Ionisus

Delta Green: Whispers in the Darkness

Part 1

>USCENTCOM HQ
>Tampa, Florida
>1412 HRS...///

"Take a seat, Agent Jimenez."

The room, once an windowless office now discarded as a empty closet, was enclosed within the labyrinth of USCENTCOM headquarters outside of Tampa, Florida. A table was between Jason, who had just walked in, and two men poised grimly on its other end. One of them was a boss of Jason's immediate boss, some assistant director whose responsibilities were a vagueness in the hierarchy of directors and coordinators and "leaders." His name was Charles Brunser and he always had a displeasure for Jason. Every criticism or denial or even plain interaction was barbed with a disdain Jason found palpable. The other man Jason didn't recognize. He had a forgettable appearance that sank into an unfitted business suit. Beady dark eyes and clean shaven, sunken cheeks. Charles Brunser motioned at him.

"This is Stephen Ariello with internal affairs, I thought it be best to have him here for this," Brunser said.

Ariello jerked his head in an expectant nod as Jason muttered a hello in return. His stomach began immediately churning. What had they busted him for? It could be any drug charge and he couldn’t recall any specific event that might have culminated in this sudden cornering. Could Umbra bail him out if they caught him for substances? He tried his best not to show his anxiety but it sank like hot rocks in his gut.

"Um, yeah," Jason said. "Mr. Brunser, what's this for?"

Stephen Ariello produced a digital recorder from under his end of the table, set it on the empty desk, and pressed record.

"We want to know some details about your recent tasking," Brunser said. His fingers were laced together, his composure clearly welcoming and interrogative. Jason was somewhat offended Brunser was using such clear tactics to get him to open up, the same methods the DIA had taught him. It made him rigid and defensive, but what windowless room with Internal Affairs wouldn’t?

"What do you mean?" Jason asked.

"Flight plans had you going into West Virginia," Ariello added flatly. "Is that right?"

"Sir, I dont know if-"

"Jimenez," Brunser mouthed, irritation lining his words,"We have to be sure you weren't breaking any EOs. Flight plan had you going stateside for the tasking, did you stay in the US?"

Jason looked back and forth between them. Something was off, and he didn't understand why they were probing him to break the coveted tenet of OpSec. It wasn’t to say they didn’t make up the rules, or broke then regularly, but interagency taskings were a subject best left to the straight and narrow. It’s what they all adhered to. The scene gave him the realization he was being shaken down, but he didn't understand the why. Was Donnelley and Foster testing him?

"Mr. Brunser I'm sorry but we aren't cleared to discuss this," Jason replied.

Ariello turned off the recording with a forcefully jab of his finger.

"Jimmy, you want things to go smoothly for you?" Brunser asked.

"We're doing this for your sake," Ariello added.

"The recording or the interrogation?"

"Jesus Christ," Brunser hissed. "Are you acting fucking stupid or is this your normal?"

"You flew me to Florida to ask me to share secrets," Jason said. "You're shaking me down for what? What you have on me?"

Ariello hit record again and asked, "At any time did you return to the Middle East?"

"What?"

This time Brunser stopped the recording.

"Before you left on your little adventure Anis al-Shamard was executed by the Daish cell you were tracking. Anis turned."

"What do you mean 'turned'?" Jason asked. The air in the room suddenly felt heavy and oppressive, and it carried the stagnant smell of a neglected place.

"Anis led the cell to our ops in Amman," Brunser spat, his vehemence implicating Jason. "Two agents were abducted and we have three dead Delta Force from the attempted rescue. One agent confirmed dead and we can't find the other. Our whole network of humint assets has been purged out of Syria, they either fled or Daish offed them."

Jason couldn't believe it. He was sure Anis had outed some information, everyone caves to torture eventually. What he had gone through must have been horrendous. He pitied the boy for that. What didn't make sense was how Anis was able to lead them to their operations in Jordan. Anis literally was never exposed to anyone but Jason, and he had never led on about their team. None of this had anything to do with West Virginia either, and internal affairs didn't add up as well. He got the sudden dreadful thought he was being played.

"No way it was Anis," Jason said. "I covered my tracks every time I handled him. It had to be someone else."

"That's not what our sources indicate," Ariello said, his inflection the most stable of the three.

"What do you mean your fucking sources?" Jason growled.

"Watch your fucking mouth," Brunser barked. "'I have half a mind to detain you for the shit show you left behind in Syria. We have five dead Americans because your asset IDed everyone south of Izraa. It's worse than the fucking Lebanon purge. CIA is losing their shit over this."

"I don't know what the fuck this," Jason mouthed, "but one amphetamine asset couldn't collapse our ops and you know that. You're fucking throwing me under the bus."

"British SIS tracked a stocky American arriving in Beirut and traveling inland," Ariello interjected. "They lost him somewhere in Syria after contacting your cell. They were IDed by Jordanian intelligence in Amman before the attack."

"And?"

"Fuck, Jimmy," Brunser exclaimed, "Let us know what you were up to so IA doesn't have to investigate your sorry ass."

"West Virginia," Jason sighed. "You know that already. Check flight patterns, you'll see I didn't go anywhere."

"That's not enough," Ariello said. "Who was your immediate supervisor?"

Jason noticed neither of them had hit record on the device again. The meeting wasn't about the dead agents or Syria at all. It was about Marlene Baughman, Foster, and Donnelley. Lettered agencies played 'my secrets, not yours' between each other all the time, but this wasn't antagonistic. It was blunt and dangerous. They were trying to scare Jason, but was any of it true?

"I'd like to exercise my right to--"

"Oh please," Brunser wheezed out through a disgusted sneer. "Do not go there, Jimenez."

"Agent Jimenez," Ariello said, his voice eerily calm like he was answering a phone, "I understand you don't want to break OpSec. We can go through the right channels to be cleared for it but that'll mean we have to keep you non-operational. We'll have to start an investigation."

"Fine," Jason mouthed. “You going to hit record or is the investigation off the books too?”

"Embassy duty, revoked clearances, reduction in rank," Brunser spat.

Jason leaned back and chuckled. "'Wow, you really want to know, don't you?"

"Get the fuck out of here before I have you scrubbing embassy toilets in the ass end of no where."

>Middle-east
>Amman, Jordan
>1705 HRS...///

The Embassy in Amman was meant to be a punishment, the standard agent likely to feel the sting of administrative busy work, but Jason tried his spiteful best to enjoy it. The work was soul crushing but doable, hardly the worst he’d endured, and It didn’t matter if he was sending emails or working field ops; he was disillusioned with the song and dance and happy to not be in the midst of whatever fallout had transpired. The important thing was to lay low, feel out what Brunser or his keepers wanted to do with him. He had a hard time believing the details of the story, especially about Anis. He knew Anis, knew him. His personality quirks, his modus operandi. His dreams. If he had be played by the teenager he would have seen it from the start, and Anis certainly wouldn’t be headless. Reaching out to his old team would also tip off Brunser, so as much as Jason wanted to he wouldn’t let himself make that call. Instead, after three uneventful weeks pushing pencils in Amman the call came to him, or rather a note.

Cafe Nassam. 8pm local, no phones. Come and see.

It was left on his desk below his keyboard, but he had seen the scribbled chicken scratch before. It was Dan Treston, his linguist. It could have been another ploy against him but Jason had to take this bait. Dan was a good guy, one of the few he liked, and he liked to think Dan felt the same way. How pathetically uncommon, Jason thought.

He commuted to his sweltering condo as usual after work, keen on keeping up appearances. Strapping his .45 to his back, Jason set out in Amman on foot. Cafe Nassam was in a district far from the US embassy and the international housing where his condo resided, so by the time he had found it he was half an hour late. It was a ratty place stuffed in a congested souq back alley with a green canvas sign that stood out against the sagging electrical wires and rusted out overhangs. A thick aroma of sweet shisha wafted from inside, the interior addled with standing smoke as he entered. The walls were once white with a several lines of intricate blue tiles, but years of hookah had stained them an off grey with tinges of sickly yellow. He ignored the wary stares as he began looking for Dan, an equally out of place American caucasian.

Dan’s sheepish yell rang out somewhere in the back and Jason zigzagged through the cafe until he found an impressively hidden nook with a narrow two person table. Dan in all of his pasty, skinny glory, was sucking flavored smoke through a hookah hose, his breath bellowing out in a minty cloud as he said, “Was about to bail after this bowl. You’re late.”

“Yeah, sorry bud. It’s good to see you,” Jason said, sitting down and taking the hookah hose that Dan offered.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say something like that, Jason,” Dan said, grinning impishly.

“Recent events have left me feeling—” He took a drag from the hookah, felt the buzz of the hoksa as he exhaled, “—sentimental.”

“Yeah, me too. We heard Brunser was blaming you for the shitstorm that’s been happening. I’m sorry man, that guy is a prick. Career prick at that.”

“I think it’s more than just finding a fall man,” Jason said.

“I think so too,” Dan said. That surprised Jason. Dan noticed, and continued, “Official story is the cell we were following did the attack.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, that group was shwacked by an air strike a week before the Amman attack in Deir al-Zour. Confirmed, Jason. Their story is bullshit.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Jason muttered. He was shocked despite already deciding the narrative he had been fed was fake. There was something comforting in the affirmation of his gut feeling, but it still felt icy. “So why?”

“I don’t think they even knew, to be honest,” Dan replied. “So far no one can make sense of how or why it all happened.”

“They tried to say Anis outted us. That I let him,” Jason said. He took another hit of hookah and shook his head. There wasn’t anyone around but he scanned their surroundings regardless. His fears had suddenly become incorporeal.

“Well you’ll get a kick out of this, then.” Dan said. He retrieved a folded piece of paper from inside his shirt and handed it to Jason. When he unfolded it the contents were time stamps and a list of IP addresses.

“What is this?” Jason asked.

“So after Anis’s execution video and just after you left one of our secured accounts kept getting encrypted messages. Didn’t think anything of it until I backtraced the IPs. Guess who it belongs to?”

“No…”

“Yep. Anis,” Dan said. He shouted something in Arabic to the host who quickly retrieved an unlabeled bottle of skunky liquor and two glasses. He poured them both a hefty serving while Jason stared at the IPs like the list would reveal something vital. It was just a bunch of numbers that meant nothing to him but he felt their importance. Thank God for the IT folks.

“So what, someone is using his cell phone or lap top or something,” Jason said, looking up over the paper.

“It’s the phone we gave him,” Dan said, gagging as choked down a sip of his whiskey. Jason answered with a gulp of his own, the liquor harsh and fume heavy. It was a good call, they both looked like they needed it. “Good God this shit is bad,” Dan coughed out.

“Okay so it’s Brunser or one of his ass puppets.”

“That’s what I thought,” Dan replied, “but I double checked. Comm team says the phone was never recovered and was deactivated. Unless they’re in on it too they would have found any IP spoof. Shit’s real.”

“You said there were messages?”

Dan sighed. “Yeah, it’s some weird shit man. I’d have given you a log but—”

“Too risky,” Jason interrupted.

“Bingo. My spidey sense was tingling but I have a plan. It’ll take some time and I’ll have to route it all to a stateside website. Deep web one. You planning on leaving Jordan again any time soon?”

“Fuck, I hope so,” Jason answered. “I can take leave whenever. Hell I don’t think they have real work for me in the embassy anyway.”

“Once you leave Jordan I’ll work on it. I think it’s something you’ll want to see for yourself.”

“Damn, alright,” Jason said, grimacing at the thought of having to wait on the messages. It was better than nothing. It was better than wasting away in Amman any moment longer. Besides, West Virginia had made his existence a distracting annoyance. He’d have started his research but just like reaching out to his team he felt it would be too risky. “Dan, thanks man. I really appreciate it.”

“Hook me up with some special K on your way out and you won’t have to thank me. Besides, I want to see where this shit goes. Get the fuck out of Jordan, you’ll hear from me stateside.”

Delta Green: Whispers in the Darkness

>MIDDLE-EAST
>AMMAN, JORDAN
>THREE DAYS PRIOR
>1340 HRS...///

The young man was on his knees, behind him seven men obscured in dusty shemaghs. He was looking at the ground in front of him; looking totally disheveled, his body slumped forward and exhaustedly calm, near lifeless. He was broken. Behind them were the upraised canopies of Palestine Oaks, Mediterranean timbers, and a black Da’ish flag wavering in the wind. Jason knew the young man. His name was Anis al-Shamard. He was nineteen.

The video had been posted early the same morning on a known Islamic State media account, though it was likely post dated and occurred a week or two before today. Jason knew what was coming next. The proclamations bitterly spat from the lead man behind Anis had stopped. Behind him the flash of a knife blade came over his shoulder and across his neck.

“Why don’t they fight?” asked Rich Weidman. The DEA Liaison was standing to Jason’s left in the dimly lit room of the compound, the glare of the monitors giving his apathy a glow. “I don't get why they never fight back.”

“By the time it's the real deal they usually go through a bunch of mock executions,” one of Jason's teammates answered. “They never know what's real or fake.”

Anis’s head was pulled back but Jason could still see his brow scrunch up in pain and his lips mouth out gurgled words. The knives were always dull and the executor began to saw into Anis's neck, locking in the young man's agonizing expression as he began to remove Anis's head. Anis was nineteen. He had worked in Syria selling hot coals on the street. He had wanted to leave Jordan and live in France.

“I ain't going down like that,” Rich said. “Soon as I feel them cutting I'm fighting.”

Jason had thought that way too once. He had told himself defiance until the bitter end, to always rage against the dying of the light. But he had never been where Anis had been. He had never been beaten and tortured and sodomized and at the imagined brink of death over and over again until living had become one fleeting moment into the next, like worthless terminal breaths. He had never been broken.

It was Jason that had convinced Anis to spy for his team. Anis had already lost his brother at the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, but when the Islamic State began their campaign of terror across the middle east Anis had lost his father and his only two sisters as well. It was all too easy for the DIA to recruit him.

“If I were in the same position you were in I'd do something,” Jason had told Anis in a crowded cafe in Amman, Jordan. “I'd get out of that refugee holding pen-”

“Holding pen?” Anis had asked.

“What you stuff cattle into,” Jason had answered. “I'd get out of there and help kill whoever was responsible. To help stop them.”

It seemed noble at the time, to spur a man into righteous danger, to handle him like an ideal on a leash. That was all anyone was to this cause anyway, Jason included. If I were in the same position, Jason would tell himself. Anis wasn’t the first Jason had seen fall. There was nothing noble in seeing Anis's head dangling in the dirt caked bloody hands of an amphetamine chemist cooking “go” pills for terrorists.

The man shifted towards the camera with Anis's head, muttering repeatedly a phrase softly in Arabic. Something dark in the background caught Jason’s attention, something over the man's shoulder. It looked like the dark outline of people standing in the background shade of the Syrian forest.

“Do you see that?” Rich asked.

“See what?” a team member said.

“Dan, what's he saying over and over again?” Jason asked, focusing on the outlines in the background. There was a sudden depth to the grainy video, like Jason was sinking into the background, pulled into the warped timbers and goblet shaped spruces like coral in a sea of darkness, on the edge of nothing. Their stuffy room in Amman began to squeeze inward, suddenly smaller.

“Someone is in the background,” Rich answered. “Look—three guys in the shade. Pause it.”

Dan Treston, their linguist, was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Jimmy,” he said to Jason. “Sounds like he’s murmuring ‘come and see’ over and over again.” Without Jason’s response Dan rewound the video and played it again.

تعال وشاهد (Tueal washahid). Come and see, come and see.

The room’s vosip phone erupted into life and Jason jerked away from his trance on the three figures in the background. Three figures Rich Weidman, Dan Treston, and two other people saw with Jason. He had to remind himself of that. They had seen it too. Three figures behind Anis al-Shamard’s killing. The phone continued its electronic wail. Jason bound for the phone as Rich was remarking about never hearing the landline ring before. Dan agreed, and the entire room went silent watching Jason.

“Jason Jimenez, DIA Amman.”

“Pack your shit, Jimenez. You’re headed stateside.”

---

>BLACKRIVER COUNTY
>WHITE TREE, WEST VIRGINIA
>UNITED STATES
>0605HRS...///

The air was different here, but Jason didn’t think it clean. It was clear and brisk, but it filled his lungs with a cold, dead bite like a fog could settle inside him any moment.Through the cracked asphalt veins of roads slithering through the Appalachian green hills there clung what meant to be a city, but White Tree seemed another world to Jason. It was some fringe place hidden in some forgotten frontier, and he felt he was deep in the womb of the past in all of its mystery and savagery. It reminded him of the most run down towns hollowing out along the Texas highways in his youth, but unlike those soon to be ghost towns White Tree was filled with people as far as he could tell.

Jason had flown into Lewisburg right as his jet lag from Jordan to Washington, D.C. had set in and the ambien was wearing off. On the drive from Lewisburg to White Tree he felt like he was drifting forward more than approaching his next assignment, slipping away into the eerie beauty of rural West Virginia.The director that had called him in for this special assignment had little to say, leaving Jason with the suspicion his superior wasn’t exactly in the know. The agencies involved, and what little he was told about Clyde Baughman’s work, had Jason’s mind reeling—but he also felt like he was coming to something different, something that was meant to happen.

Now he was drifting ever deeper into the woods, feeling choked and lonely. The drive was beautiful but the more lucid he was becoming the more he ached to be fucked up, and perhaps more. The urge came on like an anxiety, something roiling and nagging in his stomach. There were some pain pills, a few gel tabs of LSD, and a laughably small dose of MDMA he had left stateside that he had now, and although any mix of them could get the job done Jason was worried he was hungry for something more. Now that he was back in the states old habits were bubbling up again, and he did his best to focus on the trees, on Baughman, and on whatever dark state op he had been selected for.

Jason, driving a silver rental sudan via his personal fake alias, crested over the rise of the road as it peaked towards the safehouse. There were several cars parked on its closest side and Jason found a place of his own next to a roadster bike complete with a road worn stars and bars flag. Jason chuckled, pulling the flag’s corner to get a complete view of the confederate flag. It seemed out of character for the clandestine feel of the operation so far. An informant? Someone undercover? Only one way to find out, Jason thought, and quickly made his way to the cabin’s front doors.

Delta Green: Whispers in the Darkness

::CLEARANCE REQUIRED - DELTA GREEN::
::MAY ONLY BE VIEWED BY CLEARED PERSONNEL::
((TS/SCI/DG/X1//NOFORN))

(U//FOUO) Name: Jason Jimenez

Dossier

(S//NF//HUMINT) Aliases:

”Boyscout” “JJ” or “Jimmy”

(U//FOUO) Age:

32

(U//FOUO) Gender:

Male

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Appearance:

(S//NF//HUMINT) height: 73.5in / weight: 240lbs / Hair: Brown / Eyes: Green /
(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF)

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Stout, bulky physique. A natural resting glare is complimented by a slightly protruding brow and sharp, dark eyebrows hanging over deep set eyes of dark emerald with golden specks. A straight, wide nose with a divot tip runs down a straight, square face with high cheekbones, an angular jaw, and a freckle line running horizontally under his eyes across his nose. Jason has brunette hair he keeps at about 2-3 inches, brushed up in the non-descriptive modern style with crew fade on the sides. His voice is deep and low yet soft, often mistaken as mumbling when he talks. His accent is a non-locative American inflection with traces of southern drawl noticeable from anyone that has lived in the south.

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Agency/Organization:

DIA Defense Clandestine Activities
Formerly: 24th Special Tactics Squadron, USAF AFSOC/ TF-11 JSOC / AFOSI SOUTHCOM/ DIA Counterintelligence Division, Middle-East

(C//FOUO) Education:

Associate’s Degree (Military Science-Intelligence) – Community College of the Air Force, Associate's Degree (Aerospace Physiology and Medicine) – Community College of the Air Force, Bachelor's Degree (Intelligence Studies) – American Military University, Bachelor’s (Foreign Studies) ongoing

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Background:

Jason was born into a low income family just outside the wards of inner city Houston, Texas, his father a second generation Puerto Rican citizen and his mother an estranged eldest daughter of a well-to-do caucasian family from Georgia. Before he could recall Jason's father disappeared to the Caribbean, chasing a wild and free lifestyle over the sudden responsibility of an unexpected child.This had both shaped his mother’s co-dependence on partners, and gave Jason a difficult time not having a consistent father figure.His mother, very much still trying to live the promiscuous socialite lifestyle of the late 80s and 90s club scene, often left Jason alone for days with family or friends while she partied away. In his early years jason moved frequently, uprooting any friendships or bonding in his adolescence.

Jason had always been a gifted, though socially awkward, adolescent. He was Incredibly smart and with an acute social intelligence, allowing him to understand adult subject matter and perspectives forced upon him by his mother. However, he always felt detached from children of his age. Either too awkward, too shy, or just uninterested, Jason had difficulty fitting in while growing up. It didn't help that he appeared caucasian, despite his hispanic ethnicity, in neighborhoods predominantly occupied by minority populations.

He learned to fight for himself at a young age but it did little to subside the incessant bullying he endured. An angry crier, Jason was teased often for being weak and a “momma's boy”, an attitude and complex that was exacerbated by infrequent visits from his father. The man attempted to make a man out of him, and pushed a grandeur of womanizing machismo. Wanting to please his father, or any other partner his mother was dating at the time, Jason took up sports growing up. Though inheriting athleticism from both parents, Jason's constant feelings of exclusion and loneliness always pushed him away from being successful with his football, swimming, water polo, and martial arts teams. One after another he quit groups the more he realized he wasn't fitting in. This isolationist mentality coupled with the desire to gain adoration and approval from his elders had pushed Jason to the company of older friends on the fringe of the social spectrum. Outcasts, miscreants, non-conformists – anyone that aligned with Jason's identity of an outlier. In his early high school years he began to experiment with drugs amongst these crowds, harmlessly with cannabis at first but then progressing to ecstasy, cocaine, mushrooms, nitrous, and salvia. The more psychedelic and dissociative the high, the more Jason enjoyed it.

It was during during one heavy salvia trip Jason first experienced The Three, dark figures beckoning him to join them. These ominous figures continued to appear during his psychedelic experiences, always appearing behind him, urging him “to come and see”. These three figures always held a sinister nature about them, an ominous aura Jason first concluded was a bad trip, but as these figures continuously showed themselves with the same message, Jason began to wonder if his sanity was intact. Despite numerous recurrences of these beings Jason has dismissed the events as a deep subconscious manifestation that shows up the way a recurring dream would, but some instinctual notion has kept telling Jason something is gravely wrong with those entities.

It was when the Three began to show up that Jason's mother began to spiral deeper into a drug addled depression. Hooked on painkillers and eventually crystal meth, Jason's mother withered away and disappeared into the dark, dank existence of a junkie, leaving Jason to fend for himself for the last two years of high school. Jumping between relatives and friends for a home, Jason was determined to break from the cycle his parents had put him in. He was admitted into the University of Houston pursuing a criminal justice career, thinking the study was more along the lines of criminology. Quickly discovering he had enrolled in the wrong pursuit, and still uncertain and alone as a young adult, Jason hopped from major to major for two years until severe depression brought his grades down low enough to lose the vital grants and scholarships that were keeping him in college.

The dream was gone, the cycle unbroken. Jason was lost. So sure of his place in existence, the naïve expectation of the universe providing, when he fell it shattered his purpose and self identity. From this point on he worked retail and menial jobs, trying to stay afloat during the recession while he slipped more heavily into psychedelics, confident a pattern in the universe would show itself to him. He landed on the Air Force and the Air Force Pararescueman Program.

The “indoc” program at Lackland AFB, San Antonio was an arduous trial, but one Jason was well equipped to tackle. His previous athleticism and head strong nature pushed him through one of the toughest military courses the US military has to offer, two years later emerging top of his graduating class and assigned to the 24th Special Tactics Squadron in Pope Field, North Carolina. Though the squadron was part of JSOC's elite Task Force 11 Jason's first deployment was much more mundane, running MEDEVAC for coalition forces in Afghanistan RC-S from Kandahar AF. During this deployment Jason began to experiment with recreational Ketamine, using the battlefield painkiller to self medicate. Occasionally he'd sneak wild poppy sap for opium, smart enough to mask his system to avoid being caught.

Commended for his analytical awareness and natural propensity for the job, Jason was recommended to rotate back to Afghanistan as part of a backup QRF for Task Force 11, attached to the 75th Ranger regiment stationed in Camp Integrity, Kabul. In 2011 Jason's team was called to support a Task Force 11 operation working in tandem with the CIA's Special Activities Division. Hunting an HVT in Ghazni, TF-11 was reportedly stalled in heavy urban fighting within the city, and the QRF was deployed to provide combat support and extraction. Upon infiltration via HH-60 the team was beset by an inordinate amount of insurgent resistance. Throughout the night the group fought building to building to get to the pinned down JSOC unit, but upon finding them Jason discovered something terribly wrong.

The main complex housing the HVT was covered in strange symbols and adorned with esoteric shrines, paraphernalia, and was littered with casualties baring strange, gruesome wounds. Strange animalistic calls resonated in the night throughout the firefight, but Jason was too focused on triage to notice the ominous callings. While his team attempted to secure the complex he was attacked by members of the original TF-11, the elite forces turning on the QRF as they seemingly defended the HVT, Abn Haqqani al'Qawarzi. Maddening screams resonated deep within the complex as the fight unfolded, Jason's QRF steadily losing the fight against the comrades they were supposed to be rescuing. In the midst of the carnage there was a moment of sickening awareness, when the rancor of the battle paused and Jason beheld three outlined figures in the main hall of the complex, urging him to come with them. Despite the severity of the situation Jason followed. It was the first time Jason abided the enigmatic beings, the Three turning the corner towards the horrible chanting of al'Qawarzi. Turning the corner, Jason beheld the insurgent leader kneeling in the center of an elaborate symbol drawn in blood soaked sand. Before Jason could comprehend what he was seeing a bullet impacted his tactical vest, another piercing into his right thigh. As he fell he returned fire, spraying al'Qawarzi and the TF-11 assailant that had wounded him. The horrendous, bestial sounds ceased with al'Qawarzi's death. Jason was able to stabilize himself just as dawn broke, right before a larger contingent pushed into Ghazni to relieve the fiasco.

When the dust settled Jason was pulled from duty to await judicial punishment for what was described as “the apparent willingness to engage and neutralize allied forced in gross negligence, as well as a disregard for the objectives and sensitivity of the mission.” Originally being tailored for admittance into TF-11, the JSOC commander outright refused to allow “cannibals” to join his team. Because of the bizarre nature of the operation, as well as some undermining string pulling behind the scenes, Jason was not prosecuted but was kicked out of the 24th Special Tactics Squadron and was recommended for discharge. Because the USAF had spent so much money on Jason it was decided (perhaps from outside influences) that he be reclassified into a new profession. This led him to be reassigned as an Operations Intelligence Analyst assigned to AFSOUTH HQ Davis-Monthan AFB.

For two years Jason sat miserably within windowless bunkers supporting ISR operations in the South and Central America. Though he was brilliant in his analytical work, without physical application Jason felt unfulfilled and bored. To escape this he applied to AFOSI, hoping to follow more high-speed operations. Passing the selection process despite failing several polygraph tests (drug use), Jason began to work counterintelligence targeting narco and gun running operations in SOUTHCOM. Operating in Curacao, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Panama, Ecuador, Guatemala and very briefly in Mexico, Jason established himself as a very successful special agent in the brief two years working in OSI.

When it became time to reenlist for a second time he was told he would not be retained. Still marred by the operation in Afghanistan, no commander was willing to redeploy him back into the middle east, and the constant drain of talent of resources to that AOR prevented Jason from pursuing a continually successful career in active duty. Patterns of drug use, though not definitive, was enough for his superiors to question his motives to continue working counterintelligence in narcotics and reinforced their decision to discharge special agent Jimenez.

Upon the recommendation of his detachment commander Jason applied and was accepted into the Defense Intelligence Agency's CounterIntelligence division. In 2015, he deployed to Iraq as a special advisor hunting ISIS amphetamine labs in Iraq, Jordan, and Syria. His immediate successes have fast tracked him to the DIA's shadowy Defense Clandestine Service. From 2016 to 2018 Jason has been training to prepare him for DCS operations, though the nature of his training has him suspect. Rather than focus on clandestine training the DIA has refreshed his advanced medical, intelligence, and counterintelligence training in a more overt capacity, as if he was being prepped for a different joint tasking...

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Personality:

Jason lives two lives, his professional life and his “real” life. A lifetime of shallow relationships, brief intimacy, and constant upheaval has ingrained an “at arms length” complex within him. Those he's let close have always let him down or have taken advantage of him, so he's hesitant to express his deeper feelings and emotions out of fear of rejection, misunderstanding, and punishment. In constant fear of being caught for his habitual drug use, a habit he sees as harmless at worse and enlightening at best, he tends to severely limit his out of work interactions with his colleagues. This has recreated a vicious cycle where Jason longs to be accepted, adored, and loved but is incapable of overcoming his fear of rejection and punishment to allow him to do so. This emotional paradox manifests in chronic depression and low self-esteem, one he self medicates with drugs to continue his self destructive circle.

Though his performance has always been exemplary his bad habits have caused frequent disciplinary actions for tardiness, insubordination, and unprofessional relationships (the casual kind). Despite this, he has never been formally caught, leading Jason to take more and more risky endeavors the more his anonymity reinforces that he's too smart to get caught. Coupled with his longing for acceptance and inclusion, Jason tends to gravitate towards broken people to fit in with his own. Promiscuity naturally filters into his private life, always chasing the brief sexual satisfaction of casual or anonymous sex to give him a false sense of acceptance and love. Nothing meaningful comes these relationships, and so the self destructive cycle continues.

While he often spirals into his own flaws and their repercussions, his belief that life has something promised for him keeps him motivated to excel, as if his success is a preordained path to the happiness he longs for. Whether this is false or not he still musters the work ethic that precedes him. Professionally he is cordial, his veneer of grim disdain easily broken into humorous quips or light-hearted conversation. People that work with him get a conflicted sense that he cares deeply for the people around him but never connects with them. While he does care deeply for his colleagues, it's based on the want to have them accept him for who he truly is.

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Family, Friends, and Associates:

Jason keeps infrequent contact with his mother and even less so with his father. There are extended family members out there, but Jason prefers a wide familial distance. Several DIA associates maintain a business relationship with him, but he otherwise has little consistency with longer term friendships. A few fuck buddies reach out to him here or there, but can hardly be considered friends.

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Likes:

Dark humor, heady discussions, promiscuity, praise, physical exertion, complex problems, deviant behavior (both recreationally and analyzing it).

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Dislikes:

Hardliners, prudes, religion, bullying, authority complexes, pets, victimhood, manipulators, popular personalities.

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Fears:

Oblivion: Jason fears above all else oblivion. Atheism terrifies him, as the idea of nothing after death is far more sinister than any notion of hell. He worries he’s slowly lurching to sudden nothingness, creating an existential angst. He also fears he was never meant for anything great, that the voice of will trudging him along in life is a false assurance.
Rejection: Jason has always sought acceptance and in its absence his weakest traits reveal themselves. He’s quick to assume people don’t like him and responds with aversion and suspicion. At its most tame he’s constantly second guesses his social bonds, at its worst a dangerous spiral of self-loathing and impulsivity.
Being Caught: With such consistent drug use it’s been a miracle Jason hasn’t been caught already, but he knows eventually his time will be up. Despite this, he just can’t help himself. He fears he’ll be exposed and goes through great lengths to hide his proclivities.

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Traits:

STRENGTH: 4
DEXTERITY: 3
STAMINA: 4
BUREAUCRACY: 1
INTELLIGENCE: 5
WILLPOWER: 3

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Skills:

Gifted(+5): First Aid, Awareness
Adept(+4): Interrogation, Marksmanship (long guns), Military Science-Land
Average(+3): Surgery, Marksmanship (hand guns), Criminology
Novice(+2): Persuade, History, hand to hand, SERE

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Languages:

English & Spanish, fluent; Arabic, semi; Farsi & Pashtun, rudimentary.

(DG//SP) Weaknesses:

The Three: These beings have consistently appeared to Jason, mostly when in the depths of an altered state of consciousness, but infrequently in his dreams (and once in person in Afghanistan). Though indifferent in their interaction with Jason, the three hold a sinister aura that portends a dark fate for the man. Whether engendered from his subconscious or from a more dire origin, the Three are watching Jason, waiting for his fate to unfold.

Looking for Love in the All the Wrong Places: Jason has never fit in and the abandonment he endured as a young adult has led him to reach out for unhealthy expressions of intimacy, chasing shallow relationships where base things such as sex and mutual inebriation briefly fill the hole bored into his soul. He has a hard time saying no to a pretty face that's into him, and a harder time letting anyone into his emotional state (or maintaining deep, long term friendships and relationships).

Illusions of Destiny: Fostered by his mother's insistence they were both psychically developed and special, reinforced with his career successes and the periodic appearances of the Three, Jason believes deep down inside existence has something planned for him. He believes he's meant to be great, that he's inherently destined for an ambiguously positive life. While this isn't a weakness outright, shattering that perception could destroy his mental integrity. He may be meant for something, but he foolishly believes it's for good...

Depression/Addiction: Because of his tumultuous upbringing, lack of social interactions, and consistent anxiety and stress from his alternative lifestyle Jason has developed depression that he self-medicates (and exacerbates) with drugs. Without them available he becomes incredibly moody, irritable, and aggressive. While his addictions aren't as physiologically habit forming as of yet, mentally he's addicted to an altered state of consciousness to escape the unprocessed emotions stemming from his depression and trauma.

(S//NF//HUMINT) Off-Duty Clothing/Equipment:

Casually he usually wears straight leg or loose blue jeans, T-shirts or plaid button downs under a black or leather jacket. He has several black and gray slacks, solid colored dress shirts and simple dress shoes. Never dress overcoats, as his large stature makes fitting into them difficult.

(S//NF//HUMINT) Weapons/Equipment:

Kel-Tec KSG with foregrip, HK45CT .45 semi-automatic handgun
Tools/Equipment: A wallet complete with legal identification, $150 cash, and a pre-loaded debit card linked to a fake name (to buy drugs or withdraw money), Notepad and pen.
Misc: Plethora of recreational drugs (Psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, Cocaine, 2C-B/I, LSD, Mescaline, LSD, LSA, assortment of opioid painkillers, Ketamine)

(S//NF) Operational Clothing/Equipment:

Baggy khaki cargo pants, solid black t-shirt, tactical vest with front and side accessory pockets, non-descriptive baseball cap and comm headset.
(S//NF) Weapons: An HK417 w/ an Elcan Specter DR 1x/4x optic, extended mag and foregrip, HK45CT .45 semi-automatic handgun, Kel-Tec KSG semi-automatic shotgun with foregrip. Combat knife with hollow handle (simple survival kit inside).
Tools/Equipment: NVGs, suppressor for both HK weapons (handgun suppressor on-the-job only), BATDOK digital medical system integrated w/ Samsung S7 smartphone, battlefield trauma kit, secure laptop cleared for TS/SCI/DG, and a DIA field satellite connection system (to go classified in remote locations).

::CLEARANCE REQUIRED - DELTA GREEN::
::MAY ONLY BE VIEWED BY CLEARED PERSONNEL::
((TS/SCI/DG/X1//NOFORN))

Character Playlist - Spotify

Delta Green: Whispers in the Darkness

>MIDDLE-EAST
>AMMAN, JORDAN
>THREE DAYS PRIOR
>1340 HRS...///

The young man was on his knees, behind him seven men obscured in dusty shemaghs. He was looking at the ground in front of him; disheveled, his body slumped forward and exhaustedly calm, near lifeless. He was broken. Behind them were the upraised canopies of Palestine Oaks, Mediterranean timbers, and a black Da’ish flag wavering in the wind. Jason knew the man. His name was Anis al-Shamard. He was 19.

The video had been posted early the same morning on a known Islamic State media account, though it was likely post dated and occurred a week or two before today. Jason knew what was coming next. The proclamations bitterly spat from the lead man behind Anis had stopped, and from behind him the flash of a knife blade came over his shoulder and cross his neck.

“Why don’t they fight?” asked Rich Weidman, standing to Jason’s left in the dimly lit room of the compound. “I don't get why they never fight back.”

“By the time it's the real deal they usually go through a bunch of mock executions,” one of Jason's teammates answered the DEA liaison. “They never know what's real or fake.”

Anis’s head was pulled back but Jason could still see his brow scrunch up in pain, and his lips mouth out gurgled words. The knives were always dull, and the executor began to saw into Anis's neck, locking in the young man's agonizing expression as he began to remove Anis's head. Anis was 19. He had worked in Syria selling hot coals on the street. He had wanted to leave Jordan and live in France.

“I ain't going down like that,” Rich said. “Soon as I feel them cutting I'm fighting.”

Jason had thought that way too once. He had told himself defiance until the bitter end, to always rage against the dying of the light. But he had never been where Anis had been. He had never been beaten and tortured and sodomized and at the imagined brink of death over and over again until living had become one fleeting moment to next, like worthless terminal breathes. He had never been broken.

It was Jason that convinced Anis to spy for his team. Anis had already lost his brother at the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, but when the Islamic State began their campaign of terror across the middle east Anis had lost his father and his only two sisters as well. It was all too easy for the DIA to recruit him.

“If I were in the same position you were in I'd do something,” Jason had told Anis in a crowded cafe in Amman, Jordan. “I'd get out of that refugee holding pen-”

“Holding pen?” Anis had asked.

“What you stuff cattle into,” Jason had answered. “I'd get out of there and help kill whoever was responsible. To help stop them.”

It seemed noble at the time, to spur a man into righteous danger, to handle him like an ideal on a leash. That was all anyone was to this cause, anyway, Jason included. If I were in the same position, Jason would tell himself. Anis wasn’t the first Jason had seen fall. There was nothing noble in seeing Anis's head dangling in the dirt caked bloody hands of an amphetamine chemist cooking “go” pills for terrorists.

The man shifted towards the camera with Anis's head, muttering repeatedly a phrase softly in Arabic. Something dark in the background caught Jason’s attention, something over the man's shoulder. It looked like the dark outline of people standing in the background shade of the Syrian forest.

“Do you see that?” Rich asked.

“See what?” a team member said.

“Dan, what's he saying over and over again?” Jason asked, focusing on the outlines in the background. There was a sudden depth to the grainy video, like Jason was sinking into the background, pulled into the warped timbers and goblet shaped spruces like coral in sea of darkness, on the edge of nothing. Their stuffy room in Amman began to squeeze inward, suddenly smaller.

“Someone is in the background,” Rich answered. “Look—three guys in the shade. Pause it.”

Dan Treston, their linguist, was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Jimmy,” he said to Jason, “sounds like he’s murmuring ‘come and see’ over and over again.” Without Jason’s response Dan rewound the video and played it again.

تعال وشاهد (Tueal washahid). Come and see, come and see.

The room’s VOSIP phone erupted into life and Jason jerked away from his trance on the three figures in the background. Three figures Rich Weidman, Dan Treston, and two other people saw with Jason. He had to remind himself of that. They had seen it too. Three figures behind Anis al-Shamard’s killing. The phone continued its electronic wail. Jason bound for the phone as Rich was remarking about never hearing the landline ring before. Dan agreed, and the entire room went silent watching Jason.

“Jason Jimenez, DIA Amman.”

“Pack your shit, Jimenez. You’re headed stateside.”

>BLACKRIVER COUNTY
>WHITE TREE, WEST VIRGINIA
>UNITED STATES
>0605HRS...///

The air was different here, but Jason didn’t think it clean. It was clear and brisk, but it filled his lungs with a cold, dead bite like a fog could settle inside him any moment.Through the cracked asphalt veins of roads slithering through the Appalachian green hills there clung what meant to be a city, but White Tree seemed another world to Jason. It was some fringe place hidden in some forgotten frontier, and he felt he was deep in the womb of the past in all of its mystery and savagery. It reminded him of the most run down towns hollowing out along the Texas highways in his youth, but unlike those soon to be ghost towns White Tree was filled with people as far as he could tell.

Jason had flown into Lewisburg right as his jet lag from Jordan to Washington, D.C. had set in and the ambien was wearing off. On the drive from Lewisburg to White Tree he felt like he was drifting forward more than approaching his next assignment, slipping away into the eerie beauty of rural West Virginia.The director that had called him in for this special assignment had little to say, leaving Jason with the suspicion his superior wasn’t exactly in the know. The agencies involved, and what little he was told about Morales’s death, had Jason’s mind reeling—but he also felt like he was coming to something different, something that was meant to happen.

Now he was drifting ever deeper into the woods, feeling choked and lonely. The drive was beautiful but the more lucid he was becoming the more he ached to be fucked up, and perhaps more. The urge came on like an anxiety, something roiling and nagging in his stomach. There were some pain pills, a few hits of LSD, and a laughably small dose of MDMA he had left stateside that he had now, and although any mix of them could get the job done Jason was worried he was hungry for something more. Now that he was back in the states old habits were bubbling up again, and he did his best to focus on the trees, on Moralez, and on whatever dark state op he had been selected for.

Jason, driving a rental sudan, crested over the rise of the road as it peaked towards the safehouse. There were several cars parked on its closest side, and after finding a place of his own Jason followed in behind Clint and Pari just minutes after their arrival...

Delta Green: Whispers in the Darkness

::CLEARANCE REQUIRED - DELTA GREEN::
::MAY ONLY BE VIEWED BY CLEARED PERSONNEL::
((TS/SCI/DG/X1//NOFORN))

(U//FOUO) Name: Jason Jimenez

Dossier

(S//NF//HUMINT) Aliases: ”Boyscout” “JJ” or “Jimmy”

(U//FOUO) Age: 32

(U//FOUO) Gender: Male

(S//NF//HUMINT) Appearance:

height: 73.5in / weight: 240lbs / Hair: dark brown / Eyes: brown /
(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Stout, bulky physique. A naturally resting glare is complimented by a slightly protruding brow and sharp, dark eyebrows hanging over deep set eyes of light brown with golden specks. A straight nose with a divot tip runs down a straight, somewhat rounded face with high cheekbones, an angular jaw, and freckle line running horizontally under his eyes across his nose. Jason has dark brown hair he keeps at about 2-3 inches, brushed up in the non-descriptive modern style with crew fade on the sides. His voice is deep and low yet soft, often mistaken as mumbling when he talks. His accent is a non-locative American accent with traces of southern drawl more noticeable from those that have lived in the south.

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Agency/Organization:

DIA Defense Clandestine Activities
Formerly: 24th Special Tactics Squadron, USAF AFSOC/ TF-11 JSOC / AFOSI SOUTHCOM/ DIA Counterintelligence Division, Middle-East

(C//FOUO) Education:

Associate’s Degree (Military Science-Intelligence) – Community College of the Air Force, Associate's Degree (Aerospace Physiology and Medicine) – Community College of the Air Force, Bachelor's Degree (Intelligence Studies) – American Military University, Bachelor’s (Foreign Studies) ungoing

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Background:

Jason was born into a low income family just outside the wards of inner city Houston, Texas, his father a second generation Puerto Rican citizen and his mother an estranged eldest daughter of a well-to-do caucasian family from Georgia. Before he could recall Jason's father disappeared to the Caribbean, chasing a wild and free lifestyle over the sudden responsibility of an unexpected child.This had both shaped his mother’s co-dependence on partners, and gave Jason a difficult time not having a consistent father figure.His mother, very much still trying to live the promiscuous socialite lifestyle of the late 80s and 90s club scene, often left Jason alone for days with family or friends while she partied away. In his early years jason moved frequently, uprooting any friendships or bonding in his adolescence.

Jason had always been a gifted, though socially awkward, adolescent. He was Incredibly smart and with an acute social intelligence, allowing him to understand adult subject matter and perspectives forced upon him by his mother. However, He always felt detached from children of his age. Either too awkward, too shy, or just uninterested, Jason had difficulty fitting in while growing up. It didn't help that he appeared caucasian despite his hispanic ethnicity in neighborhoods predominantly occupied by minority populations.

He learned to fight for himself at a young age but it did little to subside the incessant bullying he endured. An angry crier, Jason was teased often for being weak and a “momma's boy”, an attitude and complex that was exacerbated by infrequent visits from his father. The man attempted to make a man out of him by pushing a grandeur of womanizing machismo, and wanting to please his father, or any other partner his mother was dating at the time, Jason took up sports as he grew up. Though inheriting athleticism from both parents, Jason's constant feelings of exclusion and loneliness always pushed him away from being successful with his football, swimming, water polo, and martial arts teams. One after another he quit groups the more he realized he wasn't fitting in.

This isolationist mentality coupled with the desire to gain adoration and approval from his elders had pushed Jason to the company of older friends on the fringe of the social spectrum. Outcasts, miscreants, non-conformists – anyone that aligned with Jason's identity of an outlier. In his early high school years he began to experiment with drugs amongst these crowds, harmlessly with cannabis at first but then progressing to ecstasy, cocaine, mushrooms, nitrous, and salvia. The more psychedelic and dissociative the high, the more Jason enjoyed it.

It was during during one heavy salvia trip Jason first experienced The Three, dark figures beckoning him to join them. These ominous figures continued to appear during his psychedelic experiences, always appearing behind him, urging him “to come and see”. These three figures always held a sinister nature about them, an ominous aura Jason first concluded was a bad trip, but as these figures continuously showed themselves with the same message, Jason began to wonder if his sanity was intact. Despite numerous recurrences of these beings Jason has dismissed the events as a deep, subconscious manifestation that shows up the way a recurring dream would, but some instinctual notion has kept telling Jason something is gravely wrong with those entities.

It was when the Three began to show up that Jason's mother began to spiral deeper into a drug addled depression. Hooked on painkillers and eventually crystal meth, Jason's mother withered away and disappeared into the dark, dank existence of a junkie, leaving Jason to fend for himself for the last two years of high school. Jumping between relatives and friends for a home, Jason was determined to break from the cycle his parents had put him in. He was admitted into the University of Houston pursuing a criminal justice career, thinking the study was more along the lines of criminology. Quickly discovering he had enrolled in the wrong pursuit, and still uncertain and alone as a young adult, Jason hopped from major to major for two years until severe depression brought his grades down low enough to lose the vital grants and scholarships that were keeping him in college.

The dream was gone, the cycle unbroken. Jason was lost. So sure of his place in existence, the naïve expectation of the universe providing, when he fell it shattered his purpose and self identity. From this point on he worked retail and menial jobs, trying to stay afloat during the recession while he slipped more heavily into psychedelics, confident a pattern in the universe would show itself to him. He landed on the Air Force, like both his grandfathers, and specifically the Air Force Pararescueman Program.

The “indoc” program at Lackland AFB, San Antonio was an arduous trial, but one Jason was well equipped to tackle. His previous athleticism and head strong nature pushed him through one of the toughest military courses the US military has to offer, two years later emerging top of his graduating class and assigned to the 24th Special Tactics Squadron in Pope Field, North Carolina. Though the squadron was part of JSOC's elite Task Force 11 Jason's first deployment was much more mundane, running MEDEVAC for coalition forces in Afghanistan RC-S from Kandahar AF. During this deployment Jason began to experiment with recreational Ketamine, using the battlefield painkiller to self medicate. Occasionally he'd sneak wild poppy sap for opium, smart enough to mask his system to avoid being caught.

Commended for his analytical awareness and natural propensity for the job, Jason was recommended to rotate back to Afghanistan as part of a backup QRF for Task Force 11, attached to the 75th Ranger regiment stationed in Camp Integrity, Kabul. In 2011 Jason's team was called to support a Task Force 11 operation working in tandem with the CIA's Special Activities Division. Hunting an HVT in Ghazni, TF-11 was reportedly stalled in heavy urban fighting within the city, and the QRF was deployed to provide combat support and extraction. Upon infiltration via HH-60 the team was beset by an inordinate amount of insurgent resistance. Throughout the night the group fought building to building to get to the pinned down JSOC unit, but upon finding them Jason discovered something terribly wrong.

The main complex housing the HVT was covered in strange symbols and adorned with esoteric shrines, paraphernalia, and was littered with casualties baring strange, gruesome wounds. Strange animalistic calls resonated in the night throughout the firefight but Jason was too focused on triage to notice the ominous callings. While his team attempted to secure the complex he was attacked by members of the original TF-11, the elite forces turning on the QRF as they seemingly defended the HVT, Abn Haqqani al'Qawarzi. Maddening screams resonated deep within the complex as the fight unfolded, Jason's QRF steadily losing the fight against the comrades they were supposed to be rescuing. In the midst of the carnage there was a moment of sickening awareness, when the rancor of the battle paused and Jason beheld three outlined figures in the main hall of the complex, urging him to come with them. Despite the severity of the situation Jason followed. It was the first time Jason abided the enigmatic beings, the Three turning the corner towards the horrible chanting of al'Qawarzi. Turning the corner, Jason beheld the insurgent leader kneeling in the center of an elaborate symbol drawn in blood soaked sand. Before Jason could comprehend what he was seeing a bullet impacted his tactical vest, another piercing into his right thigh. As he fell he returned fire, spraying al'Qawarzi and the TF-11 assailant that had wounded him. The horrendous, bestial sounds ceased with al'Qawarzi's death. Jason was able to stabilize himself just as dawn broke, right before a larger contingent pushed into Ghazni to relieve the fiasco.

When the dust settled Jason was pulled from duty to await judicial punishment for what was described as “the apparent willingness to engage and neutralize allied forced in gross negligence, as well as a disregard for the objectives and sensitivity of the mission.” Originally being tailored for admittance into TF-11, the JSOC commander outright refused to allow “cannibals” to join his team. Because of the bizarre nature of the operation, as well as some undermining string pulling behind the scenes, Jason was not prosecuted but was kicked out of the 24th Special Tactics Squadron and was recommended for discharge. Because the USAF had spent so much money on Jason it was decided (perhaps from outside influences) that he be reclassified into a new profession. This led him to be reassigned as an Operations Intelligence Analyst assigned to AFSOUTH HQ Davis-Monthan AFB.

For two years Jason sat miserably within windowless bunkers supporting ISR operations in the South and Central America. Though he was brilliant in his analytical work, without physical application Jason felt unfulfilled and bored. To escape this he applied to AFOSI, hoping to follow more high-speed operations. Passing the selection process despite failing several polygraph tests (drug use), Jason began to work counterintelligence targeting narco and gun running operations in SOUTHCOM. Operating in Curacao, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Panama, Ecuador, Guatemala and very briefly in Mexico, Jason established himself as a very successful special agent in the brief two years working in OSI.

When it became time to reenlist for a second time he was told he would not be retained. Still marred by the operation in Afghanistan, no commander was willing to redeploy him back into the middle east, and the constant drain of talent of resources to that AOR prevented Jason from pursuing a continually successful career in active duty. Patterns of drug use, though not definitive, was enough for his superiors to question his motives to continue working counterintelligence in narcotics and reinforced their decision to discharge special agent Jimenez.

Upon the recommendation of his detachment commander Jason applied and was accepted into the Defense Intelligence Agency's CounterIntelligence division. In 2015, he deployed to Iraq as a special advisor hunting ISIS amphetamine labs in Iraq, Jordan, and Syria. His immediate successes have fast tracked him to the DIA's shadowy Defense Clandestine Service. From 2016 to 2018 Jason has been training to prepare him for DCS operations, though the nature of his training has him suspect. Rather than focus on clandestine training the DIA has refreshed his advanced medical, intelligence, and counterintelligence training in a more overt capacity, as if he was being prepped for a different joint tasking...

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Personality:

Jason lives two lives, his professional life and his “real” life. A lifetime of shallow relationships, brief intimacy, and constant upheaval has ingrained an “at arms length” complex within him. Those he's let close have always let him down or have taken advantage of him, so he's hesitant to express his deeper feelings and emotions out of fear of rejection, misunderstanding, and punishment. In constant fear of being caught for his habitual drug use, a habit he sees as harmless at worse and enlightening at best, he tends to severely limit his out of work interactions with his colleagues. This has recreated a vicious cycle where Jason longs to be accepted, adored, and loved but is incapable of overcoming his fear of rejection and punishment to allow him to do so. This emotional paradox manifests in chronic depression and low self-esteem, one he self medicates with drugs to continue his self destructive circle.

Though his performance has always been exemplary his bad habits have caused frequent disciplinary actions for tardiness, insubordination, and unprofessional relationships (the casual kind). Despite this, he has never been formally caught, leading Jason to take more and more risky endeavors the more his anonymity reinforces that he's too smart to get caught. Coupled with his longing for acceptance and inclusion, Jason tends to gravitate towards broken people to fit in with his own. Promiscuity naturally filters into his private life, always chasing the brief sexual satisfaction of casual or anonymous sex to give him a false sense of acceptance and love. Nothing meaningful comes these relationships, and so the self destructive cycle continues.

While he often spirals into his own flaws and their repercussions, his belief that life has something promised for him keeps him motivated to excel, as if his success is a preordained path to the happiness he longs for. Whether this is false or not he still musters the work ethic that precedes him. Professionally he is cordial, his veneer of grim disdain easily broken into humorous quips or light-hearted conversation. People that work with him get a conflicted sense that he cares deeply for the people around him but never connects with them. While he does care deeply for his colleagues, it's based on the want to have them accept him for who he truly is.

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Likes:

Dark humor, heady discussions, promiscuity, praise, physical exertion, complex problems, deviant behavior (both recreationally and analyzing it).

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Dislikes:

Hardliners, prudes, religion, bullying, authority complexes, pets, victimhood, manipulators, popular personalities.

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Fears:

Jason fears above all else oblivion. Atheism terrifies him, as the idea of nothing after death is far more sinister than any notion of hell. He worries he’s slowly lurching to sudden nothingness, creating an existential angst. He also fears he was never meant for anything great, that the voice of will trudging him along in life is a false assurance.

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Bonds & Opinions:

Field left intentionally blank

(TS/SCI/DG/X1//NF) Skills:

Gifted(+5): First Aid, Awareness
Adept(+3): Interrogation, Marksmanship (long guns), Military Science
Average(+2): Surgery, Marksmanship (hand guns), Criminology
Novice(+1): Persuade, History, hand to hand, SERE

(DG//SP) Weaknesses:

The Three: These beings have consistently appeared to Jason, mostly when in the depths of n altered state of consciousness, but infrequently in his dreams (and once in person in Afghanistan). Though indifferent in their interaction with Jason, the three hold a sinister aura that portends a dark fate for the man. Whether engendered from his subconscious or from a more dire origin the Three are watching Jason, waiting for his fate to unfold.

Looking for Love in the All the Wrong Places: Jason has never fit in and the abandonment he endured as a young adult has led him to reach out for unhealthy expressions of intimacy, chasing shallow relationships where base things such as sex and mutual inebriation briefly fill the hole bored into his soul. He has a hard time saying no to a pretty face that's into him, and a harder time letting anyone into his emotional state (or maintaining deep, long term friendships and relationships).

Illusions of Destiny: Fostered by his mother's insistence they were both psychically developed and special, reinforced with his career successes and the periodic appearances of the Three, Jason believes deep down inside existence has something planned for him. He believes he's meant to be great, that he's inherently destined for an ambiguously positive life. While this isn't a weakness outright, shattering that perception could destroy his mental integrity. He may be meant for something, but he foolishly believes it's for good...

Depression/Addiction: Because of his tumultuous upbringing, lack of social interactions, and consistent anxiety and stress from his alternative lifestyle, Jason has developed depression that he self-medicates (and exacerbates) with drugs. Without them available he becomes incredibly moody, irritable and aggressive. While his addictions aren't as physiologically habit forming as of yet, mentally he's addicted to the altered state of consciousness to escape the unprocessed emotions stemming from his depression and trauma.

(S//NF//HUMINT) Off-Duty Clothing/Equipment:

Casually he usually wears straight leg or loose blue jeans, T-shirts or plaid button downs under a black or leather jacket. He has several black and gray slacks, solid colored dress shirts and simple dress shoes. Never dress overcoats, as his large stature makes fitting into them difficult.

(S//NF//HUMINT) Weapons: Kel-Tec KSG with foregrip, HK45CT .45 semi-automatic handgun
Tools/Equipment: A wallet complete with legal identification, $150 cash, and a pre-loaded debit card linked to a fake name (to buy drugs or withdraw money), Notepad and pen.

(DG/SP//HUMINT) Misc: Plethora of recreational drugs (Psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, Cocaine, 2C-B/I, LSD, Mescaline, LSD, LSA, assortment of opioid painkillers, Ketamine)

(S//NF) Operational Clothing/Equipment:

Baggy khaki cargo pants, solid black t-shirt, tactical vest with front and side accessory pockets, non-descriptive baseball cap and comm headset.
(S//NF) Weapons: An HK417 w/ an Elcan Specter DR 1x/4x optic, extended mag and foregrip, HK45CT .45 semi-automatic handgun, Kel-Tec KSG semi-automatic shotgun with foregrip. Combat knife with hollow handle (simple survival kit inside).
Tools/Equipment: NVGs, suppressor for both HK weapons (handgun suppressor on-the-job only), BATDOK digital medical system integrated w/ Samsung S7 smartphone, battlefield trauma kit, secure laptop cleared for TS/SCI/DG, and a DIA field satellite connection system (to get classified in remote locations).

::CLEARANCE REQUIRED - DELTA GREEN::
::MAY ONLY BE VIEWED BY CLEARED PERSONNEL::
((TS/SCI/DG/X1//NOFORN))

Delta Green: Whispers in the Darkness

Here's a spotify playlist for the RP. It's collaborative, so go ahead and add to it.

https://open.spotify.com/user/1276126865/playlist/6Ya4Xk3trRfsI7fBnfbblC?si=9WeBgHqZS2WisnuOH8M3ow

Edit: Posted my character here, now it's moved.

Faces in the Moonlight: Trust Games and Shadow Wars, An Occult Action Thriller

Hopefully not...But I was taken away from anything leisure between working conventions, mid-terms, and life in general. If it has been on pause since...about two weeks ago I'm willing to jump right back in.

Faces in the Moonlight: Trust Games and Shadow Wars, An Occult Action Thriller

A POST! It's entirely prologue material but I wanted to get Jason IC and in the direction of the safe house. Also I wanted play with some foreshadowing and "warm up" writing.

Faces in the Moonlight: Trust Games and Shadow Wars, An Occult Action Thriller

Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, Washington, D.C.

“Agent Jimenez, this is Greg Anapest from the CIA. Greg, this is special agent Jimenez,” Deputy Director Bob Weissing mouthed as Jason stepped into his office. The director's hand was out stretched towards Jason, open palmed as if he was presenting the grand finale of an act only Greg Anapest was audience to. A courteous knife hand Jason thought, but Bob Weissing's expression was anything but amused. The deputy director was a curmudgeon of a man but had a particular distaste for Jason, a mood he expected to walk into since being pulled suddenly without reason from Amman. The stranger, a gangly man whose gaunt visage showed his age as much as his snowy combed over hair, pushed himself out of his seat and extended a handshake Jason's way. Jason took it readily, feeling the man's bulbous joints through his skin as he squeezed. Hunger oozed out of the bottomless pits of his eyes.

Despite Bob Weissing's order in the DIA's hierarchy his office was small, a box of a room with large panel windows overlooking a verdant horizon of trees where the base hadn't snuffed the earth with concrete. Adorning the walls were keep safes of old military send offs and numerous photographs of Weissing mid-handshake with officials. Jason thought he saw Leon Panetta in one of them. It was picturesque, the total of a lifetime of successful sums. It said stability, the factory line American dream, and it felt like a cage. Weissing ushered Jason to take a seat next to Anapest, the emaciated man studying Jason closely with the vaguest expression of amusement glowing through his thin, stretched out face. He glanced to Weissing, eyebrows raising as if to cue him to begin talking.

“Jason, I didn't keep you in the know about pulling you out of Jordan because I didn't want anyone talking, especially you,” Bob said. “DOJ is putting together an inter-agency task force, counter-narco. Just up your alley.”

Jason's eyes squinted, not sure why the Department of Justice would have anything to do with his agency, especially for narcotics operations. “AOR?”

“Mexico...,” Anapest interjected, the word trailing off as he decided what would follow, “and potentially some other countries.”

“You worked SOUTHCOM before coming here right,” Weissing continued, “OSI?”

“Yes sir,” Jason responded, knowing Weissing knew that already. It made him feel like he was being talked into a trap. “Working HUMINT, following military purchases, drugs – excuse me, Sir – why get the DIA in on this? Foreign military making some shady deals or-”

“Jesus Christ, Jimenez,” Weissing spat, shaking his head, “You wanted your boots touching sand right? Field work, high speed?”

“Yes sir, I ju-”

“Right?” Weissing emphasized. Jason repeated the word back, choosing not to test his commander's consistently short fuse. Anapest sat quietly watching Weissing, the same content expression making his inhuman face that much more haunting. It reminded Jason of a shark wearing a wolf suit.

“Jason, I don't know what to do with you. I didn't ask for you, I didn't appoint you – you want to chase jihadi meth labs with your hands tied by the UN be my fucking guest, I'll forget you were even stationed there.”

Jason scanned the floor for the right words, realizing just how deep the hole he had suddenly dug. Weissing was just looking for him to nod his head until he wasn't his problem anymore, but the set up seemed off. The fact that there were no Department of Justice representatives in this meeting was enough to pique Jason's intrigue, but now hearing his boss not wanting him sent his focus reeling.

“Ghazni,” Greg said.

“What?” Jason asked. Even Weissing looked confused, now darting his eyes between Jason and Anapest.

“Ghazni, you walked in on something that closed some doors for you. Am I right?” Anapest said, any animation of emotion sucked into the void of his gaze. It bored into Jason, made his back tense up and want to curl. He sat unresponsive, face wracked with confusion as he stared back at Anapest.

“Yeah...” Jason finally whispered.

“You work with us, maybe you'll get to open a different door.”

*****

The plane ride was a dreamless sleep, the droning of the commercial aircraft a white noise lullaby that let the ambien Jason downed last night ease him back in. The flight was a red eye to begin with but the time difference from Washington D.C. to Tuscon left Jason enough hours to sleep off the rest of the sedative. Normally he wouldn't take ambien unless it was for fun but he always had enough around to help hard reset his sleep cycle to fit the time zone. When he did sleep on ambien he hardly remembered his dreams but he always woke up with the sense that he had been somewhere else. The vague recollection wasn't so much remembrance as it was instinctual, three steps removed from the fleeting memory of a dream. When the final approach rocked him awake he felt nothing instead, as if the time had slipped away between moments and some part of him with it. Jason groggily departing the plane to the airport tarmac, turning around and staring at the graveyard shift workers take his pelican cases and luggage bags and stack them on a wheeled cart right outside the private passenger plane. In his hypnagogic state he envisioned the aircraft was a longboat, his missing time a stagnant river of black stretched out into starless haze of the dwindling night beyond. It reminded him of the river Styx. He scoffed at his dramatic imagination, wiping his face with his hand as the luggage cart was wheeled to him. No words between them but a muttered 'thank you' and an automatic 'you bet'.

Jason ordered a local taxi to take him to a car rental lot across town, skipping the convenience of getting a ride at the airport. The rule Jason had given himself was to never take an airport rental, the government travel card would be too easy to anticipate and to trace. He wasn't anticipating being monitored or followed and more than pretending he was the spy that never was he was afraid of leaving any trail of evidence that could in some way link back to his off duty habits. Waiting outside the terminal Jason began to look at Tuscon's craiglist page for casual encounters. He didn't know why he meant to start there, it was always the same in each city. Bots, too many woman asking for “flowers” for sex, or the occasional 'want BBC only' ads. He moved on to other sites he was successful with before, browsing the catalog of available partners while a dark blue dodge caravan eased to a stop in front of him with a faint protest of squealing breaks.

“Mr. Jason?” the driver asked out his passenger window. He was a Native American man with clay red skin and a hooked nose like a sloping butte, his salt and pepper hair pulled back and braided into a tail. Jason confirmed it was him and they both began loading his various cases.

“I thought you would be Mexican,” the driver said, not looking at Jason as they loaded his luggage in the back.

“I thought you would be too,” Jason said through a smirk. The driver chuckled, rounding his car with Jason heading towards the other side. The driver replied, “Heh, I guess so. Where are you heading?”

“In town, I need a car rental place. Doesn't matter which just not here.” The driver began to traverse the city, the orange-purple expanse giving way to sun peaking over the elevation in the distance. Jason hadn't been here in a few years but it felt as if it had been decades. The scenery, the drab accumulation of strip malls and urban patchwork in the sparse valley of tall cacti, was exactly how he had left it. Yet he felt unfamiliar to this place and had felt so since waking up from the plane. When the ambiguous, ugly architecture of the city lost his attention he went back to his phone.

Wanting a few drinks and good company. Let's see where the night takes us! Pass, Jason thought. He wasn't interested in someone that didn't know what she was looking for or was too afraid to outright ask for it. Any inkling of wanting a relationship was a pass as well. He didn't want anything that could give the illusion of long term figuring this was the equivalent of a TDY in terms of how long he'd be in Arizona. I'm looking for someone that can keep up with me and my friend and satisfy our kinkier wants. 420 friendly, be disease free. Send pic of your face and your cock and you'll get pics in return. No face no pics boys ;). Better, could be a bot though, Jason thought. He took the bait and began writing an email in response.

“So what's with the name?” the driver asked. He sounded cordial enough, genuinely curious and not just sounding bored. There was a confident calmness to him. Every motion, every glance seemed deliberate but measured. It was equally comforting and unnerving to Jason.

“I'm a coconut I guess,” Jason said through a smile.

“Coconut? Boy you look like mayonnaise. Spanish name? European or something?” the driver asked.

Jason sighed out, “The great diaspora of America. Part Puerto Rican. I'm sure I have a little of your tribe in me too.”

“Which tribe is that?”

“You tell me,” Jason quipped. The man shook his head and gave him a glance, looking amused more than critical. He didn't answer as he focused back on the road, giving Jason the impression despite the smile he might have told the wrong joke. He checked his email for the ops house location one more time, trying to commit Foster's name to memory. He'd call him when he got his rental car but for now he looked around the front seats trying to spot some sort of cigarette case. He asked for one and the man produced a crumbled package of Camels.

“No American Spirit, nothing um-”

“What, Native? You looking for my peace pipe and whole leaf tobacco?” the drive asked sharply. Jason shook his head, stammering out a sorry that never quite jumped from his lips before the driver burst out in raucous laughter. Jason gave him a perplexed expression but still managed to laugh with him despite his embarrassment.

“Ah hah haha – Oh man! Don't worry there Mr. Jason. You want a smoke or not?”

“To tell you the truth,” Jason answered, “ I usually don't smoke. I just wanted to see if you had anything different.” He waved his hand and the driver produced one for himself, letting the unlit cigarette bob between his lips as he asked, “Different? You looking for grass?”

“Eh,” Jason said with a shrug. He meant tobacco but the driver was willing enough to talk drugs so he obliged, “lasts too long in the system. Blow, molly, lucy – any of that?” The car turned into a residential street adorned with shabby houses hidden in sageland trees, sheet metal fences, or some neglected car or machinery. The roads snaked up low hills away from the airport part of town and Jason could only guess how far away from downtown. It didn't matter, he was heading out of Tuscon after this to the safe house. The driver gave an uncertain answer with the sway of his head, saying, “I have a nephew – real big in the party scene, you know? Flips coke from the Mexicans. Gets other drugs from Cali, makes runs and what not. He probably has what you're looking for.”



“You aren't worried I'm gonna sting you?” Jason was surprised how open the man was about it all, he could have easily passed for a cop. The man gave him a slow regard, the lightheartedness draining from his countenance.

“You?” he asked in a low, tense tone. “I have nothing to worry about. Not from you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jason said, looking all the more confused. His phone began to ring.

“You have tunnels in your eyes. Holes, deep ones. At the bottom I see Three,” the driver said, right as Jason saw Foster's number come up on his phone. His stomach tried to reach the ground when he heard the man, but before he could say anything the call went through.

“You hit the ground?” Foster asked succinctly. He sounded rushed.

“Yeah,” Jason replied, shaking his head to get out of his shock,” I mean uh yes sir. Sorry, Ambien's still hitting me.”

The car came to a stop in front of a dilapidated rental lot, its wire fence wrapped in cheap tarp signs that were long ago shredded by the elements. The driver stepped out and began to stack Jason's luggage outside the car. “Blythe knows you're coming. You're running solo for the most part on intel. No RFIs, no training wheels, no special clearances. Use what the agency has you cleared for. I need you on this quick.”

Jason stepped out of the car, “Rog, boss. Hey c-”

Click. What the fuck, Jason thought. No indoc briefing, no details, no support. It was all looking to be a 'spook' operation, and while he always wanted such an assignment the vagueness of everything was unsettling. The sensation reminded him of the driver. He was already in his mini-van with his left arm pressed flat against the outside of the door, a slip of paper between his middle and index finger. Jason asked for the price of the ride and the man gave it, extending the number Jason's way and taking a wad of cash from him.

“Take these numbers, the second one is my nephew. Tell him Uncle Mitch give it to you,” Mitch said. Jason took the number, replying, “Thank you. Hey what did you mean earlier? With my eyes and holes and what not?”

“The Coyote is after you.” A grimness emanated from the man, a predatory presence that barbed his reply. “We'll meet again, Jason.”

He left Jason standing in front of the lot watching the man's car chase the sunrise into the nothingness of the Arizona wilderness. He saw the outline of the car seats inside through the back window but for the briefest of moments he thought he saw the outline of three figures sitting in the back staring back at him.

Faces in the Moonlight: Trust Games and Shadow Wars, An Occult Action Thriller

I'm the worst offender here, life will not stop from distracting me. Every day I'm trying to get to a post, catch up on reading, etc - I have half a post written and some cool stuff in the works and I'm not letting go of this awesome storyline until you kick me out haha. I understand my tardiness and if I don't have a spot I completely understand but I'm still committed to jumping in and making a creepy, cool story.