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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Audrik" data-source="post: 6435403" data-attributes="member: 73653">Contagion - Session 1Agents ROSE and SETH received encrypted emails from A-Cell instructing them to visit drop-boxes at their respective local FedEx stores, meet at the airport in Nashville, and head north to Bowling Green, KY. Their contact, Doctor Eustace Carrington of the Greenview Regional Hospital, would brief them. This was expected to be more of a training operation than an actual Opera. In the drop-boxes, they found ID badges for their cells, including new cell members. R-Cell’s badges were standard FBI, while S-Cell’s were CDC.The agents all arrived safely in Nashville within about a half hour of each other. After confirming the new agents’ identities, they all exchanged superficial pleasantries on the way to the car rental desks. Agents ROSE and SETH each rented a vehicle for their respective cells, and an hour later they arrived at the hospital in Kentucky. The weather was nice, and the drive was pleasant.It took little time to find Dr. Carrington. A woman at the front desk directed them to a lab down the hall. The doctor looked to be in his early 50s and of average build with short, brown hair. He was examining pictures of what appeared to be badly infected lacerations. Another monitor showed a patient in a hospital bed. The patient was connected to an IV and a few other beeping and pinging machines.The doctor accepted S-Cell’s CDC credentials, but he questioned why the FBI had been called in. To his knowledge, there was no evidence of criminal activity, and even if there was, he thought the FBI only had jurisdiction over cases which crossed state lines. None of the agents really knew the law well enough to fast talk, but a simple “you watch too much television” seemed to ease his concern.He related his knowledge of the situation. The patient is one Mitchell Haws, a surveyor. He was brought in the previous evening by a couple who had said they found him stumbling onto the road a few miles out of town. He had unidentified animal-like gashes which seemed to be the source of a fast-spreading bacterial infection which was literally devouring him. Dr. Carrington reported this to the CDC, and he was pleased that they had responded so quickly.The agents examined the pictures, but they too were unable to identify the cause of the wounds. The bruises which accompanied the lacerations in some places led Agent SID to believe they were caused by something like a bear. There was a sound of twisting metal which sounded close by. The monitor which had been showing the patient now showed an empty bed, and a ventilation duct ripped open and hanging down.Agent SETH immediately ran out of the lab waving his CDC credentials, and shouting for security to block all exits as there was a highly contagious patient on the loose. Fortunately, there were no patients and few hospital staff in the area, or the shouting might have started a panic. Dr. Carrington left to get a Hazmat suit. The new agents, RED and SERGE followed SETH as he took the stairs going up. Agent SID headed for the basement and underground parking garage, and ROSE remained in the lab to copy relevant files to her laptop and delete the hospital copies.SID needed security to let him through the door at the bottom of the stairs, and after a quick flash of the badge, he was through. He looked around quickly, but he found nothing of immediate interest, and so he went back upstairs.The three agents heading upstairs were stopped on the top floor by security. Apparently this floor housed mental patients and other potentially dangerous individuals. Agent SETH flashed his badge, shouted something about a contagious patient on the loose, and demanded roof access. The security guards were quick to comply.Stepping through the hatch to the roof, Agent SETH looked around. There were several industrial air conditioners, but not much else. The agents looked over the edge of the roof to examine the outer walls, but there was nothing interesting to be found.Dr. Carrington put on the Hazmat suit and then headed in the direction of the patient’s room. He was stopped by a nurse coming around the corner. She seemed panicked, and she told the doctor someone was lurking outside ICU. Dr. Carrington told her to get security, and have them page Agent Service (which was the name given by Agent SETH upon their initial meeting).The hospital soon rang out with a call for “Agent Service” to report to ICU. The three rooftop agents, and Agent SID all headed for the ICU. When they arrived, everything looked normal, and the doctor on duty assured them that he hadn’t seen anything unusual. They looked around a bit, but they didn’t find anything.It wasn’t too long before “Agent Service” was being paged once more; this time to the maternity ward. Agents SETH and SID headed up to the third floor and spoke to a nurse in the maternity ward. She was very disturbed. She hadn’t seen or heard anything, but in the course of her rounds, she discovered a newborn was missing. All of the infants were in their basinets on her last round, but this time, one was missing. The nurse had heard that there was a contagious patient on the loose, and she was quite worried. Agent SETH pulled the vent off the wall and squeezed himself inside the duct, which didn’t go a long way toward calming the nurse.Agent SERGE decided to examine the patient’s room. It wasn’t much different from any other hospital room except that it had no windows and extra machines. Then there was the fact that the ventilation duct was ripped and hanging. He couldn’t tell just what had ripped the duct, but it was apparently done from the outside since the metal was bent inward. Agent SID headed down the hall and found the Radiology labs. He looked around a bit, but it wasn’t until he was about to leave that he saw something. It was dark, but he was sure he saw something like smoke, or maybe pudding, filter itself from the room, through the vent, and into the duct. He immediately took out his phone and alerted Agent SETH who reacted to the news by drawing his gun and crawling deeper into the vent.He came to the sort of intersection you really only find in ventilation ducts, space stations, and M.C. Escher artwork. He could continue straight, turn right, go back the way he’d come, go up, or go down. Before he could decide, something slow but nearly silent came from around the corner to the right. They were face to “face”, and SETH could barely make it out in the beam from his flashlight. It was a dark creature; in some ways like a human, in others like a snake, but it gave the impression it could change its shape easily. It opened a mouth full of sharp teeth and putrid breath before diving down the ventilation shaft.Agent SETH fired two shots. He felt sure he’d hit the thing, but all he’d heard was the sound of a gun in an enclosed space, and a high-pitched ringing. Most of the rest of the hospital could hear the gunshots as well. When SETH had recovered his senses, he worked his way carefully down the shaft until he reached the second floor. He pulled himself a little way through the duct so that he wouldn’t fall.Agent RED ran up the stairs to the second floor. He looked around, but he didn’t see anything suspicious. Dr. Carrington took the elevator which slowed and jerked to a halt halfway between the first and second floors. RED shouted that the doctor was on the elevator, but it had stopped. SID ran down the stairs to try to pry open the doors.The lights went out, and the red emergency lighting came on. He pushed buttons, and though they lit up, they seemed to have little other effect. He didn’t see or hear the darkness filter through the ceiling behind him, but he smelled it. That caught his attention. He shouldn’t smell anything in that suit, but he was definitely smelling something akin to rotting flesh. Then he saw two thick but ropey arms wrap around him and felt them squeeze. He couldn’t muster the lung power to scream or the arm strength to break free. One rib cracked, then two, then three … Then his entire ribcage popped and crunched.When Agent SID finally got the doors open, he saw the doctor’s crumpled form, he smelled rotting flesh, and he heard an instrumental version of Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” coming from the speakers. He slowly got out his phone and called Agent SETH.“Hey, SETH … We’ve got a problem."</blockquote>

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