Odysseus

Miles and Strawberry were greeted by a deputy who quickly got them into the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Dan Oakley was happy to receive them and quite curious about their business in town. Miles presented the situation – the FBI was in town on account of the Spivey case. He was curious about the sheriff’s take on it. Oakley said that it was a strange one – Billy Ray’s disappearance, and the freakish sequence of events. His best bet was that Billy Ray had gone to Nashville or Knoxville during his absence to experiment with heavy drugs. He was most likely suffering from withdrawal when he returned, and then tried to take another hit, which took a really bad turn. Miles asked about the possibility of a drug ring in the area – the FBI wanted to probe that possibility. Oakley dismissed it. There were no drug rings in this town. At most, the local kids would hang out at the reservoir, drinking beer acquired through their older siblings from the Country bar, or possibly moonshine, maybe even some pot, but that would be it. Miles also asked about Mrs. Allen’s strange behaviour. The sheriff shrugged. Most likely, she’s just taken by the Spivey tragedy. A death like that shakes the entire community. The worst thing that happens around this place would be hunting accidents fuelled by moonshine. He finished by saying that the agents were welcome to look around in town. They weren’t going to find anything, but he understood that they had to turn all the stones and do all the paperwork, same as him.



Allie and Anna went into the town hall. A young, female receptionist greeted them. They asked to see Mr. Allen. The receptionist asked if they had an appointment. Allie showed the badge and asked to see Mr. Allen again. The receptionist repeated that they needed an appointment and that she could arrange one for her tomorrow. Allie and Anna started getting annoyed and pointed out that she was obstructing a federal investigation and that she could get charged and prosecuted for that. The secretary started looking really nervous now, and mumbled about how this was procedure here, and it was a really busy time, because it was tax season and they couldn’t get disturbed. This got Anna even more annoyed, because clearly it could not be tax season, and she ordered the poor girl to get the council man on the phone right now. The rattled receptionist complied. She took the receiver and dialed. Someone answered. She said that two federal agents were here and wanted to speak to Mr. Allen. When she hung up, she looked even more rattled and said that Mr. Allen was in an important meeting and had told her that they’d have to follow procedure and book an appointment. Anna pointed out that she had not been talking to Allen, but to someone else. “He took the phone,” the receptionist insisted. Allie thought that she was telling the truth to the best of her ability. Then she said that they’d get a warrant and be right back. They felt the fearful glances of the secretary when they left.



They ran into Miles and Strawberry as they were coming out from the sheriff’s office. Informed of what had transpired, Miles growled and walked straight back to the town hall. Seeing the FBI agents now numbering four did nothing to calm the receptionist down. She once again tried explaining the procedure and that the council members were very busy during this tax season. Miles wouldn’t have it. He looked around and spotted the double doors to the town hall. He walked straight towards it. The receptionist now looked positively panicked, saying that he couldn’t go in there to disturb the meeting. Miles huffed and kicked the door open.

What he saw inside froze the blood in his vain and he went pale. The room was in complete disarray, tables and chairs overturned, papers everywhere. In the middle of the room was a huge, flesh-coloured blob of goo, a humungous amoeba. Faces of people floated inside, mouths chattering silently. Miles slammed the door shut again. The secretary stood frozen. His colleagues looked at him with inquisitive alarm, even as he drew his sidearm. The other agents followed suit. The double doors suddenly buckled as something heavy struck them. The secretary screamed and ran. Everyone else watched the doors.



Another bang threw the doors open. Miles opened fire. The bullets impacted the goo, seemingly without any reaction at all. Anna screamed and ran, as did Allie and Strawberry, who went completely hysterical. Miles slowly backed up, covering their escape. A pseudopod shot out from the slowly crawling amoeba. Miles tried to duck, but was hit with a glancing blow over the head. He saw some stars but managed to get out after his fellow agents.

Outside, Strawberry had taken off in a frantic panic run, screaming as she went down the street. Anna scrambled into one of the cars and drove off to catch up with her while Allie waited for Miles to catch up. When the ex-Ranger came out, they looked back through the glass doors. It seemed the blob was retreating into the council chamber. Just then, the sheriff and his deputy came out from their office across the street, side arms drawn. They called out to Miles and Allie, ordering them to drop their guns. Miles tried to explain the situation, but Oakley would have nothing of it and kept telling them to drop their guns. Slowly, they holstered their pistols. The sheriff then ordered them to their car, hands on the hood. The deputy moved slightly sideways, producing his cuffs. Allie gave Miles a worried look, concluding that they were brainwashed.



Meanwhile, Anna sped the car and quickly caught up with the panicking Strawberry. She opened the backdoor and called out for her and Fields threw herself into the safety of the backseat. Strawberry secured, Anna gunned the engine to get back to her team.

Slowly, Miles approached the vehicle, taking special care to stay between Allie and the two officers. The Delta Green agents cautiously arrived at their vehicle and placed their hands on the hood. The burly deputy put down his sidearm and took out his cuffs as he closed in on Miles. The moment he tried to secure his subject’s hand, the ex-Ranger smoothly twisted around and locked him up in a vice-like grip, placing the hapless deputy as a shield between himself and the sheriff. At the same time, Anna arrived, bringing the vehicle to a screeching halt. She got the window down and took aim in support of Miles, even as Allie ran for the car. The suddenly overwhelmed officer was stunned and simply ordered the fed to release his partner. Miles refused. With two guns pointing at him and his partner secured in the elite soldier’s relentless grip, the sheriff surrendered.



Miles quickly organized the team. Allie was ordered to take the vehicle with the still hysterical Strawberry to the motel and immediately pack all their essentials, while Miles and Anna secured the two law enforcement officers. He gave Allie about ten minutes before they would rendezvous at the motel. Allie and Anna took a look at Strawberry before Allie left and made a diagnosis. She was clearly in shock, and Anna gave her a sedative that put her right out. Miles and Anna worked fast bringing the two captured officers into their own office. They found the scared secretary in there, but she offered no resistance and was placed in an office, too scared to move, while the lawmen were locked into their own prison. Allie sped to the motel. When she arrived, she found a van parked outside, with a satellite dish on the roof. It had the word PhenomenX scribbled across the side in a fancy font. Luckily, there was no one in the van. Sighing deeply, she called Miles to notify him and then worked as fast as she could, loading the car with as much of their material as she could, prioritizing case material. As she worked, she once again noticed someone looking at her from behind the blinders of that motel room, but found no time to give the room any further attention. The team united and drove out of town just as the sheriffs second deputy sped into town, sirens hollering. They reckoned that they had about a ten minute head start, more than enough to get out of this jurisdiction quickly enough.



They found a spot where they could pull over and catch their breath, all the while keeping a close watch on their surroundings for any pursuers, human or otherwise. Miles called Alphonse and told him about the recent developments, and about their conclusion that the entire town somehow was infected by the creature they found in the town hall, asking for advice. The senior listened carefully and then announced: “you are the agents in situ, you make the decision. If you determine that it is warranted, then call in the CDC and quarantine the town. You can work through Derringer in this.” Instructions obtained, the team could think a little about their options.



First, though, Anna wanted to have a look at Miles’ bruised eyebrow. On the one hand, her impulse as a doctor to tend to the wounded at all times, even though it was clearly a superficial bruise. More importantly, however, she wanted to try and secure some residual matter from the amoeba that could be analyzed in a lab should they get access to one. She found none, but to her horror, she discovered that the wound had healed completely when she cleaned the blood off the area. She ordered Miles to punch a plank as hard as he could. He hesitantly complied and managed to get his knuckles bruised. At first nothing happened, but after a while, the cuts healed before their eyes. Anna’s eyes widened: “You’re infected,” she said. Miles swallowed, hard.



Allie called Alphonse to ask for further advice on this piece of really bad news. His reply was short “supervise him. If deemed necessary, neutralize him”. After a bit of hard thinking, they decided that the best thing would be to put Miles out, too, so that the team would not have to worry about him suddenly turning on them. Miles conceded that this probably was for the best, and allowed himself to be tranqed. Anna did so, but remembering Spivey’s unusual resistance to drugs, she feared that the tranq might not take. It did.



Now, the team was down to two operational agents. Anna argued that they should return to Knoxville. There was nothing they could do in Groversville now, and she wanted to take some samples from Miles and look them over in the lab. Allie agreed, and off they went, making as good speed as they could without violating speed limits. Strawberry woke up on the way there, and Allie explained something about the situation, though not the whole story to not panicking the other agent. For now, the junior agent simply assumed that she had taken a bad step moving into city hall, remaining blissfully unaware of what had transpired.



They arrived in Knoxville at about 2 pm, stomachs growling. Anna ignored her hunger, and went right to work in the lab, access provided by Derringer. Miles was still out, so Strawberry went to get some burgers to fill at least two hungry tummies. When they had eaten their fill, Allie started slowly breaking the news to her. She had a difficult time absorbing the news about the blob in city hall. Miles’ infection was more tangible. Allie demonstrated by giving the sleeping ex-Ranger a small knife cut. Strawberry’s eyes widened when she saw the wound close up. Both she and Allie tested themselves and were relieved to find their wounds not closing up: they were, it seemed, not infected.



In the lab, Anna worked feverishly. Hours went by, but she could not seem to get anything but normal results from the samples she had taken from Miles. By 5 pm, she was starting to doubt her own competence handling the tests. At that time, Derringer entered. He had a parcel for her. It contained a letter from Alphonse, detailing some progress made by their lab technician, magnified pictures of Spivey’s extremities and two aerosol bottles filled with a clear liquid. The letter explained that the liquid was a substance that acted as a detector of the strange tissue. Anna looked at the pictures for a long time. They showed really fine lines, surgical incisions that had been healed by the tissue, showing where Spivey’s muscle tissue had been removed. Apparently, the tissue could mimic both human tissue and human skin, and the incisions were too fine to be detected by the naked eye. Anna slowly started to realize just what type of ordeal Billy Ray had been put through. She grabbed the packaged and finally met up with the team.



She applied the detector on the sleeping Miles. A speck on the eyebrow, his knuckles and a cut on his arm showed purple. Anna showed Allie and Strawberry the pictures and the letter and explained the full extent of what they meant, how the perpetrators had literally stripped Billy Ray of his muscle tissue without even damaging his nerves or blood vessels. Then she threw up, violently.



When they calmed down, they decided to return to Groversville to track down the contamination using the detector, but they did not want to go there during the dark, and so booked one room at a motel for the night. They did not want to separate this night.

Allie and Anna woke up at about 2 am. Miles seemed to be having a fit. His nose was running, he seemed to have a really high fever, and he coughed his lungs up. Using her stethoscope, Anna heard that his lungs were filling up with fluid. Realizing the gravity of the situation, she gave him a shot of adrenaline. It helped for a while, but the crisis was not over. At the same time, Derringer called. Spivey was having some form of flu-related emergency, and all the tissue in his arms and legs had dissolved. It was a gruesome scene, and Derringer was clearly disturbed. Anna told him to call the CDC and quarantine the town, before she hung up and Allie called 911 to save Miles’ life. The paramedic arrived promptly and when the full severity of this bug was understood, Miles was put into an isolated ICU unit. Then, after Strawberry at last woke up, the rest of the team started exhibiting symptoms. The final action taken before they were all isolated by people in hazmat suits was Allie taking all the evidence of the case to a Green box.