OPERATION ALICE
On June 1, 1995, an artist disappeared in New York City. Abigail Wright, 26, had been staying in NYC to continue her post-graduate studies and develop her artistic career. Now, nobody knows where she is. Three days later, NYPD entered her apartment (The Macallister Building, an old stone faux castle in upper Manhattan) to find the carpet had been ripped up off the ground, and the walls covered in epoxied objects that seem to bear no connection whatsoever to each other. Dentures, artificial limbs, records in Spanish, Mandarin, an economic report in Farsi, even a wheelchair. The local PD had no idea how to begin cataloguing this schizophrenic tableau, and when Ms. Wright's credit card showed up at a gas station in Maryland, it was time for us to step in.
Agent M███████ and Agent D███████ were the first ones on the scene, their goal was to catalogue the apartment and see if it had any connection to Ms. Wright's disappearance. There, Agent M███████ made a discovery that would ultimately get the rest of █-████ involved. Three days later, her body was found drifting down the Hudson River, and her death had been ruled a suicide.
We reached out to as many agents as we could. Two showed up. Laurie O██████, age 57, is a caucasian woman currently floating from house to house with an estranged family and a bad drug problem. Hereby, she will be referred to as Agent Magenta. The other, Miguel C██████, age 32, works as ██████████ Private Security. They were contacted the same way the others were. A letter with a time and a place. August 10th, 1995. Washington Square Park.
Both showed up on time. While there, something distracted Agent Magenta. We've determined this to be an odd performance, a child dressed as a clown dragging a paper dragon through the air to the sounds of an odd dirge coming from a nearby gramophone. There, they met with another █-████ agent, Agent M████. M████ had been doing poorly since the death of Agent M███████, and was clearly intoxicated during their meeting. He handed them a black briefcase with items related to the investigation:
» Temporary FBI credentials for all Agents and friendlies. » A New York Post article on the case. » The Abigail Wright police and FBI files. » The address of the Macallistar Building. » A set of freshly made keys to the building and to Wright’s apartment, stamped “DO NOT DUPLICATE.” » A Polaroid photograph of Abigail Wright, taken by herself, out of focus. A sticker on the back of the photo reads, “WRIGHT, A. 1-JUN-94.”
They were then given the following objectives:
- Catalogue each item in Abigail Wright's apartment.
- Document any evidence of the unnatural they encounter.
- If there as incursion, destroy it.
They were then let go to tackle the investigation. For some reason, Agent Music stalked Agent Magenta to her family's home at ██████ █████ ██████████. Magenta eventually noticed this and confronted Agent Music. After the confrontation, they agreed to trust each other and work together. They both tackled studying the case files over the night, and determined to set out to the Macallistar Building first thing in the morning. Agents observed casual cocaine usage from Agent Magenta before heading out in the morning.
At the building, the agents ran into NYPD Detective Giuradanda, a young careerist in his field, who was opening to break the disappearance wide open. Disappointingly, he handed the case over to the agents, but offered his department's assistance in the case should the agents need it. He also warned the agents about the odd nature of the apartment, and departed.
The agents entered the apartment building and immediately entered Abigail's apartment, where they discovered the scene as it had been when the NYPD found it. They immediately began to catalogue all of the objects in the apartment, but soon realized this effort would take three days at the least, and were unable to find any signs of the unnatural. Searching the apartment did yield something of interest, though. The apartment had been bugged. A microphone by the door led under the rug in the building's central hallway and across to an opposite apartment. The agents, upon realizing they had potentially been spied on, eliminated any unnecessary conversation. They did not investigate the microphone further. They spent the entire day cataloguing the apartment for the rest of the day, until exhaustion began to set in.
Upon leaving the apartment (around 7 PM), they discovered that in the hall, someone had hung up a black and white painting of a bottle. The bottle was unlabeled, and at the bottom of the painting, in black ink, read the following names:
A. DARIBONDI, E. LOSETTE, J. LINZ, E. MOSEBY, D. CARVER, G. TOPCHICK, H. LUNDINE.
The text on the painting continued, but was illegible past the name H. LUNDINE. Agent Magenta approached the painting and took it down off the wall, and when she touched the painting, she heard a whisper directly in her ear. It said:
"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the l ̶i̶v̶i̶n̶ɓ̶ ̶p̶o̶ꓨ̶."
On the back of the painting, read the names of the agents and their families. The agents left the painting in the hallway and investigated the central mailbox in the foyer of the Macallistar Building.
The residents are listed as follows:
1A Abigail Wright 2B Thomas Manuel 3A Roger Carun 4A Louis Post 5A Empty 6B Michelle Vanfitz 7B Empty 8A Empty 9A Empty 10B Empty 11B Empty
The agents left the Macallistar Building and the streets of Manhattan were dark, cold, and wet from the day's rain.
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