Champions Game

Sat 4/1/91

11.39 - The Political Officer is quite a nice chap really and he does make a good cup of tea.
We're sitting around hoping that the KGB have enough information to intercept the plane which took off half an hour ago carrying five nuclear warheads...

So, last night we left the room and made another attempt to pursuade the guard to take us to the General. He refused so Drongo picked him up and banged his head off the door frame a few times until he stopped moving (ick) then carried him to use as a shield.

The next guard we ran into managed to shoot both his fallen comrade and Drongo before Drongo managed to batter him senseless. Meanwhile the rest of us ran on ahead and found yet another guard. Jane shot him in the hand but he kept fighting so in the end we just had to rush him. Charles got shot in the arm, but in the end we managed to keep on hitting him until he was stunned and Jane could get a clear shot at him.
It was horrible. I'm never going to get used to this, no matter if the people we hurt are trying to kill us, it's still awful.

We got into the restricted wing, but we couldn't find anything useful straight away and then there was a horrible roaring scream - more magic we believe, possibly a summoning. Rather than waiting to see what had been summoned we left Korpeno's troops to sort that one out while we ran outside (leaving the book by the door).
We saw five trucks leaving so we hopped into the back of one. Presumably the cargo was a nuclear warhead, since that's what Korpeno was trying to steal after all.

Drove for hours then arrived at an airbase. We managed to stay hidden until the drivers had left, saw a plane which the warheads were going to be loaded on to, took it's serial number and went indoors to find a telephone.
Bob's suggestion to just flash passes and stick to saying "You're not authorised to hear this, Comrade, we must report to Moscow at once, please allow us to use your telephone" seemed to work. The Political Officer seemed to recognise the phone number we had been given and that finally persuaded him to help us.

It would have been suicidal to try and stop the plane taking off, given that most of the troops here will be loyal to Korpeno, so we've made the phonecall and are now sitting things out in the Political Officer's office, drinking tea and hoping that our KGB officer friend can sort things out.

Mon 7/1/91

16.09 - We're finally back in Moscow.
The KGB did manage to stop that plane and bring it down. Unfortunately some other nuclear warheads on detonated in Washington DC on Saturday... Nobody is quite sure how they got there.

There's been a huge amount of international tension, but at least us saving the combined NATO troops in Saudi Arabia from the same fate as Washington has allowed time for negotiations, instead of the total nuclear war that could have been triggered. Things are hanging by a thread just now, but there's hope of a solution, which there might not have been otherwise.

It's difficult to take in the thought that a whole city has just vanished. All the people, all the animals, all the buildings just reduced to ash and rubble.
It seems so hopeless. We did what we could, but that still happened.

The KGB man said that for some reason someone had taken some of Drongo's blood from the hospital he was in and carried it to a research facility at Loch Fiag. Presumably they are curious about the way he gets shot and then just heals up so easily.
We need to find out what's happening here. Find out what's happening to us.

Thurs 10/1/91

Well, some good news to come home to. Neil is up and walking around the ward at the hospital today. They're talking about letting him go home on Monday.

I called his solicitor this afternoon and apparently in view of the evidence we provided the police won't be making him go to court. He's got any number of defences from self-defence to provocation to temporary insanity. It's a relief to know he won't have to stand up in court and talk about all that dreadful stuff again.

The USA seems to be falling apart from within. They've got martial law imposed at home and have withdrawn half their troops from Saudi Arabia, leaving British forces in the majority in the coalition there.

British military seem very pleased with themselves just now. Apparently they have a viable Star Wars defence system in place considerably earlier than they or the Americans had expected.

I've barely slept since we got back. Nightmares every night and I keep waking up at the slightest noise. Guess I should go and get some sleeping tablets or something. It's probaby shock or stress from all the things that happened.

Fri 11/1/91

Dropped in to see Drongo's mum on my way home today and gave her a box of Russian sweets. She's got his George Cross on her mantelpiece.

Thurs 17/1/91

03.50 - Am round at Jane's flat. Couldn't cope with sitting in on my own.

It sounded like static - like the tv was on the blink. That's what I thought it was at first - just static. But then the voiceover started "This is the sound of bombs falling on Baghdad..."
It's real. We're at war with Iraq.

11.55 - Apparently they're calling this "Operation Desert Storm".

Hell of a day so far. The newswires are buzzing. Explosions blooming like flowers in slow-motion all over the tv screen - except that I can't forget that each one of those flowers is an inferno with human beings trapped inside it.
If I could remember how to mean any of the prayers I learned at school then I'd be praying now...
God help us.

Thurs 24/1/91

We have a new member of staff today. John Cassidy. He used to be a university anthropologist, apparently, but there's some problem with the credibility of his research or something. I'm not clear on the details. He says his main detractor is his ex-wife, who is also some kind of academic.
He's done a lot of work in Central America and Africa, so he should be a useful addition to the team.

Sat 26/1/91

Of course John Cassidy did rather fail to mention that in addition to a vengeful ex-wife he also has a vengeful university academic grants body after him.
Apparently they don't believe that spending grant money in Third World gambling dens is a valid form of anthropological research.

Sun 17/2/91

The ground troops have gone in to Kuwait today.

Neil is back in the office. He doesn't seem to remember much of what happened, which is a blessing in a lot of ways. His sister is staying with the foster carers and he's renting a room in town. That chamber of horrors they used to call home is up for sale.
Some people who looked like intelligence agents asked him about what happened, but he can't remember exactly what was said there.

Wish I could either remember it clearly enough to make sense of it, or forget it enough to have some peace.
There are kind of blank spots in my memory, and trying to talk to Neil about what happened, trying to fill in the blanks, sort of hurts or at least makes me feel very uneasy.

It's a bit like the Russian. I can barely remember three words of it now that thing - that spell - has worn off, although I have to say that that isn't painful to recall in the way that memories of Gamaliel are.

As far as I can piece things together, Gamaliel wants something from us, there is some sort of a deal made that I can't quite remember. He regards all of us except Charles as his agents in some way. Beyond that I really have no idea who he is or what he wants or why.

Mon 18/2/91

Asked Drongo to show me Loch Fiag (where the KGB said there was a secret research lab). He went up there a couple of days after we got back from Russia and didn't see anything suspicious.
The motorcycle ride there and back was terrifying, but there's nothing else around for miles so we couldn't have gone by train. Interviewed quite a few locals and pretended to be doing a feature on remote areas as potential tourist destinations. The nearest village is Lairg, which is quite a way down the Glen. There's the Overscraig Hotel closer to the Loch and a Lodge which is apparently being renovated. The workers from the Lodge are staying in the Overscraig Hotel and they all seem to be perfectly normal builders, nothing suspicious at all. There are no other non-locals around, other than the hotel owners. No evidence of any of the support staff that a laboratory might need, or any infrastructure like electricity supply and rubbish collection. Two years seems like a long time to rennovate a single building - that doesn't sit quite right somehow, but there's nothing else out of the ordinary up there.

Tues 19/2/91

There's quite a big news black out just now over the fighting at Umm Qasar. Rumours of some kind of new weapon being used there, but nobody can find out what it is.
CND have written an open letter to the government asking them to confirm that they haven't used nuclear weapons in Iraq. Word is that they're using shell casings with depleted uranium in them, which is bad enough...

I've been trying to track down the owners of the Lodge, but without success. The paper trail looks perfectly in order, though.

Wed 20/2/91

Civil war has broken out in the Congo. Will this fighting never end?

Asked Bob to see if he could figure out who is building that Lodge at Loch Fiag. He's better at official paperwork stuff than I am. He's asked me to cover a press conference for him tomorrow in return. Better start reading up on it now.

Sat 23/2/91

Of course, bloody Graham would have to have been there, wouldn't he? I just completely corpsed at the press conference, asked the world's stupidest question, and bloody Graham was sat right behind me...
Bob's annoyed with me for messing it up too. Damn.

Bob can't find out who owns the shell company which is building the Lodge. That's kind of suspicious, but not totally unheardof. Not really enough evidence to justify any more digging. As he said, the KGB could just have been lying to us. There may be absolutely nothing there.
They said the company which was experimenting was called Biogen International, and there's nothing in Companies House under that name.

Mon 25/2/91

Ceasefire with Iraq. Sooner than anyone expected, but thank God it's over.

Neil's been very busy lately. Using his free time at the front desk to do research on the background of all the strange stuff that's been happening to us. He showed me a webpage with an analysis of the history of the Shil na Gig. Nasty stuff, but I guess it's useful.

Tues 26/3/91

Drongo is looking really ropey these days. I guess he's getting nightmares like the rest of us, but he seems to be much worse than we are.

Wonder if any of the stuff Bob was telling me about sympathetic magic is right - could Drongo's blood be being used to hurt him?

Wed 27/3/91

I tried to talk to Drongo about his dreams, but all he would say was that they featured "folk experimenting on him". He still looks a total wreck.

Fri 29/3/91

What have we done?
We left Saddam in power and now he's massacring the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs - after we promised them that if they fought against him then we wouldn't abandon them.

Wed 10/4/91

UN supposed to be going in to Northern Iraq to protect the Kurds. It looks like too little, too late to me.

Tue 30/4/91

9.04 - We're leaving for Loch Fiag in half an hour. The others still think I'm chasing shadows here. Wish I believed it too. I'd far rather be wrong about this.
Drongo's in a worse state than usual. He was actually shivering when he got in today. I'm really not convinced about letting him drive.

18.44 - The CB radios that Drongo modified so seem to be rather better than the standard ones.
Jane and Martin are staying in the village tonight, the rest of us are staying in town. We'd be recognised if we showed up again in such a small place.

Wed 1/5/91

Martin and I went hillwalking today to scout out the land near the lodge. Not good news, there was definitely a sniper at the edge of the woods and we found some discarded bullets too.
Told Jane, but she's still going to head over there after dark to see what she can find.

Thurs 2/5/91

2.47 - Well, we got Jane back safely, but we've lost Charles.
So tired that I can hardly think straight. Guess I'd better get some sleep. If they've got Charles then they know who we are and where to find us. There's no point in running now.

10.22 - Charles appeared at breakfast, calm as anything. He remembers going up to the woods, but then claims that nothing happened and he hitched a ride back with a farmer in the early morning. He's quite insistent that there is nothing here, no story, and that we should all leave.
I'm a bit suspicious that they (whoever 'they' are) have done some hypnosis on him.

Jane had a very long walk through the woods, at some points she climbed up into the trees because she had seen motion sensors of some kind pointed at the ground and wanted to avoid them.

Around 12.30 last night she heard gunshots and went to investigate. She found the bodies of two soldiers in sniper suits (gillie suits they're called, apparently) who looked as if they had been beaten to death. Both had guns and there was a smell of cordite as well as bullet casings on the ground so the weapons had obviously been fired
There was a trail of blood leading away, which suggests that they had shot whatever (or whoever) attacked them. But the blood trail got less and less and eventually disappeared. She saw an entrance, a door, into the hillside after she lost the trail.

Now Drongo heals remarkably quickly, and he's managed to batter people into submission, if not actually to death, after they've shot him.
The obvious conclusion is that somehow someone else has got the same power... that somehow the blood sample they brought here (if the KGB are telling us the truth on that) has been used to pass on his strength and incredibly quick healing abilities.

But it looks like something has gone wrong. Those soldiers were killed by whoever (whatever) has the Drongo-like power... it's out there and it's angry with them, even though they created it and should have kept it safe inside whatever is under the lodge and under the hills here.

We can't think of anything else to do here now, so we're going home.

22.45 - Back in Edinburgh.

Fri 3/5/91

Finally got Drongo to tell us something more about his dreams, on the assumption that maybe there is some link between him and whoever is out there with his blood and his powers.
He dreamed last night of hiding and of being hunted in an area that looked like Loch Fiag.
He was very uncomfortable answering questions, and talking to him made me feel sort of odd, uncomfortable, like with Gamaliel...

He started dreaming after we got back from Russia about being experimented on. Then one night about a month ago there was a dream of smashing his way out of a laboratory and escaping to avoid being hurt again.
Since then his dreams have involved hiding and being hunted and eating sheep in the hills to survive.

Mon 6/5/91

Martin's finally found out about Biogen International. They're a government agency and run directly by the primeminister's office. I guess this means that pursuing the story is a really, seriously bad idea that is going to get us into a lot of trouble at best, and possibly get us killed.

He's also looked at the plantations, the hills, geology, land ownership and land use of the entire area around Loch Fiag. Work started on the lodge, allegedly, in November 1989.

I've found local newspaper reports of an increase in sheep deaths in the area round Loch Fiag in the last month, so that confirms that part of the story, more or less.

Wed 8/5/91

We're back in the Highlands again. Charles is still sulking about the waste of time and insisting that there isn't a story here at all.

We avoided Glen Fiag entirely and drove up an adjacent valley with our new camper van.

Left Jane to sleep and the rest of us hiked over the hills and stood watch over the area by the lodge. We could see the entrance she mentioned, although it was pretty well hidden by building debris.

Jane will take over watching when it gets dark.

Thurs 9/5/91

17.55 - Jane saw a squad of 20 soldiers come out of the entrance last night when it got dark and swap with the day shift. They work in pairs. Four of them have big sniper rifles, the others have smaller weapons and look more mobile.
I'll need to sit Charles down and get him to explain the weapon types slowly before I try a full write-up, my head is spinning with words like calibre and rate of fire...

Drongo had a really bad headache this morning. He said he'd dreamed of being near the camper van last night.
We figured out where we think the person/creature would have been to see the camper van at the angle he described and went up there to look. We found the fresh remains of a sheep there.
I left some sandwiches for the poor thing, in case he/it comes back.
This is really scary though. Suddenly it seems really unsafe to be here. I'm sure Drongo could punch through the side of the camper van if he set his mind to it, and the Drongo-thing that's out there is frightened and angry and hungry and has already killed people.

23.23 - Bob just called in to tell us there had been several explosions near the concealed entrance to the hill - possibly grenades.
Jane saw the Drongo-thing jump into the group of soldiers who had just been hit by the explosions. They fired submachineguns at it, but that barely slowed it down. Eventually it ran for the woods, leaving the dead and injured behind it and sixteen other soldiers turned up to drag them back to the hill.

This is on top of four stretchers she saw being brought in just after dusk.

Jane says the Drongo-thing doesn't move quite right. It walks on two legs and is about 5'10" tall, but looks almost as if it might be a quadruped that has been modified in some way.

Fri 10/5/91

2.15 - Drongo is just back from collecting a motion sensor from the woods for Charles to look at.

Charles now appears to believe that this is a real story, so he's stopped sulking. Unfortunately he doesn't seem entirely sure about how to block the sensor.

I'm off to try and sleep for what's left of the night.

7.46 - Have just joined Jane and Bob on the hillside. It's very cold this early in the morning. Jane's wondering if the Drongo-thing might be living in those ruins we saw in the woods. Well, it's not as if we have any other ideas of where to start looking, so we might as well try there.

9.32 - Drongo says he dreamed of being in pain and moving through the woods and then out of the other side. He has a really bad headache today, looks even worse than usual.

12.04 - Absurdly, we're in the woods with a picnic. We have fizzy pop and cake and a blanket to sit on. This has got to be the world's least convincing alibi, but I suppose that after a night like last night the soldiers might have a few other things to worry about than us blundering around in the woods here.
Jane found an identity card half buried in the ground near the ruins. I guess it belonged to one of the dead soldiers. Apparently he belonged to an agency called PHTACI. Neither Bob nor Martin have a clue what that stands for.

19.55 - The soldiers have just left the bunker, all armed with what looked like flamethrowers. We're going to try to use the ID card to get in to the bunker.

Sat 11/5/91

14.29 - Back safe in Edinburgh. Have had a bath and slept for a few hours and I'm feeling a whole lot better for both.

The ID card got us in to the complex. It was really rather spooky and science fiction like with black metallic walls.

PHTACI stands for Post-Human Threat Analysis and Containment Initiative. None of us like the sound of that.
Drongo isn't 'post-human'... and neither is Jane, in spite of her spiderwoman powers. It's scary to think that there's someone labelling them/us as not really people anymore.

The complex was huge. We followed signs to Biogene International. There were other signs to Albion Industries, so I guess we should check up on them at some point...

Anyhow, we found the labs, which were smashed up pretty badly, and Drongo got thoroughly nervous because he recognised them from his dreams. We searched the offices and the filing cabinets and photographed all the papers we could find, then we emptied all the fridges and freezers and tipped out all the tissue samples, cell cultures and test tubes that we could find. Hopefully they'll be unusable now.

Our luck held until we were almost out, but then two soldiers found us. We ran. Drongo held them off for long enough for the rest of us to escape, and dragged some stuff out of the building site to block the door to the complex, though they shot him several times with their submachineguns. We got back to the camper van and drove straight for Edinburgh, though Drongo insisted on stopping in the first town we passed through to break in to a butcher's shop where he ate a lot of raw meat (ick). The raw meat seems to help him to recover from his injuries.
I had to dig the bullets out of him after we got back here. Almost wish I'd never taken that First Aid course, but someone has to do it, I suppose.

As we were leaving we saw the soldiers catch up with the Drongo-thing. The flame throwers seemed to have much more effect on it than bullets, so I guess it has finally been killed.
Poor creature.

Jane's developing the photos just now, so I guess we'll know more as soon as we get to read the documents.

Sun 12/5/91

Biogene was making what they called a 'chimera' from some poor volunteer along with samples of Drongo's DNA, some components of wolf (to give it a pack instinct and aggression) and some components of cat (for reflexes and night vision). They also put bioplastics under its skin and hardened its knuckles. Unfortunately, after recovering from the initial surgery the chimera started developing cancers, particularly in the brain. The brain cancer caused it to lose the ability to communicate and, according to the scientists, to lose the ability to reason, although it looked to us that its attacks on the soldiers required quite strong reasoning and planning skills.

They experimented on the poor creature, assuming that it was no longer sentient, and when it could stand the pain no longer it broke out, killing most of the scientists in the process.

It looks like there were some other experiments on humans, but they were similarly unsuccessful.

However there was mention of dogs being enhanced so that they could detect specific types of what PHTACI are pleased to call 'non-humans' (Bloody Nazis. What makes them think they have the right to decide who is human and who is not?)
There were dogs at the airport when we went to Paris. They growled at Jane and at me, though not at Bob or Charles... I wonder if this means that Jane and I fit their profile.
The dogs apparently have cybernetic links to their handlers.

Drongo is looking a lot better today. He says the dreams have stopped. And he's claiming on expenses for yetanother new leather jacket to replace the one with bullet holes in.

Susan Phillips - former fashion and beauty journalist, currently trying to move in to hard news stories (and not just as a way of annoying her ex-boyfriend).
Blonde, 6'2" tall in her stiletto heels and with a tendency to find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bob Fudge - cynical serious news reporter, unpopular with some important political figures. Interested in the occult.

Drongo, or, as he is known on more formal occasions, "The Accused", spends his time drinking; modifying, repairing and occasionally riding motorbikes; listening to loud rock music and getting in to fights. He's employed as a technician and bouncer by the news agency and various Fringe shows.
His mother calls him James Bell.

Jane Stuart - paparrazzi photographer, unpopular with many celebrities, has an alcohol problem.

John Huang (deceased) - reporter, known for his integrity, but also, unfortunately, for his belief in UFOs

Charles Reynauld - former reporter of international criminal affairs. Taking a break from chasing Columbian arms dealers in favour of a more peaceful life dealing with Glasgow gang wars.

Martin Farmer - industry and industrial relations journalist.

John Cassidy - anthropoligist, reporter and Renaissance man... Has travelled extensively in the Third World (mainly to avoid university funding authorities and his ex-wife).