The Crimson Affair

The Crimson Affair

This is the field report of Agent Darren Days, B-Class Field Agent for the Diogenes Organization. I was deployed on site with my partner, Eric Fields. We arrived at the estate of Professor Arthur Testa at exactly eight o’clock on Monday night. One of our dispatchers had told us to go, by car, and make contact with two other agents that had been sent to investigate the grounds two hours prior.

When we got there we did find the vehicle of the two other agents, even noting that the front door of Testa’s estate was broken open, like someone had pushed it down with great force. Heavy rain began to fall once we drove through the gates, onto the grounds. Testa’s estate was located past this long highway, along with this stretch of hills that took us deep into the forest at the base of these mountains.

Making our way into the home, Eric and I had immediately noticed signs of a great struggle. There were tables knocked over, shattered windows and a trail of blood starting on the floor, then leading up the stairs and along the walls. The trail finally ended at the top of the foyer’s staircase, where we assumed the bloodied party made their way down one of the three separate halls at the top of the second floor.

The house was Victorian, but with a slight futuristic bit of detail thrown in here and there. It was all wooden frames and dark wallpaper, but every now and again you could make out electronic trash bins and lights that turned on when they detected movement. Making our way upstairs, Eric and I halted after coming to the first and longest hall.

At the end of this corridor, the light flickered. Under it was the shape of a person who was glaring right at us. When the light flickered off we could see the reflection of the shape’s blackened eyes. It was a person, white as a ghost, but crusty as hardened, cracked bread. The shape came closer revealing the form of a man, walking as men usually don’t do.

Atop this, he was groaning something low, like a primitive growl, but ever so softly. Eric and I already had our pistols on him, warning the man that we would open fire if he continued to come any closer to us. He stepped slowly, but with such desire, like a limp or a wound was holding him back from running.

It wasn’t until he stepped under the lights closest to us that we saw this man was something else. There was blood smeared across his mouth and his armed were stretched out at us. I gave him one more warning, opening fire when he did not comply. The bullets did not stop him. By this time he had grabbed my suit jacket.

His fingers were icy and thin. His skin had no color and his breath smelt like a rotting carcass. With his head right in front of mine, I could see both of his eyes up close. They were white like he was blind or something. This man was undead. I couldn’t do anything. I froze for a second as shock totally took me over.

Luckily, as the man leaned his head back to take a bite out of my face, Eric shot him in the head. That put him down for sure. I took a moment to compose myself and phoned headquarters. At first, the reception didn’t work inside of the house, so Eric trailed me outside, back to our car, where I was able to get a signal.

I called our head office and demanded at least six patrols of backup. Whatever was happening here was big. After the call Eric and I reentered the house, moving past the corridor containing the dead body, we made our way to the last room on the left, after investigating the rest of the top floor. We eventually found ourselves entering a strange staircase that took us to an area beneath the estate.

The entrance to these stairs were uncovered within a door in the last room, made up to look like a closet. Heading down the spiral stone steps, we encountered another undead man. He appeared quite similar to the last as he claimed the steps up, slowly working his way to us. I kicked him in the chest, sending the man over the railing-less staircase.

We saw as he hit the ground, splattering a good three stories below. Finding our way to the bottom of the steps, we uncovered a labyrinth of crypts. Within them, all lied people, bodies, like the undead men we had seen. These bodies were everywhere. They had been suspended from wires, stuck in giant glass tubs, discarded all around and even some were still lingering.

We made our way through the tunnels, unloading our ammo on every moving thing we came across. It might have just been luck, but I truly believe we survived a trip through the first circle of hell. There were three more undead folk in the crypts. They were taken care of easily. A bullet to the head for each.

Eric and I were learning that this was the only way to kill them. We wondered how much money it must have cost Testa to build all this under his home or, better yet, if it had been here all along. Passing through what seemed like endless tombs, Eric and myself found an opening to a subterranean lab.

It was beyond a large metallic door, found at the furthest most end of the labyrinth. The crypts, which had a plethora of bizarre scientific technology scattered about them, took up precedence in the lab portion of this underground lair. Everywhere we looked there were the remains of experiments gone wrong.

Human experiments. There were people in giant containers of green liquid. These specimens looked to have been severely burned, then fused together with wires and metallic bits of armor that were embedded into their flesh. None of them were alive, thank god, and this area seemed to have been cleared out as we uncovered a large number of these experimented undead folk with multiple bullet wounds in them.

Working our way through the labs, we uncovered a large room. Sitting at the center of it was the two agents we had been sent to find. They were Clark Sumner and Daisy Hill. Daisy was still on guard, nearly blowing Eric and myself away after entering the chamber, but stopping once she saw we were human.

Clark had a wound in his side and was resting, bleeding out onto the metallic floor. Daisy asked if there were anymore more of the undead roaming the grounds. We told her that, as far as we knew, the last of them we had killed on our mission to find them. I helped Daisy get Clark to his feet and we made a plan to trail back to our cars.

I phoned headquarters again, but the signal was dead. Walking back through the carnage, Daisy told of how she and Clark shot their way through an undead nightmare. She revealed how Testa had an unhealthy obsession with the advancements of man and how, after being dropped by four of the worlds biggest pharmaceutical powerhouses, Testa began funding his own mad projects from beneath his home.

It was only a matter of time before these experiments got out of hand and Testa was destroyed by his own creations. Daisy further revealed that when she and Clark had arrived on location, the undead experiments had made their way to the top floors of the estate and began escaping through windows and the front entrance, explaining its state of dismay.

Making our way back to the foyer, Clark remarked that by the time they had contained the undead from venturing off of the grounds, they took their dual crusade into the mansion and uncovered the main laboratory. Clark added how they, in fact, came across a living Professor Arthur Testa who was in a state of decay as his creations had nearly tore him to pieces.

As Daisy and Clark entered the lab, Testa fired the first of three bullets into an undead man who had been clinging to his leg. Seeing the agents, Daisy recalls Testa panicking, shooting Clark in his side and then turning the gun on himself. Before Daisy could reason with him, Testa laughed maniacally, declared his life’s work a success and blew his own brains out before the two agents.

Clark then added how he and Daisy then waited for backup to arrive, as they had phoned for help before entering the estate. Finding our way outside, other agent patrols had pulled up. Clark was taken into intensive care for his wound and Daisy followed along with him. Eric and myself suffered no major injuries.

Following reports on the venture revealed Professor Testa’s obsession with Anaximander of Miletus. The first known writer of western philosophy, being one of the first to study human biology. This philosopher, whom Testa had based his experiments on, seemed to believed what he did. Both thought if humans reverted to a primal state, true tranquility between our species could be achieved.

However, that this primal state should only be globally reached after the modification of the human body to withstand anything. Testa desired to make the human body one with machines, to advance our race and then return us to the nature of animals, dominant, but aware of our role in the animal kingdom.

No better than any other beast. Simply genetically enhanced to secure the sustained existence of our species. Whether his theories were true or not, it was all too sickening. After sweeping his lab our investigators uncovered notes from the philosopher, Anaximander. Seems like the old man made notes on what one person needed to do to make this end-all goal a reality.

This meant that Anaximander was the first to think up this crazy plot, countless centuries ago, and that this mad man’s dream has traveled time to wreak havoc in the modern times. All I can say to that is that no matter who tries to bring the work of this mad philosopher to life, the Diogenes Organization will be there to take them down, mark my words.

You know… he looked like a stern cold man with a dead gaze, a bald head, and a long white beard. His lazy eye, which stared ever forward, was darker than his other one and his cloak was dark green, emanating dread. This was the portrait of Testa’s idol, Anaximander of Miletus, which the professor had kept in the estate’s foyer.

Just on a glance, he looked evil. Just the man to desire the dead to be brought back to life. I can only assume that, just like Testa, Anaximander’s creations destroyed him in the end as well.