Recently Updated

Active Agents

Allies and Wild Cards

Guide to the City

Mission Reports

Personnel

The Opposition

Return to Enantiodromia

4.04 - My Sins Remembered

Nighttime. The only sound is the soft hum of a car engine, the road beneath the wheels. Agent Daniel McGee, his face lit by the dim glow of the dashboard lights, sits in the passenger seat of his old car. Sitting behind the wheel is the albino.

"You want to turn on the radio?" asks the albino, conversationally. "I think there's a bottled water in the glove compartment, if you're thirsty." McGee declines.

"We're nearly there," says the albino. The car is passing down a street in a dark city, and the buildings to either side appear to be made of some black metal, all gothic spikes and arches. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" asks the albino. It's all gone now, of course, but once it was so beautiful." Finally, he stops the car and pulls the parking brake. "This is the place, he explains, getting out.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," says McGee.

"Suit yourself," says the albino, "These streets aren't really empty, of course, but you can wait in the car if you really want."

McGee gets out of the car. Under his feet the street feels like the same sort of metal, and some sort of hard grit is blowing through the air. In the strip of sky visible between the rows of tall buildings, dark clouds churn and roil.

The albino enters one of the buildings, and McGee follows. They climb several winding flights of stairs, their way lit by cold, blue torches set in iron sconces. "Five flghts," says the albino when they finally stop. "Five. You'll need to remember that."

They enter a room like a shrine, with several artifacts on display. There is a huge black cloak hanging from the wall, long enough to fit a man nine feet tall and still cover his ankles. Hanging ext to the cloak is a proportionately large hood. On the floor next to the robe's pooled hem is a huge iron lantern, its glass chimney stained with ages of soot. And hanging over the whole display is an enormous scythe, its polished wood haft at least thirteen feet long, its blade — the only brightly shining piece of metal McGee has seen so far — six feet from base to tip.

The albino makes a sign of reverence — or perhaps it is obeisance — before the display, then steps forward and fumbles with something in the robe's folds. He turns and holds out a large metal key. "This is important," he says. "You'll need to remember this." Then he puts the key back and says, "It's time to go. They won't ignore us forever."

"If the key is important, why don't we take it now?" McGee asks as they descend the steps.

The albino chuckles. "Oh, you don't need that key. You'll need it when you find it again, later. But you'll remember."

They return to the car, and the albino drives a bit further. "I'm sorry to be so cryptic," he says. "It is difficult to make myself understood." His voice suddenly sounds far away, as though he were speaking through a long metal tube. McGee looks, and the albino's face is covered by a metal mask, ornate with flanges and spikes, his eyes and mouth invisible behind shadowed, rectangular slits. "But when the time comes, you will understand."

Eventually they reach a narrow alley. "This is where you get out," says the albino. His face is normal again.

"Who are you?" McGee demands.

The albino only smiles. "I am not who you think I am," he says. "Your window is shrinking."

McGee turns, and at the end of the alley he can see daylight. But the light is moving away quickly, as though the alley were stretching, longer and longer. McGee scrambles out of the car and runs for the light.

For a moment he is blinded, and shadowed shapes move around him and bump into him. Then his eyes adjust, and he is standing on the sidewalk, squinting in early morning winter light, with pedestrians walking around him. Across the street, the twin towers of Babbitt Plaza rise over the skyline.

McGee is back in the City at last.

The first thing that Agent McGee noticed, upon finding hiimself standing in the middle of Babbitt Plaza, was a small crowd of people behaving strangely. They were sitting together on the grass of one of the plaza's many landscaped greens, quietly staring at the Babbitt Towers, not moving or speaking. Some of them had pulled their legs into a lotus position.

McGee did not spend much time considering them, however. He went to a nearby newsstand and checked the current newspaper. The date was January 22 — almost a full month since he had disappeared from Emile Markham's old house after destroying Morrot.

He had no idea what had happened in the interim.

* * * *

Angela Delafont gathered Agents MacMillian, Herschler, Lane, and Morrisson together to discuss strategy. They needed to figure out who had attacked Orpheus Group, how to strike back at them, how to get themselves together again. She asked the Agents to think of any strange or unusual events that they had noticed in the days, hours, or minutes before the attack.

Agent Lane mentioned the four-digit number written on a slip of paper he had found on Scott Archer's body. The group discussed the possible meanings of the number until Tommy Fabrosi, awake for the first time after his injury, suggested that they might be the number of a safe-deposit box at First Municipal Bank and Trust.

They also discussed possible avenues of investigation. There was a general consensus that Bishop had been behind the attack, but opinions differed on how to get to Bishop. Agent Herschler wanted to investigate Lamont Christensen further; the others were not convinced that this would be very fruitful. Delafont felt that it was as good a place to start as any.

They decided to try the bank first. Herschler and MacMillian entered the newly recovered and retrofitted projection creches, and the team made ready to depart.

* * * *

Agent McGee tried calling Orpheus Headquarters first. He got only a busy signal. Next he tried Agent MacMillian's number, but got a recorded message saying that the number was no longer in service. The next number he tried was the same.

On the fourth try, the dial tone suddenly broke up into static. After several pops and stutters, an urgent voice came through the speaker. "Who is this?" it asked.

"Who is this?" countered McGee.

"This is Radio Free Death, man, who is this?"

"This is Agent Daniel McGee."

"McGee? Holy shit man, where the hell are you?"

"I'm... I'm in the City. About a block away from Babbitt Plaza, heading north. What's going on?"

"Man, you have got to get off the phone! They're tracing you right now!"

"What? What the hell is going on?"

"GET RID OF YOUR PHONE! THEY KNOW WHERE YOU ARE!"

McGee chucked his cell phone into the sunroof of a passing car and started walking faster.

* * * *

As the Agent team was pulling away from the hospital, the radio suddenly crackled to life.

"I found McGee!" shouted Radio Free Death. "One block north of Babbitt Plaza. You've got to pick him up, they've got a lock on him already — go go go!"

Agent Morrisson leaned back and projected while Agent Lane stepped on the gas.

* * * *

Agent McGee saw a dark van screeching around the corner ahead of him; he turned and saw two men in dark suits and sunglasses walking quickly toward him from the other direction. One of them was reaching for something inside his jacket.

The van came to a shuddering halt at the curb right next to him. The passenger door flew open and Agent Lane yelled "Get in!"

Agent Herschler jumped out of the van and ran towards the closer of the two men in black. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash from a rooftop down the street, heard the muffled crack of a projectile breaking the sound barrier, and threw himself to the sidewalk as an enshrouded sniper bullet passed through his upper chest, tearing a ragged hole through his ectoplasmic form. Morrisson stuck his head out through the van window, sighted the sniper, and invoked his Dirge emanation to disable the shooter and partially destroy part of the building's roof.

Agent MacMillian closed with the second man in black, and tried to use Intimate to force him not to shoot at McGee. The tactic half-worked; he did not shoot at McGee, but instead turned to MacMillian and said, "I can see you, you know." And he shot her through the stomach with a black bullet.

The other gunman fired at McGee and missed, hitting a female pedestrian behind him instead. The crowd began to panic.

McGee pulled his own gun and took aim at the gunman firing at him, fired and hit. The gunman fell, and the Agents who were projected saw a puppeteering spirit relinquish its hold and stagger backwards out of the body.

Agent Morrisson dove through the van door, morphosed into a rolling blob of black protoplasm, lunged at the gunman who attacked MacMillian, manifested into solid form, shaped himself into a hardened spike, and impaled the attacker through the chest. A spirit flew out of this body as well, and both ghosts began a quick retreat.

Herschler, meanwhile, had haunted the building under the sniper and finished him off with Nimbus fire, and McGee had managed to scramble into the van. The rest of the Agents regrouped and sped off.

* * * *

Back at the abandoned polio ward, the rest of the Agents brought McGee up to speed on what had been happening in the City.

Everyone was glad to have him back safely, but McGee himself was somewhat reticent about describing his encounter with the albino and his vision of the city, the tower, and the key. When they suggested he join them in investigating the safe-deposit box, he was eager to start.

Safe-deposit boxes at First Municipal Bank and Trust.Infiltrating the bank was surprisingly easy. Herschler haunted the building and detected only a few security guards inside. McGee phased in through the vault door, found the box, reached into it and enshrouded the objects inside. Then he simply walked out. There were no complications.

Back at the hospital, McGee resolidified the contents of the box and the Agents looked them over. They comprised several dossiers and a flash memory stick.

The first dossier was on a man named Robin Terce, a senior agent at the local CIA headquarters in the City. He was supervisor to an agent named Phillip Nash, although that name meant nothing to anyone other than Herschler.

The second dossier was on a man named Samuel Magabe. Information on Magabe was sparse. His occupation was listed only as "interagency liaison," and he had unspecified connections to something called PROJECT: SHADOWLAND. There were several photographs of Terce and Magabe talking together — on the street outside of CIA headquarters, or while sitting in a car.

The third dossier was on Dr. Masato Takeichi. Most of the information focused on his role as one of the original founders of the Eurydice Corporation. However, there were also references to his connection to PROJECT: SHADOWLAND as well.

The last document was a FOIA report on PROJECT: SHADOWLAND itself. It consisted of page after page of thick, black lines. Every bit of content had been completely redacted.

Finally, the memory stick contained PDF scans of all of the documents and photographs. It also contained a video file.

The video was shaky and grainy, probably taken with a cell phone. It showed the front of CIA headquarters, shot from across the street, apparently from inside a cafe or restaurant. The camera focused on the front of the building, then swung around to focus on a newspaper held up by the man holding the camera. The date was November of last year, while the Agents had been in Bolivia.

The camera swung back to CIA headquarters, in time to see Agent Rob Herschler walk in through the front door.

There was a cut in the film. The man holding the camera (presumably Scott Archer) held his wristwatch up to show that two hours had passed. Then he focused on the building again. After a moment or two, Herschler walked out along with Robin Terce. He shook Terce's hand, laughed, then got into a cab and drove away.

And the screen went black.