PISCES Campaign - WONDER WALL - Session Two (After-Action Report)

Operation Roster (linked to After-Action Reports):

+ Ronald "Al" Frost - previously AFO with the Met's Diplomatic Protection Service
+ Chloe Thornes - ex-MI6 case officer with overseas experience in Russia
+ George Crackanthorpe - old-hand MI6 secondee
+ Holly Walker - a PISCES shrink and professional skeptic
+ Simon Spencer - millennial bad-boy computer hacker given another chance at life

WONDER WALL: SESSION TWO

"From mice to men
And then to rats
But only snakes behave like that..."

Last time we left the PISCES lads and ladettes, Team Wenceslas (Officers Walker and Crackanthorpe) had set up a surveillance post in one of the abandoned flats at the top of the Wyndham Court estate. Hoping to catch a snifter of Old Scratch's existence beyond second-hand stories, they tossed their bedrolls on the dirty, beer-can-and-tin-foil strewn floor and readied for the long haul.

Night falls, electric lights come on. Across the estate people return home to the warmth of their apartments. A bored Crackanthorpe saunters outside to poke his head around the estate after dark. He takes the stairs down to the fifth floor walkway, and as he rounds the corner spots one of those greasy "rat-prints" on a flat window. Inside, the sound of a TV buzzes.

Then something fat and heavy ran across his foot. A black rat. Behind him - tired of waiting, having come down to find him - Walker watched the creature rush past her.

Ahead on the balcony, the electric lights flickered out one by one. A solid darkness advanced...

Swallowing the two PISCES agents in impenetrable gloom.

Both stood their ground as they were plunged into Stygian depths so dark they couldn't see each other, couldn't see the balcony, couldn't see the railing that stopped them plunging to the concrete far below. A squeaking roared toward them, filling their ears as bristled fat bodies raced over their feet and up their trouser legs. A surging tide of scrabbling, furry forms rushed past in a wave.

Crackanthorpe kicked out as the swarm threatened to knock him down, and as he did something brushed past him - an unseen figure, perhaps human. A sharp pain slid across his cheek, like a papercut. An invisible razor opening flesh.

Behind him, Walker too tried to remain upright against the squeaking tide in the darkness. Then she gasped as a hand ran across her shoulder. Its fingers were like razorblades, and the shoulder of her jacket, the flesh beneath, opened at its touch. With a cry she grabbed out into the shadows. Her hand snatched at something solid - sharp bristles, like straw, dug into her palm as she tried to wrestle her invisible assailant to the ground.

But it was too strong - in the darkness it is almost impossible to fight, and Walker found herself slammed the railing. While she cannot see it she can feel its edge against the small of her back; the sudden fear of tumbling over the edge making her grab harder, to drag the thing with her if she fell.

A tearing noise. A mix of bristles and soft, unyielding cloth came away in her hand - and suddenly she stood alone. Slithering down the wall, she collapsed - furry bodies and the thing she had, briefly, in her hand raced away, toward the stairs. The squeaked receded and the lights came back on, one by one.

In the light the two officers look at one another: Crackanthorpe, his face bloody, a slash across his cheek oozing blood; Walker, her shoulder torn open, in her clenched hand a tuft of coarse brown bristled fur and a scrap of cloth, purple and aged.

The moving darkness filtered at speed down the staircase, lights disappearing and reapparing with its passage. Over the railing the pair watched the impenetrable shadow race across the estate's courtyard toward the park - and the copse of trees at the far end.

Taking the stairs two steps at a time, they followed their mysterious attacker. The park was dark, the streetlights barely able to pierce the gloom. Between the trees, Walker saw other lights moving - a procession of torches? No, cell-phones - receding in a steady line deeper into the copse.

The trees were thick but not impenetrable, and the two found a beaten path leading further. Beyond the treeline late-night traffic roared. The procession of cell-phone lights had vanished. Slowly and carefully, unwilling to draw attention to themselves, the PISCES officers move on.

Ahead stood a wall, crumbling and weatherbeaten, an open metal gate offering access. A brass plaque, aged but legible, read: "Wyndham Chapel." Beyond stretched a clearing speckled with stunted headstones, an old stone building at its center. The enormous doors stood open, stained glass above it glimmering with light from inside. The roof formed a stepped pyramid that loomed with twisting, ill-conceived angles. A trick of the night, perhaps, yet remarkably similar to that of the nearby estate.

Deciding safety the better part of valor, Crackanthope and Walker returned to their car and bandaged their wounds. Checking the bristles and cloth she found, Walker deduced the former was from a rat - but one at least 5-feet long (!) and, based on her scuffle, able to walk on its hind legs (!!). The cloth proved harder to place. In the end, both went into an evidence baggie to be sent by courier to PISCES' laboratory in Birmingham. Walker calls a taxi to head home. Crackanthorpe, concerned about future incidents that night, sleeps in the car.

Day cannot come soon enough.

At Morning Prayers...

Team Shadwell - having survived their shoot-out/car-crash of yesterday - took the morning to get their stories straight. MI6 was apparently on the warpath regarding the situation and had called for a debriefing. While Frost tried to find out more about that, Thorne and Spencer followed up on some of yesterday's clues. Using his IT know-how, Spencer set up a deep-web scraper to keep an eye on sales of weird blue gemstones or jewelry on the Internet, just in case their missing briefcase's contents wound up on an dark web auction. Thornes's hunt proved less successful; her attempts to track down the real-name or address of Casey, the woman involved in the American's murder, failed - and PISCES was too busy to assist right this minute.

Around midday, over a late brunch, the still sore members of Team Wenceslas met with Team Shadwell at Hyde Park to compare notes.

Having gone over what both teams had discovered (and showed off their respective injuries), Spencer looked into the suspects involved in yesterday's car-chase. Two were dead - Ahmed Dutta and Jason Kelso - while a third, Ashley Galiya, was still in ICU. Checking their backgrounds, he found the first two had low-paying delivery jobs (Dutta for an Indian restaurant, Kelso for a firm called Tilbury Freight), and all of them had dropped off social-media in the last year. Both Dutta and Galiya appeared to be Muslim, while Kelso was not.

Deciding Cohen Jewelers, which the American had visited before his untimely demise, might prove a useful source of information, Frost called his friends in the force to get Cohen "invited" to help with enquiries. It didn't take much to push City of London Police to ask him to drop by his local station to give an unspecified statement - one that Frost and friends would be there to intercept.

And Now, A Call to the Carpet...

With that done, our intrepid heroes filed back to PISCES HQ - the squat tower looking more depressing than usual. In their regular meeting room Control looks nonplussed as a red-faced MI6 officer barely suppresses his rage. "So you're the idiots with the audicity to balls up one of our operations," he bellows - and proceeds to lay into Team Shadwell for their indiscretions, supposed or otherwise...

• An MI6 surveillance team had been observing the incident
• That barring Spencer's (illicit) backup of audio-visual material he'd got from the scene using his bugs, PISCES had been ordered to turn over their material and scrub their records
• MI6 was blaming PISCES for causing an "international upset"
  
• And - perhaps most importantly - the briefcase, at least according to the debriefer, was missing

Holding their tongues from giving too much away, the officers took their bollocking quietly, though not without the odd riposte. At the end he left, slamming the door behind him.

"Well, with that over with I've got some bad news," explained Control. "According to the Gods, Operation Shadwell is officially closed and you're being transferred to Wenceslas."

A collective groan.

"Of course, I couldn't ask any of you to look into things in your own free time," he continued. "It wouldn't be cricket - particularly if you went off the books and made sure you didn't cause any trouble for our friends..."

"Is he asking us to keep looking into the case?" asked Thornes quietly.

Indeed. He was.

A Deal with the Devil...

Since Frost had already set up an interview with Cohen it seemed a shame to not follow up on it - no matter what official niceties might be broken. As they drove to the site, Spencer rang his Uncle Eddy - an old-school Cockney gangster - for more info. The old man warned his nephew that Cohen was a big-time player in the stolen arts and fencing trade, his fingers in so many pies (including, allegedly, the famous Brinks-Mat gold robbery of 1983). Some said he was nigh untouchable. Forewarned, Frost, Spencer and Thornes parked in Hatton Garden nick's car-park and went in to talk to Cohen personally.

Simon Cohen - Jewelry Dealer

Cohen, a flat-cap wearing East Ender in his late-60s, proved friendly, if a tougher nut to crack than they might've imagined. Pointing out he had committed no crimes, he explained the dead American, Hauser, had irregularly visited him while in London - and yesterday had sold Cohen a number of diamonds he'd brought into the country from Amsterdam. Told that Hauser was dead and that MI6 had been protecting him, Cohen grinned. Hauser wasn't an arms-dealer like PISCES thought, but was an "art-trader" - part of a triangle-trade bringing goods into the UK for the Americans. Hauser was a CIA asset - and, Cohen explained, he held Hauser's sales on "credit" for unspecified reasons.

If they wanted to know more, Cohen was happy to tell them - so long as they did him a little favor, anyway. A disgusted Frost told the old man that he didn't work with crooks and he'd rather sift through the old man's financial accounts with a warrant, but Spencer - whose background and "dodgy" family-ties made him more open to the proposition - agreed to take the deal. From his pocket Cohen drew a Stanley knife and, cutting a symbol into the palm, motioned for Spencer to hold out his own hand. "A deal's a deal. Bound by blood," he explained, as the knife flashed.

More blood spattered onto the interview room's table, and Spencer bit his lip, as Cohen carved what looked like a mix between the Kabbalistic "Tree of Life" and a series of geometric patterns into the young officer's flesh. Then, both having spat into their bloody palms, they shook on it. "Pleasure doing business with you, my son," grumbled Cohen with a smile. "There's an auction at Botherby's next week," he explained. "A certain item's up for sale. I'll want it within the next couple of days."

"Wait," repeated Thornes. "There's an auction? You want us to steal something for auction?"

"You must be the brains of the outfit," Cohen sniped. "It's not my problem how you get it, just that you do." He nodded at Spencer. "I'll send you the brochure."

As he rose to leave, Frost offered a "gentle" reminder that the ex-copper wasn't as generous or soft-hearted at making deals as his colleagues. If the old man was intimidated he didn't show.

"Don't tell Control about this," demanded Spencer, trying to staunch the red threads trickling down his wrist. Frost agreed, albeit without much conviction. Poking his head around the door, a pale-faced constable surveyed the carnage and wondered aloud how he'd explain all this in his log.

The three PISCES officers looked at one another and wondered what they'd put in theirs.

Meanwhile, at the Old Chapel...

Back at the Wyndham estate, Crackanthorpe and Walker did a daylight recconaisance of the old chapel hidden among the trees. Having requisitioned sidearms, they picked their way through the weed and trash strewn graveyard toward the chapel. Walker, given a boost by Crackanthorpe, hoisted herself high enough to poke her head over a window sill and glance through its stained-glass. Inside was empty, rows of dusty pews laid out in rows, a central aisle down the middle. Multi-hued tones from the light streaming through the glass gave the interior an otherworldly look.

The front doors - open last night - were closed, and it took all their strength to push one open. The room beyond was coated with a fine layer of dust, dozens of footprints leading up and down the aisle and around the seats. Putting their feet on the previously made footprints in order to hide their break-in, the pair did a cursory search of the place.

White Chapel by Immortal Snapshots

Motes of dust hung in the air. A spread of wild ivy that covered part of the western wall drew Crackanthorpe's eye, a splash of color behind it, and he wrenched the creepers aside. Behind was a mural of a red-haired woman - and at first he thought it might've been of a saint or the Virgin Mary based on the garb and halo above her head - except that her leering face and the grotesque rat-creature she draped almost lovingly over her shoulders like a fur stole had nothing to do with Christianity. Crackanthorpe shuddered; for a moment he thought the face of the rat-creature had grinned at him.

On the other side of the room Walker found another mural - this one done in spray-paint and graffiti-stylized, half-finished and missing its head. Based on its hands it was of an unidentified Black man, wearing a purple puffer jacket and Nikes. Above the unfinished face was a glowing crown - and around his neck the same bloated and disgusting rat thing as around the other mural's shoulders.

Suddenly the pair heard chanting - singing - a hymnal - came from somewhere in the room. Children's voiced raised in song. The pews, Crackanthorpe realized; there were children singing on the pews. He grabbed a handful of dust from the floor and threw it over the seats. The outlines of ghostly children formed as the dust scattered over them, hanging in space. The singing continued.

Above them a scratching noise echoed down from the ceiling. Walker looked up - and up - and up...

The staggered ceiling, crisscrossed with rafters, rose in many-tiered angles, overlapping into a darkness that seemed endless. It was like staring into infinity. And something was coming out of it. On the other side of the room, paw prints - as big as a man's hand - were coming down the wall. Something invisible was crawling down the wall. Whispers in broken French and English scratched their ears...

Crackanthorpe knew French. "Gut you," the voice muttered, "tear you open, smash your brains in..."

He stood his ground as Walker backed away. Footprints, more like claw-prints, formed in the dust approaching Crackanthorpe. He held out his hands, trying to show he was no threat. "We're not here to harm you," he began...

A hot breath, the stench of rotting meat and trash and death hit his face. The thing was inches from him now. "I saw your photograph," said the invisible thing. "Mr. Policeman."

Walker grabbed her partner's arm, yanked him, and right at that moment something slashed across Carackanthorpe's stomach. The jerk backwards had saved him - the shirt across his belly had been opened with a slash of invisible talons, jagged lines cut across his flesh. A second earlier and it might have opened him up, spilled his guts across the floor. He ran.

He ran past Walker, leaving her standing in shock, as footprints appeared in the dust. They weren't following him. They were going for her - and she ran too, diving through the open chapel door as something slashed past her ear.

The two PISCES officers hit the mud and grass of the graveyard outside and lay there, momentarily stunned. The enormous door that had taken both of them to open slammed shut with a sound like thunder, knockers ringing like clangers.

Crackanthorpe probed his stomach. A flesh-wound. He rolled on his side, coming face-to-face with one of the gravestones. On its ancient weathered form were carved the words:

Tessa Cook
Died in the Year of Our Lord 1891
Aged 8

Tessa Cook? He knew that name. It was one of the missing children from the Wyndham estate... but she'd only vanished a few months ago. There were more: Alex Munto, Alex Hawthorne, Lucy Peel, Damien Wrigley - some of the names were misspelled, all died in 1891, yet all seemed synonymous to children who'd disappeared (been kidnapped?) within the last year.

And among them one more: Blair Styles. Died 1891.

The same surname as Det. Sgt. Styles.

A descendant... or...

"Is Styles a time-traveler?" they asked each other. "Is he... undead?"

Above them, a flash of blue lightning cut the sky and the Heavens opened - the rain soaking them to their skin.