So hey, I did a thing inspired by
@MJ12 Commando's thing on the previous page.
Spooks
A man in black, vacant eyes unblinking behind his sunglasses, observes an enemy of the state from his van. He no longer remembers which state he is trying to defend.
A group of policemen, their uniforms stained and disused, pace the street with perfect coordination. They are not looking for crime; they are looking for an excuse.
An officer in a grey jacket decorated with the insignia of a country that no longer exists records hundreds upon hundreds of phone calls and bugged conversations. His fax machine still prints out orders from a higher command that has long been dissolved.
Spooks are a societal cancer, a manifestation of the otherworldly infecting the mundane world and turning it upon itself. They have no purposes, and their origins are unknown. Some assume they are the results of an alien reality seeping through this one and causing it to "glitch." Others believe they can trace back the source to a memetic virus, spreading through ideas and words until it finds its preferred host. Whatever the correct answer, no one has ever managed to destroy the infection - only its individual manifestations.
The usual environment of spooks is a country with a powerful organism of law enforcement that has, to an extent, manage to sever itself from the rest of the government, and are no longer fully accountable to other authorities. Often, these are "secret polices" and "intelligence agencies." Though this is a fundamentally human phenomenon, it provides the grounds in which the spook manifestation will plant and fester. The infection does not at first affect an entire institution: rather it manifests in individual "cells," localized subdivisions of the greater organisation. The potential for several infected cells to grow to the point that they could override the entire organization is largely theoretical, though a few closed call have occurred during the Cold War.
A spook manifestation can be divided into three stages and a culmination.
In the first stage, the normal chain of commands and order of operations is disrupted. Without apparent causes over than human error, reports are misfiled, memos disappear orders are transmitted to the wrong people, modified during transmission, or otherwise changed from their original intent. As this goes on, the actions of the cell are disrupted without the cell being aware of it, until new orders are received that were never sent in the first place and the cell ceases proper communication of their activities to their hierarchy. The vast majority of spook manifestations are halted there without anyone realizing what has happened: a strong hierarchy intervenes, believing the issue to be one of bureaucratic disorganization and human error, people are disciplined, teams are reorganized, and the manifestation ends before it could take root.
Should this not happen, the manifestation enters its second stage. Vulnerable agents start suffering emotional and psychological influence. The first symptom is forgetfulness in matters of personal life - dates, birthdays, celebrations, appointments disappear from memories and agendas. The pleasure one derives from the company of one's family seems to dull, and individuals feel estranged from all people except their colleagues. As their social ties decay to the point of removing themselves from the world entirely, their sense of empathy fades, as well as their interest in the rationale behind their cell's organization: all that matters is fulfilling its purpose and carrying it out its orders. The effects of the first stage worsen: all orders received by the cell come from nowhere, and the higher-ups who should monitor the cell begin receiving falsified reports that appease any concern to an undue extent, and which were never written by anyone. At the apex of this stage, the cell is severed from its hierarchy. It disappears from the records, and no one remembers its existence.
The third stage is known as metastasizing. Agents have forgotten their personal lives and live only to carry out the orders received by their cell, which now bear only a vaguely thematic connection to their agency's intended purpose. They feel an inherent connection and no longer need to talk to communicate. Murder, abduction and torture feature very frequently in their "duties," and they rapidly develop the appropriate skills. Soon, new agents appear who never existed - one day this corner of the room was empty, and the next it has a desk and Agent Grey sitting behind it. The space of whatever headquarters the cell is using distorts to accommodate this new population, though never to too great an extent; when there is no more room for the new agents, they leave, secure another building and create a new cell there. This is the point where the manifestation is hardest to root out, as it is now spreading on its own. Occasionally, agents who die in the course of their duties reappear at headquarters after what they perceive as a "medical leave." Memories of their first death tends to make them even harder to confront the next time.
The cell may now come into conflict with the agency to which it nominally belongs if their activities are investigated. This is the point of culmination of the infection. Two things may happen. Most often, the infected cell comes under enough scrutiny and investigation that it goes to ground, abandoning its headquarters and finding new locations, at which point it loses much of the power that came from its centralization but also becomes almost impossible to destroy entirely, cropping up to cause new problems for years afterwards. These are generally labelled as rogue or terrorist organizations, and believed to be mundane. Rarely, the infected cell "reintegrated" into the agency, and the interrogations and investigations conducted cause new cells to come into contact with the infection. Though a strong enough reaction can prevent a disaster, failure will cause the infection to crawl up the chain of command, infecting more and more of the agency as a whole. In extreme cases the agency will split in two, the "original" human organization and the now fully overridden spook organization. In this case, the supernatural nature of the manifestation is hard to ignore, and supernatural influence is brought into play against it - either from interested third parties, or from a government's own paranormal resources.
Agent White
A member of a third-stage, "metastasized" spook cell, Agent White does not know if he ever was truly human or appeared one day all suited in his office - nor does he care. His name is one of a long string of color-based monickers, once an internal joke among agents and now their only identity. Connected to his allies by a crude telepathic link with a range of a few hundred meters, Agent White is at his best when acting as part of a group. In fact, isolating him from his comrade is one of the few things that can make him stop acting like a human machine, and causes him great amounts of anxiety and psychological suffering. Acting as part of a group, however, brings him peace of mind and comfort. Following his orders lets him feel that his place in the world is understood and secured.
Agent White is currently deployed in Chicago, where his cell was once tasked with monitoring criminal activity of a specific type, now forgotten as their purpose inflated to cover all of crime, everywhere. Bugs and wires all over the city provide the sleepless headquarters of the cell with a constant flux of information; ground agents like White form the strike teams which, upon orders from "on high," break down doors and spray rooms with bullets. Agent White understands that his cell's methods, though effective, would be questioned by the judiciary system, and so he allows the suspects no chance of contesting his verdict. Besides, they already killed him twice; he's only repaying the favor.
Attributes
Strength 3 Dexterity 4 Stamina 4
Intelligence 3 Wits 2 Resolve 5
Charisma 1 Manipulation 3 Composure 5
Skills
Athletics 4 (Relentless Pursuit, Urban Environments),
Firearms 3* (Ordnance Pistol, Close Quarter Shoot-Outs, Coordinated Attack),
Streetwise 3* (Chicago Criminal Underground, Black Market),
Investigation 3* (Forensics), Stealth 2 (Small Unit Tactics), Brawl 2 (Grappling), Larceny 2 (Cover-Up, Framing the Perp), Computers 2 (This Is Most Certainly Illegal), Medicine 2 (First Aid), Drive 2 (Unmarked Van, Relentless Pursuit), Intimidation 2 (They Will Never Find Your Body, Agent Grey Is A Lot Less Nice Than I Am)
*Asset Skills
Merits
Professional Training 5 (Spook), Firefight Style 3, Parkour Style 3, Contacts 3, Small Unit Tactics 2, Quick Draw 1
Advantages
Health: 9/9
Willpower: 10/10
Supernatural Features
Unnatural Will: Many forms of supernatural influence that would affect a normal person are inapplicable against Agent White; as a rule of thumb, anything that plays on human emotional responses is going to fail unless he is isolated from his hive mind, but "brute force" influence may still function.
Telepathic Link: Agent White can communicate mentally with any other member of his cell within a three hundred yards radius, faster and more clearly than with words.
One of Many: Agent White may spend Willpower on behalf of another agent within his telepathic radius. Several agents can combine Willpower expenditure in this fashion, though any point beyond the first adds only one die to a pool rather than three, or one point to a static value.
Solitude Anxiety: As long as there is no other member of his cell within his telepathic radius, Agent White is incapable of spending or regaining Willpower.
