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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Audrik" data-source="post: 7283789" data-attributes="member: 73653">Convergence - Session 3cLakefield began waving frantically for Pepper to close the door and retreat. Before he did so, the EPA scientist tried unsuccessfully to cut through the resin with his survival knife. The agents got back up to the car and regrouped for the second time in less than an hour.Whatever was in that barn had sealed the main entrance and had likely done the same to the rest of the ground floor. The hayloft doors were open, so it – or they – could probably fly. Lakefield called Derringer and gave a full report. He requested a support team, but Derringer reminded him the situation needed to be resolved without alerting too many outside people if possible. Lakefield grumbled, but he knew Derringer was right. All the same, he wanted Derringer to have a cleanup crew ready in case his team disappeared. Derringer agreed. It would be a last resort, but if the agents couldn’t handle the situation, something would have to be done.Back to the barn. They needed a way in, and Lakefield had spotted a ladder behind the farmhouse. They quietly moved the ladder to the barn and rested it against the open loft. They had a quick match of Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who would climb up. Lakefield threw Rock. Pepper threw Paper. Lakefield had a shotgun. Pepper climbed the ladder.Once in the loft, Pepper looked around. The entire interior of the barn had been coated and reinforced with the resin. There were soft lights of various colors and frequencies coming from somewhere down below, and so he peeked over the edge. He had been preparing himself for this the entire time, and yet he was still not ready.In one corner were various machines that looked somehow biological in origin. Two of the devices had vats of liquid, and a human body floated motionlessly in one of them. There were several flat slabs of the same resin which lined the walls and ceiling, and they appeared to be tables. All of this was secondary in Pepper’s estimation. More important, he decided, were the six child-sized, gray humanoids with long, wiry limbs, almond-shaped heads, and large, black eyes. Aliens! He was right all along.Dr. Pepper held back a shout and crawled back out of the loft and down the ladder. He was motioning for Lakefield to retreat, and for the third time in an hour, the agents regrouped after a retreat.“Aliens! I told you! Aliens! The thin, gray kind. There were six of them in there. And a human body in a tube.”Lakefield had seen some strange things in his time so aliens might be a possibility. Or they might be something worse. He needed to take a look for himself, and he was taking a gas can and flares with him. The ranger slung his shotgun over his shoulder and carried the flares and jug of gasoline up the ladder into the loft.He ventured a look over the edge of the loft just to get his aim, and he found that Pepper’s account was mostly accurate. The one difference was that the human body was not in a tube. It was on a slab now, and the little, gray things were gathered around it. That’s right … a little closer. Now, say cheese!Lakefield lit the flare and tossed it along with the gasoline right into the center of the grouping. Almost immediately, the creatures simply stopped moving and hung motionless like powered down robots or discarded dolls. At the same time, large pieces of the resin wall began peeling themselves off with a loud buzzing. Those gray things weren’t the only creatures in the barn! And he suddenly felt himself wishing they were.The new creatures had been camouflaged against the walls. They were large, spongy crablike things covered in fungus and resin, and there were six of them. When they moved, it was sometimes fluid and sometimes stuttered as if they were cutting in and out of three-dimensional space. They didn’t have wings that he could see, but three of them seemed to fly anyway. They landed in the loft forming a semicircle around him with the loft doors at his back. A fourth darted below the loft toward a dark corner of the barn, and the remaining two just faded from view.Pepper saw these two fade into view on the roof of the barn. He screamed and shot at the one on his left. It was a perfect shot, center mass, only … the damned thing flickered at exactly the wrong moment, and the bullet passed clean through.Lakefield scowled at the three arrayed against him and leveled his shotgun at the one on his left. He pulled the trigger and scored a direct hit. A spray of pellets and spongy flesh splattered against the resin wall. Score one for the good guys.The buzzing increased in volume, and one of the things dashed toward Lakefield with a shiny, black object in its arm-like appendage. The object sliced through him and he felt himself cut in places and directions he didn’t realize he had. Everything went red and then black as he felt most of his upper body slide away from the rest of him. The buzzing faded soon after.Dr. Pepper heard the shotgun blast at the same time the two creatures dove at him. They each had a long baton that hummed almost as loudly as the creatures buzzed. He didn’t have time to wonder what they were, however. One of the batons brushed his flesh, there was a sizzle-crackle-pop, and Pepper had disintegrated.Three hours later, Special Agent Atwood arrived at the FBI office in Knoxville. SAC Derringer took Jane Allen into protective custody and promised to get her medical attention. When Lakefield and Pepper hadn’t reported in by the next morning, Derringer told Atwood not to wait up. The Spivey case was closed.</blockquote>

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