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3.07 - Uku Pacha

An aerial shot of green-forested mountains. The camera swoops in on a small valley near some ancient ruins. The floor of the valley is one large cultivated field, row after row of leafy plants that look suspiciously like coca plants. As the camera dips closer, camouflage netting can be seen covering most of the plants.

Cut to one of the narrow, gravel roads bordering the field. Several men with bandanas around their mouths are on patrol, propping their automatic rifles in the crooks of their arms. The sun is high in the sky. The air is quiet and still. After a moment, a faint sound is heard — the squeak of metal wheels.

The guards look decidedly nervous. One yells at the others something in Spanish. They line up at the side of the road. The creaking gets louder, and soon, down the road, a dark shape appears. It is tall and box-like. It is a cage, with bars of black iron, pushed on a wheeled platform. Four men push the platform along: two in the front, two in back. Two more men wielding pistols follow closely behind them.

The guards look more nervous still, and some of them edge back a few inches as the cage goes by. A close-up on the men pushing the cage reveals that they look sick unto death: pale, drawn, drenched with sweat. One of them vomits suddenly, but continues to walk, tracking his feet through the slop he just made. The pistol-wielding guards look no better. One of them simply stops in his tracks, looks around blankly, then puts his weapon in his mouth and fires. There is a barked order from off-screen, and two of the rifle-carrying guards drag his body away.

The handlers push the cage up to the edge of the field. The camera pans out over the rows of plants, revealing several more cages, each with its own team of pushers and guards, lined up at various points around the field's perimeter. The camera also moves to an angle that clearly shows the interior of the cage for the first time.

The cage is empty. All the cages are empty.

One of the pistol-wielding guards shouts an order, and one of the handlers reaches to open the cage door. He gets it halfway open before falling dead in his tracks. The guard opens the door the rest of the way, then staggers back.

Suddenly the camera rushes out into the field, following the POV of something careening through the rows. A horrible sound, something between a howl and a scream and a sob, is barely audible, as though heard from a great distance. More screams are approaching, getting louder but all of them muffled by that strange sense of distance. The camera reaches the center of the field and begins spinning, jerking around. Awful noises, growling, snarling, rending, gristly crunches fill the air, but it is all faint, distant, as though it were happening inside a small, locked box at the bottom of a very deep, dark well.

The camera cuts to a still shot, outside the invisible melee. The terrible sounds continue in the background. The camera pans in close to one of the leafy plants. It is turning black. Cut to an extreme close-up of one of the leaves: the black can clearly be seen soaking in through the leaf's capillaries, filling its veins, flowing back up to the plant's stem. Soon the entire plant is the color of pitch, down to its roots.

And still the sounds continue.

Cut to black.

Initial operations in Bolivia had begun. Agents were to fly into La Paz in small groups, on separate, commercial flights. Dr. Neel Shivani and Agent Angela Delafont had already arrived several days ago, along with a team of non-projecting personnel, to establish contacts and set up a base of operations. Agents Walter Hanley, Li Xianjin, and Doug Sands would join them.

Agents MacMillian, McGee, Herschler, Lane, and Morisson arrived at El Alto International Airport without incident. They checked into a hotel and were eventually contacted by Delafont. She sent two SUVs with drivers to the hotel to pick up the Agents and bring them to the temporary headquarters down in La Paz.

As they navigated the maze-like slums of the city, two trucks moved to block them into a narrow street, and men on opposite rooftops began firing at them with rocket-propelled grenades. Agent Morrisson immediately projected and neutralized one of the assailants with his Dirge power; Agent Lane slowed and deflected one of the missiles with Pandemonium and Poltergeist; and Agent McGee eliminated the second attacker by puppeteering him and causing him to leap off the rooftop. Agent MacMillian was injured as she struggled with the driver of her own vehicle, who had himself been puppeteered; however, Agent Herschler was able to wrestle the driver to the ground, at which point the possessing ghost fled.

It was clear that the enemy knew they were coming. The temporary headquarters was immediately moved to a backup location outside La Paz: an abandoned silver mine up in the hills. The Agents regrouped there and equipped themselves, and Neel Shivani treated Agent MacMillian's wounds.

The infamous Yungas Road, or 'Road of Death'.Agent Delafont outlined the plan. The T&S laboratory was located on a high plateau near the Peruvian border. To reach it, they would have to drive up the Yungas Road - the so-called "Road of Death." One lane wide, bordered on one side by an unscalable cliff, on the other side by a vertiginous drop-off, it was known to thrill-seekers everywhere as the most dangerous road on earth. Once the Agents reached the border, they would be up on top of the plateau, and the terrain would flatten out a bit. They would make camp, send a recon team in to get the lay of the land, and then decide from there how to proceed. Dr. Neel Shivani had set up several portable projection creches, modified to run on gasoline-powered generators, so that sleeper-class projectors would be able to go in spiritus.

They split into four groups: Agent McGee would ride point on a motorcycle to scout ahead. Agents Delafont, MacMillian, and Morrisson would ride in the first SUV; Agents Hanley, Li, and Herschler would ride in the second; and Agents Lane, Sands, and Watts would bring up the rear.

Halfway through their journey, McGee spotted a tripwire on the road and called the caravan to a halt. Inspection revealed the tripwire to be connected to an explosive device. The group decided to enshroud the tripwire so that it only existed in the ghost world, then simply drive the SUVs through it. While they were deliberating, three spectres attacked from the cliff above; however, Agent Lane was able to hold them enthralled using Dreamscape. Once the caravan was clear, Agent Herschler detonated the booby trap from a distance, destroying the three spectres.

Then, as the road was beginning to reach the plateau and the cliffs on either side were beginning to flatten out, McGee and the lead SUV were hit by a Pandemonium effect, slowing their relative time. Hanley hit the brakes to avoid slamming into them, but Sands was not so quick, and rammed his SUV into Hanley's, causing them both to slide toward the drop-off.

A ghost darted from the treeline and inhabited the lead SUV. The next moment, the gas-tank exploded, flipping the SUV up and forward in slow-motion. The slow-time effect vanished just as the vehicle slammed down vertically onto its front bumper. It began tipping forwards, right on top of McGee, who had been knocked off his motorcycle by the force of the blast. Thinking quickly, McGee projected and then enshrouded the SUV just as it rolled onto him. Delafont and Morrisson fell through the now-incorporeal vehicle and hit the ground. At that moment, gunfire erupted from the treeline above them, and enshrouded bullets slapped into the dirt road.

MacMillian activated Beckon to distract the shooters. Lane used a Pandemonium effect to increase the distance between the rear two SUVs and the edge of the cliff, preventing them from going over. McGee flickered up into the trees, behind the shooters, to get the drop on them. Everyone was injured, distracted, or critically low on vitality.

At that moment, McGee saw a wave of force ripple through the forest, and one of the shooters abruptly — an involuntarily — ripcorded. Not understanding but keen to take advantage of the distraction, he fired at another the other shooters, severely damaging his corpus and forcing him to ripcord as well. The third shooter also ripcorded involuntarily, falling victim to the same force that had taken the first. The last shooter, seeing himself outgunned, ripcorded voluntarily.

Back on the road, Agents still able to function were helping the wounded. MacMillian was still maintaining her beckoning. Then, from the treeline, she heard a familiar voice say "Lower your light, child."

She did so. Standing before her, in ghost-form, wielding a fennel staff in one hand and a strange strip of some thin, leathery substance in the other, was Sister Magrathea — the head of the convent that she had stayed in during her missionary work in South America, many years ago.

To be continued...