Modern/Delta Green - The Beginning of the End (COMPLETED)

[talien]

God Shall Tread: Conclusion

Jim-Bean awoke in a rubble field, under a red sky. Ssruthaa and Hammer were present and unharmed, though their clothing and hair appeared scorched, and they were lying amidst random debris from the gate.

The surrounding landscape was utterly desolate. The dark plain of cooled lava stretched to the horizon in every direction.

"Maybe I should have asked this question earlier," said Jim-Bean, dusting himself off as he rose to his feet. "But where did the gate lead us?"

"Millions of years in the past," said Ssruthaa. "Long before your race learned to crawl."

"Great," said Hammer, glaring at Ssruthaa. "And what are we supposed to do now?"

Ssruthaa shook his head violently, then his whole body shivered. The human form melted away, replaced by a distinctly serpentine shape. He pointed one long finger at a giant structure in the distance, silhouetted against the reddish sky. It was a strange and alien building, twisting like some behemoth serpent up into the sky almost two hundred feet.

Though the great structure appeared clearly, it was quite a long way away. It could take the better half of a day to reach the alien edifice.

"Ssstart walking," said Ssruthaa.

 

[talien]

Chapter 45: Time and the Serpent - Introduction

This story hour is from “Time and the Serpent” from Traid Entertainment's Dwellers in Shadow. You can read more about Delta Green at Delta Green. Please note: This story hour contains spoilers!

Our cast of characters includes:

• Game Master: Michael Tresca
• Kurtis "Hammer" Grange (Fast Hero/Gunslinger) played by George Webster
• Jim “Jim-Bean” Baxter (Charismatic Hero) played by Jeremy Ortiz (Jeremy Robert Ortiz)
• Joseph “Archive” Fontaine (Dedicated Hero/Acolyte) played by Joe Lalumia

Playing old-school Cthulhu adventures (they're definitely not scenarios) is enlightening. They're basically Dungeons & Dragons with guns. Time and the Serpent is an old-school adventure that involves time travel, dinosaurs, zombies, and serpent people.

I wasn't happy with the outline for Future/Perfect Part Four. It took the scenario arc in a completely different direction and provided a take on time travel that didn't match with what we've already established in the campaign. Time and the Serpent went in the opposite direction and turned the conclusion into time traveling pulp insanity, which is just fine with me.

Like the scenario before it, if the players aren't morons, a lot of combat will be avoided. The agents at this point know when to run when faced with something huge and pissed off. So unfortunately, that means they let the plot sweep them along. They're in unknown territory being led by a cannibalistic serpent man sorcerer, so their options are a bit limited.

The other thing that I wrestled with was when to pause the game. The final battle is tough and I wasn't comfortable having just two agents face off against many serpent people. So I used the gate jumping interludes as an excuse to pause until the next session when we hopefully have more players.

Defining Moment: Two words. Zombie. Allosaurus.

Relevant Media

• Dwellers in Shadow: Source of Time and the Serpent.
• Clocks: by Coldplay.
• Resident Evil Commercial: Explains the post-apocalyptic future.

 

[talien]

Time and the Serpent: Prologue

Confusion never stops
Closing walls and ticking clocks
Gonna come back and take you home
I could not stop that you now know​

--Clocks by Coldplay​

After trudging across the blasted landscape for hours, they reached a standing stone nearly five feet in height with strange markings on it.

"What is that?" asked Hammer.

"It isss a warning," said Ssuthraa.

"Warning against what?"

Jim-Bean cocked his head. "Did you hear that?"

Hammer and Ssuthraa stopped. "What?" asked Ssuthraa. "What do you hear?"

"Voices…" said Jim-Bean, swiveling his head to pinpoint the sound. He was on utterly barren and flat terrain; there was no way he couldn't see the source. The voices were coming closer…

"…it sssound like?" said Ssuthraa urgently, interrupting Jim-Bean's concentration. The serpent person shook him. "Ssspeak, fool!"

"Hey," shouted Hammer, pointing his pistols at the serpent man. "Step away from him."

"Chanting," said Jim-Bean. "It sounds like chanting." The words came unbidden from his lips:

"Ce'haiee ep-ngh fl'hur G'harne fhtagn,
Ce'haiie fhtagn ngh Shudde-M'ell.
Hai G'harne orr'e ep fl'hur,
Shudde-M'ell ican'icanicas fl'hur orr'e G'harne."

"Sha'ddu-Ka arrives," said Ssuthraa calmly, "show proper obeisance."

"Who?" asked Hammer.

"What?" shouted Jim-Bean over the chanting which had reached a fever pitch.

Suddenly without any sort of warning, there came a low rumble from deep in the ground. The agents were pitched backward, off balance. Then they saw it.

At a distance of no more than fifteen feet, the face of the dirt burst outward in a shower of stones and earth--and then--a THING came after them.

It was octopoid, all flowing tentacles and a pulpy gray-black, elongated sack of a body, rubbery, exuding a vilely stinking whitish slime. It was eyeless and headless, with no distinguishing features at all other than reaching, groping tentacles.

The thing was almost upon them. Jim-Bean felt somehow rooted to the spot--fixed immobile, as if his feet were stuck in mental molasses, a fly in the ointment of the group-mind--hearing the dreadful droning chant, his eyes wide open and popping, his mouth slack, his hair standing straight up on his head.

Hammer shoved him hard. "Run!"

Ssuthraa was already ahead of them, but the thing seemed to have no interested in him. They sprinted in the direction of the tower. Tentacles snapped out, clawing, reaching for them. Hammer rolled to the side as one of the tentacles whipped through the air where his head had been.

When they were out of range, Jim-Bean stopped and turned around. The only evidence of the thing's passage was a cloud of dirt where it had burrowed back into the earth.

Hammer advanced on Ssuthraa. "Proper obeisance, huh? You could have given us more warning!"

"You are ssstrangersss here," said Ssuthraa, non-plussed. "And inferior at that.

"I'll show you inferior," threatened Hammer. "I noticed you were running first."

But Jim-Bean stood between them, staring at the place where Sha'ddu-Ka attacked.

"What?" asked Hammer, irritated.

"I think that thing was…talking to me," said Jim-Bean, panting. "The voices chanted something. It's fading now."

"What did it say?" asked Hammer,

"We'll meet again."

 

[talien]

Time and the Serpent: Part 1 – The Thing from the Gate

The citadel was constructed of pure obsidian and it reached two hundred feet into the reddish sky. It twisted like a gigantic serpent, looking as if it grew up from the dark plane. It was an ominous sight.

The only opening was at the base, approximately twenty feet high and ten feet across. The interior was shrouded in shadows.

Inside, the fortress was a vast complex of tunnels, passages, and rooms. The passages inside perpetually twisted and turned in seemingly random directions. All were completely cylindrical, like giant tubes.

"Did those worm things build this?"

Ssuthraa snorted. "The Chthoniansss? No, they have no need of sssuch ssstructuresss. They make their homesss deep within the Earth."

Ssuthraa led them through the tunnels.

"Where are we going?" asked Hammer.

"If you wisssh to leave here you will do asss I sssay."

"That's not an answer," muttered Hammer, but he continued to follow the serpent man for lack of any other options.

They entered a room that was approximately fifty feet in diameter, its ceiling nearly twenty feet high. The walls, like the majority of the fortress’ architecture, were made from obsidian.

Filling the room was a stunning amount of machinery. It was strange, alien equipment; tubes, spheres, and philes containing liquids of every color of the spectrum filled the chamber. The tubes ran from the walls to organ-like structures suspended in mid-air, ten feet above the lab’s floor. These structures seemed almost bio-mechanical, giving the lab a surreal similarity to the interior of the human body, with wires and transparent tubes the veins, pumping insane liquids from organ to organ. There was a pungent, oppressive odor present.

Jim-Bean gagged. He rifled through his satchel and tossed Hammer a gas mask while donning his own.

Ssuthraa walked straight to the far end of the room, to a pile of stone tables. They were two feet by two feet, carved into a strange type of rock, turquoise in shade.

"He seems to know this place pretty well," said Hammer. "I don't like this."

"He probably comes from here," replied Jim-Bean.

Ssuthraa led them back out and into the tunnels without a word. They followed him to a great door, circular in shape and ten feet in diameter. It was covered with the now familiar pictograms they had seen elsewhere.

Ssuthraa effortlessly rolled the door away. Despite its great size, the door was curiously lightweight.

They entered a huge domed chamber. Nearly one hundred feet high, the chamber was made of the same obsidian. Covering the dome were hieroglyphics, the same style as before, only much larger. A fifty-foot high statue stood in the exact center of the room. The half-human/half-snake creature was hideous to behold and appears to be carved from a turquoise material.

Ssuthraa made what might have been a genuflection before the statue.

"That thing's not going to come to life, is it?" asked Jim-Bean nervously.

Ssuthraa chuckled. "This isss Yig. It isss by hisss good gracesss that you live at all."

They continued on through more tunnels until they reached a huge circular room.

It was composed of the same obsidian, nearly one hundred feet wide. The ceiling of the room was a great shaft, and the red primeval sky could be seen two hundred feet above the floor. Starting at approximately fifty feet up, other passages opened up into the shaft.

The openings in the shaft above occasionally vomited forth noxious smoke that drifted up through the shaft and out into the sky. Some of the gas was a glowing green, some a putrid orange. On the floor of the chamber was more of the ancient hieroglyphs.

There were two archways at the opposite end of the chamber. These portals were approximately thirty feet high and twenty feet wide and were covered with runes that emanate a bluish glow. Each had a slot filled with a gold cube.

The archways were filled with a deep gray mist; much like steam, which did not seem to drift far from the door. There was something odd about the way the smoke drifted; it occasionally seemed to twirl, twist and congeal into tiny storm-like collections of clouds; and it never drifted far from the stone doorway before evaporating.

"Temporal gates," said Jim-Bean. "Like the other ones at Hellbend and Duxbury."

Ssuthraa cocked his head, reading the symbols.

"What, you having problems reading signs?" asked Hammer belligerently.

Ssuthraa pointed at the symbols on one of the gateways. "I am not familiar with thessse gatesss.

The symbols over one gate looked oddly like a series of giant lizards in various poses—foraging, sleeping—and near the top, eating each other. The other symbols appeared to be that of a city.

Hammer peered at the symbols. "I don't like the look of those symbols." He turned around, his back to the archway. "If we're going to go through another gate, we may want to go into the city—"

Jim-Bean looked up and behind Hammer in horror.

Hammer didn't have to turn around, because the fetid breath of a meat eater was accompanied by a trumpeting roar. The shuddering footsteps of the thing shook the structure of the tower.

Hammer needed no urging. He ran straight for the other gate. There was the snap of razor sharp jaws behind him and another blast of wind, this time from the thing just missing him as it lunged.

Without hesitation, he dove through the portal…

 

[talien]

Time and the Serpent: Part 2 – The Wasteland

Hammer stepped out into a nightmare.

It was a destroyed city. Clouds swirled and thundered above. Sunlight barely filtered through, bathing the place in perpetual twilight. Wind tore at him, filled with debris. Hammer choked and ran over to the rusted hulk of a long-since abandoned car, covering his mouth.

Ssuthraa appeared, followed by Jim-Bean.

"Did it follow—" Hammer didn't get to finish because the allosaurus roared through the gate right behind them.

Jim-Bean kept running straight down the street.

"Loop back around!" shouted Hammer. His pistols were out, but they weren't going to help him much.

Jim-Bean ducked into a crumbling building. The allosaurus smashed its snout into the doorway, partially collapsing the façade of the building on it. Roaring in pain, it took a few steps back. Then it lowered its head and slammed into the building again.

Jim-Bean barely made it up the steps, dust and debris falling all around him. The building's structure had already been weakened by whatever apocalypse had befallen the distant future.

The allosaurus, frustrated, stomped off to pursue a moaning noise in the distance.

Jim-Bean looked around. He was in what once was an office building. Peeling posters, broken chairs, and shattered desks abounded. There was curiously no paper anywhere, and a complete lack of monitors of any kind.

Was this the future? Jim-Bean wasn't sure. He didn't think it was an alien world; the seats looked human enough.

Walking into the conference room, he found a few desiccated bodies, sitting in chairs and slumped over a large table. It looked like they were having an important meeting. Whatever happened had killed people instantly.

Jim-Bean found a keypad with an odd arrangement of letters at the far end of the room. He tapped a few keys.

A hologram sprung up. An older woman's head appeared, looking wan. A husky female voice narrated.

"Imagine a world where you can reverse the effects of age, stress, and sun. From the leading name in biotechnology comes REGENERATE, another breakthrough from Amalgamated Bio Carb."

A cylinder filled with sparkling blue liquid rotated in the space above Jim-Bean's head.

"REGENERATE's revolutionary Sapphire formula actually brings dead cells back to life." The woman in the hologram caressed her own face and her wrinkles disappeared. "Now your youthful beauty can last forever. Always consult your doctor before starting treatment. Some side-effects may occur..."

Jim-Bean turned to go. And found himself facing twelve blue-tinged corpses sitting upright at the conference table, all staring intently at him.

He leaped on the table and pounded across its surface, clearing grasping claws and gnashing teeth.

Jim-Bean slammed the door, but the narrative continued. "REGENERATE is a registered trademark of Amalgamated Bio Carb. Our business is life itself."

 

[talien]

Time and the Serpent: Part 3 – Everybody Do the Dinosaur

Jim-Bean pounded out into the street, several shambling corpses moaning behind him. The allosaurus, sniffing at a pile of garbage, looked up.

"Jim-Bean!" shouted Hammer in the direction of the gate. "This way!"

Jim-Bean plunged towards the sound of Hammer's voice. The allosaurus roared a challenge and set off after him.

The moaning, which had shifted from a soft background noise that could be easily mistaken for the wind, had become an awful chorus. It was the zombies.

Jim-Bean caught a glimpse of just how many blue-tinged corpses had been animated as he ran through an intersection. Hundreds, if not thousands, were all attracted to the sound of the allosaurus' bellowing. And some of them weren't shambling but running full-tilt, as easily fast as Jim-Bean himself.

He kept running. The crowd of corpses converged behind him, right in the allosaurus' path.

Momentarily distracted by the onset of new if somewhat rancid meat, the allosaurus scooped up a pile of zombies and, tossing them into the air like popcorn, swallowed several whole. Arms and legs that didn't fit into its maw were severed and plopped to the ground.

But more zombies were coming. They clawed at its legs as it strode among them, flattening dozens. It finally had to stop its headlong charge as many jumped onto its back, clawing and gnashing. Unbalanced by the irritating things, the allosaurus collided with a building. The building groaned and teetered forward.

"What about Ssuthraa?" shouted Jim-Bean as he neared the still active gate.

He couldn't hear the response but it was clear that Hammer didn't care much for the serpent man. He plunged into the gate just before Jim-Bean did.

 

[talien]

Time and the Serpent: Part 4 – The Mole

It started out as just a mole.

One little fleshy, oddly colored mole on Archive's hip. Nothing unusual.

Then it got bigger. The color changed. It shifted from a normal-looking mole to a weird, fleshy protrusion. A skin tab. Still, nothing that strange about it.

It bothered Archive. Dressing became an awkward, arduous exercise to avoid irritating the sensitive skin tab. And it continued to grow.

Archive went to a dermatologist and paid to have it removed. It was a quick outpatient surgery, the dermatologist told him. And he was right, it was quick.

The next day it was back.

The second time Archive went to the dermatologist, Majestic-12 agents were waiting for him. He was obviously under surveillance.

They didn't explain who they were or what they were doing there, but he assumed Sprague sent them. They took him somewhere, a warehouse, and laid him down on a table. It was for the best, they said.

Archive knew this had to do with the explosion. With Yog-Sothoth. The experience had changed him. He just didn't know how…until the mole showed up.

The surgery this time was going to be painful, because the little wiry growth had become more akin to a tentacle. Sometimes, it wiggled or curled. He had flashbacks to his OUTLOOK stress test, when they cut off his legs, but he was too sedated to care…

When he awoke, Archive was tied to a wooden kitchen chair in a dilapidated house. No one else was present. Surrounding him was what appeared to be thousands of feet of cords — cable lines, high voltage lines, cat five cables — all intertwined and woven through the chair, to the chair, and connected to various hand-made boxed filled with humming, spitting and arcing electrical equipment. He was stripped of weapons and equipment and bound to the chair with a copious amount of plastic zip-ties.

Archive struggled to get free. A low hum filled the air.

Finally, the old light bulb above the stove exploded in a huge shower of blue white sparks, and a huge, high-pitched whining, like an enormous generator filled the air. The noise drowned out all other sounds.

Blue, white and red lightning bolts leaped from the boxes, arcing and hitting items in the room. They found an item, struck it once, and then peppered the target with growing numbers of hits until it vanished in an eruption of blue white light, leaving a scorch mark on the floor where it once stood.

Archive struggled harder. "Hey!" he shouted. "HELP!"

When all large metal items in the room have been disintegrated, the lightning began striking Archive. He screamed.

BZZT!

Archive screamed again.

BZZT!

Archive's vision was consumed in a blue white flash.

He awoke in a strange obsidian room. Though his clothing and hair was scorched, he was otherwise unharmed. He lay amidst random lightning-kissed ruined kitchen appliances.

The wooden chair Archive was secured in was lighter, as if it were sapped of all water. He easily broke out of the chair. It collapsed into chunks of brittle wood and ash.

His equipment and clothing lay carefully folded on the ground. Archive got dressed.

That's when Hammer and Jim-Bean skidded to a halt as they entered to the room.

"What the hell are you doing here?" asked Jim-Bean.

"Long story," said Archive.

"Did you see a serpent man come through here?" asked Hammer.

"Uh, no. Why?"

"Long story," said Hammer. "Let's go."

As the other two moved away, Archive checked his hip. The weird tentacle was gone.

He smiled to himself and followed after them.

 

[talien]

Time and the Serpent: Part 5 – The Throne Room

The throne room was nearly one hundred feet long and carved from obsidian. Every five feet a pillar rose from the floor to the ceiling, twenty feet above the chamber’s floor. The pillars resembled huge malformed bones, twisting in their contorted support of the roof. A group of figures were visible at the far end of the hall; gathered around a device of some sort, but it was impossible to make out anything clearly from such a distance. The only illumination was derived from the machine and its weird lights casting bizarre shadows along the walls of the hall.

As the agents crept closer, a low chanting was audible. It was a strange and alien chorus; the combined voices resonated in a very harmonious way. The chanting became louder and louder.

Eventually they agents got close enough to clearly see the figures and the machine.

The figures were six serpent people. They were dressed alike, garbed in a smooth, flexible armor covered with runes. The runes were closely related to the runes discovered throughout the fortress. They stood atop a dias enclosed with a low wall.

The eighth figure wasn't a serpent person but none other than Arthur Hunt, dressed in flowing red robes, likewise covered with the familiar runes. He stood closest to the machine, hands stretched out in front of him. All of the serpent people seem to be in a sort of trance as they chant ever louder, unaware of the intruders.

"I knew he was a snake man," muttered Jim-Bean.

The ceremony was directed at the machine in the middle of their circle. The central cube was black and the connected tubes pumped alien liquids into it. It was covered with runes that glowed. Most importantly, it hovered in midair, about five feet from the ground.

The chanting grew louder and the glyphs glowed brighter. The unholy machine began to hum.

Hammer made a hand signal indicating Jim-Bean should loop around left, while Hammer would loop around right. Archive was told to stay where he was.

Creeping along the low wall, Hammer aimed for Arthur Hunt's head. If he was lucky, he could take Hunt out in one shot.

He was just about to squeeze the trigger when a reptilian head got in his way.

Hammer was about to fire anyway when he recognized the head. It was Ssuthraa.

The serpent person reared up behind Hunt with a wicked-looking knife and plunged it into the back of his neck, neatly severing his spinal cord instantly. Hunt crumpled.

Hammer lowered his pistol, confused.

Ssuthraa stood over the corpse, arms and sinuous neck outstretched in ecstatic glory. "Now I am the Prime!"

Before they could react, a pulse of energy blasted outwards from the floating cube, wracking reality itself. The very air seemed to shudder and then became very, very still.

 

[talien]

Time and the Serpent: Part 6 – The Prime

Dust fell from the ceiling. Ssuthraa was still standing. Some of the other serpent people slowly got to their feet; others were unconscious from the impact. Archive and Jim-Bean were unharmed.

"I'm afraid your usssefulnesss isss at an end," hissed Ssuthraa quietly to Hammer. Then he turned to the other serpent men. "Look! The intrudersss inssserted an impossstor into our midssst!" He pointed at the corpse of Hunt, which was morphing back into a serpent person. "Kill them!"

Hammer didn't waste any time. He emptied both clips, downing two of the serpent people.

More got to their feet, lunging at Jim-Bean. He went under in a pile of flailing claws and fangs…

Then he burst outwards, flying up into the air. Serpent people were tossed to the side.

Jim-Bean, floating twenty feet in the air, brought his arms together. Rubble from the ceiling cracked away and smashed near Ssuthraa. He tumbled out of the way, but the serpent person next to him was crushed.

Archive was chanting too. Whether he was helping his fellow agents or harming the serpents was unclear.

"Guys!" shouted Jim-Bean, looking up. "I think I can hear fire engines!"

Hammer was backpedaling, firing as he went. "That means…"

"We relocated to the present!" shouted Jim-Bean.

"A CITY in the PRESENT!" Hammer shouted back. He fired and another serpent went down.

Jim-Bean pointed at the ceiling and more rubble cracked away, crushing another serpent person. Blue sky was visible through the cracks. The sound of emergency vehicles was clearly audible to all. In fact, the fire truck Jim-Bean heard sounded very close.

A second later the front end of a fire truck cracked through the rubble. Jim-Bean shifted out of the way as it tore past him, plunging the fifty foot distance to the floor below. It smashed into two serpent people.

Rubble slid down through the opening, creating a ramp upwards. Serpent people ran for the opening, transforming into their human guises, led by Ssuthraa.

Hammer turned and fired, but he was out of bullets. "If they get into the city…"

Archive lined up a shot with his magical Glock. "I've got him!"

He fired a single shot. Ssuthra's head bucked and he fell face first. That left two other serpent people.

"NOW I AM THE PRIME!" shouted Archive, eyes blazing.

The fire truck teetered, balanced with its front end smashed into the ground. Jim-Bean concentrated, palms outwards toward the truck.

The looming shadow engulfed the last two serpent people as they ran. Then the rear end of the fire truck smashed them flat.

"Is that all of them?" asked Hammer.

Jim-Bean, floating in the air at his vantage point, looked around. "Yeah, think so."

"Did you feel that?" asked Archive, who was further back in the room.

"What?" asked Hammer. "What now?"

There was a thud that reverberated throughout the floor of the cavernous room.

"What was that?" asked Archive.

Hammer felt it too. "It can't be."

Boom.

The sound echoed. Something heavy. Something moving.

"It went down in that other portal…" began Jim-Bean. "It can't be still alive."

Boom. Boom.

It was coming closer.

"What?" asked Archive, panicking. He peered into the gloom. "What the hell is that?"

Boom. BOOM. BOOM!

The booming became a cacophony of something pounding its way into a charge.

Archive turned, shaking, holding up his Elder Sign.

"I think," Hammer finished reloading his pistols, "something followed us through the portal."

 

[talien]

Time and the Serpent: Part 7 – Zombiesaurus

"What followed you through the portal?" shouted Archive as the pounding became deafening.

The shuddering footsteps were so powerful that debris flaked from the crumbling ceiling.

"This dinosaur followed us…" said Hammer, aiming for the far side of the hall.

"But we thought the zombies killed it."

"Zombies?!" shouted Archive. But that was all he got out as a towering allosaurus roared into the room. A shaft of sunlight from above illuminated a flash of teeth and claws. Its skin was a mottled blue and it was covered in tiny red spots.

The undead allosaurus bore down on Archive.

"If it's dead, I think I can…" Archive was shaking as he held up the Elder Sign. "By the…" he struggled to find his voice.

The allosaurus, seeing a puny foe openly defying it, pounded into a charge, head low. It closed the gap between them within seconds.

"BY THE POWER OF THE ELDER SIGN I REPEL YOU!" screamed Archive.

The allosaurus veered off, circling in the huge hallway, roaring in frustration.

It got close enough that Archive was able to determine that the red spots weren't spots at all. They were tears and bites in its flesh.

The allosaurus roared and took a few steps forward, then one backward.

"I can't…" Archive was sweating, his arm quivering. "I can't hold it off for long…"

Jim-Bean called on his cistron. "This is Agent Jim-Bean."

"This is Sprague. Where the hell have you boys been?"

"What?"

"We thought you were dead. You've been gone for two weeks."

"Two weeks?" Jim-Bean shook his head. "No time to explain. Trace my coordinates. Preternatural threat in urban area. PURGATORY at my coordinates. Repeat: PURGATORY AT MY COORDINATES."

"They'll never get here in time, Jimmy," said Hammer, a note of finality in his voice.

Jim-Bean floated up to the ceiling, stopping just short of the lip of the collapsed structure. He crawled over the edge as if he had climbed the distance.

And found himself in the middle of a crowded intersection. Samson police, firemen, and bystanders crowded around the opening where the fire engine had fallen through.

"Everyone back!" shouted Jim-Bean, flashing his back. "We have a gas leak. This place is going to blow! Evacuate the area, RIGHT NOW!"

Cops sprang into action.

Jim-Bean ran over to the SWAT team van. "You!" he shouted at the commander. "What explosives have you got?"

"Just det cord, why?"

"I need it. All of it."

The SWAT team hustled to hand over the det cord. Jim-Bean grabbed it and, with most of the area evacuated, dispensed with the illusion that he was a normal human being. He just dropped over the edge into the looming darkness below.

Archive was faltering. "Guys…"

"Hold on just a little longer!" Jim-Bean launched himself from column to column between the allosaurus and Archive, strapping det cord to the base of each.

The allosaurus reared back, and lowering its head for a charge into an invisible barrier, pounded forward.

Jim-Bean jumped out of the way just as it charged past towards Archive. He fell to his knees from the psychic force of such a huge beast defeating his ward.

Hammer jumped in front of Archive at the last moment, unleashing both Glocks. There was a flash of its huge, ragged maw opening wide and then Hammer was gone.

The pillars exploded then. Rubble further collapsed from the opening as Archive stumbled backwards. A huge chunk smashed into the allosaurus' head.

More debris fell in quick succession, burying the dinosaur in a hail of rocks.

"Hammer…" said Jim-Bean.

Archive slowly got to his feet. "It's not over."

The debris pile shifted. With another roar, the allosaurus pounded out of the rubble.

"Cthugha fm'latgh uh'e wfaqa!" shouted Archive, Elder Sign outstretched.

The eye at the center of the pentagram of the Elder Sign opened wide and a beam of blazing fury struck the allosaurus full in the face. It was mere yards from Archive.

It shuddered forward. The allosaurus' head melted, eyes streaming away in tiny liquid pools. And still it came.

"Cthugha fm'latgh uh'e wfaqa!"

The flesh peeled off the head, leaving a grinning white allosaurus skull. And still it came.

"CTHUGHA FM'LATGH UH'E WFAQA!"

The head finally came unmoored from the spine. It blasted off the allosaurus' neck. The huge body collapsed a few feet from Archive.

A second later a circular hail of gunfire burst through the stomach of the dead allosaurus. Hammer stepped out, covered in undigested zombie flesh.

"Did we get it?" he asked, panting.

"Yeah," said Archive, exhausted. "We got it."

Hammer fumbled for his cistron. He couldn't find it in the stomach contents. "Jim-Bean! Did you call off PURGATORY? "

The thundering roar of jets boomed overhead.

"Oh $#!+" swore Jim-Bean. "No."

"Call it off!" shouted Hammer. "NOW!"

Jim-Bean flipped open his cistron.

"This is Agent Jim-Bean. Target neutralized. Repeat: TARGET NEUTRALIZED. PURGATORY cancelled!"

The roar of the jets faded. To Samson citizens, it was the Air Force defending American airspace in case the gas leak was a terrorist attack. None but the agents knew that the entire city could have been obliterated in that moment.

Hammer fell back against the corpse of the allosaurus, exhausted.