CLASSIFIED (1.0)
A Fanfic By Joe Stakem
Washington, D.C.
Monday, June 1st, 2003 09:24 a.m.
The suits were all gathered at the round table, old gray haired men with old agendas. Elevator music played over a p.a. system, most likely to provide interference noise to anyone trying to record the meeting. Everyone had folders filled with various files on various things in front of them. Everything and everyone was low key. They all wore dark sunglasses, to hide their eyes, even the armed marines at the doors. It was a meeting of all sorts of D.C. types; the military officials, politicians, people from the private sector, a few interns, and Marcus Crane. The matters at hand were of the utmost importance to all seated, but not much so to Crane, he was just a spectator in his mind, though their decisions would directly dictate his actions.
They all knew why they were there, and it was about to be revealed to Crane. He was seated next to a military analyst, her subtle perfume stinging his eyes a bit under his shades, as most perfume does. 'God I miss that sting...' He looked around the room at the familiar yet disguised faces. They were all present, everyone. Whatever happened must have been huge, the meeting room had never been this packed, not for a simple mission briefing. After more moments of surveying the scene, the meeting was called to order. The man at the head of the table, the man with the ten thousand dollar suit, stood up, a massive projection screen lowered, the lights dimmed, an intern rushed to give him the remote to the projector slideshow. The man, designated simply as ONE, pressed a button on the remote, the first slide came into view. It was of a dead female.
"Most of you of course know of the murders that sprouted around the globe..." ONE began, they all stared at the picture of the girl, orange streaks in her hair, helpless, dead, stabbed. "First in Munich, then Spain, Rome, Portugal, Mexico, England, then finally California, all of them within the last nine months, we hadn't yet even begun to speculate as to their significance..." The pictures were in all the folders everyone had in front of them, Crane included. The pictures kept rolling forward, dead girls, some of them very young. "We hadn't yet put together a connection, all we knew was that it happened over a four week period, and all murdered were young girls, all murdered the same way, a stab wound to the midsection..."
A slide rolled in of a close up of the wound. Marcus silently observed the woman next to him gently gripping the crucifix dangling from her neck. "Next came the explosion in upper London. We thought it was just an IRA hit, terrorists." A picture of the burned out watcher's council came. "Then of course, came the church desecrations..." Pictures came of churches, missions, and monasteries pillaged, burned, gutted. "Reports from around the globe came in of a mysterious man, a preacher, ransacking every holy place he could find, searching for something...." A picture came of the preacher. "His last known whereabouts put him in California, you all know where."
"All of our agents in the area were instructed to keep their distance, the situation was....volatile. We managed to slip three in, right in the middle of it all, Sunnydale..." The pictures stopped at one of scenic Sunnydale, probably from some tourist brochure. "Two weeks ago we lost contact with them, we sent more out into the field, to ascertain what happened, and what they found...was nothing. The whole town gone, swallowed by what looked like a seismic disturbance." A picture rolled in of what used to be Sunnydale. Local officials attribute this to an earthquake. There are no fault lines running under Sunnydale." ONE paused for a moment, letting it sink in. "...Then more reports flooded in, from all over the globe, but this time they were different." Crane was deep into the file he was given by an intern seconds ago, this part of the meeting was for him alone.
"Paris, one week later. A young woman flings her would be attacker thirty feet in the air and into a flower cart. Jakarta, India; an accident victim heals right before doctors' eyes. Nairobi, Kenya; witnesses report a young girl snapping a lion's neck with her bare hands to save a young child. Japan, an eleven year old girl confronts a yakuza crime boss, snaps his neck clean." Crane looked at all the pictures and medical reports in his file, not believing his eyes. "We've dispatched as many people as we could, paid off as many witnesses as we could for their silence, yet these reports still grace our desks." Crane looked up, ONE was staring directly at him, they all were. "We've ascertained that these events, the ritual-like murders, the explosion, the massive sink hole we have in California, and now the emergence of these 'superwomen' around the world, are connected, your job Agent Crane, is to ascertain how they are connected, so we may proceed further. Too much has happened in too short a time for it all not to be. You're to go to the source, California. Your flight leaves in an hour. You'll find a car with everything you'll need in the trunk when you land. God speed son..."
TO BE CONTINUED