Night Floors

Spoiler Warning: This scenario is taken from the second Delta Green rule book, Delta Green: Countdown. If you are a Delta Green player you may wish to ask your Keeper if they intend to run any scenarios in that book before reading this write-up, as pertinent scenario information will be revealed. The scenario was altered by Allan Goodall with the inclusion of extra NPCs and additional handouts.

Saturday, February 14, 2004, 1:09 p.m. EST

Macallistar Building, New York, New York

The Delta Green agents went back to cataloging the contents of apartment A-2 of the Macallistar building while they talked about their next course of action. They called ALPHONSE to ask for his opinion. MICHAEL stressed the numerous dangerous situations occuring in the "night floors", including automatic weapons fire. ALPHONSE responded that he would have to make a few phone calls, but he would call them right back.

A short while later ALPHONSE phoned back with his recommendations. He suggested that the agents should formally call for the Center for Disease Control. The CDC, in the form of agent MORGAN, has the authority to evacuate the building and condemn it. The building could then be demolished, or the building could be purchased by Delta Green and studied. The final decision was left to the agents, as they were the ones in the field and they were the only ones with first hand experience of the "night floors".

MICHAEL first wanted to make sure that the inhabitants of the building were all back in their rooms, and hadn't "moved upstairs" during the night. He also wanted to know of anyone had moved into a supposedly empty room. He checked by buzzing each apartment by way of the intercom. Everyone was at home, and no one answered in the empty apartments. He returned to Abby's apartment.

The agents discussed what they should do with the people in the smoking lounge. MORGAN wanted to rescue them. MAYA was all for leaving them alone. They briefly discussed the idea of a quick trip to the smoking lounge and back. They compared notes and realized that each set of agents got to the smoking lounge by taking a different route through the same door. It appeared that the smoking lounge didn't have a formal "location", at least not in any normal sense. MICHAEL won the argument when he stated that he thought the smoking lounge inhabitants lived "somewhere else". He didn't think they could be brought out.

MORGAN called the CDC and reported an outbreak within the building that had "hallucinogenic properties". The CDC sent a discreet response team. The NYPD's hazardous materials squad was called in via MICHAEL and the FBI. MICHAEL contacted Artlife and notified Ms. Lechance that everyone was being pulled from the building. The residents were quickly taken away to Bellevue hospital, though not without a struggle. By early evening, the Macallistar building was empty.

The agents headed up to the door to the roof and opened it. They saw the roof, spread out before them. MORGAN set up a camcorder as the sun set. The doorway in front of them shimmered and wavered as though it were a television picture distorting due to a weak signal. Once the sun was below the horizon, the view of the rooftop was gone. In its place was a dim, carpeted corridor that ended in a right hand turn.

The Delta Green agents looked down the corridor and then looked at each other. "Do we go inside?" asked MAYA?

"Who are you, and what did you do with MAYA?" asked MICHAEL, sarcastically.

MORGAN began theorizing about ways they could enter the "night floors" without necessarily being trapped. "You are just dying to put a toe in that door, aren't you?" asked MAYA.

They closed the door and opened it again. The hallway changed. It was now long and straight, with doors on either side. Down near the end of the hall was a room with smoky tendrils slipping out of it.

MORGAN began to hear voices coming from the walls and ceiling around him. He couldn't make out the conversation but they seemed to beckon him. MICHAEL expressed his worry that MORGAN would wander into the "night floors". They shut the door. MORGAN convinced them that he was in control of himself. They opened the door. The same hallway greeted them, though the smoking lounge was now closer.

The "night floors" were inticing. The agents talked about the bottles they found in the stone maze. "We never found your bottle, did we?" MAYA asked MICHAEL.

"That's okay!" cried MICHAEL.

MORGAN had an idea. He suggested that they send the camcorder through the doorway and record what happened when the door closed. They tied a shoe string to the video camera and shoved it through the doorway. They closed the door and opened it. The camcorder was gone, replaced by a clockwork, metal dog. The agents looked nervously at one another and closed the door again. They reopened it. Tied to the shoe string was a note. MORGAN reeled it in and read it.

He couldn't make out the words. When he turned to MICHAEL to speak, all that came out of his mouth was, "Tell me, have you seen the yellow sign?" This disturbed the agents, but it didn't stop MORGAN from handing the note over to MICHAEL and MICHAEL reading it. The same phrase was uttered by MICHAEL. MAYA refused to look at the note.

Once again they closed the door and opened it. As they opened the door, the shoe string was wrenched from MORGAN's hand. The corridor had changed, and now made a left hand turn with no sign of the smoking lounge. A white shoe was spotted disappearing around the bend. The agents quickly agreed that something was trying to lure them into the "night floors".

MORGAN yelled after the man in the white shoes. There was no response. Near the door, a crack appeared in the ceiling. MORGAN yelled into the corridor once more, calling to anyone beyond that he had found his bottle. Nothing happened. They closed the door and opened it. The only difference in the scene was that the crack in the wall was now larger. MORGAN wanted to prod the crack. MICHAEL suggested that he shoot at it, as that was the action least likely to draw MORGAN into the room. MORGAN pulled out his pistol and fired. The crack rapidly widened and then parts of the wall fell away like a house of cards. The remaining part of the corridor was nothing more than a the set of a stage production, the walls a facade of plywood shored up with two-by-fours. Beyond the walls was a huge auditorium filled with life-sized marionettes, whose strings reached up into the darkness above. MICHAEL quickly turned around, but the others continued to gaze. The marionettes began to file out of the auditorium, as if they were an audience watching a play that just ended. MORGAN closed the door.

The agents were visibly shaken by the unreal display. Yet they were unable to just leave the door alone. MORGAN opened it once more. The scene had changed. The door now opened onto a ballroom filled with marionettes. They were dancing, or standing in groups, while other marionettes served them from trays. The strings hung from the darkness above them.

MORGAN wondered aloud what would happen if he shot a marionette. MICHAEL had had enough. He turned and walked down the stairs, suggesting to the others that they follow him. MAYA, whose psyche still hadn't recovered from her earlier experiences with Delta Green, inexplicably decided to stay. As MICHAEL left the building, MORGAN aimed his pistol at one of the marionettes. He fired. The marionette grasped its chest and fell. Blood quickly radiated from the bullets point of impact. MORGAN shut the door. MAYA stood wide-eyed, babbling and hallucinating at the same time. She didn't even object as MORGAN injected her with a sedative. He led her out of the building.

Outside they met MICHAEL. MAYA was babbling, MORGAN was twitching. "Didn't go well?" he asked, rhetorically.

They decided to finish cataloging the contents of Abby's apartment. In spite of it being night time, they re-entered the Macallistar building. They set up in apartment A-2 and continued their work. Near midnight, MICHAEL started to get the feeling he was being watched.

There was one other location in the building that seemed to have strange effects happening when day turned to night: the basement. They went downstairs. They found Thomas' paintings in the room he used for painting. MICHAEL grabbed them two at a time, looked at them, and then took them outside. MORGAN and MAYA watched as MICHAEL stacked them on the stoop. There were five canvasses in all: a painting of an open door, a picture of a marionette ballroom, a group portrait of the denizens of the smoking lounge, a scene of a going-away party where the revellers were soaked in blood, and an eerily disquieting picture of something dressed in yellow tatters disappearing around a corner. This last picture greatly disturbed MICHAEL for some reason. When he came out of the building with it, MORGAN asked him what he saw. "Tatters" was all MICHAEL would say in response.

He walked back into the building and picked up cans of paint thinner. He poured it on the paintings, and then set them on fire with a lighter. "Why are we toasting marshmallows?" cried MAYA, who was trying to regain her grasp on reality.

MORGAN wanted to try one last experiment. He went to the side of the building and climbed the rickety old metal fire escape to the roof. He carefully looked over the side, seeing nothing but the roof and the small structure housing the door to the stairs. He gingerly climbed onto the roof. When that was without incident, MORGAN walked over to the door. He opened it. Beyond was a long, carpeted corridor. He heard a scream issuing from somewhere through the doorway. He slammed the door shut, ran for the fire escape, and quickly made his way to the street. The agents called ALPHONSE and informed him that they recommend that the building be demolished.

The next day, ALPHONSE called MICHAEL to tell him that arrangements had been made and that the building would be demolished — under orders from the CDC — in two weeks.

Monday, March 1, 2004, 10:20 a.m. EST

Macallistar Building, New York, New York

Demolition began on the Macallistar building on the first of March. The three Delta Green agents looked on, making sure that the building wouldn't somehow try to stop the process. The third floor shattered without so much as a whimper of protest. The full demolition work would take a week to complete, but by then the building would be completely destroyed.

The building's inhabitants were all at Bellevue, undergoing treatment. They seemed normal enough during the day, but in the evening their personalities changed. They were usually more garrulous and more outgoing, but they were also completely divorced from reality. They begged, demanded, and cried to be returned to their apartment building. This effect seemed to lessen after the building was destroyed, but the artists that once lived in the Artlife co-op were still somehow "connected" to the "night floors".

There was nothing in the history of the building to suggest what might have happened to it. It was a normal building, as far as the agents could tell, until the inhabitants started disappearing.

They never did find any sign of Abbigail White. The FBI file remained open, but MICHAEL suspected that she was "somewhere else", wherever the sixth floor might be. The agents did take some comfort in the knowledge that they destroyed the building, and that they had rescued David Langford, the cable man now enjoying a quiet life in the mid-west courtesy of the witness protection program.

The agents left the site of the Macallistar building, and made their way to their respective homes.