Chapter 13: An Introduction to the DDPSI: Director Monroy

A bespectacled man of average height wearing a grey pinstriped suit was gripping his desk phone so hard that his knuckles were turning white. He looked to be no younger than 45.

"Yes, I understand," he said. "Call. Me. Immediately. If they find her. Goodbye" he said, before hanging up the phone. His knuckles were still tightly gripping the phone despite having just hung up.

His small office was filled with filing cabinets, bookshelves, and not much else. His cheeks red with frustration beneath his thick, graying beard, he angrily threw several stacks of paper off his desk in frustration. They all scattered and fluttered aimlessly toward the floor.

Every time. Every. Single. Time. Some idiot cop who slept their way through their training at the police academy shows up to an incident they never imagined they'd be tasked with handling, they bungle it up, and then several city blocks end up sick with some novel contagion, cursed, transformed in the worst cases, or some combination of the above. And to top it all off, he winds up swamped with paperwork for the next six months from all the chaos. The entire department gets put under review, his supervisors start breathing down his neck, he gets yelled at by the director of the Centers for Disease Control in cases where there was a mutant pathogen outbreak, and policy gets updated. All because ONE COP couldn't be assed to pay attention during training.

Well… it didn't get that bad every single time. In fact, only 6-7 out of 20 cases where the DDPSI's response had been delayed due to the incompetence of local emergency response teams required more than a level 1 response, and 1-2 out of 30 required a response at or above level 3. Major incidents on the scale of a national tragedy only ever occurred about once every 8 years, if even at all, and the DDPSI was usually able to stop them before they got out of hand, but…

"Incidents wouldn't GET that bad in the FIRST PLACE if the fucking SWAT teams would just DO THEIR DAMN JOBS!!!" the man roared. He'd been through too many of these and he couldn't bear to go through yet another. It wasn't just that he'd have to do more paperwork that was bugging him. If he didn't like paperwork, he wouldn't be the director of a federal agency. No… what bothered him was that people, no, "professionals," even, who had been hired to protect and serve seemed to be either unable or unwilling to fulfill either of these duties. And because of the American people's misplaced trust in these people, he had to repeatedly witness awful tragedies every few years and not only clean up afterward, but also assist the victims as they deal with the aftermath of the tragedy and witness firsthand the consequences of these officers' negligence upon individual people.

He looked up at a photo prominently displayed above his office of a 15-year-old girl and her 9-year-old sister. They were pale, too pale. Their lips, on the other hand, were impossibly red, perhaps made even redder merely by their contrast against the girls' pale skin. But their strangest feature was their eyes… he'd never forget those eyes. They were a deep scarlet, but their corneas seemed glazed over almost as if the girls were dead. The girls themselves weren't smiling. Their facial expressions seemed almost as dead as their eyes. No… not dead. Hopeless. Especially that 9-year-old, who should have been so full of life and hope at her age… but where that life and hope had once been was now a dark, empty void, a void which consumed all joy and hope and spat out nothing but darkness. A deep, bottomless void which could not be filled.

He shuddered. He'd been through a lot at the DDPSI. By the time he became the director, he had seen so much that any lesser man would be going to therapy for severe PTSD for the rest of his life. But not Jedediah Monroy. Monroy took those emotional scars and used them to enact departmentwide changes and push for action on a national level to improve response times, response protocols, and training for local emergency response teams. In recent years, he'd managed to raise the percentage of SWAT teams who actually call the DDPSI for already resolved incidents in under 30 minutes from less than 4% to more than 60%. But…

He placed his hand on his temples and loudly slammed his boot to the floor in frustration. "God. DAMN IT!" he yelled. It wasn't hard. It really wasn't. All they had to do was show up, cordon off the area, call the DDPSI, and not let anybody leave. That's it. That's all they had to do. Once the DDPSI show up, that's it.

"So WHY," he laughed, "is this so HARD for everybody to understand!?!?!?"

He finished typing a message on his computer before hitting, "send," then opened the glass case on the side of his wall and pressed the button labelled "3."

Immediately, he heard a bell loudly ring thrice from the next room while a red light began to flash. Shortly after, he heard a commotion as office workers hurried to their desks and workers began to chatter.

He threw open the door to his office and was greeted by a small army of office workers sitting at their desks while a bell chimed and a red light flashed from behind him. He turned around and saw a large screen with only the number "3" on it and a flashing red light above it like one might see on a police siren. He walked over to the light and flipped a switch on its side to turn it off. He didn't need such annoyances distracting his workers in the moments to come.

He then turned to face his workers, their eyes and ears all intently focused on him. He then lifted the microphone that had been resting on the desk in front of the television to his lips. "I've just received a very worrying call from Minnesota," he said, his gruff voice booming through the room The SWAT team in the city of New Beginnings, Minnesota, received a call at about 9:05 about a potential supernatural incident. They arrived on the scene at about 9:15, confirming almost immediately that the incident was supernatural in nature. There were 5 human-sized hornets of unknown origin surrounding a badly damaged taxi cab. The driver is wounded, and the SWAT officers made the mistake," he continued, gritting his teeth, "…of letting the passenger go after interviewing her." Immediately, almost everyone listening groaned in frustration.

"I know, I know, I'm mad about it too. But what's done is done," Monroy continued, the bright lights of the office reflecting off his sweat-beaded forehead. "She left at about 9:45. Apparently there are some inconsistencies in her story, but the SWAT team doesn't think she had anything to do with what happened, so they just… let her go," he said, wildly gesticulating with his hands as he did so. "The SWAT officers also believe that a third party, also supernatural, was involved. The evidence for this is that there are several sharp objects of unknown origin on the scene and embedded in the corpses of the hornets. Furthermore, one of the hornets is encased in a large, yellow structure made of an unknown material. The witness says that she didn't see what happened and doesn't know where those came from, but we'll just have to iron those details out when we interrogate her," he sighed. "Right now, the SWAT team are rushing to find the witness and driver of the taxi that drove her away from the scene, then determine who they might have come into contact with. They're also setting up a perimeter while they wait for us to arrive on the scene. I've already dispatched some field agents. What I need you all to do is proceed with the standard Level Three protocol. Call the governor, call the mayor, get the National Guard on standby, etc."

Monroy paused for a moment as he adjusted his glasses and shuffled his notes. He listened to his workers begin typing on their keyboards and dialing numbers on their deskphones, so he raised his hands and cleared his throat. "A-HEM! I'm not done yet," he said. His workers then stopped what they were doing and turned to give him their undivided attention. "Thank you," he said. "What I'm most concerned about right now is that these hornets came from some kind of nest nearby. If it turns out that there is indeed a nest of giant insects near the city of New Beginnings, we'll need to evacuate and escalate the threat level to a Level Four." He heard a few gasps from the crowd and even saw one making a sign of the cross by touching his head and then both his shoulders. He inhaled, then continued, "This is why I will call the Special Humans Unit and request the assistance of a few Altered. I want the rest of you to make sure when you're making your respective calls that you really emphasize just how dangerous the situation may actually be. Joseph, Mason, make sure your team remains in constant contact with our field agents. Keep us updated on new developments. Bethany, you will be the liaison between us and the Altered that will hopefully be dispatched. That is all. Get to it!" Monroy finished.

With that, everyone turned their chairs to face their desks and began furiously typing away at their keyboards and making phone calls. Monroy, too, headed back over to his desk. He knew he had a long night ahead of him.

When Director Jedediah Monroy closed the door to his office, some chatter began among the office workers who didn't have any immediate phone calls to make.

"A nest? That's horrible!" a woman cried.

"There goes tomorrow's dinner date…" said another.

"A-altered!? Already!?" said a third.

"Hey! Don't you all have calls to make!? Time is lives! The longer we take to respond to this, the more people are in danger!" yelled the office secretary, Sarah.

"S-sorry…" a woman muttered before dialing a number on her phone.

Back in the city, an armored van with sirens blaring was dashing along the highway.

"Hey, we're en route to the site of the attack," a woman dressed in full hazmat gear said into a headset. "Any updates? There haven't been any more attacks, right?" she said, worriedly.

The voice on the other end of the headset responded softly, "No, no reports so far. But just in case, Director Monroy said that he's requesting aid from the Special Humans Unit."

Everyone in the van nearly jumped out of their seats. "Altered!? We're really going to be working with Altered!?" a man in full tactical gear shouted.

Everyone in the armored van looked uneasy. They knew just how serious the situation could potentially be.

"No. You're just our CDC correspondents. The Altered will be assisting our field agents and keeping you secure if there's another attack. We'll also have the Green Berets on standby as well.

"S-seriously!? It's that bad!? I… I don't think I signed up for this!" cried one of the women in the hazmat suits, shaking.

"It's… it's probably nothing to worry about. Director Monroy has a tendency to… overreact," the headset responded in an attempt to reassure the woman.

"Tch. I'd rather he overreact than underreact. I've got kids in this city for crying out loud," said another man in tactical gear.

"Hornets aside, what about the witness? Have they found her?"

"No, unfortunately not. The SWAT agents checked the building the taxi dropped her off at, but no dice," sighed the headset.

"Darn… wait…" said one of the CDC workers, suddenly standing up from her seat.

"…Do you guys hear that?" she asked the other passengers.

She pressed her ear to the side of the van and listened to the loud sound of metal scraping against metal and gears grinding to move hundreds of tons of heavy machinery.

"Hear what? The train?" replied one of the men in tactical gear. "Yeah, this highway goes right by the train tracks. You didn't know that?"

The woman ignored him. "Isn't the train station near where they said they dropped that woman off? It's inside the quarantine zone, right?" she asked.

"Yeah, so?" the other CDC worker asked. Suddenly, her eyes widened. "Oh… oh fuck!"

"Natalie, call the train company. We need a list of passengers on that train now!!!" the woman barked into her headset.

"Shit! On it!" Natalie replied, suddenly understanding just how monumentally worse the situation has become.

"If those hornets carried a pathogen and that woman is on that train… oh God, just thinking about all the paperwork is making my head spin!" Natalie sighed. She then turned her chair to face the man next to her. "Joseph! There's an Amtrak station inside the quarantine zone! A train just departed! There's a chance the witness might be on it! I need you to take over CDC correspondence while I call the train station."

Joseph suddenly stopped typing his report, his face ghostly pale. "Are you serious!?"

But no sooner had he spoken than had Natalie already transferred her call over to his headset and began searching for the train station's number.

Far away, in a military encampment in Ohio, a tall woman dressed in a sleek, black pantsuit and wearing a pair of sunglasses as dark as her hair, which was done up in a ponytail, spoke into her deskphone.

"So… that's what's happened, huh?" the woman asked. "Very well. I will dispatch 'Arghus' and 'Kinesis.' Will that be all, Director Monroy?" she asked, the gruffness of her voice in no way matching the beauty of her face.

"Yes. Thank you very much, Dal-" began Monroy.

"That's Colonel Dallas to you, Director. Please notify my secretary of any further developments in this situation. I sincerely hope my agents aren't needed," Dallas responded before hanging up.

She paced back and forth in her large, dark office for a few moments, then began walking across the seal of the United States military on her floor toward the large set of steel double-doors that served as the entrance to her office.

"Yes, their abilities should serve him just fine… should the situation get out of hand, that is," she thought as she opened the doors to her office.

"Oh… I'm forgetting something, aren't I?" she paused. "Yes… that's it."

Suddenly, her hair began to morph and change, liquefying and then transforming into silver fibers that wove themselves into the shape of a silver beret. When they finished, the beret sat atop her head as though it had always been there, and her hair itself appeared completely unchanged as though it hadn't just been turned into a beret a moment prior.

"That should do," she muttered, not even bothering to check how she looked in the mirror positioned next to her door before proceeding.