Division 13 Case File 013-015: Our Lady of Sorrows

A cryptic message recovered from captured Nullborn operatives leads Division 13 to an abandoned church hiding far more than forgotten history. Beneath the crumbling sanctuary, Captain David Shipman and his team uncover an ancient chamber... and a discovery that will forever change their understanding of the war they've been fighting. One name: "Daemon".

As old mysteries begin to align, new questions emerge. What are the Remnants? Why have the Nullborn been searching for them? And what secret has been waiting beneath New York City for centuries?

Some truths were never meant to stay buried.

Transcript

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A Rare Morning Off Duty

SPEAKER_07 0:00

My name is Hannah Keegan. I'm a lead detective for a top secret New York Police Department Task Force. We're assigned to the unexplained cases that border on the paranormal. This is Division 13, and here are our case files.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

I am not by nature a man who relaxes easily. This is something I've known about myself for a long time and accepted as a feature rather than a flaw. Controlled tension is useful. It keeps the edges sharp. It's the thing that has kept me and the people around me alive in situations that didn't offer much margin for error. Sitting across a small table from Angela Sinclair on a Tuesday morning, however, I found myself more relaxed than usual. Not completely. It wasn't like I decided to put down all my burdens and never pick them up again. More in the way of a person who has, just for a moment, stopped checking whether anything is about to go wrong. It was a new feeling. I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it.

SPEAKER_04 1:04

You're doing it again, Angela said.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Doing what?

SPEAKER_04 1:08

That thing where you scan the room every 30 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

She was smiling, her coffee cup held in both hands, her green eyes carrying the amusement of someone who found something charming rather than annoying.

SPEAKER_04 1:21

You've checked the door four times since we sat down.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Occupational habit, I said.

SPEAKER_04 1:27

You're off duty.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

I'm never really off duty, she said firmly.

SPEAKER_04 1:33

For the next hour. Doctor's orders.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

You're not a doctor.

SPEAKER_04 1:38

I'm a single mother. Same thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

She set down her cup.

SPEAKER_04 1:42

Tell me something that has nothing to do with work.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

I thought about this seriously for a moment. It was a harder question than it should have been. I bought cereal last weekend, I said. She stared at me.

SPEAKER_04 1:57

That's what you've got.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

She laughed, a real laugh, the kind that reached her eyes, and I found myself thinking that I had been navigating dangerous situations for most of my adult life, and none of them had made me quite as aware of my own limitations as this conversation. We talked for a while. About Lizzie, who had apparently informed several of her classmates that her mother knew a real superhero, a piece of intelligence that Angela delivered with the expression of a woman who had chosen not to fight this particular battle. About the neighborhood, about small, ordinary things that I had not talked about in a very long time, because there had not really been anyone to talk about them with. She was reaching into her bag.

SPEAKER_04 2:46

There's a Halloween fair on Long Island next weekend. The Hollowed Grounds. It's one of those big outdoor harvest festival things. Corn mazes, hayrides, all of it.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

She produced a folded flyer and held it out.

SPEAKER_04 3:01

She's been asking about it for weeks. I told her we'd go.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

I took the flyer, looked at it. Something moved through me, brief, sourceless, gone before I could identify it. Like the feeling you get when you walk through a cold spot in an otherwise warm room. I looked at the name on the flyer. The hollowed grounds. The feeling passed almost immediately, leaving nothing behind it except a slightly unsettled feeling. I dismissed it. I set the flyer down. I usually don't introduce Lizzie to anyone I'm dating this soon, Angela said, and there was something careful and deliberate in the way she phrased it. I could tell she'd been thinking deeply about this.

SPEAKER_04 3:46

But since she already thinks you're a superhero, I'll make an exception. I thought you might want to come.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

So this is an official date, I said, with a slight smirk.

SPEAKER_04 3:58

That depends on how the rest of this morning goes.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

I looked at her across the small table, at the easy, knowing smile, at the green eyes that had seen enough hard things to have earned their steadiness. I'll be there, I said. The morning went well.

Transcripts Become A Usable Clue

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Back at HQ, the interrogation transcripts from the Navy Yard prisoners were not, by any conventional measure, useful. Kenny and Donna had spent the better part of the morning going through them, and when the team assembled in Loretta's office that afternoon, the picture they presented was consistent with what I had already begun to suspect. The no-born operatives had not given us information so much as they had given a performance. Cryptic, symbolic, prophetic. Language designed to unsettle rather than inform, to imply vast knowledge without actually sharing any of it.

SPEAKER_05 5:00

Most of it is repetition, Donna said.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

She had the transcripts spread across the conference table, color-coded tabs marking the passages she and Kenny had flagged.

SPEAKER_05 5:11

The same concepts appearing in different formulations across both subjects. The lightbringer, the witness, the path, the remnants.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

She looked up.

SPEAKER_05 5:22

It reads less like answers and more like doctrine, like things they've been taught to say.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Or things they actually believe, Kenny said.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

He was leaning forward over the table, his eyes moving across the pages with focused attention, looking for patterns.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

There's a difference between a person performing mystery and a person speaking from genuine conviction. These read like the second one to me.

SPEAKER_05 5:49

Either way, Loretta said. The question is whether any of it is actionable.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

One statement might be, Kenny said. He pulled a marked page from the spread and set it in the center of the table.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

This one. Both subjects said something similar, independently, in different sessions. We didn't catch the correlation until we cross-referenced. He read aloud. Seek the deconsecrated house of God, where the mother stands guard, weeping. We all considered this.

SPEAKER_06 6:22

It's a location, Overton said, not a question.

SPEAKER_05 6:26

We think so, Donna said. Kenny's working theory, and I agree with it, is that the map we recovered from the Bushwick warehouse isn't a direct index of remnant locations. It's a series of waypoints. Clues that lead to clues. The tablet said, When many become one, your path will become clear. We may be looking at a trail that requires interpretation at each step, not just a simple map to follow.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

I looked at the statement on the page. Donna allowed herself a small, satisfied expression.

SPEAKER_05 7:08

Our Lady of Sorrows, a deconsecrated Catholic church on Pitt Street in the Lower East Side. Abandoned for years. It's been operating as an underground rave venue for about 18 months.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

She pulled up a photograph on the monitor, a weathered stone facade, and in front of it, a large statue of the Virgin Mary with her head bowed and her hands open. Tears carved into the stone of her face.

SPEAKER_05 7:34

The building records show an elaborate basement system beneath the church, far more extensive than anything the church would have needed for ordinary use.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Something was already there before the church was built, Kendrick said. The church was built on top of it.

SPEAKER_05 7:51

That's what the building archaeology suggests, Donna confirmed.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

I looked at the photograph of the weeping virgin, looked at the date on the building records. We go tonight, I said, before the Nollborn get there first. The team was assembling in the equipment room when I found Kenny still at his station in the computer lab, running a comparative analysis on the map's coordinate system. He had his headphones around his neck and three monitors going simultaneously, and the expression of a man who had decided the work was more important than the clock. He looked up. Gear up, I said. You're with us. He looked at me for a moment, then at the monitors, then back at me, as if checking whether I had said what he thought I had said. Tonight? Tonight. He was quiet for exactly two seconds, then he pushed back from the desk and stood up, and the expression he was wearing, the one he was making a visible effort to keep neutral, was the expression of someone containing excitement much larger than they wanted to show. Copy that, Captain, he said. I turned and walked back toward the equipment room. Behind me, I heard him start shutting down his monitors, and I heard the efficiency in the way he was doing it, moving with the contained purpose of someone who had been waiting for this and was not going to waste it by being slow about it. In the equipment room, Castillo caught my eye and gave a brief, knowing smirk and a nod. Kendrick looked toward the lab doorway, and when Kenny came through it carrying his field kit with the ease of someone who had been doing this far longer than just two months, Kendrick stepped forward and put a hand briefly on his shoulder. Congratulations, Kendrick said. It's about time. Kenny didn't seem to trust himself to say much. He nodded once and began checking his equipment.

Kenny Gets The Call To Deploy

SPEAKER_00 10:07

The old church was alive in a way it probably hadn't been for decades, not with worship, but with sound and light and the compressed energy of a few hundred people who had decided that an abandoned sanctuary was exactly the right place to lose themselves for a night. Colored lights swept across the stained glass windows from the inside, sending fractured blues and reds and greens moving across the stone facade. A DJ occupied what had once been the altar space. The pews were gone, replaced by a crowd that moved like water finding its own level. We moved through the edges of the crowd in civilian clothes, weapons concealed, taking care not to move with the purposefulness that identifies law enforcement in a room full of people who are generally not eager to see it. Kendrick was best at this. He had a natural ease in crowds that I had always quietly admired. Castillo blended through sheer energy, matching the room's frequency. Overton was invisible in a different way, still peripheral, the kind of person who disappears because they're not asking for attention. Kenny moved well, better than I had expected for his first deployment. He had situational awareness without the stiffness that sometimes accompanies it in officers who are new to operating in civilian environments. He stayed in my peripheral vision without crowding me, which was the right instinct. We located the basement access point, a heavy door behind the former sacristy, padlocked but not well, which told me the rave operators either didn't know about the basement or had decided it wasn't worth exploring. Kendrick dealt with the padlock in about 15 seconds. The door opened onto stone steps that went down into a darkness the rave's lighting hadn't reached and probably never would. The temperature dropped immediately. Lights on, I said quietly. Stay tight.

Undercover Through The Church Rave

SPEAKER_00 12:19

We went down. The basement was unusually large, as the building records had suggested. The furnace room was there, as expected, hulking and rusted in the far corner. But beyond it, the space continued, tunneled back into the bedrock in a direction that should have put us under the street, maybe under the building across from it, maybe further than that. Overton echoed my thoughts.

SPEAKER_06 12:50

This really is a strange building plan, she said quietly.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

She had a small flashlight in addition to her rifle light, moving it along the walls.

SPEAKER_06 13:01

The stonework is different here. The furnace room is 19th century. This.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

She indicated the tunnel entrance beyond it, narrow and low, cut directly into the rock.

SPEAKER_06 13:14

Is much older.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

How much older? Kinney asked.

SPEAKER_06 13:19

Older than the church for sure, Overton said. So the building was constructed on top of it.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

We stood at the entrance to the tunnel. It was narrow, perhaps three feet wide, the ceiling dropping to about five feet. Carved smooth in a way that wasn't quite consistent with any hand tool I could identify. I looked at the team, looked at the tunnel, ran the math on who was going to fit. Kendrick was already shaking his head slightly. At 6'3, the geometry wasn't in his favor. I was barely a possibility at six feet. Kenny was lean enough, but tall enough that it would be a struggle at best. That left two options. Overton stepped forward. I'll go, she said. Her voice was matter-of-fact. This was the logical conclusion, and she had already reached it. Castillo, who had been studying the tunnel entrance with her flashlight, backed away. Of course you will, she said, quiet, flat, in a tone that carried something underneath it. Overton glanced at her. A brief, measuring look. Whatever she read there, she chose not to address it. She turned back to the tunnel. Radio check every five minutes, I said. If you lose signal, you turn around. We don't know what's in there. Understood, Overton said. She went in. The tunnel swallowed her light quickly. Within 30 seconds there was nothing visible from the entrance. Just rock and darkness, and the faint sound of the music filtering down from above, muffled and distant. The rave continuing, oblivious, while one of my people crawled into the bedrock of Manhattan, looking for something left by a civilization that was old when this continent was young. Radio check, I said into my earpiece. Overton, you read?

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Reading you, she said.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Her voice was steady.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

There's something there's markings on the walls. It's the same writing system as the tablet.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Keep moving, I said. Carefully. We waited.

Ambush In The Furnace Room

SPEAKER_00 15:50

They had been following us since the street. I know this now, in retrospect. At the time, I was just barely able to detect the muffled sound of the basement door at the top of the stairs opening, and then the quality of the silence that followed. The silence of multiple bodies moving carefully in the dark, trying not to be heard. They weren't careful enough. Contact, I said, and the team was already moving. Five of them came down the stairs. Two more came in through a secondary access point I hadn't clocked. A gap in the foundation wall on the far side of the furnace that had most likely once been a cold chute. Seven total. All in human form, which in some ways made the close quarters more manageable, and in other ways made it considerably worse. Because humans, even enhanced ones, are harder to track in the dark than ones with eyes that glow orange. The fight was fast and ugly, and happened in a space that was not designed for it. The low-arched ceiling of the furnace room meant nobody could stand fully upright in the far corners. The furnace itself created a choke point that cut the room in half. The noise from above, the relentless thump of the rave, swallowed any sound we made below, which meant the several hundred people directly over our heads had no idea what was happening beneath their feet. Kenny moved well, better than well. There was a moment, early in the fight, when one of the operatives came at him fast from his left, where I saw him make a decision in real time that a lot of more experienced field operators would have gotten wrong. Instead of trying to create distance, which the room didn't allow, he closed it further and used the lack of space as the advantage it actually was. He took a hit to the shoulder and delivered two in response. And the operative went down with an arm that was visibly broken in two places. He didn't get back up. Castillo and Kendrick worked the choke point together with the efficiency of people who had been operating as a unit long enough that they didn't need to communicate every decision out loud. I handled the two who came through the furnace gap. It was over in under four minutes, which, in close quarters engagements with enhanced opponents in a confined space, was faster than it had any right to be. The team was good, getting better.

Overton Finds A Single Glyph

SPEAKER_00 18:33

I keyed my radio. Overton.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Then still here. I heard something.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Are you clear? We're clear. Take your time.

unknown 18:48

Copy.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Kendrick was checking on Kenny, who was rotating his shoulder experimentally and had the expression of a man conducting a damage assessment and finding the results acceptable. Castillo was at the secondary access point, confirming it was secured. I heard her muttering under her breath, expressing the same frustration I felt. We shouldn't have missed that detail. The air in the basement smelled of ozone and concrete dust and the residual static discharge of the ark rounds. Above us, the music continued without interruption. Overton was gone for four more minutes. When she came back through the tunnel entrance, she was moving carefully. Not injured, I assessed immediately, but carrying something that required care. She was dusty from the tunnel, her hair loose from where it had caught on the stone ceiling, her jacket scuffed along the right shoulder. She straightened up, took a breath, and held out what she was carrying. It was small, roughly the dimensions of a deck of cards, maybe slightly thicker. The same material as the tablet, that not quite metal surface that didn't rust and didn't feel like anything manufactured in any era I was familiar with. The surface was largely bare, except for a single symbol. One glyph, centered on the surface, rendered with the same precise, deliberate brushwork as the tablet inscription.

SPEAKER_06 20:27

Just the one marking, Overton said. Whatever it is, I think it's a label or a name. The same kind of identifier character that opened the tablet translation.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Kenny was already crouching, his pocket light trained on the object, his expression cycling through the focused sequence I had come to associate with him, working something through in real time. Nobody spoke. The music thumped distantly above us. Somewhere in the rave, someone was having the best night of their life. Blissfully unaware that six feet below their dancing feet, a team of federal paranormal investigators was crouching in a furnace room around an artifact that was older than recorded human civilization.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

A proper noun, the same kind of construction as the Kothra Jinn identifier from the tablet. He turned the object slightly in the light. The glyph structure is it's a compound. Two concepts combined into one designation. He was quiet for a moment.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

What name? He looked at the glyph one more time, then at me. Damon, he said. The word sat in the air of the furnace room the way certain words do. Not loud, not dramatic, but with a weight that had nothing to do with its size. One sound, two syllables, a name belonging to something or someone none of us had ever heard of, left in a tunnel beneath a deconsecrated church on the lower east side of Manhattan, in rock that predated the island itself. Kendrick looked at me. I looked at Overton. Castillo looked at the object in Overton's hands. Kenny looked at the glyph. Nobody said anything for a moment. Because there was nothing to say yet. We had a name. We didn't know whose name it was, what it meant, why it had been left here, what it was supposed to tell us. We had a piece of something we didn't understand. One more step in a trail laid out by someone who had died before our civilization learned to write. But we had the name. Baggett. I said, We're done here. Call transport for these guys. I nodded at the now restrained Nullborne.

The Name Damon And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Once prisoner transport arrived, we all came back up through the basement, through the furnace room, up the stone stairs and through the heavy door and back into the rave. The transition was surreal, from rock and ancient darkness and the smell of something impossibly old directly into colored lights and synthesizer music and a crowd of people who were very much living their best 1982 lives and had no idea that anything else existed. Either oblivious, uncaring, or both. We moved through the crowd and out through a side exit and into the cold Lower East Side night. Pitt Street was quiet by comparison. The sound of the rave reduced to a thumping bass line behind the church's stone walls, the weeping virgin still standing her post on the steps, stone face bowed, stone tears catching the street light. I looked at her for a moment before I got into the vehicle and watched the prisoner transport SUVs pull away. Where the mother stands guard, weeping, I said quietly. She had been standing watch over something that had been placed here before the neighborhood existed, before the city existed, before anyone had thought to build anything on this island at all. Standing guard over a name carved into a piece of material that shouldn't exist, left by people who had been dead for eons. As we pulled away from the curb with Kendrick behind the wheel, I glanced over my shoulder into the back seat. I could tell that Kenny was already deep in thought, comparing and cross-referencing the new information. Overton had the remnant secured in an evidence case on her lap. Castillo was quiet, looking out the window at the city going past. Damon, I said. To no one in particular. To myself, maybe. To the case file I was already composing in my head. We need to find out what that name belongs to. Nobody responded. They didn't need to. Above us, the city went on. Below us, in tunnels and thin points and places that predated everything built on top of them, something was waiting to be understood. We drove back toward HQ and the lights of Lower Manhattan receded behind us, and somewhere in an evidence case on Overton's lap, a name waited in the dark. Damon. End case file zero one three zero one five.