by Jacob Hammes
Results were less than shocking at first. Out of the millions of people that crossed paths with the objects daily, no one showed any ill effects.
Like all studies, results from the tests were assembled. Out of every 2.4 million people, one or two people seemed as if they acted strangely. Some would stare dreamily at the object for an unnecessary amount of time. Other people would simply stumble into the object, use it to regain their footing, and wander off as if nothing had ever happened. The most convincing ‘symptoms’ exhibited were of random strangers getting light headed around the object and having to be carted off by loved ones toward the shade or given water before they passed out.
The sad thing was that the results were completely impossible to prove. Who knew if the subject showing said signs hadn’t just downed a gallon of whisky?
That is, until Melvin Lambert walked onto the scene.
Poor Melvin left work that day, from Constitution Avenue on the fourth floor of an office building, the same man he had always been. He was meek, quiet, and completely stress free. He sported large glasses, a pocket protector, and a blatant comb-over. He was by all accounts the most mild mannered tech nerd in the city. He also weighed in at a whopping one hundred and thirty six pounds. The old suit he wore told everyone who knew him that he was either frugal or broke. He always shook the hands of those he worked with, smiled a big toothy smile, and laughed embarrassingly loud.
That day, Melvin chose to go home by a route that he hardly ever took. He fatefully crossed a street being watched by the Unusual Operations Division. It was day six of a week-long observation of one object that emitted particularly strong electromagnetic pulses. The broad wings of a bronze eagle had been created during World War II for the Nazi regime. It was ugly and gaudy, but just big enough to weld to the top of a fencepost. The owner of the Nazi relic said it had belonged to Hitler himself.
The eagle was tack welded to an iron fence, overlooking a street. It stayed practically unnoticed for six days before Melvin came along.
He stopped dead in his track, stared at the surveillance camera for two minutes. His body did not twitch or sway and his eyes did not blink. He was hauntingly still, looking through the camera to the people watching, or so it seemed.
Poor Melvin was brought into the DC area police station for questioning after a long stay in the hospital. He was charged with two counts of felony battery, attempted murder, assaulting a police officer, and very nearly twelve other crimes. The police reported that Melvin had withstood both pepper spray and Tasers before being engaged lethally. He was shot four times before he fell, but luckily, he survived. Melvin was never the same man; unfortunately something had cracked inside of him.
Studies on people who have gone insane over the last few decades use brain waves to diagnose whether or not someone has snapped. Unfortunately, the same waves were found in poor Melvin. He seemed to have suffered a severe case of reversion.
It was ultimately blamed on work-related stress.
The study concluded that one out of every ten million people in the United States might incur a peculiar reaction to certain amounts of electromagnetism. Like the resonance of a hundred troops marching across a bridge, it was hypothesized that when brainwaves were in perfect conjunction with the frequency of the electromagnetism, bad things could happen. The reason behind the resonance was still unknown and so far was impossible to replicate. The only factual evidence relating science to the strange objects was that each of the objects were emitting mild and harmless radioactive waves and each of the documented relics had some sort of metal.
It had been a side job of the UOD ever since to catalogue and track these items. The official term the items were given was ‘Relic’ and categories were made for the strength and danger of each. When new ones appeared, it was usually because that one-in-ten-million man happened upon a relic that he was allergic to. Unless a single Relic fell into an allergic man’s hands, they would remain invisible forever. No single Relic held enough power to ping a satellite unless it met with a catalyst.
The reason this case was so important; who needed a Special Forces agent with an angry, diluted outlook on life and special new skills who just so happened to be allergic to an object he found in a cave somewhere?
“Well,” Marcus said, scratching at his stubbly chin. “Let’s compile the information from the last team that would have been dispatched and get a head start on this guy. If he’s dangerous, we need to figure out what he’s after.”
“Already on it, Marcus,” Gregory said. “You really think that I wouldn’t have already taken care of that? I should demote you, you know. I’m not sure you’re such an asset to this agency sometimes.”
“Stuff it, old man,” Marcus kidded. He saw his boss inflate indignantly for a moment before smiling and slapping the table.
“This is going to be interesting, my friends,” Gregory said in a jovial voice. “I’ll be calling everyone in so we can have the dream team together again, working on the year’s most important case.”
Marcus flashed a genuine smile. He loved this job, loved his team, and loved that his boss was so passionate about serving both Marcus and the rest of his team to the best of his ability. Not to mention the fact that he was going to be doing his part, keeping the world safe from crazy people.
He also could not help wondering what type of case this would turn into. It had been a while since something serious turned up and Marcus was growing impatient. He practically licked his chops at the prospect of stretching his legs once again.
After all, he was past due for some fun.
Chapter 4
Light crept through the blinds of the office building as the early morning hours wore away. Marcus was busy looking over the details of the case one by one figuring out if there was any helpful information to be found. The order had been given to exhume John’s body under the assumption he was still indeed dead. His family would have to be given a false reason for the exhumation for obvious reasons; no one wanted to find out their son was alive and killing people and if he were dead he should remain that way.
The facts were fairly cut and dry. Due to John’s top-secret clearance, many things about the case remained unknown.
John Flipske,
28 years old
Served ten overseas operations (CLASSIFIED)
Sixteen additional above TOP SECRET Black Operations.
His record was spotless; the guy didn’t even have a speeding ticket. Obviously digging up any sort of dirt on him was going to be an exercise in futility. John was a victim of something bigger and Marcus could feel it in his gut.
Marcus rubbed his eyes, wondering what Gregory’s next move would be. As much as cavalier attitudes ran rampant through the office and its agents, there was only so much the team could do from Washington, D.C., at 0645 on a Saturday morning. The DOD was also very particular about what the UOD was allowed to do, and constant collaboration was a necessity. To the general public, the Unusual Operations Division did not exist.
It would be hours before the team could do anything other than analyze.
The clock ticked down to ten minutes before seven before four more essential members of the Unusual Operations A-team showed up. First through the door, unannounced as usual, was Stephen McGregor, the only Irish black guy Marcus had ever met. The man was wrought from iron; a Greek god in a Gucci suit. His style of dress was often the topic of conversation around the office. He looked like a man who drove a Ferrari (which he did) and drank extremely expensive scotch (which he also did). Huge arms stretched his black button up. His silver tie looked like a piece of dental floss wrapped around his bull neck, lying against his bull chest that way.
Stephen McGregor was two-hundred and fifty pounds of ex-special operations extraordinaire. Two-hundred and fifty pounds of ex-special operations that looked through the door at the next person in for just a little too long with just a little too much enthusiasm in his eyes.
Brenda Vaughn walked through the open
door and exchanged a very, very brief glance with Stephen. She was his polar opposite in many ways; short, petite, white as a porcelain doll and blonde as a super model. Brenda was born and raised in Northern Iowa and joined the Air Force academy straight out of high school. Her skills were found in intelligence analysis and she was one of the best. After graduating at the very top of her class, she went on to serve as a joint operations liaison on an aircraft carrier for two years before being picked up by the DOD. Shortly after, she was transferred to the U.O.D. Brenda’s blue eyes and black eyelashes could melt a glacier. She was the beating heart of beauty—simply amazing.
As for her physical attributes, not only did she fill out a pencil skirt and a stereotypical business woman’s blouse perfectly, she could run 5 miles in under twenty five minutes. Her calves were exquisitely toned and accentuated perfectly by the high heels she wore. Her hair, pulled up in a bun, finished off the business lady look.
Phillip James France was next. His usual hunched posture was worse today. Marcus concluded the man was either still drunk or very hung over. He wore his dark glasses inside the dim office and rubbed his temples like he had just left a rock concert. No one really ever saw the man without them on. They were like his lucky totem. Short dark hair stuck out in odd angles from his head. His scruffy facial hair masked a chiseled jaw and constantly pursed lips. A brown suit and tie were wrinkled and haphazardly thrown over his thin body. Marcus noticed that Phillip had chosen to wear some Chuck Taylor shoes with his suit.
How tasteful.
Finally, Bishop Lloyd entered the office. Were there a toss-up between most outgoing, Marcus and Bishop would tie. He was often confused for Marcus over the phone for having the same personality traits and a similar voice. Bishop was well liked by everyone; his piercing green eyes never ceased smiling.
The big differences between the two were that, unlike Marcus, Bishop had blond surfer hair. He had grown up on the shores of Southern California’s Pasadena area. His life revolved around the water until he decided to grow up and get a real job. Bishop went to work for his father as a machinist at twenty years old. By the time he was twenty-two, Bishop was a master of the trade and had created four different types of automatic pistol from junk metal.
The young entrepreneur heard of the DOD through his uncle, an FBI agent. He decided to show the agency his unique talent in hopes of landing a weapons designing position like someone in a movie. What he earned instead was a list of felonies for possessing and manufacturing illegal firearms.
Until his accident, Bishop was going to live a very ordinary life.
The lifeguard that pulled Bishop out of the water said he had been down for twenty minutes or more. Bishop had been surfing a particularly rough coastline when the leash of his board wrapped itself around an outcropping of submerged rock. It was, by all accounts, a miracle that he had survived. What was more, the man who had helped free him reported that Bishop had been smiling underwater, completely conscious.
To everyone but the UOD, the lifeguard had been hallucinating.
“Good morning everyone,” Bishop said lightheartedly. He walked with incredible confidence, like nothing had ever worried him. His smile curled only one side of his pink lips and his eyes took in everything quickly. He made his way to the placard holding his name and propped his expensive penny loafers up unceremoniously. Beneath the khaki pants it was clear that Bishop had neglected to wear socks with his ensemble.
“Get your feet down!” scoffed Gregory. Bishop complied immediately, looking a bit sheepish. “These are very, I mean very, expensive monitors and if you so much as scratch the screen on one of them I’ll have you polishing brass for a month!”
“Sorry, boss,” Bishop said, wiping the screen clean with his white shirt. “I got a little too comfortable.”
Phillip chuckled as he found his own seat.
“Good morning to you too, boss,” Stephen said, flopping himself down into a leather seat. Marcus swore he saw something crack beneath the huge man.
“What’s the big news this morning?”
“Yeah, I’d like to know why I get to cancel my appointment with the Spa today,” Brenda said. “I deserve this spa treatment. I’ve been waiting for months.”
“Murder,” Henry Bauss said. “Lots of cold-blooded murder.”
“Sounds pretty usual for the Unusual Operations Division, don’t you think?” Stephen replied.
“Committed by a dead man,” Marcus added, defending his friend Henry.
“Zombies,” Phillip said, looking suddenly more alive. “I’ve waited my entire life for just this moment!”
“It could be zombies,” Marcus replied. “Apparently a Special Forces team was killed two weeks ago and one of them has come back to life. He seems to have a particular fetish for acting out his vengeance on the living.”
“Sounds like a crappy rendition of one of those Halloween movies,” Brenda said. “Who says this guy actually died?”
“The United States Army does,” Henry said, stroking his graying chops. “Hopefully, we will have some answers when his body is exhumed later today. The guy’s dental records said he was who his tags and identification said he should be, but his body was pretty badly burnt. It made visual identification of the remains impossible.
“There must have been a close enough match to identify this guy by his dental records,” Henry punctuated his point.
“Or the records were forged,” Marcus said. “We need to find the man who identified the body and get a statement.”
“So what do we have to work with so far,” Brenda asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee from a nearby table. “Do we have any leads to work with? Any reasons this man would be running from the government? Did he go AWOL just before the killings took place and we just didn’t get the memo? There has to be something we can work with here, otherwise beating our heads against the monitors here will do us just as much good as staring at them would.”
“So far we have a surveillance video of a guy getting his head blown off,” Henry said. “We are waiting on the Department of Defense to work their magic and get us some files on what the Spec Ops agents were doing in Afghanistan and if it had any correlation to the murders.
“Also, our satellite was pinged around the same time the team was murdered.” Henry stopped to let that fact set in. Everyone looked up, including Marcus. The satellite never took individual pings unless a coupling took place; the joining of a Relic and someone who is allergic.
“It was a heavy signal, possibly one of the strongest we’ve ever had. Too bad for us, the signal died before a team could identify a pinpoint on the what’s and the where’s of the situation. We could be dealing with a new find, a potentially dangerous new find.”
An hour or so went by in silence while everyone worked. The team watched the grainy footage again and again as the morning passed on, searching for clues as to what John was after. This could not be some random killing and Marcus knew it. A Special Operations Agent didn’t just fake his own death, kill his team of highly trained brothers, and show up in another country simply to kill a shopkeeper. Marcus couldn’t yet see the missing connections, but he knew they were there.
Marcus fixated on the video searching for clues, too. John entered the store, walked to the far back out of the range of any camera, emerged with a box, set it on the front desk, and then proceeded to blow the shopkeeper’s head off before leaving with whatever he had taken. It all seemed cut and dry and obviously John had gone there for something. Was it possible that he was stealing? It was only an assumption that the box contained what he had dropped off in the first place.
Henry had been quick to contact the shop the murder had occurred in. The dead man had a partner who spoke only Mandarin Chinese. Lucky for him, he was home with the runs the day his partner was relieved of his brains. Thankfully, it seemed like it would be the first break the team got on the case. After all, the man had seen John, or whoever he was, come into the store in the first place.
The object in question was a golden orb, decorated with small jewels and seemingly flawless diamonds. Across its smooth surface was delicate writing inlaid in a scrawling artistry. It was obviously very ancient and very, very rare. It was unlike anything they had ever seen—stunningly intricate and amazingly beautiful. At first, the two were astounded and told John that they did not feel comfortable dealing with such an expensive piece. Instead they referred him to a museum curator.
John told the two that he would pay them ten thousand US dollars if they would clean the object and gather any information on it that they could. They were obviously quick to jump on the prospect of making such a large amount of cash for such a little amount of work. They suspected John of thievery but kept their suspicions to themselves. After all, they hadn’t stolen anything; they were just going to clean the object.
They concluded rather quickly that the orb was an ancient piece of art decorated in a dead Babylonian language. As to its exact origin the shop keepers had no clue. They were not historians, nor were they curators. The man claimed that he had taken pictures of the object, though, and would be more than happy to share any and all of their information.
At least Marcus had a handle on what John was doing there. It still left him with a feeling of hopelessness, however. Where would this lead them next?