Arkham International: Call of the Cursed Sea – Chapter Ten: Arkham

CHAPTER TEN: ARKHAM

by Josh Reynolds

“Did you know about it?” Banks asked, as Commissioner Qiana Taylor closed her office door. She held up a finger without looking at him and reached into her pocket for a dried lump of meat that had once been an ear. The ear had been tattooed with a ward of silence by an unsteady hand at some point in the past, and as she murmured softly to it, the ink flared. The bound spell would ensure that the next few minutes would not be overheard by anyone out in the office, or elsewhere.

It wasn’t that she was paranoid, but experience had taught her that someone was always listening where they shouldn’t, especially of late. The Foundation wasn’t the opaque vessel she’d assumed, but a sieve, leaking information to God alone knew where. How else to explain the recent attacks on Foundation agents, or the trap set for Hudson and Antonova – or the one meant to claim her life as well? If someone was trying to tell her something, she wanted to let them know the message had been received.

Only when the ear’s radiance had faded did she turn to Banks and Scarborough, who sat across from her at her desk. Both looked tired. Given that they’d only just gotten back from overseas, she supposed that was understandable. “Not until it was happening,” she said, belatedly answering Banks’ question. “By then it was too late.”

Banks grunted. “They killed Pickell. Lumley killed Pickell.”

“I know. It was in his report.” Lumley’s report had been chillingly precise; better put together than most of her agents, other than Osborne and Scarborough, could manage. Everything accounted for, even the number of rounds expended. It was as if the man were trying to drown her in numbers.

“He executed him.”

Taylor could hear the indignation in Banks’s voice, and sighed. “Pickell was a lost cause, if your description of his… condition is to be believed. He’d have taken to the sea himself before long.” She’d seen what happened when someone succumbed to the taint of the Deep Ones before; she still had nightmares about the visit she’d paid to a certain camp in Kansas, as far from the sea as one could get, full of listless… people, arrested during a raid on a cannery plant near Innsmouth. The American government was keeping them under special observation, with Foundation assistance.

Banks flushed. “That’s no excuse! There’s still a such thing as due process…”

“Is there?” Scarborough said. “Maybe it doesn’t apply to fish-monsters.”

“That’s one for the legal department,” Taylor said. And it was something that they were mulling over. How did one classify something that was technically nonhuman but sentient? How did one treat it – them? – when it came to legal rights? It was a question in need of answering. Humanity shared the planet with at least three nonhuman sentient species at the moment. Could they be afforded the same rights as a human? Would they even care? It made Taylor’s head hurt to consider it. “How is Nkosi?”

“Hurting, but on the mend, last we saw,” Banks said. “He might be able to help us decipher those markings we found in the tumulus – lair? – whatever you want to call it, if Lumley ever turns them over.”

“He will. I’ll make sure of it,” Taylor said.

Scarborough looked at Taylor. “Lumley was shadowing us the entire time. We were a stalking horse. Was that your idea?”

Taylor frowned. “No. And if it had been, I’d have told you. As I said, I didn’t know about any of this until it was too late.” She sat down in her chair and leaned back, studying the pencils in her ceiling. She was tired. She needed a break but had the feeling she wasn’t going to get one any time soon. “You both know how the Foundation works by now. But even our autonomy has its limits, especially these days. Things are unsettled. And when things get unsettled, governments get panicky.”

“Lumley didn’t look especially panicky,” Scarborough mused. “And the way he and his men hit those creatures spoke to training – lots of it.” She leaned forward. “So, who’s been doing the training, if not you, and for how long?”

Taylor tugged on her earlobe. She’d been wondering the same thing since her meeting with Malden. This whole thing had clearly been in the works for some time. The Arkham disaster might have precipitated the perceived need for a militaristic wing of the Foundation, but someone had been getting ready to fill that need for a long time. How else to explain how she suddenly had nearly a hundred extra agents – all soldiers – who didn’t need things explained to them? Who saw monsters and knew the best place to put a bullet, rather than running in fear? Someone, Malden maybe, had been working towards this behind her back. And she wasn’t happy about it in the least.

Still, no sense looking a gift horse in the mouth. Not when they desperately needed warm bodies. “That isn’t important at the moment. What is important is making sure we put them to effective use.”

Scarborough and Banks exchanged a wary look. Taylor didn’t blame them. This was foreign territory for all of them. Banks cleared his throat. “Meaning?”

Taylor took a deep breath. “There are more hot spots like Scapa Flow popping up all over the map. Dozens, in fact. Not just Deep Ones, but other things. Cults, madmen, and monsters. It’s as if all of them have decided to come out to play, all at once, for reasons we still don’t understand. We’re looking at a cascading paradimensional disruption the likes of which I’ve never seen. Even Arkham is small potatoes in comparison. But for once, we might have the firepower to take the fight to the enemy.” She sighed and sat up.

“Let’s hope it’ll be enough.”

Read or listen to more of Arkham International Season Two: Call of the Cursed Sea.

Read or listen to Arkham International Season One: Shadow of the Drowned City.