"None taken." Durand murmured in response when the man who had just identified himself as Commander (retired) Mark Branham said no offence was intended.

"As to your questions, as Agent Choi has said it appears that the aliens that we both appear to be familiar with are trying to kill anyone linked to United States Navy Observation Squadron Fifty Four.  Our Task Force is protecting some of the survivors. We also have reason to believe that the Policy Liaison Group may have been compromised. Which is why we are here. Because the United States Navy is not in my chain of command." He's not mocking the American by turning his words back on him, merely making the point that if US Navy Intelligence has a leak then that doesn't affect his NATO team. He figured Branham could work the rest out by himself. If someone in the PLG knew about this place then other...people...might also know about it.

"So what is it going to be Commander? Are we going to, what is it you say, dick each other about until ET gets here? Or are we going to help each other?"

"ET wasn't inclined to confine his activities to the northern hemisphere Commander," Cooper said by way of explication of his presence.  "If you're worried I'm a Mad Max mercenary type recruited to find and blow you up, you can rest easy.  I'm Royal Navy; DIO liaison to NATO... seconded to this Task Force.  We're only going to have a problem if he says we are," Cooper nodded toward Durand.

"Assuming also that 'Wheels' here stops trying to mindfuck us," Williams added with a slight smirk.

Cooper shifted his attention and fixed his gaze with the man in the chair.  The RAN Clearance Diver's face tightened as a question formed, which he repeated, unvocalized, to himself as his eyes drilled those of the wheelchair bound man.  The interrogative grew heavy in Cooper's mind, almost like an echo, but instead of becoming softer each time, it grew both slower and louder with each repetition.

What is your name?
What... is... your... name...?
WHAT...... IS.....YOUR.....NAME?
WHAT...... IS.....YOUR.....NAME?
This message was last edited by the player at 08:14, Mon 22 Jan 2018.

Branham blinks at James' explosion.  "Hawkins is still alive?  No shit.  If anyone was... huh.  No.  Okay."  He draws a deep breath, seeming to collect his thoughts.  "Ramón, I think it's time for us to come in from the cold."

The seated man doesn't respond at first - not outwardly, at any rate.  But to Cooper, there's a sudden rush of connection, distantly perceptible to Hannah as well.  :: Whoa!  Ease up there, son.  You gotta learn some finesse if you want to hang onto your frontal lobes. ::  There's a considering pause.  :: All right.  Me llama Ramón Rice.  And I think we'll need to talk later...  ::  The connection wavers with pulses of deep fatigue.

Aloud, there's a pause of a few seconds, then: "Yyyeah.  Why'n't you take that?  I'm 'bout done..."

With a faint snap of static electricity and displaced air, the invisible barrier dissolves.  Rice sags in his chair, apparently on the edge of consciousness.

Branham shoots his companion a concerned look, but whatever he sees isn't enough for immediate action.  He sighs.  "Okay.  You think you know VO-54?  This is VO-54."  He sweeps a hand around.  "This is where we keep what the visitors left of us.  You want to sit down somewhere more comfortable?  There's some other people you need to meet..."
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:43, Thu 25 Jan 2018.

Durand nods his head, lets his rifle hang down on its tactical sling until the barrel is pointed directly at the floor. "I think that would be a good idea, gentlemen. I also have a team upstairs -" A nomex gloved finger gestures towards the ceiling above their heads. "- if you don't mind I need to tell them that we are all good down here. It would maybe be best if you do the same with your people so that we do not have any misunderstandings above ground."

He's taking a calculated risk when it comes to OPSEC but they had already heard him communicating with someone on a short range radio and it's probably best if Vidry knows that he and his countrymen upstairs are not about to be attacked by a swarm of the things from Alien. Or the invisible hunter that had taken out Arnold's team.  And besides, it's in the old guys' interest as well. If their security did get into it with Vidry's team there would be casualties. Maybe on both sides, but definitely among the local security, Durand was certain of it.

So if there are no objections Durand will reach for his radio, opening the message with an agreed code so that Vidry would know he was not talking with a gun to his head, this time speaking in English so that the two elderly Americans would understand him and know he was not trying to deceive them. "Leopardfrog from Bullfrog. Authentication Zulu Zulu Nine. No sign of enemy presence down here. Stay alert but do not fire unless you are fired upon. Have the QRF continue to loiter. Over." He isn't about to order a full stand down, not yet.

Cooper took a deep breath, as the connection to Rice ended.  He nodded to Ramón as Coop relaxed his posture and gaze.  Williams was very curious at Rice's powers, as well as what these men might have 'collected' here.

"So how long have you guys been down here?  In Belize I mean,"  the RAN Petty Officer clarified.  Staying off the grid for a decade or two took serious comment.  Coop wondered what there might be to stay entertained in such a place.  The diving is supposed to be great here. he recalled.  Perhaps they might have time, but first things first.  Grey Cell needed to know what these survivors of the last alien 'activity' knew.

Hannah frowned, her brow furrowing as she glanced between the man in the wheelchair, Ramón, and Diver.  Standing down with the rest of Grey Cell, her gun was no longer trained on the wheelchair bound individual.  But it was still held 'casually' in his direction.  Her auburn eyes darted back and forth for a moment as she could sense some sort of strange mental exchange.  She couldn't make out the contents, but the passage of information was obvious enough to her neophyte senses.

But then the fleeting sensation was gone.  Along with the palpable, but visually invisible, barrier that one of the men had tried to construct.  Double Down gasped slightly when it collapsed, feeling the resulting mental void particularly acutely.  The thin army aviatrix shook her head to clear the mental cobwebs and took in a deep breath to try and center herself.  Her shoulders shuddered lightly as Double Down exhaled, feeling some of the building tension released.

She held back standing just to the side of Williams, but couldn't hold her tongue and offered, "Commander Branham, sir, does Ramón require medical assistance?  We have a medic..."  A gesture of good will.  And perhaps a chance to have one of her people have a closer look at one their people.  Of course, that medic wasn't Painter; a thought which surfaced an unbidden, momentary pang of pain and regret to Hannah which she could only hope that the remnants of VO-54 weren't privy to.

As Bullfrog called of the dogs, and Diver engaged in casual conversation, Omdahl motioned for Commander Branham to lead the way.  She offered to push Ramón's wheelchair, but, obviously, didn't know where to go.

Or what to expect down here.  Curiouser and curiouser Hannah mused to herself; they certainly had entered Wonderland.  It just remained to be seen if they could keep their heads...

Branham gives Hannah a considering look before responding.  "Thanks, but no.  He's just worn out.  Running the crystals takes a lot out of him these days.  I appreciate the help rolling him around, though.  Been here since before any of you were born, I think," he non-sequiturs, belatedly nodding to Cooper by way of addressing that answer.

He nods in the direction in which he and Rice were moving when Grey Cell met them.  "If you'll follow me, the conference room has a phone to the command post.  I'll get the Cazadores to secure their heaters.  I'm assuming," he glances over his shoulder at Sébastien, "you're not expecting any other company."

Branham indicates an about-face and leads the way down the left-hand (from the entrance) hallway to the door with the glass insert, which he opens.  Beyond it is a battered conference table made from what appears to be recycled high-school chemistry-lab bench tops bolted atop steel two-drawer filing cabinets.  A sideboard of four more filing cabinets supports a modern Cisco IP phone, two quiescent coffee makers, and a scattering of office supplies.  A dozen or so mismatched rolling chairs, their leather and vinyl hides scarred where they aren't wholly pierced, cluster around three of the table's sides.  Despite the dry-erase board hanging on one wall, the air holds a faint haze of chalk dust and the threadbare green institutional carpet has a slight yellow tinge where cigarette burns and coffee stains aren't evident.

"Park Ramón there, if you would, miss," Branham says, absently waving a hand toward the end of the conference table that hosts no chairs.  He picks up the phone and punches one of the speed-dial buttons.  "Carlos? Tenemos invitados. Invitados, no visitantes. Dígales a las patrullas que aseguren sus armas y que se reúnan en la sala de preparación."  He pauses and glances at the phone's time display.  "El código es uno, siete, uno, cuatro.  No. Estamos bien aquí abajo. Déjalos dormir."

He hangs up and turns back toward the group, but his gaze is somewhere over James' shoulder.  On that wall hangs a trio of framed photographs.  Each is a shot of a different large group of people, easily a hundred or more, mixed uniforms and lab coats and 1950s-vintage civilian attire, taken at night in front of an open aircraft hangar.  James picks out a much younger Darnell Hawkins at the end of one row, in front of what might be an equally-younger Mark Branham.

In each photo's background, the intake maws of two mid-century fighter jets - F-8 Crusaders, to Hannah's eye - gape open in shadowed screams.  Between the jets, behind the center of each group, something larger looms: a dusky bulk with uncomfortably-organic lines like a horseshoe crab's carapace.  It's kin to the shapes the team has seen in gun camera footage from an Australian sky, and lit by lightning and gunfire over Miami's suburban horizon.  Canopy glass and aluminum fixtures glint like embedded debris in its skin.

Branham swings a chair around and lets himself slide into it with a sigh.  "Mister Morrison, do you know the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story?" he asks James.  "A fairy tale begins, 'once upon a time.'  A sea story begins, 'no shit, there we were.'"  His faint smile creaks like a joke he's used a hundred times, rolled out again for a new audience.  "So, no shit, there we were."  He waves at the photos.  "And here we are.  A few of us.  Me, Ramón, four other guys.  The last of the collateral damage."  There is no humor at all in his grin, and his eyes glitter with a rising mania.  "Welcome to the black project psych ward.  The Navy promised it would take care of us but there are multiple ways to parse 'take care of...'"

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Carlos? We have guests.  Guests, not visitors.  Tell the patrols to secure their weapons and assemble in the ready room.  The code is one, seven, one, four.  No.  We're fine down here.  Let them sleep.

---

Ensuring that his assault rifle is set to SAFE then leaning it against one of the filing cabinets that form the base of the table, Durand takes a seat, making sure that his rifle is within arm's reach. The Frenchman had half expected to be fighting his way through an alien nest by now, finds this situation more than a little incongruous as he looks around the room, noting the contrasts between the old in the form of the photos and some of the furnishings, and the new such as the Cisco phone. Glancing at the photos, he recognises the aircraft type, for his first assignment after enlisting in the Fusiliers-Marins had been aboard the aircraft carrier Clemenceau in 1993, when Le Clem had been in the Adriatic and its F8 Crusaders had taken part in operations over the former Yugoslavia. Durand would return to Yugoslavia several years later, take part in operations to snatch War Criminals, the first time that he had worked with the DGSE, had embarked on a path that would eventually lead him to Grey Cell.

That was all ancient history now of course. Although not as ancient as the story that these guys apparently had to tell. And so Seb Durand leans forward, his elbows resting on the makeshift table, his fingers interlacing, He's kept his helmet on. Quite apart from anything else that should make it more difficult for anyone to try and snatch the circlet that he's still wearing. Why the fuck would any of them want to do that? Who knows, but the Frenchman isn't letting his guard down, not yet. That's why there's a rifle resting against his leg, and a sidearm and a taser resting snugly in their respective holsters. Just in case. And he didn't need a degree in Psychology from the University of Strasbourg or be part way through a Masters from the Sorbonne's UPMC to tell him that Commander Branham had some issues.

"So why don't you tell us your story, Commander?"  Durand unclasped his fingers, let his hands indicate the Grey Cell team. "I'm sure we'd all like to hear it. Because as you've probably gathered, the aliens are back."

James' Spanish, gleaned during his FBI posting in New Mexico, is just good enough- he hopes- to confirm that the old man hasn't just sold the visitors out. James nods to his teammates to indicate as much, as Branham replaces the receiver.

I hope this isn't Stockholm Syndrome, the former G-Man muses, putting himself between the seniors and the room's only entrance. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, James is having trouble accepting that the compound in which he is currently an uninvited guest isn't swarming with freaky, hostile space creatures, or their quisling human muscle.

Breathe.

He's seasoned enough to realize that his body and mind are experiencing the unpleasant aftereffects that follow in the wake of adrenaline dump. Perhaps his unconscious, on behalf of his body, is still spoiling for a fight, jonesing for another hit of adrenal hormone. Despite the best efforts of the subterranean compound's straining ventilation system, James' scalp is still sweating profusely. He reaches up and wipes his damp forehead with the back of his multicam sleeve, remembering the space blanket lining his tactical brain bucket.

Breathe.

Durand's ably continuing the line of questioning, so James monitors the hallway through the lightly frosted pane in the door, watching the team's six as the meet-and-greet unfolds.

-
This message was last edited by the player at 01:48, Sat 03 Feb 2018.

Cazadores... must mean Caçadores Cooper thought, trying to piece together the Spanish using his idioma Portugués.  The languages were close enough that he got the gist of what was being said.  In special reconnaissance and intelligence, getting the gist of an adversary's intentions was about all you could hope for.  Of course these VO-54 survivors weren't their adversaries.  At least, that is what Cooper hoped.  He didn't think it likely, so when Choi nodded to him and the others, Cooper gave a relaxed shrug.

Coop turned his attention to the picture of the U.S. Navy fighters and the bizarre alien craft.  "These things went extinct in Australia back in the Mesozoic era.  First time I saw one was Indonesia.  Horseshoe crabs I mean, not alien spacecraft," Cooper said.  He thought back to the engagement in the outback.

"Hey, maybe we can get Claw 15 out here," Cooper said to his teammates.  He realized that the VO-54 wouldn't have any idea who he was talking about.  "I think you guys would have a lot to talk about," he said by way of poor explanation, shifting his gaze between the fighter jets and Ramón in the wheel chair.  The last time Cooper had seen Claw 15's pilot, a man whose name he'd never been able to pry out of the black files, was as the aviator was being carried off the MEDEVAC bird on a backboard.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:00, Sat 03 Feb 2018.

With talking to strangers having been self-assigned to those in the assault most proficient at wringing the truth out of people, Michael finds a corner of the room where he can post himself.  The radio strapped to his back along with the body armor encasing his torso makes the airman a large physical presence, one that is difficult to park into a chair, and the threat assessment centers of his brain haven't dropped into the band that would allow him to take his pack off.  Instead, he moves into a corner, rocks on to his tip toes, leans back and lets the force of friction take some of the weight from his gear off his torso and put it on the wall with a drop of his heels.  Hands take a quick inventory of his equipment and, finding everything accounted for, settle to the top of the magazine holders on his vest, thumbs hooked into the mesh.

The GoPro strapped to his helmet he keeps angled towards the two men, recording the conversation for later analysis, should the situation go pear-shaped.  One ear listens to the conversation, the other waits for a blast of static or warning tone telling him trouble is on the way.

"It's a lousy airfoil but I don't think the visitors care much about aerodynamics." Branham tells Cooper.

He leans forward and props his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers and resting his chin atop them.  "You kids know the squadron's history.  The Navy shut it down in '63.  The body count was too high, we weren't getting results that human science could replicate in a lab, and visitor activity was ebbing."  His face hardens with long-held anger.  "So, of course, we were 'safe' to stop trying to build ways to fight them."  He cants his fingers at Sébastien.  "Which I'm sure you've had to do, judging by your presence," and he aims at Michael, "and your little war trophy there.

"The squadron survivors went back to wherever they came from.  But there were a bunch of us who weren't entirely," he pauses to select a word, "functional as officers or sailors after playing with the devil's toys.  They couldn't stick us in the VA system.  There wasn't anyone who could treat us and had the clearances to hear about our problems.  So while British Honduras was in the middle of getting its independence, the admiral got in touch with a few squadron guys who'd gotten out of the Navy and used them as cutouts.  They bought an island with the squadron's last slush fund and set up a treatment facility for us.  We've been here since '65.  Some of us are even functional, most days."  He bares his teeth in something that bad facial recognition software might process as a grin.

"After the Shag Harbor crash, the admiral convinced a few other people that the threat wasn't gone - just in remission.  And the only people qualified to continue with analysis and research were... already collected."  He disentangles his fingers and waves a hand around the room.  "They sent down a Seabee team.  Told them they were building a bunker for nuclear command and control.  It was plausible at the time.  They cleaned out the warehouse of all the logbooks and portable artifacts and sent them down here, and those of us who were able went back to work.  In... '83, I think, or '84, they found the Shag Harbor wreck and sent that to us, too.

"That was our last tasking from the admiral.  When he died, I don't think he left any notes for any successors to contact us.  We were a hole in the map.  George Frye was our last cutout.  He got his hands on the funding stream and made sure we were taken care of."  His eyes narrow.  "I thought he was running something on the side, but now it looks like he may have had some idea the visitors were back and didn't tell us.  He came down here last year, checked out a couple of crystals, and made backups of all our files.  He said it was for continuity in case we all checked out but now I wonder..."

He flattens his hands on the table and stares at Sébastien.  "Your turn.  How'd you get read into this mess?  And how bad has it gotten out there?"

James chuckles dryly. FUBAR. "I'm not sure what kind of alien shit you had to deal with back in your day, sir, but I'd say things are... escalating. I met my first E.T. a about a year ago in Los Alamos. That was before I joined this outfit. Since then, we've tangled with E.T. in Libya, Australia, and Miami, Florida. Had a couple of shootouts, witnessed a couple of dogfights with your flying horseshoe crab things, even caught a live spaceman."

James pauses a moment, emotion threatening to derail his report, "And we lost a teammate." He made himself continue, more to distract himself from the feelings of loss and guilt that had just welled up than to illuminate his elderly hosts.

"Anyway, we think we have a leak somewhere. We've got another team trying to track it down and plug it, but there's a pretty good chance that if E.T. doesn't know about this place already, he- it, whatever- will soon."

-
This message was last edited by the player at 00:58, Mon 26 Feb 2018.

Durand had sat back as the Commander spoke, his eyes never leaving the man, idly wondering how long he had waited to tell this story. Nineteen sixty five. They had been here for over fifty years. Fifty years living underground. Hiding? That was one way of looking at it. Was that what was in store for him? For the rest of Grey Cell? Hiding underground somewhere, never knowing if today was the day that your enemy might find you? Fuck that.

"As Agent Choi says, Commander, the threat appears to be escalating. Things had gone quiet for a while -" Durand paused, recalled the dates that he had scribbled on a legal pad during the briefing " - specifically between 1979 and 2008." The Frenchman leaned forward. "Any guesses as to why they might have quietened down? And why they suddenly ramped up again? Our experts have no theories, so any light you might be able to shed on that would be very much appreciated. They also seem to be operating in association with various groups here. Terrorists, Russian mafia, other undesirables." 

Durand paused again. "Oh, and I don't suppose you can tell me exactly what it is that I'm wearing on my head, what it does?" As he spoke he reached for the chin strap on his helmet, slowly unbuckled it and placed it on the table in front of him, exposing again the circlet that rested on his head. "Are you familiar with it, seen one like it before?" Because I still don't know if my fucking head is about to explode.

Shit, we need a slush fund, Cooper thought to himself as he listened to the story.  He thought about what life would be like in a similar setup on Turquoise Bay or perhaps a few of the smaller Indonesian islands.  Exy...  You need a lot of gorillias for that, mate, he told himself.  And to hopefully have all your marbles at the end of it.

Maybe Mewes had parachutes lined up for everyone, maybe not.  Cooper didn't know the man that well.  Either way, it was best not to leave such things to chance.  Karolina might be the canary in the coal mine, he speculated to himself.  Perhaps Crad as well depending on how buggered his arm was.  In Cooper's estimation, the arrangements Task Force 47 made for both would be very telling.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki...n_English_vocabulary
This message was lightly edited by the player at 09:25, Sun 11 Feb 2018.

Muscles bristle and Dacovetti's jaw tightens, grinding his teeth together at the mention of the plasma pistol as anything as gauche as a "trophy."  He's not proud of the acquisition of the weapon.  He's relieved the team has finally acquired a piece of technology that lets them punch a little bit above their pay-grade.  What else was going to introduce a structural disturbance into the spaceship via a hand weapon?  The assumptions directed his way by a geriatric psychic with more than a few demonstrably screws loose causes the airman to undergo a systems check directed at his ego.  The report comes back, after a few deep breaths, that he's taking the phrase a little too personally. Perhaps that's due to disturbed radio connections with the outside world. But mentally unstable or not, Branham is kind of an asshole.

"And do you possess any more tech on-site we need to see?" he tacks on to Durand's question without shifting his position on the wall.

Somewhere out of sight, a clock is ticking that is diminishing our operational advantage.  Risk and uncertainty is growing to replace safety.

"Huh.  Los Alamos."  Branham frowns at James.  "So they're still interested in our nuclear program.  That probably means something but hell if I know what."  He shifts his focus to Sébastien and thinks for a moment.  "I can't say why they went into remission for those years.  I know what you need, but we were always an engineering unit.  Still are, really, if you stretch the definition to include this."  He taps his forehead.  "One of the guys - Ernswiler - was trying to build a picture of what they were doing on the ground, but he mostly had a file drawer full of newspaper clippings of Men in Black sightings.  I'll get you that.  It may have something that'll help but I won't put money on it."

He peers at Sébastien.  "Uh.  Heh.  That?  That's..."  He pauses, obviously searching for words.  "You know their ships are partially bio-engineered, right?"  An pause while he assesses the team's reactions.  His lips twitch in a slight smile.  "That thing translates psychic commands into inputs to what their ships use for nervous systems.  It's one of their fly-by-wire computer processors.  But when you break it, it flips to acting like a buffer to keep them from frying their little grey brains with feedback.  I'm assuming you broke that one, right?"

His eyes flash with renewed manic energy at Michael's question.  "You ever seen Buckaroo Banzai, son?  This is the lab with the watermelon.  You mind if I call you 'New Jersey?'"  It's clear he neither expects an answer nor cares what it is.  "You will want to see this shit.  Don't have one of those in the collection, though."  He points at Michael's appropriated plasma weapon.

Branham pushes himself back from the table and stands up.  "C'mon.  I'll give you the nickel tour."  He pauses.  "Oh, yeah.  If you want to evacuate us... I appreciate the sentiment but you really should get the data out first.  Jackson's on dialysis with a side of dementia, Van Horn is a vegetable with occasional telekinetic episodes, Owens is getting a daily chemo cocktail, and Ski is three-quarters gone with Parkinson's and doesn't really work on linear time any more."  He rests a hand on Rice's shoulder.  "Ramón here has one good stroke left in him before he's gone.  So, yeah, triage the hardware first."

He leads the way out of the room, assuming Grey Cell will follow him.  "We don't use much of the lab space these days," he narrates.  "We do what we can because it gives us a focus, but we're a bunch of senile old bastards who keep odd hours and don't have a lot of energy.  Owens and Ski - mostly Owens, now - are still plugging away at the math on anti-gravity.  Ramón and I were checking the crystal growth lab when you came in.  Most of the projects were always analysis and reconstruction of salvaged bits and bobs."  His voice goes harsh.  "We're a bunch of medieval monks trying to figure out a smashed Betamax.

"But we do have a couple of things you might want to take home."  He gestures at a reinforced door that bears radiation and laser warning signs.  "The Shag Harbor wreck had a working gun.  Neutron accelerator with a telekinetic sheath."  The grin he casts over his shoulder at Michael suggests bats and Gothic castles.  "Mind bullets, New Jersey.  Do you think the Russians have bigger mind bullets?  Do we have a strategic mind bullet gap?"

 He keeps walking.  "Telekinesis.  Memory editing.  'These are not the droids you're looking for.'  The 'Someone Else's Problem field' mode of invisibility.  Brain-machine interface.  I told you we were the black project psych ward."  The harshness is back, anger long-held and mostly self-directed.  "That's a joke.  'Psych' for '-ick' and for '-ological.'  We have both kinds of music, country and western.  We are a dessert topping and a floor wax."

At the end of the hall, another door looms, heavier than any the team has seen thus far, set in a frame that could probably withstand anything short of a light anti-tank warhead.  The stack of warning signs on the wall beside it is taller than the door itself.  Branham leans forward for a retinal scan, punches a nine-digit code into a shielded keypad, and undogs the hatch.  Beyond is a chamber just big enough for the entourage, then another identical door.

Branham ushers the team into the airlock, closes the first door, and pushes forward to repeat the process for the second.  He presses the handle down to retract the locking lugs but doesn't open the door.  Instead, he lightly rests his fingertips on it, then steps back and gives Hannah a faint smile and as much of a bow as the cramped quarters will allow.  "After you, young lady."

The door swings open at a touch.  Beyond is darkness, and the sound of dripping water, and the smell of ozone and the sea and old metal.

And in Hannah and Cooper's minds, the fringe of a vast and semi-feral presence, flickering through mad predator dreams of flight in a decades-long slumber.

Durand has no clue what some of the things that are being mentioned actually are. Neutron accelerator with a telekinetic sheath. They might as well be talking in Latin. Working gun and bullets he does get, although not what they mean by mind bullets. Hopefully Mike is following all of this.

As the descend into the belly of the whale the Frenchman wonders if these guys volunteered for this assignment way back when. Or were they detailed to it? At one point he’s tempted to ask but it probably doesn’t really matter. And what happens to them now? That one is above his paygrade but one thing is for clear, they’re back on the grid, whether they want to be or not.

And then they’re at the next stop on the tour. Maybe the last stop from the looks of it. The DGSE Operator can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise up. He doesn’t distrust these old guys. But he doesn’t entirely trust them either. Maybe it’s a legacy of long years spent in the field. He looks through the door but he can only see darkness.

When Branham invites Hannah to go first Durand steps forward, places a hand on Omdahl’s forearm lightly, catches the aviator’s eye. ”If you don’t mind.” The elderly American may just be being chivalrous, but Durand isn’t about to let a member of his team walk in there blind, not when he can’t see what’s in there. ”Coop, on me, we’ll go first.” Durand then steps forward, across the threshold into the dark, his rifle at the low ready, his helmet still attached to his LBE, trying to strike some sort of balance not appearing overtly confrontational but also being ready to deal with anything unexpected.

"Aye," Cooper said.  As he passed by Hannah, he leaned over and whispered,"There's something out there.  Do you feel it too?"  He paused briefly for Hannah to respond, flipping down his NVG-bins as he did so.

"We own the night," he said, repeating a special forces mantra he'd heard on a joint US/Australian snatch and grab operation in Jakarta.  As his eyes adjusted to the soft green light of the AN/PSQ-36, Williams took a deep breath in.  The awareness he'd honed over the past months was quickly becoming akin to a sixth sense.  Like all senses, they were both a boon and a bane.  As with sight, hearing, or smell, sensory input could quickly invoke fear.  In the combat environment, that fear had to be channeled carefully or suppressed if needed.

Just as special operations troops learned to embrace darkness and overcome the overwhelming sensory cacophony of battle, Cooper and Hannah would have to overcome the fear induced by this new sensory experience.  From shallow water blackouts during dive school to gut wrenching HALO drops in full combat gear, Williams had acclimated himself to ignoring sensory input that told him to make it stop, to run away, to give up, and to panic.  He knew that as a pilot, Hannah had certainly done the same, overcoming the screaming protests of the inner ear.  This new sense would be no different.  It would be honed, it would be strengthened, and when it invoked fear, as it was doing now, it would be conquered.

"Ready," Cooper said as he moved parallel to Sebastien.

This message was deleted by the player at 19:20, Wed 21 Feb 2018.

This message was deleted by the player at 21:57, Wed 21 Feb 2018.

"You can call me 'Little Miss Muffet,' if I get to see the sights," Michael says to Branham with uncharacteristic levity.  The voice an excited child waiting to see what Santa would bring.  Or a glimpse into the future for a sci-fi addict.

During the walk down the hallway, Dacovetti is practically vibrating.  For once the excitement coursing through his veins isn't from combat or coffee or sex.  It's closer to solving one of those engineering problems that would keep him up for hours, knowing the math would come if he could twist it just so.  This is revelation, he can feel it.  Not the chaotic uncertainty of combat with an unknown foe with crushing technological superiority.  This is how it works.  This is peeling back the curtain.  The promise of data and technological samples.

If they have time.

His weapons are almost forgotten with beckoning darkness.  He can't wait to be illuminated.

Out of the blue and into the black.

James switches the IR spotlight attached to the foregrip of his Mk.18 and lowers his NOD monocular, happy for once not to be on point. Truth be told, he's afraid of what they might find in the pitch dark chamber beyond the doorway. As he passes Branham he pauses to ask, "What exactly are we going to see in there?"

-
This message was last edited by the player at 00:56, Mon 26 Feb 2018.

The lithe army aviatrix listened with particular interest to all of the conversation about the 'research' going here.  Especially the part about the bio-engineered parts of the alien flight control systems.  It wasn't the first time that she'd heard reference to them.  And it sounded like the artifacts here might actually contain one (or at least part of one).  So, it was with more than a touch of curiosity that she followed the Commander on the tour.  Most of her skepticism with respect to the aliens, their artifacts and physiology, had pretty much dissipated in the barrage of overwhelming evidence.  Which only left a healthy dose of fear.  Branham's self-deprecatnig remark about monks and the betamax hit home.  Humanity, in general, was behind the eight-ball on this one.  Some of them (like Grey Cell and VO-54) just had had the wool ripped from their eyes with respect to the Truth™.

Hannah held up a hand to Durand's chivalry, hopefully halting Sébastien and Cooper's entry through the doorway.  She gave Branham a rather pointed look.  "A darkened room?  Really?" she muttered aloud, and took a deep breath while she stretched out with her mind.  Double Down knew that any sixth sense she possessed wasn't really going to respond to her beck and call, but she did have an inclination that if she defocussed slightly that she might be a touch more receptive to her surroundings.

Of course, the niggling fear scratching at the base of her skull told her that this might be a bad idea.  The fact that Cooper was sensing something as well on reinforced that flight mechanism.  Hannah felt a touch dumb not arming herself with either MP7 or NVGs.  But something told her that neither would be beneficial in this case.  She was reminded of the cave on Dagobah.  Luke: What will I find in there?  Yoda: Only what you take with you...

Ozone.  Dripping water.  Something predatory waiting.  Something wild looking to be freed.  She could feel the perspiration on her palms and the dry lump in her throat.  "Eyes wide open." the auburn-haired pilot intoned quietly as she fought to calm the rising tension and the flush of adrenaline.   Then Double Down pushed past Bullfrog and Diver, "Shall we, boys?"

And Hannah stepped into the darkness.

Branham stretches another one of those disquieting grins at James.  "The future," he replies.

Grey Cell steps into the darkness.

The chamber beyond the airlock's inner door is vast and echoing.  Seawater pools in the concrete floor's pits and depressions.  A slow liquid throbbing sound emanates from somewhere ahead.  Cooper is the first to recognize it as a pump.

On one of the side walls, a small constellation of indicator lights gleams from a complex collection of boxes and wiring conduits.  The green, amber, and red pinpoints barely illuminate the web of lines and hoses running from each wall to --

-- nothing at all, insists the visual cortex, confronted with an adamant absence of form.  Then the mediation of thermal imagers and night-vision goggles and slowly-awakening otherwise-sight sweeps the curtain aside.

The landing gear resolves first, a prosaic element on which the mind can find purchase.  Tricycle arrangement, single main wheels and a dual nose assembly beneath heavy oleos.  The retractable struts rise into shadowed bays inset amid a sweeping complex curve that stretches overhead.  Between the gear assemblies, a crew hatch yawns open, ladder extended in grudging invitation.

The ventral lifting-body surface is a blunt, round-tipped isosceles triangle, sixty or seventy feet on a side.  A pair of stubby vertical stabilizers angles outward above a tail unmarred by exhausts.  A hint of a fuselage rises from the centerline like the flare of a cobra's head framed by its hood.  There is no straight line, no angle, save for the landing gear and boarding ladder - near-obscene mechanical intrusions amid the organic curves.  Dark glimmers of the indicator lights' reflections pick out lenses set at intervals along the body.

The dream is stronger here as Hannah and Cooper step forward.  Half-glimpsed flashes of sea and sky flit in and out of memory.  Then a wary twitch through the cold and the darkness, and the presence rolls over in its sleep and cracks a slit-pupilled eye.  And makes a small noise deep in what passes for its mind and nestles back into the comfort of its slumber as it recognizes fellow predators.

And in Miami, another set of indicator lights flickers and changes as Karolina Kowalska cracks a blood-filled eye.

FADE TO BLACK

MUSIC: Unmarked Helicopters, Soul Coughing

CLOSING CREDITS:

Captain Karolina Kowalska	Spartan-117
Sébastien Durand	Dave Ross
CWO2 Hannah Omdahl	dcoda
TSgt. Michael Dacovetti	keys138
SA James Choi	Raellus
PO Cooper Williams	Spartan-117
Cpl. Caradoc Crewe	Tegyrius

This message was last edited by the GM at 22:42, Sun 04 Mar 2018.