On July 13, 2010, at the FBI headquarters in Los Angeles, Max Shearman was under orders to form a team to investigate and incident that happened just off the coast of Santa Cruz. Working under the Special Affairs Department or SAD for short, the team was intended to investigate paranormal or supernatural events in the America and abroad.
Max assembled a team consisting of: Connor “Eagle” Whitmore, a veteran SAD agent, Nathan “Mask” Gibbons, an NSA agent and infiltration expert, Mark “Firewall” Stillwall, a hacker conscripted in to the SAD after encountering vampires, Michael “Mr. Green” Jones, a rookie cop with a gang-related past, Thomas “Boy Scout” Quinn, a detective avoiding a psych review after encountering a werewolf, Ryan “Genome” Murphy, a biologist and geneticist looking into supernatural physiology, and Izabelle “Fixer” Lenor, an amnesiac NSA cleaner.
The team was assembled to look into the reappearance of a cruise ship named the Queen Zenobia. The ship had disappeared nearly five years earlier and was presumed lost at sea. The only hail came as a lethargic and disturbing call from the communications officer.
Each of the members of the team were chosen for their respective talents and Eagle was made team leader due to experience and rank. They headed out to the beach area that had been roped off from the public.
At the beach, strange blobs of flesh were showing up on the shoreline. They appeared to most closely resemble leeches. Genome investigated a corpse as the others checked the shore for any evidence. As they did, Boy Scout was attacked by one of the creatures that was merely faking death. They dispatched of it and Genome looked more closely at the corpses on the beach.
It took several hours, but Genome was able to determine that the genetic code of the creature had been altered by means of a mutagenic retrovirus the likes of which he had never seen. Further, the bodies on the shore were at least 95.6% human. Tired of waiting, Eagle took the team on a motorboat and headed into the ship.
In the ship, they found other mutated creatures roaming the ship that they were forced to put down as they worked their way up and down the levels. Here they found a CIA agent named Rachel Sinclair that had lost her partner Renard. They were also sent into the ship to investigate the event. Taking Rachel along, they made their way to the communications room. Here they found a massive mutated creature with a lamprey like mouth for a head, a practically lifeless human body dangling from it. The human body mumbled speech, but was not conscious and was clearly the communications officer.
Fixer managed to get behind it and the team assault the creature simultaneously, killing it for good. Here, they found a man hiding in the locker of the communications room. His name was Bryan Emmerich, a nuclear physicist who was paid to man the nuclear reactor that had been retrofitted into the Queen Zenobia.
When asked why they would do something like this, he said the people responsible, calling themselves only the Organization, needed it to power the lab at the bottom of the ship. Eagle had Bryan take them down to the lab with a key card they found on the dead body of the mutated communications officer.
In the lab, the team found evidence of experimentation with viruses and using the blood from vampires to create the mutagen. Inside a massive tank nearby there was a red liquid, obviously the bulk load of the virus.
As they investigated the area, they could hear gunfire distantly. Mask went investigating and he traced it to an area outside the lab. He ran into Renard the CIA agent, but held him hostage, not knowing who he was. He was brought before the rest of the team that were about to leave before they ran into a man named Jack Norman. He had injected himself with an enormous load of the virus and had sustained a gunshot from Renard before collapsing. Jack went on about stopping the Organization for their betrayal before passing out. Renard then showed them where an antidote was being made and logs of how someone had sabotaged the ship, leaking the virus out.
Eagle asked if the antidote could cure Jack, but Renard believed that the amount he injected could not be cured. Eagle summarily executed him before he could transform. With all of the information they had, Eagle called back to Shearman and had them bring in the ship, their first mission a success.
5 years later…
Eagle awoke to find himself disoriented. He checked around his house to find that somehow five years had passed with him having no memory of it. He looked into his files and found that all of his cases had been taken care of and nothing was out of place.
Confused, Eagle called up Firewall and Boy Scout, who both of them had experienced the same phenomenon. Neither of them could find anything out of place at their homes so Eagle gathered them together. The three of them attempted to look into anything out of the ordinary in their lives, but none could come up with a concrete conclusion. Firewall believed it was the Nosferatu due to his paranoia of them and Eagle did not discount this idea.
A couple hours passed before Eagle received a phone call about coming into work. The team went in to the usual meeting room. There, Shearman sat with a semi-familiar face. They recognized Bryan Emmerich from the ship. He had to be constripted into the SAD due to his sensitive knowledge. He was being placed on the team due to the absence of Mask, Genome, and Fixer who were taking care of other business related to their fields. Boy Scout asked what his call sign was and Bryan retorted “A-Bomb”.
At first, the team sat as Shearman went over pending cases, each member trying to discern what they might have missed. As they did, the team gradually noticed a commotion in the halls. Apparently, as Boy Scout found out from his mentor, the director and his strike team had captured three werewolves. Eagle knew this had only happened one other time with his cousin Raoul Duke.
Heading down to what should have been a restricted area, dozens of SAD agents were trying to look into the cells. Eagle finally had the local security agent there tell them to get them away as he was approached by the strike team leader, Brock Rumlow along with his teammate Monster. Apparently, director Jeremiah Rush had viewed their cases and the success rates and determined that Eagle’s team would be the perfect group to interrogate the werewolves. If he had any questions, he was to speak with the director which Eagle promptly did. With that, Rumlow handed Eagle a dossier on all they had about the captives.
Heading up to Rush’s office, he found the one-armed director disheveled and tired. Still, Rush was willing to give him any information that Eagle required. Eagle wanted to know what he wanted to get out of the werewolves and any information he could give that might assist them in their interrogation.
Rush said that he was tired of the simple investigation of supernatural creatures and it was now their duty as the SAD to exterminate them. He was willing to grant Eagle permission to use any enhanced interrogation techniques he preferred, with an emphasis on any. He does not view these creatures as human and therefore not subject to the US Constitution. He, however, isn’t able to give much more information than what is in the dossier.
Heading back down, he gathers his team and makes his way back to the lab. Eagle went over each of the captives: a red wolf with no apparent name with his only contents of a collar and a charm on it, a male named Gavin Quinn who was riddled with scars and only possessed a picture of what appeared to be a twin brother, and a female named Caitlyn Whelan with several tattoos, two bladed weapons, a bag of black powder, and wearing a gold wolf’s head necklace. The two human-looking werewolves had been stripped naked and all three were chained to the wall.
Eagle decided to handle the wolf first and called Duke for some advice on how to handle the situation. Duke could only tell Eagle that like people they are all different and each one will have to be handled differently. On the basis of the wolf one, however, don’t treat it like a common dog. They are intelligent and can understand your language perfectly.
Eagle entered the room with the wolf with Boy Scout as Firewall went to work on dictating and recording the events. Eagle maintained a system of yes/no answers with the wolf and managed to get his name, Scratching Claws. Scratching Claws provided his tribe through body language and markings on the floor. As they did this, an equipment failure happened and the team was forced to use pencil and paper to write down what they were seeing.
Scratching Claws noted that there was a Black Spiral Dancer somewhere nearby, motioning his head upwards. However, he could not tell who. Eagle, in a bid to keep the wolf cooperative, brought him a raw steak from the kitchen that the wolf readily devoured. Eagle was able to determine that the wolf did not like humans in the least and would readily kill any that he could if he was free.
With little more they could get out of the wolf due to a language barrier, they decided to move onto Caitlyn. Eagle tried to stall her out, making her wait almost an entire day in the cold in order to look like her rescuer when he came in and offered her clothes, food, and water. Caitlyn accepted her clothes, but rejected the food and water. Eagle tried to be cordial and bluff her into believing he was there to help, but Caitlyn saw right through him. She still remained polite.
Eagle wanted to know whatever he could from her. Caitlyn gave Eagle as much vague information as she could. She told him about the tribes and that not all werewolves wanted to kill humans. In fact, most werewolves wanted to avoid humans altogether. When asked about the Black Spiral Dancers, she told them that they were enemies of all the other tribes. However, Caitlyn either refused or artfully dodged any questions that would give anything away about her home, friends, or other werewolf locations.
When asked why she killed four men as per her dossier, Caitlyn denied this and said the guy who led the team (Brock) activated some sort of magical device that sapped the life out of the men there and gave him strength. She had been walking outside her area and was tricked into believing that Brock was someone friendly. Before she knew it, Brock had beaten her unconscious. While she traveled they put something on her neck, the gold necklace that Eagle could see. They also injected her with some that prevented her from changing forms.
Eagle grew suspicious now that things weren’t as they seem. Before his loss of time, Thomas Little was the director of SAD and the excuse he heard was “personal business” caused him to have to leave SAD for the time being. Not trusting Rush, but not sure what to do. Eagle went to question Caitlyn again when there was a knock on the door.
Brock was standing at the door and said that the girl would need another injection of the suppressing chemical and was to see “the Doctor.” Eagle adamantly refused and said that he would have to chemical administered as Rush gave him full access to the prisoners. Angry, but unwilling to cause issues, Brock handed the chemical injector to Eagle who then gave it to Boy Scout.
As Boy Scout injected Caitlyn in her leg, she sniffed Boy Scout and realized that he was a werewolf like her whispering it to him and asking why she was doing this. Incredulous and stunned, Boy Scout could not even respond when he heard it. In the meantime, Eagle had Firewall grab a picture of Rush, suspicious of the nature of his director.
Firewall brought the picture to Eagle and he showed it to Caitlyn who identified him as Prescott Solomon, a Black Spiral Dancer. Tearfully, she told them he had engineered a plan that killed her son. He had been devastating her entire Sept. Convinced that things were not as they used to be and not trusting anyone in the building, Eagle had Firewall call in Duke for a favor to get him a helicopter to remove these werewolves from the building, believing no good would come of them if they stayed. However, while Duke was able to make it happen, it would take at least three to four hours to mobilize. They would have to prepare in the meantime.
Because of the wait, Eagle sent Boy Scout and A-Bomb to speak with Gavin Quinn. Gavin toyed with the two interrogators whenever they asked questions. At first, he merely asked for a steak dinner, but when he received it, he did not touch it. Unlike Caitlyn, Gavin was more than willing to reveal intimate details like his past, locations of Septs, and viewpoints on tribes. However, with each question, his requests got increasingly bizarre like asking for a life-size stand-up of John Cena, lacy purple underwear, and $14.63.
As time ticked down, the team devised a plan to let the wolf go as a cover for them while the two human-like werewolves boarded the helicopter with them. They would take them to Duke who would do what he saw fit with them. Explaining the plan to Caitlyn and Scratching Claws who both agreed to it, they were interrupted by Gavin who demanded their attention.
Gavin had told them that the entire capture was a set-up to determine what was going on in the SAD. All of the other Septs in the area had been exterminated and the Garou in the Sept he was staying at were baffled as to how. When Boy Scout asked if Caitlyn was lying about being a werewolf, he replied no, that the entire team was. He noted that none of them bothered to realize that the entire team were orphans?
When asked why they hadn’t changed, that’s why Plan B had been looking into the situation. Plan B was Monster from Brock’s strike team. He had been hiding amongst them to get more evidence. Gavin told them that something had happened to them to prevent them from changing. When the team balked at the idea they would all be gathered together as a sheer impossible coincidence, Gavin said the spirits work in mysterious ways. Of course, this prompted Gavin to give them a quick crash course in the Umbra.
With time running out, Eagle released all of the captives and met with Plan B in the evidence room who gave the Garou back their belongings. He had the ability to disrupt the communication and power at the building, but it would have to be quick as the strike team would soon figure it out. Due to the nature of this ability, Eagle would have to ensure that the helicopter was a far away from Plan B’s location in the power room.
As they decided on a five minute window to attempt this, Eagle returned to see Caitlyn cutting open her hand and extracting green ooze from it. The chemical injected into her was a spiritual toxin and she would need to get it out before leaving.
Hitting their window, the group made their way to the top of the building. As they exited the building, Brock and several agents could be seen on the opposite end near the helicopter. Brock was unaware of the plan to escape so thankfully, he ignored the chopper. Reaching for an object on his neck, he activated and sucked the life force from the agents behind him. He swelled to huge Hulk-like proportions and leapt at the group.
Striking Caitlyn first, he leveled her in one punch, knocking her out. Gavin quickly ran to Caitlyn and used the bag of powder on her, reviving her as the team discharged their guns on Brock with little effect. Scratching Claws leapt onto him tearing a solid chunk from him before being thrown off. Caitlyn used what strength she could and flung her dagger into his shoulder.
Brock yelled in pain and removed the dagger, much of his wounds healing quickly. The team fired again and Scratching Claws tore a massive chunk from him. Firewall assisted Caitlyn to the helicopter grabbing her dagger along the way. Finally, Boy Scout and A-Bomb simultaneously unloaded their pistols into his head at point blank range, killing him.
Boarding the plane, the commander of the plane, Steven Thompson, asked where to go. Gavin quickly threw out that he knows a safe place close to here where they can’t be found. Eagle agreed and they were taken to a forest outside of Los Angeles.
Dropping them off, Eagle gave all the information he had obtained from the captive Garou and told him to get it to Duke. Here, they were greeted by a huge mountain man named Heals-the-Land. He told them that Scratching Claws would be safe to stay here. He along with Plan B, who would be coming later, would be able to help them understand their destiny better. He would have Gavin escort Caitlyn back to her Sept. They were free to stay here and he assured them that no one would be able to find them here. It was time for Eagle’s team to discover their destinies…
