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-BEGIN LOG-
Date: August 15th, 2014
Mission #▓▓▓▓▓
This case began when our devices went haywire at exactly 2:43am five days ago. Terrain scanners, seismometers, RAD-counters, pretty much everything that operated with a wide range said the same thing.
Something big, a blip the size of Picnic and then some, just appeared on the instruments without warning, and the shockwave was so intense that they couldn’t handle it. The alarms started blaring, twelve different scanners ended up fried, and of course, Maury was having a conniption fit. Within minutes, Scarberry, Rachel, and I were yanked from our previous assignments, an epicenter was triangulated, and we were dispatched.
Luckily, we weren’t cooped up in poor Mary for too long. That car can only handle so much weight before it refuses to cooperate. I’m sure Randy gave it a mind of its own, but, I don’t care. The Mary Celeste has gotten me outta too many sticky situations for me to care. A quick flight out onto the site and the poor thing was already wheezing.
The site was, sadly, an inhabited human residence. Although secluded, out of town by Clearwater Lake. The manor-like house displayed no structural damage, no sign of conflict, no nothin’. There was nothing out of the ordinary here, and that in of itself was odd.
“There’s a human living here. Twenty-seven year old female with high academic performance, name’s Sophia M. Carroll. She’s currently living in this old family home by herself, on a hiatus from her work as a botanist.” Scarb recited as he pulled her information from the infernal abyss that was the internet. His deft little hands made quick work of the search.
“Botany? That’s an odd choice for a profession.” Rachel said, “I’ll have to check for unwanted lifeforms. Whaddya think Ros? A full-blown search and area quarantine?”
“No.” I said, “I don’t think it matches up with the sapient plant life in our database. The blip, the forced normalcy… There’s definitely something else at work here.”
“Forced? How do you know?” Rachel asked, skeptical as ever.
I looked over to her, my mask mechanically slipping into place. I smiled. “Just a hunch, Rach.”
Of course, she didn’t like that. She doesn’t ever like hunches, or doing any act without solid factual evidence. She finds it reckless.
But, what is that scientific method she likes so much? Hypothesize, plan, experiment? Infer? I digress.
I drove Mary onto the gravel road leading to the house and expertly parked the car in the driveway. Rachel and Scarberry had their disguises on by then, and we exited the vehicle in one fluid motion. I prepared my mock police badge under my sleeve as we approached the door, briefcases in their respective hands. I reached to the door and knocked, a simple musical knock to at least, seem a bit more human.
We waited patiently. I was about to knock a second time when the door unlocked, and opened slightly, a freckled face peeking out.
“Miss Carroll? We’re with-” I began, taking my sunglasses off.
“Bullshit.” She interrupted, her voice raspy.
“Pardon?” I asked, giving her a questioning look. “Ma’am? Are you okay?”
“Get off my property and don’t come back.” She warned. Her eyes carried a hint of hostility to them. She was protecting something, although I didn’t know at the time what it was.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that Miss, not until we know you’re safe.” I told her, trying to sound genuinely concerned for her safety. My persuasion skills are on point, at least I thought, until she poked the twin barrels of a 12-gauge out of the cracked door, aimed straight between my mask’s eyes.
Instinctively, Scarberry and Rachel ducked and weaved out of harm’s way while I swiftly grabbed the end of the gun and pushed it up. I wasn’t able to get it out of her hands before she fired the weapon, narrowly missing the top of my hat.
My movements were swift and accurate. I didn’t intend on harming the poor girl, only making her cooperate. In the span of a few seconds, I had the door busted in, the gun out of reach, and Sophia on the floor. Her face, I could see it clearly then. She had long red curls of hair that were messily draping over her brilliant blue eyes, which were currently full of fear. After all, how often are you tackled at 3 in the morning by a big guy like me in an all-black suit?
She wasn’t about to give up without a fight, though. She screamed, struggled, and kicked. She even tried to bite me.
“Seventeen! Sedatives, please!” I called.
Rachel was already on it, swiftly giving the poor thing an injection in her shoulder before she ended up breaking her teeth on my arm.
We didn’t say a word to one another, we knew damn well that the gunshot and the screams would attract unwanted attention by the local authorities. We had to make the initial search quick.
“Scarb, basement. Rach, ground floor. I’ll take the second. We move up to watch each others’ tracks.” I told them. Scarberry was the quickest to pick up little details, and I knew Rach was interested in an imaginary lab. I decided to pick the poor unconscious Sophia off the floor and return her to bed, where she belongs.
So I did that, I gently picked her up and made my way upstairs, looking for the master bedroom. The others were doing their parts.
I found the bedroom and gently laid her down and tucked her in, making sure she was at least somewhat comfortable. The most notable side effect of the sedatives we use is a strong sense of impending doom and according to multiple sources, that isn’t exactly ideal.
But that wasn’t quite as I’d define the things my heightened senses detected as I finished getting her taken care of. I felt a presence, as the humans would say. A flash of light here, a faint detection of movement there, it was rather quick for me to notice we weren’t alone in this room.
I surveyed the area, trying to find any hint of life, anything that validated what my sensors were screaming at me. Hell, by the time I looked under the bed for any boogeymen, I was hearing pitter-pattering footsteps and quick, short breathing.
“Guys, get up here. Anomaly.” I said calmly, just loud enough for Rachel down the stairwell to hear.
Before the others could react, and before I knew anything about what was happening, I found myself violently hurtling down the stairs. It was like I was pushed, or telekinetically thrown, either way about it I ended up on my ass at the bottom of the stairs like an unlucky clown at a rodeo.
Rachel stood over me for a short while, looking as disappointed in me as ever. She spoke when I started to regain my senses. “Anomaly you say?”
“Yes, get Scarb and the electron scanners.” I told her, standing up and brushing off my coat. “I don’t have an identification on the perp.”
“No ID? Roswell, are you defective?” She asked.
“No, the perp is either just really really fast or really good at hiding in a place I can’t see.”
Before she could respond, a yelp was heard from downstairs, and Scarberry let out a distress signal. Rachel and I rushed to get down into that musty old basement, but when we opened the door, the signal stopped.
Scarberry was gone. Not a trace of him left except little prints where his boots last touched, before being dragged… Into nothingness.
I looked at Rachel, and she looked at me. We didn’t need to say a word, or even think a word. We just picked up Scarb’s equipment, tidied up the mess a bit, and calmly retreated to Mary to discuss a plan of action.
“Okay so what are you thinkin’?” I asked Rach as I started putting Scarb’s suitcase into the trunk.
“I think we need more than an electron scanner.” Rach said. “The only thing I can think of that would make someone disappear like that is something from a higher dimension.”
“Agreed. Have we got a 4d hostile?” I asked.
“Maybe. Or it might be 5d. Or higher. There isn’t enough evidence to directly point to a specific shape.”
“By all means, let’s get that evidence-” I began to say, before another one of Scarb’s telltale yelps interrupted me. We both looked up to see the little fella get launched from the front door, upside-down and flailing about like he was in the middle of fighting something.
He slammed into the car door, denting it a little bit. I winced, not liking the crunch it made. Rachel didn’t even flinch or wait for Scarberry to confirm if he was okay.
“What did you see?” She asked.
He looked up at her with an eye as wide as a saucer. “I don’t know but it sure was cool.”
“Elaborate.” She demanded, unamused.
“Pentagons. Lots of pentagons. It was like one of those fractal simulations that runs on the supercomputer. All of the pentagons just showed the same thing, all I could see was you guys, trying to find me. Everything else was a trippy white void.”
“Everything except what pulled you in, to begin with.” Rachel asked, “Did you see it? Did you glimpse a facet of its face?”
“I have no idea how you know it was a living entity but yes and we definitely need Herald to run some IDs for us. We can’t take this thing without having a gameplan. Also, it has a message for you Roswell.”
I was perplexed, more or less trying to wrap my ol’ noggin’ around the whole mess. “Go on.” I said, thinking so much that I was almost afraid my processors would overheat.
“‘Leave Sophia alone. Otherwise, you will be punished severely.’” He recited.
“Hmm, a real friendly visitor ain’t it?” I said, “C’mon Scarb. We better regroup.”
We quickly loaded up into the Mary Celeste and took off, not wanting to have another scrap with whatever was in that house. At least, not until we could win a dance with it. We made absolutely certain that we weren’t watched, or had any stowaways. We each looked the car top-to-bottom seven times.