I lost track of the world around me, the noises disappearing slowly until I was lost in the silence of my own thoughts. I had just wrapped my hand around the mug to take the first sip, when I heard the door close, and the footsteps of another person who walked up and took the seat next to me. I glanced over. The man wore a ratty, dirty leather jacket that looked like it had once been a very nice possession. He spoke to the bartender for a bit before turning to me.

“Yer havin trouble here, bucko.”

He didn’t say it like a question. It was a statement, as grounded in fact as the color of the sand outside. I didn’t say a word in response. He ran his gloved hand over his messy hair, and I realized that something about him just struck me as odd in this place.

“Of course yer havin trouble. City slicker such as yerself don’t just walk into town and get answers. Not here, anyway. No sir, these fine people demand a price for their answers.”

“What do you want?” I finally responded.

“I don’t want nothin. I don’t want nothin at all. But ya see, that ain’t what I’m gonna get, cause you brought yer trouble down here. Or yer trouble brought you. Either way, there’s hell to pay fer yer tresspassin.”

“Tresspassing?”

“Listen, we don’t take kindly to yer kind around here. Here, we’ve gotten ourselves a nice little equilibriem with each udder. You, and your ilk, are jest the kinda people to go and ruin that. And we don’t want that, no sirree.”

The man brought out a small box from inside his coat and placed it on the table. I caught a hint of yellow on the back of his glove as he pulled it back into his pocket. The bartender took the box from off the table and stored it underneath the counter.

“Now I dunno what brought you here to this neck of the woods, but if I were you I would leave, and let your little outpost fall to whoever is messing with it. I’d highly recommend not coming back, either. See, these people have a LONG memory.”

He stood up and tilted his hat towards the bartender.

“Pleasure doin business with ye, barkeep.”

“A pleasure as always, friend.”

The first words spoken by a resident of this godforsaken town. Five words was all it took, five distant, uncomfortable words. I was staring absentmindedly at my drink before but now I was at full attention. Out here, in the middle of the desert, any liquid at all is appreciated. Contaminate the bar, and you’ve contaminated the city.

I looked up at the bartender, and the bartender looked back at me. I felt the eyes of each and every man in the building on my head. I was stupid. I hadn’t prepared for something like this.

The roar of the stranger's motorcycle became the alarm for my escape. I bolted towards the door, over chairs and tables, the eyes of the townspeople calmly following me in my flight. It was only when I reached the door that they moved, in unison, like a finely tuned army. I heard the deafening shuffle of every chair in that bar as the customers rose from their seats. Outside, the hot sun beat down on the town where I now had to escape. The once empty streets were already filled. The town that seemed deserted and hostile was now fully angry.

I picked a random direction that wasn’t already cut off and ran. I ran from the town, and I ran as far as I possibly could before I realized how lost I had made myself.

I need to rest. The next part will go up later.

- Have a Nice Day

It's been a very long seven days.

I'm going to resupply and recuperate a bit before I post the next reports, but a word of warning, they will be long.

- Have a Nice Day

He Comes Running With a Flag in His Hand

So it took a while, but something finally happened.

The three of us spent the last few days keeping an eye out for anything unusual, rotating sleeping so that two of us were always awake at any one time. The house was rather boring, and whoever was awake wound up playing cards half of the time. Specifically, me and one of the scouts were at the tail end of a game of poker when we heard knocking at the door. I sent the scout up to open the door, and I reached for my cane. The other scout was asleep on the couch between us and the door and the lazy bastard didn't move an inch.

So I stood there and watched as the scout went to the door, half expecting something like the Rake to pop up and lunge for me. Instead the door opened and there was this guy in a white coat. I lowered my guard for a second and the man poked the scout with his right hand and the scout collapsed immediately. No wobbling, no slurred speech, just straight down.

Once he hit the ground, several things happened. The man at the door looked up and scanned the room methodically from left to right. The scout on the couch began to wake up. And I realized that the coat the man was wearing was a torn, ragged version of the Oathbreakers' uniform. The man's eyes stopped on me and I saw them widen in surprise.

I hardened my grip on my cane and in the time it took my hand to get a firm grasp of the head, the man had moved from the doorway to the couch where the other scout was still trying to get his bearings. The man in the white coat poked the scout's neck, his arm moving almost too fast for me to see, and the scout fell back down over the tattered arm of the couch that was his bed. I attempted to raise the cane up, but sadly I never made it. However, in the time between the second scout's fall and my own incapacitation I managed to catch a few bright gleams from holes in the man's arm. I would have plenty of time to think about the ramifications of this discovery while the man held me in the air by my neck with that very same arm.

In retrospect I should have been thinking about what to do right then and there, but instead I panicked, worrying that I was going to fall like the other two. Thankfully I didn't fall. The thing decided to hold me there for a bit instead of poking me, every muscle in its face twitching and spasming like nothing I've ever seen before. Soon it calmed down somewhat and began to speak in a very monotone, stuttering voice.

"I... I... I remember... I......."

At this point it let out a few noises I'm certain no man could ever make.

"This one remembers you. This one remembers the... the... the... the atrocities you committed."

I stared down at him, dumbstruck partly by the fact that this thing remembers me, and partly by the fact that I couldn't remember what atrocity it was talking about. Thankfully, it continued before I could dwell too long on this fact.

"I know you. I remember what you did... at... I... I... This one knows what you did at the location designated 'Northe Facility.'"

That one caught me off guard. I managed to get out a few words from under his grip.

"What are you?"

Again, in hindsight, this was not the best of things to ask, as I'm sure it would have continued its monologue unaided. All I managed to do was make it angry. It's steel grip on my neck tightened and it let out a wavering roar as it pushed me against the nearest wall.

"I USED TO BE A MAN. I HAD A NAME. I... I was... I..."

More violent facial twitches at this point, and it seemed to be a lot more unstable.

"This unit is designated 3.1.14.14.15.18. It was assimi... it... I was TAKEN from my facility. You let... You... You abused the Tower for your own gain. This unit was assimilated from the Recovery designated 11.4.... 4... 4... 4... 4... IT TOOK ME UP AND SPAT ME OUT ON THESE SANDS. DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE? TO HAVE THESE COMMANDS ALL THE TIME?"

I might have answered, but I was slowly being choked by an arm that I was certain was metal at this point. I took this time to notice that this guy had one metal eye and one non-metal eye. I am not sure why I didn't notice it earlier, but I am now convinced that I need some more combat training to reduce these panic freezes. Needless to say, they almost got me killed today.

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE? HUH? YOU DAMNED TRAITOR! I'M GOING TO DRAG YOU OUT INTO THE DESERT AND BURY YOU IN THE SAND AND WATCH YOU DIE."

Mercifully, I was now in full control of my faculties and I was quickly trying to figure out how to kill this angry Towerborn before it choked me or made good on its promise to bury me in the desert. I still had my combat cane and after a bit of one handed fidgeting, I put it on what I hoped was the acid setting, and I jabbed it as hard as I could into the arm that wasn't holding me up.

This worked surprisingly well. He lost his grip on my neck and began screaming like any other organic being would. I guess the Newborn hadn't assimilated too much of him, since the pain receptors in his brain were clearly still active. During its thrashing, a pair of glasses fell off of his face and onto the floor. This seemed to pull the Towerborn out of its agony, but instead of rushing me again, it scooped up the glasses and fled out into the middle of fuck-nowhere from whence it came.

Had I the right equipment, I might have followed it out into the desert. However, I wasn't exactly expecting the thing I was looking for to be a piece of the Newborn, so I was missing a few necessities.

I did, however, manage to catch the general direction in which it fled. I also discovered that both scouts were completely and utterly dead.

So I've contacted the bosses, requested a cleanup crew, and I'm heading out quickly to resupply and plan out my next move. I'm also nursing a bruised neck and being very thankful that I am still alive.

- Have a Nice Day

To the Wild West

I am honestly surprised at what I found here. It's little more than a house in the middle of a desert, with the nearest town miles away. The bosses said that the base housed 5-10 people, and I could see that being true, but what were they doing out here?

Anyway, my report. I arrived with two scouts mostly for backup and orientation, neither of them being the insane one that came back. I do not know my way around this neck of the metaphorical woods at all, and these two supposedly can help me a little with getting around. Don't know their names, probably not going to bother asking. So anyway, we arrive at the base, a two story house in the middle of nowhere like I already said. And like the briefing said, nobody was there. What the briefing didn't mention was how well stocked the base was.

This base must have had some way of communicating with the bosses, and there's a telephone and a fax machine here, but nothing else. No computers, no towers, no televisions, nothing. To call the interior sparse would be a major understatement. It's just empty. And I don't know if this was how it's meant to be or if we've got a thief as well as a murderer to look for.

And on that thought, I was actually wondering if there were bodies here, or at least something to indicate that there was a killing. But nope, no bodies, no body parts, no bloodstains anywhere. It literally looks like the people living here just packed up and left.

To tell the truth, it's a bit disturbing.

So since whatever took our men decided to come back for the scouts, the two guys and I are going to sit here and see if it comes back again. Hopefully whatever it is, I can get rid of it quickly.

- Have a Nice Day

Where do you go?

When I said they probably had a big job waiting for me when I got back, I was thinking something along the lines of another cult infestation, or maybe something a little bigger. Maybe it will wind up spiraling out into a complicated, sticky situation, but it ALWAYS starts simple. "Help these guys plan an assault on this cultist base." "Help these people figure out what's going on with the town's population." "Do this seemingly menial task that's going to take three weeks longer than planned."

It's been years since I've been assigned to a proper assassination. The last one I did was before I joined this organization, even before I got Tommy roped up with those shady Doctors.

And even then, I knew who I was looking for, or what I was up against. This one, not so much.

So here's what I know: we had a base in western Texas.

Had. Apparently, it's gone now.

And it's gone in such a way that the higher-ups have no idea what happened to them. One day their reports stopped coming in, and when they sent in scouts to investigate everybody was gone. What tipped the bosses off to the fact that they didn't all pack up and leave was the fact that out of the five or so scouts they sent in, only one came back, and he was apparently so far gone that they couldn't get much of anything out of him.

All the guy could say was that there were monsters in the desert, and that one of them ate everybody.

I'm incredibly worried that I'm going to be dealing with a big one here, but the bosses are adamant that the culprit isn't anything beyond my abilities to handle.

So I have to go to Texas, find something that wiped out a base and a group of scouts that we know next to nothing about, and then kill it, whatever it might turn out to be.

I think I'm going to have to gather up some supplies for this one. Seriously worried about living through these next few weeks.

- Have a Nice Day

A Means to an End

So, I passed near Logansport again. Apparently the kid from earlier had gone batshit and killed his boss in cold blood. So I guess he won't need my help transferring out after all.

And the higher-ups actually got back to me about the idea of leaving the Newborn seed with the Chicago guys and letting them blow themselves up with it. They said that it is "an acceptable method of aiding the group," and that it coincidentally clears me from having to help them beyond dropping the seed off and leaving. So I’m going to call this entire job finished, and wait for the next one to roll in since they don’t usually approve quick fixes like that unless they’ve got something bigger waiting for me.

It's nice to see that this blog survived a real life minute in the field. Maybe it’ll go places. Like that Logansport kid. Or like his boss.

- Have a Nice Day

Fun times

So, another small town. I had my worries, I'll admit, but I'll thank whatever lucky stars sent me the job they did.

So this place is a recruitment outpost, and they have been having issues with a weird cult popping up within their boundaries. Now this is an issue for many reasons, but mostly because cult activity means that something wants a foothold in the city, and that would directly affect the jobs of the recruiters here. And since very few of them have had direct combat experience, they called me in to help the ones who DID have experience clean the cult out.

However, I elected to do some digging first. Partly because it's nice to know what you're trying to clean out but mostly because it takes a while and it keeps the return to Chicago that much farther away. Through this digging, I learned that the cult called themselves "The Awaiters of the New End," and that they were pretty much indistinguishable from the dozens of other Newborn-centric cults out there.

I also learned that they were relatively small still, and meeting in a building with few windows, and on the basement level, no less. So one night, when the group was huddled together for their meeting, I pumped some sleeping gas into the room and had a couple of guys take care of anybody that left the building.

The gas managed to do 90% of the work for me, and after I culled everyone in the room and disposed of the bodies I found this nice little Newborn seed that the cultists were keeping in a wooden box. They probably wanted to unleash it somewhere in the city once they got enough people to attempt it. They're not the first to think of doing that, and I really doubt they'll be the last.

Anyway, the outpost wants nothing to do with the seed, so they gave it to me to dispose of. I really, really do not want to mess with the Newborn right now, so I petitioned the bosses to let me drop it off in Chicago and let those knuckleheads use it however they wish. More than likely the request won't go through, and I'll have to think of another way to dispose of it.

But regardless of their choice, I have to head back north to Chicago. I am not looking forward to this.

- Have a Nice Day