"Her vitals are normal, she's perfectly healthy. No signs of injury either. If there was something to do with an anomaly that was wrong with her, I wouldn't be able to tell from any kind of medical exam."
"Alright, that's fine." Sawyer's monotone voice reaches the examiner that had come from the medical ward just before she left the room, leaving Sawyer and Claudia alone.
"So, were you briefed on cryptids?" Sawyer doesn't sit down on the chair opposite Claudia that's now left vacant by the examiner.
"Yeah, but… it's still hard to believe." Claudia, the newest recruit of Sawyer's unit 24 replies with uncertainty.
She manages to lift her head up after staring at the floor and tries to make eye contact with Sawyer.
"You want me to… fight those things?"
"As per our arrangement, you will be fighting alongside the rest of my unit."
"I - I don't even know how to use a gun."
"You'll learn."
Claudia sits in silence for a bit, anticipating any new piece of information to come from Sawyer. However, when Sawyer doesn't continue talking, she decides to speak up.
"When can I go home?"
"Not until Morris Lavender has been found."
"But-"
Sawyer cuts her off. "Lavender knows about you, he was in charge of researching what happened to you. Until we know everything, you are a hazard to the public."
She doesn't understand it, even if she had some sort of supernatural ability, Claudia would never hurt anyone with it. "I… I just want to go home…"
"A responsibility of the facility is keeping victims of anomalies under our supervision. We can't risk patients exposing everything that the facility works so hard to keep hidden." Sawyer speaks in a cold, informative tone. "That's why that man that was killed by Lavender will never again be seen by his family. And many others, if their corpse has been affected by an anomaly then it will be seized by the facility."
Claudia's eyes droop down as she shakes her head. "Then how come I survived?"
"Don't know. But you're not the only patient I'm having to look out for."
Her eyes flicker up upon hearing those words, she reluctantly opens her mouth to speak with great interest, "There's somebody else like me?"
"Not like you, more so the opposite. A member of my unit. We believe that he was unknowingly overexposed to an anomaly and developed hallucinations and enhanced strength as a reaction from his mind and body."
"Was he-" She wants to say 'kidnapped, but changes his wording to hide her resentfulness, "-taken in like me?"
Sawyer nods. "He was. He doesn't express a desire to go home. I assume killing cryptids is something that eases his suffering from the hallucinations."
"You'll meet the unit soon. For now, I'm sending you to train with Tessa, disregarding whatever anomaly you've been affected with, you still need basic training as a soldier. She'll teach you how to handle a gun and simple close combat. Tessa Callahan is one of the only female soldiers employed at Facility:Null, the best in fact. She'll make sure you can handle yourself on a mission."
Seeing Sawyer preparing to leave the room, Claudia jolts up from her seat to question him further. She has so many questions, and most likely any answer that Sawyer gives won't give her closure.
"I'm needed elsewhere now, so I'll call for you when there's a job for us to do." Sawyer heads for the door.
Upon seeing him leave, Claudia yells out, "Wait! You can't just dump all this on me and expect me to think it's all normal! How can I just go along with this?!"
"I'm just a soldier. I follow orders, I can't fix all your issues."
Turning his back on her, Sawyer leaves.
———————————————————————-
3 months ago…
On a dark road in the middle of nowhere, stand a creature around five feet tall. A gruesome mouth characterises its face, accompanied by two round holes for eyes. Four arms serve as its feet, with two extra attached to its neckless upper body.
Suddenly, a strong flashlight illuminates the monster's figure.
"Ay, look who we found…" A man's voice announces from behind the source of the light.
A second man speaks out, his voice booming louder than the first's. "Unit 13, prepare to engage!"
Six other men a decent distance behind the first two all confirm their being on stand - by.
"Copy." All six voices answer.
The creature locks its attention onto the two men at the front of the unit and scurries toward them with violent momentum. As soon as this happened, the other six soldiers in the unit that had just been idly waiting in the dark split up into two groups and rushed into the woods on each side of the road.
The second man stands his ground as the monster charges him, raising an assault rifle that had been hanging on a strap around his shoulder. He doesn't waste any time pointing his gun at the creature and fires away indiscriminately. The other man takes a few steps back.
Three bullets whiz past the monster and hit the ground next to it, averting its attention. A second later, three more bullets are fired at it, but barely miss, seemingly on purpose. This short but calculated distraction was enough to give the man unloading his whole magazine into the monster's face enough time to keep up his barrage. Though the bullets do non-lethal damage, the cryptid in front of him is clearly overwhelmed.
The spray of lead into the cryptid's body surely leaves it with a sick taste in its mouth. The gaping maw expands in anger. As its arms reach for the man merely inches away from him, a machete is brought down on its head from behind. The swift strikes chops the six-armed creature's head off, though certainly not in a clean manner. Severing the head of a being that has no neck would certainly be a straining task, though the man standing behind the beheaded cryptid seemed rather pleased with himself.
It was the same man who stood next to the individual who has been gunning down the cryptid, and has made his way behind the monster while it was shortly distracted - then using a machete he had sheathed to his belt to finish the job promptly.
The man holding the machete walks over to the gunner and speaks to him. "You ain't upset that the kill wasn't yours, are you?" The larger man spoke ever-so jokingly in his heavy redneck accent at the other man.
The gunner tsked. "There's always next time, you bastard."
Turning away from the man with the redneck accent, he speaks to his men covering the road from each side.
"Coast is clear, come out boys."
The six soldiers emerge from their spots, casually assembling with the two men in command.
The man holding the gun turns to his group. "Good fuckin' shit boys." His tone is almost celebratory.
Simultaneously, the man with the redneck accent calls out to behind the group. "Roth!"
From the darkness behind the other soldiers, appears an older man wearing a long coat and holding a handgun. This man was identified as Micheal Roth, the gun in his hand was earlier in preparation for a battle with the cryptid, which had ended faster than he anticipated.
"Seems your intel was good, who woulda guessed it was actually in Enfield, huh?" The man says to Roth, his comment at the end clearly sarcastic.
"Mhm." Roth replies, walking past the man and further down the road. "I'm pleased."
As Micheal Roth makes his way further down the road, the man with the redneck accent follows him - confused as to where he's going.
"Roth!" The man shouts out.
He follows Roth to a lonely shack on the side of the road, and watches the old man open the door. Entering behind him, the man follows Roth in looking around the place.
"What's got you interested in this darn shack, Roth?"
Roth continues scanning around, but finds nothing. Or rather - no one.
"Hm, nobody's here. I suppose my eyes had deceived me." He admits in a defeated tone. Yet, the way he talks seems to signify that he knows there will be more to whatever he's got going on.
The other man scoffs, now realising that Roth was looking for somebody, yet the shack had been devoid of anyone for the whole time they'd been in the area.
"Alright, old-timer, let's go back to the others."
Upon returning to Facility:Null, the members of unit 13 reported back the details of their excursion. Unit 13 was a group that held their heads high, joking and laughing on missions - laid back on the fact that they worked the most dangerous job in the world, that 99% of humanity didn't even know existed. They had a right to be in high spirits, unit 13 had been on a winning streak as of late. A handful of strong and capable men that were trusted to get high-profile cryptid neutralisation missions under control.
What no one could imagine is that less than a week from this point in time-
Unit 13 would be completely massacred.
…
Two days before their demise…
In a room on the ground floor of the facility, three men stand around a table. An old newspaper is the centre of their attention. In a bold heading, the front page reads - "Mysterious Moth-Man Still at Large".
The mysterious Moth-Man was still at large near this normally quiet Ohio River community, but the excitement he caused is dying down. The excitement began two weeks ago when Mr. and Mrs. Roger Scarberry and Mr. and Mrs. Steve Mallet, all of Point Pleasant, spotted a large white apparition flying at high speed, following their car. They told a deputy sheriff it looked like a "flying man with 10-foot wings." They said it was about seven feet tall with large red eyes. These reports brought curious crowds to the McClintic Wildlife Station where the incident occurred.
During the next three days at least eight persons reported various similar creatures. On Nov. 18 two volunteer firemen, Capt. Paul Yoder and Benjamin Enochs, said they saw what definitely was a very large bird with red eyes.
A monster in the skies.
The article was from November the 30th, 1966.
The first popular "classic" Mothman sighting, almost 58 years ago. Inarguably the most popular cryptid among those who had no clue about the existence of cryptids. Simply a legend which the regular folk speculated about, it had become a sensation since its first major headline. However, for the facility, it was without a doubt real - and yet, they had never caught it. So now, after 58 years of the Mothman's total ambiguity, the facility had a lead on the pitch-black winged being.