Q Cell Saves the World

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The Introduction to Q Cell Saves the World

 

Q Cell Saves the World

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Jan 13, 2010
Posted by: Keith

When you take a ‘job’ like this one, you walk away from your old life. Fortunately, none of us have close family ties… but just because we don’t exist anymore doesn’t mean the people we do know disappear. For that reason, old email accounts and message services are monitored. When the email from Justin Burke came in, it was forwarded to Agent Alphonse; he sent it on to Samantha. You see, Jason is one of Sam’s nephews. He is a very bright chemist, working on his doctorate and is being actively scouted by several 3 letter organizations.

But his email was a bit disturbing…

From: Burkeja@mallard.mandrake.edu
Subject: Please Help!

Look, I’m sorry to bug you like this, but I don’t know who else to turn to and my life is in danger.

No. Scrap that. Sorry, I’m a little hysterical. I should say that my life may be in danger. You know that project that I’ve been working on, the one I couldn’t tell you about? Well, I think someone wants to kill me for it. Or something. Or maybe it has nothing to do with the project. I don’t know. And that’s why I can’t go to the police with this.

I’ve got this thing on my arm. I don’t know what it is, like a big tattoo or something, but people have been dying from it. The tattoo, I mean.

And I’ve started seeing things out of the corner of my eye. Things that shouldn’t be there, places I should never see.

Again, I’m sorry to lay this on you, but you’re the first I could think of who might be able to help me. Please come to Eastfield soon. You can find me in the lab, third floor of Strothers Hall. I don’t like to go home anymore.

Please hurry!

Jason

-------END TRANSMISSION--------

Samantha: This is disturbing for a number of reasons… Jason is as level-headed as they come and not as prone to hysterics. Jason knew that I worked for a government agency. No specifics, but he did know that I carried a gun… Makes sense that he’d try to contact me. After talking with Agent Alphonse, we have a go. Actually, I am a bit surprised that he would readily agree to spend agency assets on a personal mission… But I am not going to complain. Jason is a great kid with a very promising future. And Siss isn’t riding in MY car. That girl is dangerous… well, her ‘tools’ are…

Samantha rents a house over the internet in Eastfield. The real estate entry for a quaint, three-bedroom house, furnished in early 1980’s décor was quite charming. Within the hour, she had it rented and the real estate agent on standby to get the keys.

At least they won’t be going in blind to Eastfield. Samantha sets Fat Bast3rd (FB) to digging into the university for clues while she searches the more mundane records. It took FB about 5 minutes to hack into the university’s web server, and thirty minutes later he was downloading the entire university’s administrative database. He starts scouring it for anomalies; but finds nothing.

Samantha discovers that Eastfield is a powder keg waiting to explode. Apparently three months ago, a high school student was raped at a frat party <newspaper article from three months ago>. Several students were arrested. Then two weeks ago, six students were brutally beaten by police and taken to jail <newspaper article from two weeks ago>. Needless to say, tensions between the town folk and the university staff and students are tense at best. There are daily protests at the courthouse.

As they are driving into town (all in separate cars, mind you-FB wanted to stop for some Mama Leonie’s fried chicken, and Samantha wasn’t going to have Siss’ tools in her car), they all see a lady on the side of the road, her arms covered in blood and large bloody canvas next to her that reads “Welcome to the Twilight Land.” And as quickly as they take a second look, they realize that it isn’t blood, it is merely paint and the canvas is just an abstract painting.

Samantha: That was weird. Must be one of those angle things… looks different depending on the angle… yeah…

Siss: That is cool! I have to take a picture of that.

They get to town and drop off their gear at the house. Siss gets informed that her ‘tools’ will be put in the basement – locked up. They decide to take two cars to the university and meet up at Strothers Hall to meet Jason. As they drive past the court house, they get a first hand view of an ongoing protest with groups of townsfolk and groups of students yelling at each other.

They find Jason in his office. He looks like crap and smells like he hasn’t showered in days. As he starts to tell the story, he breaks down and cries…

“Do you remember the project that I was working on that I couldn’t tell you about? Well, there is a new drug that they call Pixie Dust. I tried it once, but I didn’t like how it totally takes you over. So, I decided to try and make an antidote for it. My analysis showed that it is a peyote extract mixed with some sort of blood. I haven’t been able to identify the species though… It’s not human or animal… perhaps it is some mutant or synthetic strain…

Well, a couple of days ago I perfected the antidote and tested it on one of my frat brothers. They are all hooked on it. And it worked! It doesn’t stop the addiction which is more a psychological, sociological problem than a chemical problem, but it worked. Anyway, the next morning, I woke up with this tattoo…

—Jason breaks down again… crying—

Now I am marked to die <picture of tattoo>… See…”

Jason then hands them a newspaper article (Newspaper article from a week ago) about three people with the same tattoo that has died under unnatural circumstances. The article also mentions a professor at the university, Anton Wallace, who apparently is an expert on the Order of the Ebon Tower that the tattoo is associated with. Samantha sends the professor an email setting up an appointment for later in the day.

They manage to get Jason out of his office and to the rented house. They try to get him to eat, but he ends up getting sick. He makes them promise to go to the frat house to get his notebooks. He needs them to make more of the antidote. Without his notes, he can’t do anything. He spreads out all of the papers that he brought from the lab and tries to continue working between bouts of weeping and crying.

Samantha finally has enough tranquilizes him to get him to sleep. When he wakes in the morning, he spends the first 15 minutes puking… not a good sign and he is looking even worse than yesterday. Samantha decides to call in some medical help. She makes the 1-800-911 call… “Special services” medical arrives shortly and take Jason away for medical treatment. Quick thinking Samantha gets Jason to sign a power of attorney incase his frat brothers try to stop her from getting the notes.

As Samantha is getting ready in to head out, she notices something odd. She now has a tattoo… Just like Jason… Damn… Everyone is getting ready, but no one says anything about a tattoo. Samantha keeps quite about it for now. FB apparently isn’t feeling too well… he didn't ask for any breakfast…

Samantha: Where in the hell did that come from???? Well, at least I feel ok… Actually, that effectively eliminates the “intoxicated and doesn’t remember getting the tattoo theory” that I was considering.

Samantha also thinks that it is a good idea to get some filter masks and gloves. No sense in going into a drug den unprepared, secondary highs are not fun. Siss already had her own mask and a box of Nitrile gloves. So, they stopped at the local hardware store before heading off to the frat house to get some filter masks. No need going into a drug infested area without some protection.

The frat house is a mess. The outside is in bad shape. Broken bottles in the uncut grass, used pixie dust tabs everywhere, and even one of Greek letters on the house has fallen off. The house could use a coat of paint as well. Even though it is morning, the house looks dark. As they approach, they hear load music playing, shaking their innards.

Samantha: No wonder the townsfolk hate them. Nothing says "decaying property values" quite like a frat house.

The front door is slightly ajar and opens as Samantha knocks on the door. The inside of the house is worse than the outside. It looked like Jamestown… bodies everywhere… flies crawling over them… the stink of stale beer and unwashed bodies… and worse. The group thought they were all dead until one rousted himself, scrounged around for another hit of pixie dust and went back into his coma.

They easily found the stairs to the attic and started making their way to Jason’s room when one of the pixie heads lurched in their way, barely able to stand. He cocked his head to the side and his eyes seemed to focus on the group for a bit then he said, “What is it that you seek?”

At which time, Samantha promptly shot him with a tranquilizer dart. He dropped like a rock, only to be replaced by another who said, “What is it that you seek?” Samantha pauses for a moment then says, “Jason’s notes.”  The pixie head staggers on by after that and headed on down stairs.

They find Jason’s room locked and they can see a light shining from under the door. Samantha picks the lock, but they have to push their way into the room. It has been thoroughly trashed. The bed had been up-ended against a wall. The chest of drawers demolished and his clothes scattered. The desk where his papers should have been is upside down and the drawers are broken into pieces on the floor.

They finally find the notebooks… in pieces all over the room. They collect as much of it as they can and bag it up. Maybe the Unshredder program can sort it out. They decide to get out as quickly as possible. FB is feeling worse…

They make their way over to the university to meet with Anton Wallace. He is a bit of pompous Harvard graduate. But he knows the subject matter. "The Order of the Ebon Tower was some sort of modernized fertility cult that supposedly had all sorts of magical powers, from controlling the weather to striking down their enemies with Polio, though personally, I don't believe it." He shows the group his scrapbook on the Order and he even has photos of the Order members as they were being arrested in 1939. "Here is the preistess of the cult, Marion Switzman, being arrested," he says. The Samantha looks at the picture and says that Marion Switzman looks a lot like the lady that the group saw on the side of the road painting on their way into town.

Professor Wallace says, "That would be impossible as Marion Switzman died in an insane asylum in 1959. You probably saw Elizabeth, her daughter.” He continued,  “She was born in 1959 at the asylum and currently lives in Eastfield.” He gives Samantha her address.

Samantha shows the Professor her tattoo. The rest of the group find out they have them too… The Professor doesn’t know what to make of it. He doesn’t believe that they just appeared overnight. But he can’t spend any more time on this. He informs them that he must finish his notes as he has to leave town for a conference.

Samantha: Note to self: Need to have the Fat Bast3rd check to see if that was where he was really going—once we have time, back at the house.  Background checks are the price you pay for being both pompous and annoying.

Samantha decides that they should get a better look at these tattoos and the group heads off to the science building. They head up to the chemistry lab and Samantha volunteers a piece of her tattoo for the microscope.  Siss is the closest thing to a scientist that they have, so she takes a skin sample of the tattoo and a blood sample.

Looks like a normal skin cell with a lot of melanin (just like a birthmark). Keep in mind, Siss is not a biologist or a Doctor… She also takes a blood sample and it appears normal – to Siss. FB wants to take a look at the blood sample and as he is hunched over it looking, Siss tries to get a blood sample from FB.

Siss: Well, Samantha didn’t look or act sick. FB was definitely sick. I really needed to see what his blood looked like compared to Samantha’s. So, I tried to get some.

What Siss did not know was that FB does not like needles, at all. He grabs the microscope and takes a swing at Siss… In his weakened condition, he barely hit her and promptly fell to the ground and passed out.

While FB is out, she gets the sample… There is something odd with it, but she can’t figure it out. She finds some smelling salts to rouse him. But she overdoes the smelling salts…

Siss: What? I am not carrying him down two flights of stairs!

FB pukes. Not just pukes, but projectile vomits all over Siss. Can you see the irony here? Fortunately they have an emergency wash station here so that Siss can get cleaned up. Just as she is finishing cleaning herself up, someone starts banging on the door to the lab… funny it isn’t even locked…

Samantha goes to look out the door and sees about a dozen pixie heads… two of them have axes. But they are moving really slow. It is kind of like a bad zombie movie. Samantha checks her tranquilizer darts and quickly finds that she doesn’t have enough for all of them. Siss is on the ball though… she is in a chemistry lab after all…

It took her all of a minute to come up with a formula that would produce a gas that would knock out a horse, not to mention a dozen pixie heads. They don their filter masks and Siss dumps the chemicals into the sink by the door. Within a minute it giving off copious amounts of gas as Samantha opens the door.

It was like watching dominos fall. One after the other entered the room then as they tried to make it toward the group, they just fell over. After the last one fell, Siss waited for Samantha and FB to get to the elevator before kicking on the exhaust fan in the lab. These guys didn’t move fast, but there are a lot of them.

Samantha: I’m glad she thought of that.  It would be…difficult…to explain taking them out with the Uzi.  This is so much easier to deal with.  I should have thought to bring some trank grenades.  Oh well...  It worked out.

After leaving the lab, they decide to go and see Elizabeth Switzman. Her house is dark and no one answers the door. A quick check of the property shows that the house is locked up and there is a path from the back door heading off into the woods.

Samantha picks the lock on the kitchen door and gains access to the house. In the kitchen, they find numerous newspaper articles about the Order members who died. One had written on it, “Who will be next?” They find some unused pixie dust tab behind the articles, pinned to the wall.

It didn’t take long for them to figure out that Elizabeth Switzman is a disturbed individual. The paintings in the living room and the mural on the wall of her bedroom were a good sign of it. They also found her diary. It did explain a few things: like her following Jason and the group.

According to the GPS, the old Switzman estate is in the general direction of the path out back. Samantha decides that it is time to go and check it out. It is very dark outside… Very dark…

 


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