The return from Bolivia to New York City involved heightened security. Every time the pair of aircraft landed to refuel they were brought into a hanger that was surrounded by serious looking armed security. The scientists and guards didn't interact with the team, leaving them to mostly chat amongst themselves or to try to get some food.
Back in New York it was once again off to a large hanger, this one in a secluded, seldom-used part of the airport. Heavy security was present, but also a number of vehicles packed with scientists, doctors, and people of indeterminate responsibilities. Colt, Vivienne, and Ralph stood off to the side and watched as the Caduceus scientists worked to remove the frost-covered metal box containing the Tyrannish mummy. They hadn't noticed Maddie exiting the plane from a door on the other side, and were a bit surprised to see her approach. With... a monkey perched on her shoulder.
"Um, Maddie, what's that?" Vivienne asked.
"Oh, this is Don Juan. But you can call him DJ. You remember him, he had they fire-shooting snake bracelet on," Madde replied.
She began to pull up her sleeve to show the bracelet but Vivienne stopped her. "Probably best not to show that around here, Maddie," she advised. Maddie nodded seriously.
"Ah, there you are," came a voice from behind them. They turned to see a heavyset man, his hair plastered against his sweat-covered forehead and his round metal-framed glasses nearly fogged over. "I'm Conners, the quartermaster." He regarded them, then looked at the clipboard in his hand, then back at them. "Hmm, nothing here about a monkey."
"His name is Don Juan," Maddie said helpfully.
Conners was clearly trying to think of how to reply when Ralph interjected. "Is Shapiro here?"
"Shapiro? No. But he wanted me to tell you he'll be in touch in a few days," Conners said. "You know, everyone at headquarters is talking about this. It's a big deal. Oh, and I have these for you." He reached into his messenger bag and pulled out four envelopes, each about an inch thick. "I'll need you to sign for those." Conners handed them each a piece of paper to sign acknowledging receipt for $2,500 in cash. "It's your bonus."
Maddie was clearly struggling to comprehend that someone had just handed her that much money in cash. Her parents had probably never earned more than $500 in a whole year at the farm, and now someone was giving her five times that amount for a few days work. Of course, she did have to kill some people to earn it. Though she was feeling a bit morally flexible about that given everything that had transpired.
Everyone signed their receipts. "Anything else you need to turn in?" Conners asked. He eyed their equipment, particularly the BAR. "Probably don't want to go around the city with those."
The team handed off most of their long guns, though Maddie of course kept Pappy's sawed-off shotgun. They also turned over the serpent scepter, the empty crown box, and the scroll from Tyrannish's tomb. Conners inventoried each item, signed a receipt, and handed it to Ralph.
"Colt, you don't look well," Conners said. And he was right. Colt barely survived the encounter at the temple, and while the aid camp patched him up the best they could, he was still struggling badly. "We have a full hospital at headquarters. The doctors can fix you right up, they're very good."
Colt sighed. "Yeah, I think that's for the best."
Conners waived over a few of the medical staff and pointed them toward Colt. "I'd say come by headquarters around 5PM tomorrow. I suspect he'll be ready for release by then."
With that everyone said their goodbyes. Maddie stayed with Vivienne in her studio, while Ralph took the train back to his apartment in Newark. The next afternoon they were back together, entering the Caduceus lobby for the first time. The Meadham Building was of course well-known, being on of the tallest buildings in the city at 18 stories, topped with a glass dome. The lobby was immaculate, the marble floors inlaid with the Caduceus logo. As Ralph, Maddie, and Vivienne entered they saw Colt stepping out of an elevator, and they were surprised how great he looked.
"I feel fantastic," he said. "They even cleaned my clothes."
"What did they do?" Maddie asked. She'd never seen the inside of a hospital before.
"They put me under for most of it," he said. "I did have some pretty bad nightmares though. It was like something was surrounding me and squeezing me and I couldn't escape. But when I came to, all the soreness was gone."
"Well, let's get something to eat," Vivienne said. "I'm going to take you to my uncle's dim sum restaurant in Chinatown."
As they stepped outside Colt pulled up his collar. "It's so cold outside," he said to no one in particular. None of the others felt it, but they didn't think much of it either. After the jungle, the early evening here was lovely.
Vivienne's uncle's restaurant was literally called "Uncle's Dim Sum". The room inside was very small - just a counter and a couple of tables, the only people there a pair of very large, tattooed Asian gentlemen, one of whom nodded at Vivienne and motioned toward a curtain against the back wall.
The others followed Vivienne as she went through the curtain. "Uncle!" she said.
An older Asian gentlemen wearing a perfectly tailored suit welcomed her in Mandarin, not acknowledging the presence of the others until he offered them a table. Food came out of the back immediately. Maddie began stabbing dumplings with her chopsticks before Vivienne stopped her and showed her how to use them.
They talked for a few minutes, enjoying some illegal beer with their food, when there was a commotion out in the front of the restaurant. Uncle stepped out, then returned and whispered something to Vivienne. They both looked at Ralph. "Uncle says there's an Italian gentleman out front who came in asking for you specifically Ralph."
"How would someone know to find you here Ralph," Maddie asked, concerned.
"Well Maddie, let's just say Uncle and I are sometimes in the same line of business, as are some of our Italian associates," he replied. Vivienne was surprised to see that Maddie seemed to pick up the nuance immediately. She was a quick learner. "Though for him to come into this part of town uninvited is a bit of a breach of protocol."
Ralph stepped through the curtain and saw a stocky, middle aged Italian man in a decent suit standing between the two lager Asian men, their arms crossed menacingly.
"Hey, there you are, Ralph," the man said jovially.
"Mister Casale," Ralph replied with a slight nod.
"One of the boys said he saw you come out of the Caduceus building and thought that was weird, so followed you here, which was even weirder. I mean, the smell of this place," Casale said with mild disgust. "Anyway, I thought I'd check in on you. I heard you'd left town after how things went down on that last job. You still working for Dutch?"
"No, I'm retired, Casale," he said.
Casale nodded. "Working for Caduceus then?" He leaned in conspiratorially. "You know, they're not what they seem, Ralph. We should talk sometime, perhaps in a place with better food." If the tattooed men understood Casale, they didn't act insulted. Just annoyed by his presence.
Casale took out a calling card and gave it to Ralph. "Look since you aren't with Dutch any more, maybe you'll find yourself in need of a friend. So call me if you need anything. Because that's what friends do for each other."
Ralph took the card and simply nodded. With that Casale straightened his jacket and left.
Ralph returned to the back. "I'm sorry about his manners, Uncle," he said. Uncle nodded in acknowledgement. Ralph filled the others in on the conversation.
Over the next few days everyone took care of some things in the city, and Ralph also provided some pistol lessons to Colt and Maddie which seemed to help a little. On March 23 each of them received a telegram, Maddie's being delivered to Vivienne's apartment. They were asked to come to the Meadham building the following day at 9AM for onboarding and a 1PM meeting with Shapiro.
After checking in at the front desk, they were pointed toward a part of the spacious lobby in which to sit and wait. A few minutes after 9AM a woman approached. She appeared to be in her mid-40s and was dressed in a blue business suit with a skirt, stockings, and short heels. Her steel-frame glasses gave her slightly gaunt face an even more severe appearance. She regarded them one at a time, putting a check mark on the paper on her clipboard after looking at each person.
“Well then,” she says. “Congratulations and welcome to Caduceus. I am Ms. Sandra Brisbane from Human Resources. I see you are all part of the Special Operations division. That is quite an honor. Please come with me and we’ll get started on your new hire orientation.” With that she turned and began to walk purposefully toward one of the elevators.
She spoke over her shoulder as she walked. “As I’m sure you know, the Meadham Building is the world headquarters for Caduceus. Of course we have offices in most of the important world capitals, as well as a few locations of more… special interest to our mission.”
The door to the elevator opened. “Please, after you,” she sad. The elevator operator had already pushed the number three.
They arrived onto a bustling 3rd floor, a large open area filled with desks in the center of the floor. Ms. Brisbane led them to a conference room along one of the exterior walls, which afforded a lovely view of New York City. The conference room itself was fairly spacious, the table large enough to comfortably seat about 10 people. Coffee, tea and pastries were set out on a side table. “Please help yourselves”, Ms. Brisbane said as she sat down at the head of the table. Four places were set at the conference table, each with an identical small stack of papers, a paperback booklet entitled “Caduceus Employee Handbook, 12th edition”, a pen, and a pencil.
Once everyone got some refreshments and sat down, Ms. Brisbane began. "Please open your copy of the Caduceus Employee Handbook, 12th edition, to page one. We’ll be going through this together. If you keep questions to a minimum, we will be finished by Noon.” Vivienne groaned to herself. This was going to be a long day. Ralph was already drawing pictures of cars on the inside cover of the handbook.
After about 10 minutes of mind-numbing reading of the employee manual there was a knock at the door, followed immediately by it opening. A mild-looking man of stocky build walked into the room. He appeared to be in his 50s, his brown hair and mustache well arranged. His dark suit was slightly rumpled and looked like it just doesn’t quite fit right. He face was slightly flush.
“Oh, Doctor Shapiro, this is unexpected,” said Ms. Brisbane, who appeared slightly flustered. “How may I be of service?”
“My apologies, Ms. Brisbane. However, I need these individuals immediately,” he replied.
A pause hung in the air a little longer than it should. “Well,” said Ms. Brisbane through a very tight smile, “I’ll be happy to have them sent up once they’ve completed all their new hire paperwork.”
“I’m sorry, but there is a situation that requires their… unique set of skills,” said Shapiro. “It really can’t wait.”
Another long pause and then Ms. Brisbane began organizing her papers, clearly flustered. “This is highly irregular. They haven’t even signed their papers yet,” she said to no one in particular. “And they were paid a bonus in cash, which is simply unacceptable.” She stood, grabbed her things, and strode quickly out of the room without looking at anyone, her chin held high.
The man turned to the group. “Welcome to Caduceus, my friends. I am Quinten Shapiro. I believe I spoke with Ralph on the radio.” He handed each of them a laminated identification badge featuring their name, the title of “Special Operator”, and a photograph. There was also an identification card for the monkey, with a photo having been taken by someone in the hanger upon your return to New York City a few days ago. “Please make sure the monkey is wearing this when in the building, Ms. O’Callahan,” he said. “We wouldn’t want anyone thinking an animal escaped from one of the labs.”
Vivienne recognized the background of her photo, which was out in public. In fact she remembered when she'd been at that place and it had been before she'd ever been in touch with Caduceus. That meant... they'd been keeping tabs on her for some time. Which made her feel very uncomfortable.
Shapiro asked questions about Bolivia and took notes as they spoke. “I’m sorry you were thrown into the deep end in Bolivia,” Shapiro said. “But given your success, and what you experienced there, we’re promoting you to Tier Two.” He slid packets across the table to each of them, the folders about an inch thick. “These documents can’t leave this room, so I’ll remain here with you while you read them.”
The packet included an executive summary:
CIRCLE TWO BRIEFING - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
During its work across the four corners of the world Caduceus operatives have uncovered many secrets, some of which point to a decidedly different historical record than the one currently accepted. This briefing packet provides details about those learnings.
Humans are not the first intelligent species on this planet. Prior to recorded human history the Earth was ruled by the empire of the Serpent People, a benevolent and technologically advanced race. At some point in the past a schism occurred within the Serpent People, one faction remaining loyal to an entity they called Yig, the Father of Serpents, who they believed to be their progenitor. The other faction gave their worship to a being called Tsathoggua, an evil toad-like monstrosity that reveled in vile acts and atrocities. This faction referred to itself as “The Inner Night”.
The resultant civil war destroyed the Serpent People’s civilization, the few remaining survivors allied with Yig moving into underground habitats where some still reside today. The Serpent People avoid direct interaction with the human race, recognizing that if humans knew of their existence, the humans would almost certainly see the Serpent People as a threat and try to destroy them. The lessons of the recent World War further solidified their view that the humans would declare war on the Serpent People. Even with their advanced technology any conflict would result in annihilation, not only for the Serpent People but perhaps for the entire planet.
The Inner Night, however, has no such scruples and seeks to establish a new empire. Caduceus has gathered evidence indicating The Inner Night is pursuing some kind of plan that would result in the destruction of most of the human race and the enslavement of the survivors. In fact agents from The Inner Night infiltrated Caduceus to steal medical technology they could use to forward their plan. In 1928 they attempted to assassinate Joshua Meadham, seeing him as someone who could stand in the way of their plans. He barely survived the attack.
After purging Caduceus of The Inner Night’s agents, Mr. Meadham created a group within the organization called Circle Two focused on stopping The Inner Night and eradicating the threat they pose to the human race. As a recipient of this briefing, you are now part of this elite group. You should treat all the information in this briefing as highly confidential - as you read on you will understand why. If this information were to become public knowledge it would undoubtedly cause wide-spread panic, which must be avoided at all cost.
This is bigger than all of us, and only by working together can we thwart The Inner Night.
While reading the packet Shapiro was called out of the room. Ralph noticed a letter sticking out of a folder from a Frank De Luca, the head of security for Caduceus. He slipped the letter out of the folder and read it. It told of some kind of recent attack on the Meadham Estate, making references to a temple there as well as some creatures Caduceus was using as guard animals that sounded remarkably like the lizard/dog hybrids they'd faced in Bolivia. He slid the letter back in place just before Shapiro re-entered.
“Which brings us to your next mission,” Shapiro said. “Two days ago the North Borneo Chartered Company contacted us for assistance. On March 16 they observed what is believed to be symptoms of an infectious hepatitis outbreak, with the first deaths occurring just two days later. Normally this strain of hepatitis show symptoms for up to eight weeks before eventually dying of acute liver failure, but in this outbreak death is happening much, much faster. From the information we have obtained, we believe this outbreak could in fact be the Yellow Death, a serpent person biological weapon designed to depopulate areas of human population. As such we suspect the Inner Night is behind this. The team’s mission is to enter the quarantine zone so that our scientists can determine the nature of the outbreak, as well as the cause. If the Inner Night is involved, you’ll take whatever actions are needed to stop them. Oh, and I’ll be going with you as your scientific advisor.”
The team were given access to the Caduceus arsenal and selected various shotguns as well as some grenades and dynamite, all of which was ready for them at the hanger the next day as they departed for North Borneo.
The journey to North Borneo was even longer than the one to Bolivia, but they made it in good time. After a few days of travel they could see Mount Kinabalu towering upward, it’s 13,000 peak hidden above the clouds. Jungle rose up the side of the mountain, but sections had been cultivated and given over to farming, primarily tobacco and coffee from what they were told in the briefing.
“About damn time,” Shapiro said, wiping his brow. “The sooner we get on the ground, the sooner we can get to work.”
As they descended the sky seemed to grow darker. Ralph saw something that looked like large birds flying off to the left side of the plane, but as they got closer he became a bit confused. These looked just like monsters his grandmother told him about from old German fairytales called nightgaunts. Humanoid and flying on bat-like wings, their skin was an oily black and their faces... well... they had no faces, just smooth flesh. They were said to fly away with people, leaving them stranded someplace to die.
"Guys, look at that," he said. Though no one heard him over the noise of the engines.
What they did hear, however, was one of the rear doors being ripped off the plane.
Turning to the back they all saw one of the black creatures fly through the doorway, crashing into some of the crates as they looked on in horror.
The sound of breaking glass, however, caused them all to turn to the cockpit, just in time to see a pair of the creatures ripping the pilot and co-pilot from their seats and then fly off.
Things happened quickly after that. Colt shrieked as he saw one of the creatures outside his window. He pulled his .38 and fired through the thin side of the plane, hitting the creature and seeing it tumble away. Another latched onto the plane outside of Vivienne's window, and she greeted it with a double-barrel shotgun blast that blew a big hole into the side of the plane and an even bigger one in the nightgaunt as parts of it scattered in the winds.
Ralph calmly stood. "I'll fly the plane," he said as he walked to the cockpit and strapped himself in. Maddie dispatched another nightgaunt that landed on the wing near her seat with her shotgun, then ran forward and got into the co-pilot seat while she re-loaded.
Shapiro crawled down the aisle, screaming in terror. Colt was pretty sure he smelled urine as he stepped over the scientist toward the creature in the back of the plane... just in time for a second to enter through the missing door. He fired three times, taking one of the pair down but the other grabbed him and held him tight. Vivienne looked on in disgust as the nightgaunt's barbed tail came around and began slowly stroking Colt's check as his eyes bulged and body went right with shock.
Maddie was looking over her shoulder as this unfolded and didn't see another other nightgaunt as it flew straight at the front of the plane, attaching itself to the cockpit window frame. She turned just as it's tail stabbed deep in to Ralph's shoulder. He grunted loudly in pain.
Maddie was never more glad that she'd cut down Pappy's old shotgun, because even in the confined space of the cockpit she was able to bring it to bear and blast the thing with both barrels, spraying the cockpit with black goo. The spike sticking out of Ralph's shoulder was all that remained of the creature.
Meanwhile, in the back Vivienne dropped her shotgun and ran to Colt. Her reflexes were lightning-fast due to her martial arts training and she grabbed the nightgaunt's tail as she ran past it, pulling the creature backwards. At the same time a screeching Don Juan jumped on the tail and began biting it.
The creature's head turned toward Vivienne as she contemplated what to do next, but her thoughts were interrupted by a loud crack as the creature's head exploded. Looking toward the front of the plane she saw Ralph turned in his seat, his Luger in his hand, smoke wafting from the barrel. She had to admit, it was a hell of a shot.
"Can you fly this thing?" Vivienne asked, eyeing the bloodstain expanding on his shirt.
"The flying's the easy part," Ralph said. "It's the landing that's hard."