Division 13 Case File 013-018: Blackwood Hollow, Part 2

Something is wrong in Blackwood Hollow.

By daylight, it seems like an ordinary small town tucked away in the Catskills. The streets are quiet. The people are friendly. And no one has ever heard of a child named Kairo.

But Division 13 didn't come all this way for nothing.

At 3:47 in the morning, Captain David Shipman receives another mysterious phone call.

Two words:

“They’re here.”

Outside, the people of Blackwood Hollow are waiting.

As night falls over the town, Shipman and his team must uncover what has transformed hundreds of ordinary people—and why they seem determined to protect something buried beneath the earth.

But whatever Division 13 finds in Blackwood Hollow may raise an even bigger question:

Who is Kairo?

Transcript

Division 13 Case File Opens

SPEAKER_04 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_01 0:15

The drive-up was quiet. Kendrick had the wheel. Overton was in the passenger seat with her notebook open, though I noticed she wasn't writing in it so much as staring at it. Castillo and Kenny were in the back with me, and the landscape outside had shifted from the dense sprawl of the city's outer burrows to very different scenery. The cat skills coming up around us, the trees heavy and dark in November, the sky a flat, pale gray that suggested it hadn't decided yet what kind of day it wanted to be.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

So, Cadywampus.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Castillo said after about 20 minutes of nobody saying much.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

We never really had the chance to talk about all of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Kendrick made a wordless sound of acknowledgement from the front seat. I was just thinking about it myself, Kenny said.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

It was looking at his hands. I keep coming back to the engineering. Whatever he was before, he had serious skills. The intercom system, the hidden doors, the animatronics themselves, the mechanism that allowed the nanotech to animate them. That's years of work. Whoever he was before the transformation, he didn't stop being that person. The infection changed what he does with the ability. It didn't take the ability away.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Almost too crazy to think about. This was a question I'd asked myself quite a few times. Angela and Lizzie randomly receiving a flyer for a fair involving a rogue noborn seemed entirely too implausible to be just coincidence. I've been around, and I've seen how the universe can sometimes seem to have a very warped sense of humor. But I struggled to believe in this level of coincidence. I made a mental note to ask Angela exactly how she'd come across the flyer. Jackson's voice brought me back to the conversation at hand. How long do you think he's been out there?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

The missing person's trail goes back at least three years, as far as we can tell. Kenny responded. But the construction quality of some of those figures suggests even longer. Could be five years, could be more. So odds are he was eventually going to draw the attention of Sentinel Prime.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

It's got me wondering if he was always a killer, Castillo said. Or if that came with the infection.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Nobody had a clean answer for that. There's a bulletin out, I said. Every law enforcement agency in the Northeast has his description. He'll surface. I paused. And when he does, we'll be ready. Castillo nodded, but I could tell from the set of her jaw that she wasn't done thinking about it. She wouldn't be for a while. None of us would.

A Slaughter Signals New Intent

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Division 9. Kendrick said, shifting the conversation. Wiped out. All of them. Shadowvale Station.

SPEAKER_06 3:37

It's an escalation.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Overton said.

SPEAKER_06 3:40

A significant one. The Nullborn have been reactive until now, responding to our operations, protecting their assets. Coordinating a strike on a full division team is a different order of intent.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

They're done being careful, Kenny said.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Maybe they've decided they don't need to be anymore, I said. Which means either they've reached a threshold in whatever they're building, or we've pushed them hard enough that they've decided the exposure risk of a direct strike is worth it. I looked out at the gray sky over the tree line in the distance. Either way, it's on our list. But right now, we need to focus on Blackwood Hollow.

The Cairo Recording Feels Wrong

SPEAKER_01 4:23

About that, Kendrick said. The recording. Something's been bothering me about it. Same, Castillo said.

SPEAKER_06 4:35

It was routed through State Police Dispatch.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Overton said.

SPEAKER_06 4:40

A child's voice. Frightened but still calm and aware enough to place a direct call to State Police Emergency Services.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

She looked up from her notebook. Kendrick was nodding his head as if to say that Overton had vocalized his concerns precisely. There was something off about the recording itself.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Kenny said. The audio. It was off in a way. The tone didn't seem like a child, really. It seemed more like someone or something pretending.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

So either this Cairo is a very unusual kid, I said, or that recording is something other than what it appears to be. I let that sit. We treat it as a genuine distress call until we have reason not to. But we go in with our eyes open. Nobody argued with that. The road curved over a long rise, and as it crested, the valley opened below us. A hollow in the hills, tucked between ridgelines, a cluster of buildings around a central square, a church spire, the glint of a reservoir to the northeast. Smoke from chimneys. A water tower. The neat stillness of a small town that doesn't see much traffic. We're here, Kendrick said. From a distance, it looked like a postcard. Something told me that was too good to be true.

Blackwood Hollow Plays Nice

SPEAKER_01 6:15

The town was smaller than it had looked from the ridge. 800 residents, the welcome sign read, and walking the square you could believe it. The storefronts and sidewalks had that small town vibe, people moving with the unhurried pace of those who don't have anywhere urgent to be. Those that noticed us looked at us with the slightly bemused attentiveness of a community that doesn't see many strangers and makes note of the ones it does. The town hall occupied the north end of the square, a white clapboard building with a flagpole and a sign identifying it as also the sheriff's office, which in a town this size made perfect practical sense. Mayor Juniper Webb met us in the front room. Mid-50s, efficient, with the easy composure of someone who runs a small government and has learned that composure is most of the job. She shook hands. She offered us coffee with an easy smile. Sheriff Kyle Miller was younger, lean, with the watchful eyes of a man who took his responsibilities seriously. He stood back while Webb talked, which told me something about their working dynamic. We played the recording for them. Webb listened with the appropriate concern of a public official being told her constituents may be in distress.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

She looked at Miller. No Cairo in the school roles, he said. No family by that name in the tax records either. I checked this morning when state police let us know you folks were on the way.

SPEAKER_06 8:07

Could be a nickname, Overton offered. Could be, Webb said.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

She smiled. It was a pleasant smile. It reached her eyes and seemed genuine enough.

SPEAKER_05 8:19

We'll certainly look into it. In the meantime, please, feel free to stay as long as you need. The dewdrop in on Millbrook Road has rooms available. We don't get many visitors this time of year.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Another smile. Outside, I didn't say what I was thinking as we climbed into the vehicle.

SPEAKER_05 8:41

She's helpful.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Castillo said before I could.

SPEAKER_05 8:44

Very.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Overton agreed. What's your take, Captain? Kenny asked. I don't know yet, I said. Let's get settled and see what the town looks like after dark. The motel was a very modest and simple two-story building. The sign out front had a vacancy light that was on, as the mayor had predicted. The clerk at the desk was a man in his late forties, with the slightly unfocused look of someone who'd been on a long shift. He registered us without much conversation, which was fine. He seemed slightly nervous in the way some people get around law enforcement, which is common enough not to mean anything specific. The rooms were clean. The beds were functional. The TV got four channels. My window faced the parking lot and, beyond it, the dark line of trees at the edge of the property. I called Angela. The conversation was good, easy, the kind of easy that still surprises me a little, because I didn't think I was still capable of it. I was definitely grateful for the experience. After I hung up, I sat on the edge of the bed for a while. I thought about Angela and Lizzie and the brownstone in Flatbush, safe and ordinary and real. I thought about Kendrick and Castillo and wondered idly which of them would be sneaking into the other's room once they thought the rest of the team was asleep. That led me to thoughts of Overton and our conversation at HQ. All of that was real too. All of it mattered. I turned out the light and went to sleep. The phone rang at 3.47 in the morning.

Quiet Motel Before The Call

SPEAKER_01 10:38

I was awake before the second ring. That's not discipline. It's just how I'm built after enough years of being woken by things that needed immediate attention. My hand flashed to the nightstand to grab my service weapon before I had my eyes fully open. Realizing it was the phone that had so rudely interrupted my sleep, I picked up the receiver. Silence. Then, very quietly, a voice I didn't recognize. Young, careful, barely above a whisper.

SPEAKER_03 11:12

They're here.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

The line went dead. From the corner of my eye, I caught a quick blur of movement. A shadow at the window, moving quickly out of my line of sight. An impossible shadow, given that my room was on the second floor and there was no purchase for anyone to be outside of that window. I was out of bed and at the window before the dial tone started. I raised the blind a few inches and looked out. The parking lot was full of people, standing in the darkness beyond the reach of the motel's exterior lights, arranged in a loose crowd that extended from the edge of the parking lot to the tree line. At least a hundred of them that I could see. Still, facing the building. At the front of the crowd, closest to the motel entrance, stood Juniper Webb. Every one of the townspeople had glowing orange eyes. I registered this without great surprise. This job had definitely dulled my sense of surprise about this kind of thing. I think on some level, I was expecting this. Or something like it. I was already pulling on my jacket and reaching for my radio when the knock came at my door. Three quick raps. I opened it. The whole team was in the hallway, armed and alert. Parking lot, I said. We saw, Kendrick said. Got a phone call. Then Webb's voice came through the window, amplified by the stillness of the night, carrying the clarity that outdoor voices have, but everything else is quiet.

SPEAKER_05 12:57

Come out, she said. Come out and join us. There's no escape from this. No use in fighting what you'll eventually become. Life is simpler, as one of us.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Then the rocks started hitting the building. One shattered the window of my room with a crack that echoed down the hallway.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Rifles are in the SUV.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Then we go get them, I said. Through the lobby. Stay tight. The lobby was empty. The clerk's station was abandoned, no sign of him, his jacket still on the hook behind the desk, a half-finished cup of coffee going cold on the counter. I held up a fist. The team stopped. I couldn't quite figure out why, but my instincts told me something was wrong. I looked up slowly. The clerk was up there. Pressed flat against the ceiling tiles, fingers and feet finding purchase in the gaps between the panels, orange eyes wide and staring down at us with a feral expression. Then he scrambled away from us, moving across the ceiling with an impossible speed, fingers and feet working the ceiling panels like a rock face, heading for the back of the lobby where the rear exit stood open to the night. He hit the door frame, twisted through it, and was gone. Castillo watched him go. She said. Let's move, I said. The crowd was still there when we pushed through the front entrance. Closer now. They'd moved while we were inside, the outer edge of the group encroaching on the parking lot proper. The orange eyes caught what little ambient light there was and reflected it back in a way that turned the darkness between them into something with texture and weight. We moved to the SUV. I kept watching the crowd. They were watching us back. But they weren't advancing. They weren't throwing rocks anymore. They were simply standing there, staring. As I reached the vehicle and got the rear hatch open, Kenny had the Rygen rifles distributed quickly. We turned to face the crowd, weapons raised. And that was when it happened.

Orange Eyes Surround The Rooms

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Webb's head tilted back, then the heads of the people around her, then in a ripple that moved through the crowd like a wave through still water, everyone's head tilted back, all of them staring up at the sky with the same angle, the same expression, not looking at anything visible, but attending to something, listening. And then, slowly, methodically, without a word or a signal anyone else could perceive, they turned. All of them, together, facing the tree line. And they began to walk, not running, not scrambling, walking with a steady, purposeful stride. Into the woods.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

What the hell?

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Castillo said very quietly. I might have a theory, I said. But for now, we need to see where they're going. I turned to Kendrick. Grab the stung grenades and binoculars. He was already moving. We follow them, quiet, distance. Nobody engages unless I say. They moved through the woods with unhurried certainty. They knew exactly where they were going, which meant they'd made this walk before. We followed at a distance, using the tree cover, moving with silence as the operational priority. After a time, we came to a clearing. The town's reservoir opened in front of us, a dark expanse of still water reflecting the night sky, the surrounding land cleared and flat. And at the near edge of the water, in an area where the ground had been broken and moved and piled to the side, was an excavation site. Construction equipment stood dormant at the margins. It was a reservoir maintenance project, or had been before whatever was happening here started happening. The crowd was gathering at the edge of the excavation, filling the space around it, all of them facing inward toward whatever was at the center. From our position at the tree line, we couldn't see what it was. The crowd's bodies blocked the view. Non-lethal only, I said quietly. Stun grenades first, hand to hand. These are victims. We incapacitate, we don't kill. Lethal force is the last resort. I looked at each of them. Understood? Four nods. We moved out of the tree line. We got within thirty feet before they became aware of our presence. I'm not sure how they knew, no sound, no visible signal, but Webb's head turned first, and then, as if the information had been transmitted through the crowd by something other than speech, everyone slowly turned toward us at once.

SPEAKER_05 18:36

Stop them, Webb said.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Her voice was calm.

SPEAKER_05 18:41

Protect him. They must not reach him.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

The crowd surged. Kendrick put the first stun grenade into the center mass of the advance, and the concussion dropped a dozen of them immediately. Kenny and Overton went to the left flank. I took the right with Castillo beside me, and we worked through the remaining crowd methodically, using the minimum force necessary, dropping people and moving on. They weren't as strong as standard noborn. They didn't have the enhanced reflexes or the speed. What they had was number and the determination of people who believed they were protecting something important. That made them formidable in their own way. Not skilled, but determined. We continued to fight our way through. And then it was over.

The Crowd Marches To Water

SPEAKER_01 19:36

The crowd was down and the excavation site was open in front of us. We went in. The excavation went down about twelve feet at a gentle slope. In the center of the excavation, partially embedded in the earth, was a capsule. It was roughly the size and shape of a single occupancy vehicle. The material had the quality of the tablet, of the remnants, that not quite metal surface that didn't seem to corrode and didn't catch light the way normal metallic materials do. It looked to have been there long enough that the earth had grown around it, root systems working their slow way across the surface. The front of the capsule was a panel, transparent, or mostly transparent, yellowed slightly with age. Through it, visible in the light of our rifle-mounted lights, was an occupant. The figure within was desiccated, ancient. Whatever biological processes had sustained it had completed their work millennia ago and left behind something preserved rather than living. The features were still there, the structure of the face, the hands folded at the chest, but the tissue had gone to something that was no longer quite flesh. Its eyes were open, clouded, sightless orange pupils staring blankly at the night sky. Cap, Kenny said. He was moving around the capsule's circumference, his light sweeping the far side. I followed. On the far side of the capsule, in the lower third of the casing, was a rupture. It looked as if something internal had failed, and the pressure of whatever it contained had split the material outward. From the rupture, slow and consistent, a fluid seeped. It caught our torchlight and held it. Orange, luminescent. The same color as the eyes of every infected person we'd encountered since Billy Rath at the warehouse in 1979. I followed the seepage with my rifle light. It ran down the side of the capsule, pooled briefly at the base, and then drained into the earth around it. The reservoir maintenance project had broken through to the capsule. Cracked the surrounding rock enough to expose the rupture, and now the fluid was draining steadily into the soil. The reservoir, Overton said. The water supply, I confirmed. The whole town has been drinking it, bathing in it. Irrigation, too, probably. Could even be airborne from the soil outgassing, Kenny said. He was crouching near the base of the rupture, examining the seepage without touching it. If the concentration is high enough.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

Well, Castillo said, That's our cue to leave.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Not yet, I said. Kenny, the markings on the capsule, can you read them? He straightened, moved his torch across the surface of the capsule slowly, following the inscriptions that covered the upper third of the casing in a dense, careful pattern. The same glyph system as the tablet. The same deliberate construction. Kenny was quiet for a long moment. It's a warning, he said finally. The same language as the tablet. He moved the torch slowly. It says He paused, moved the torch back to the beginning of the inscription, and read it again.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

It says something like, What is sealed within must not be disturbed. Those who disturb this vessel invite the consequence of what they cannot comprehend.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

The words sat in the excavation with us. Sealed within. Imprisoned. This thing was meant to stay contained in a container that had now been breached by a construction crew who had no idea what they were breaking into.

SPEAKER_06 23:48

Dawn's coming, Overton said.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

She was looking at the eastern edge of the sky above the excavation, where the dark sky had shifted to something slightly lighter.

SPEAKER_06 24:00

Whatever's happening to the townspeople, it's been worse at night. The sunlight must be affecting it somehow.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

We need to keep them contained until support arrives, I said. Overton, Kendrick, head back to the motel. Use the landline. I want medical and containment units here, ASAP. And I want Loretta on the phone personally. I looked at the capsule. Tell her what we found here. What exactly is this thing? I don't know yet, I said. But that seal inscription is in Kothra's language. Whatever this is, the enlightened knew about it. And they decided it needed to stay in the ground.

An Ancient Capsule Starts Leaking

SPEAKER_01 24:47

The support teams arrived shortly after 5 a.m. Medical Containment, a Sentinel Prime Logistics Unit that materialized from three black vehicles and immediately began the process of establishing a perimeter around the reservoir and the excavation site. The townspeople of Blackwood Hollow were scattered across the reservoir grounds in various states of semi-consciousness. The stun grenade effects had worn off, and most of them were awake, disoriented, sitting in the frost-covered grass with the expressions of people who'd woken up somewhere they didn't remember going to sleep. Webb was among them, her orange eyes dimmed to something close to their normal color in the early morning light, looking at her own hands as if she didn't quite recognize them. I heard her muttering to herself, the words conveying her understandable torment.

SPEAKER_05 25:43

What have we done?

SPEAKER_01 25:45

I stood at the edge of the excavation while the containment teams worked. The capsule's rupture had been temporarily sealed with a compound the prime logistics team carried specifically for situations involving unknown biological agents. The seepage had been brought to a stop. Downstream, the reservoir's intake valves had been closed. It wasn't a solution, it was a pause. We'd be able to give the town's water supply back to them in time. What we weren't going to be able to give them was an explanation. The team assembled at the vehicles as the sun came fully over the eastern ridge and the hollow filled with flat morning light. Capsule goes to a secure prime facility for analysis, I said. Full chain of custody. I want Russo and Kenny on the preliminary assessment before anyone else touches it. I looked at Kenny. You'll coordinate with Prime Logistics on the transport protocols. Already on it, he said. We got in the vehicle, Kendrick took the wheel. The road out of Blackwood Hollow curved back up through the hollow's rim and onto the ridge, and as we crested it, I watched the town recede in the side mirror. The square, the church spire, the reservoir glinting in the morning light. A town that had been going about its ordinary business until a reservoir maintenance project broke through the wrong piece of ground. We drove south for a while in silence.

The Case Ends With One Name

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Then Kendrick said, The seal inscription. Yeah, I said. He kept his eyes on the road. It raises the question of why. Nobody had an answer for that. Overton was writing in her notebook.

SPEAKER_06 27:47

The fluid, it behaves like the neon compound, the nanotech, the orange luminescence. But it's obviously incredibly ancient.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Which means, Kenny said, the no-born didn't invent the virus. They found it. Or they found what it came from.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

The implications settled over the vehicle like weather. Another thing, Kendrick said.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

The recording. We went to Blackwood Hollow because a child named Cairo told us to. We found something significant. So Cairo, wherever he is, whoever he is, was right.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

But that leaves the question. He paused, looking into the rear view mirror and meeting my eyes. Who is Cairo? I looked out the window at the cat skills receding behind us, at the gray sky over the highway, at the ordinary world going about its ordinary business on a Thursday morning in upstate New York. I didn't have an answer. But the question was the right one. It was going to matter. I could feel it the way you feel things that are going to matter before you understand why. We find out, I said. That's next. We drove back toward the city. End case file zero one three zero one eight.