Saturday, December 18th, 2021: Undisclosed Location, 12:45PM
Steven Wilson hefted the assault rifle and slammed a magazine home.
"Any word from the main base?" He asked as he cocked and loaded the M18 pistol he used as his sidearm before tucking it away into his holster.
"None," The reply came from a worried-looking Parker, as he switched through all the frequencies on the walkie-talkie that had been assigned for emergency use.
"Well, we all heard the explosion and saw the smoke." Rico volunteered unhelpfully.
"And saw the chopper." Tai chimed in from where she was perched in the tree branches, watching the circling helicopter through binoculars. "Can still see the chopper, actually." She mumbled, running a hand through her black hair.
For his part, Ayodeji stayed quiet and continued to pull his hood tighter around his head; it would have looked like he was trying to smother himself if you didn't know any better.
Parker clicked off the radio and pulled a face before letting out a long sigh, his breath misting up in front of his face. "There's no response on any frequency we used. Nothing from Greynolds, nothing from Sonia, nothing from Tracen." He tucked the walkie-talkie away into his webbing and picked up his rifle from where he'd lent it against a tree.
Wilson kept his crouch. One knee in the dirt, gun rested across his other thigh as he thought, considering his options. There had been a sequence of explosions, including one from the island itself, from the plane they'd discovered in the surf. Tai had gone to check it out and found it split apart; the mechanical guts of wires and fuselage spilled across the water, while a plume of choking black smoke rose into the air. She'd also confirmed the death of the student who caused it. Not too much longer after that—in terms of context, which was important—there had been the helicopters and more explosions. The special forces, with their regular insertion methods, likely dropped onto the home boat.
"OK," he said finally and decisively, causing the other three to turn to look at him. "Tai, tell me exactly how many helicopters we're dealing with and what their patrol pattern is." Tai acknowledged him with a nod and scampered further up the tree to get to a better vantage point. The only thing marking her passage was the gentle rustle of leaves and the occasional loose pinecone or branch falling onto the forest floor.
"Looks like at least two." She called down to them after a brief delay. "One is further away and hovering over one spot; the other is patrolling closer—it looks like it's tracking around the shoreline."
It was as Wilson thought then. He waited patiently, thinking through the potential options and considering what they needed to do as Tai navigated her way back down the tree trunk without falling and snapping her leg. Once Tai dropped onto the forest floor, she immediately got to work setting up her CS/LR4A sniper system.
"Listen up," he said as he stood up to his full height. He was about to give the island team, his team, their marching orders, and he wanted to make sure they all took in what he had to say. "Without contact from command, we're to assume that we're on our own, which means we're going to protocol—" But before he could finish, there was the sound of heavy footfalls and loud panting breaths. Ayodeji swung around in an instant, his gun trained at the source, as Marco burst through the treeline. Despite the cold, he was red in the face and had built up a sweat in the course of his run, meaning he must have been in a dead sprint for most of it. His rifle was slung across his chest, and his shotgun was over his back.
"We have a big problem." He said this between loud, greedy pants as his burning lungs tried to fill back up with air.
"We're aware, Marco!" Ayodeji snapped, "We all saw the helicopters and heard the explosions; it's no reason to run around the forest like a madman trying to give me a heart attack."
"No, not that." Marco gulped; he had a hand out against a tree trunk for support. "There's boats, multiple boats, loaded with operators."
Then, before anyone could ask any follow-up questions, they all heard it.
“This is the Interpol Incident Response team and SEALs. Your collars should no longer be active and you are not being monitored. Please make your way to the beach as soon as possible. You're going home.”
Wilson narrowed his eyes.
"Load up." He said. "No one is going home."
Then the island team passed through the trees and made their way towards the red glow.
Saturday, December 18th, 2021: Undisclosed Location, 13:04PM
Two men in all black stood among other black-clad figures, counting the number of injured, exhausted, and starving students who were loaded into multiple dinghies.
"Is that everyone?" One of the men in black asked one of his compatriots, who had a tan complexion and a bald head. The man glanced over at him and then down at his list that had been affixed to a clipboard.
"Looks like we're missing one." He muttered, flipping the page over to check something underneath and then flipping it back down, as if the count would magically change. Then he checked his watch. "Not sure where he would be."
"How long do we give it, you think?" The other man asked, fumbling with the collar radar he'd gotten from one of the students.
"Well, that's the thing—"
Whatever the bald man had been about to say was cut off as Tai's bullet split his head apart like an overripe watermelon, scattering skull and brains across the sand. The rest of the black-clad men jumped into action, half of them spinning on their heels as they drew their weapons to return fire, while the other half rushed to the boats and began pushing them off the beach and out into the surf. The shooting was quick and brutal, and the previously silent island erupted into gunfire as if it were the long-awaited encore to the prior twelve days of performance.
Wilson stayed crouched in the treeline, calmly squeezing off individual rounds at the figures on the beach. As another one of them hit the ground, there was a yelp to his right, and he saw Rico fall onto his side, clutching at his stomach, his gloved hands and the snow around him quickly turning a deep red.
When he turned his attention back to the beach, he could see that the boats were in the water and beginning to break through the waves. "Tai!" He called out, "Shoot the boats!"
"I think there's a bigger problem!" She gave her reply, and Wilson heard what she was referring to before he saw it. The tell-tale whop whop whop as the helicopter that had been patrolling swung around.
There was a moment when it seemed to stare down at them from above, an apathetic observer of their obstinance.
Then it opened up with its guns. The high-pitched whir filled the air around them as bark was ripped from trees and clumps of grass and dirt were chewed up all around them. Parker was caught mid-turn and split into two jagged halves. Meanwhile, where Rico had been lying, there was only a pink mist floating through the air. Wilson couldn't see where Ayodeji, Sai, or Marco had gone, but their guns had stopped; they'd faded back into the woods, scattered by the force of the military that had been brought to bear against them.
Wilson himself went to fall back, to retreat to a safer location so he could rethink their strategy, but instead, he found himself toppling over and onto the cold ground. When he looked down in confusion, he found one of his legs lying in a red soup, with only a few tendrils of meat desperately clinging to his upper thigh.
His assault rifle lay out of reach, and Wilson could hear the chopper above him still. An impassive metal shell, waiting for his next move. He fumbled with his pistol holster, his fingers suddenly struggling to obey even the simplest commands. His once nimble and coordinated hands reduced to nothing more than clumsy bags of meat from the effects of shock and blood loss.
As Steven Wilson struggled to draw his pistol, one of the men on board the helicopter slid the side door, and the pilot lazily brought the rotorcraft around. For a few seconds, they watched the old man desperately try to continue fighting, watching as life slowly drained out of him. Then one of them leaned out of the open door and put a burst of lead through his chest.
Tight cluster, center of mass.
Sunday, December 19th, 2021: Cook Inlet, en route to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, 9:02PM
Sgt. Jaylen Ackridge's breath billowed out in front of him from where he stood, leaning against the corrugated outside wall of a refrigerated storage unit on the deck of an innocuous-looking boat. A camera strap hung from his neck, swaying slightly in the wind as the boat pushed its way forward through the night.
One of these containers could hold up to a hundred sets of adult human remains. Today, on the first day of recovery operations, it was hauling less than a third of its maximum capacity.
Interpol had commandeered its own little corner of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and brought up temporary mortuary facilities on the backs of trucks, courtesy of the FBI. There was some friction between all the different chains of command involved in the recovery. He didn't know that, but he assumed it was likely, given the level of unorthodoxy. You had Interpol's DVI team, you had the Air Force, you had the Navy, you had the civilian coroner's office, you had the various feds, you had God knew who else; each cog had its own protocol and higher power to answer to. Earlier, there had been some discussion of using King Salmon's or even Anchorage's civilian facilities—that would have been normal protocol—but that plan had been vetoed by the federal guys. They wanted this to be as controlled an operation as possible. Any civilians that were needed for the identification efforts would be brought up to Elmendorf-Richardson. The circle had to be as closed as it could be; "less need to worry about tragedy ghouls," they'd said. Considering the cargo they were dealing with, he could hardly blame them.
The process would be slow. The island, in its entirety, was a crime scene. It was important to understand just the scale of the search area.
Ackridge's official role, under normal circumstances, was combat photographer. In actual practice, that meant that most of the time, if he was documenting anything at all, it was the aftermath of suicides and accidents. If any personnel died on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, his job was essentially to photograph the scene in situ. He'd once considered himself lucky that he'd never dealt with any murders in that capacity.
But, point was, this wasn't his first time assisting in a recovery operation.
First time ever following orders from the Navy, though.
Elmendorf-Richardson's only non-civilian, non-Office-of-Public-Affairs photographers were laid out with COVID. Interpol wanted as many recovery teams possible working on their operation, and each had roles that needed filling. Ackridge had a camera, and he had experience. So, the morning after the Navy's mop-up of the island team, he'd been pulled aside by his CO, he'd had his services volunteered to Interpol, and he'd been flown north from Tacoma. He wasn't sure why they'd asked for him out of all people—surely there had to have been candidates elsewhere who better fit the role. He hadn't bothered to inquire about that; he didn't expect any answers. But now, his current role was to be a crime scene photographer attached to one of the recovery teams.
He could say, with confidence, that he had not been prepared to see the things he'd seen today.
The procedure was simple. Upon the discovery of a decedent, the first thing he did was to take multiple shots of the whole scene. Then, in situ shots of the decedent, personal effects, blood spatters, wall scrawlings, evidence of the AT's operations, anything relevant. Then, closeups. A photo of each decedent's face to aid in identification. If no face was present, he took a picture of what remained. Everything that could be documented was to be documented. After all that was done, if the decedent was wearing a collar, that was removed for safety, and then the bodies were bagged along with any personal effects and hauled back to the transport boat. Upon arrival at the boat, the bags were unzipped, the decedents were photographed again in the bag, and then everything was zipped back up and prepped for transport to the mortuary.
It was a job where, where, where, you know, a certain level of cognitive dissonance was the most efficient way to get it done. Generally, that was just something you needed to be good at if you wanted to make a career staying in the military, but it was especially urgent in situations like these. You tried not to think about the bodies as people; you tried not to - not to notice the, you know, the little details; you tried not to get to know them. But these were just kids. He couldn't even begin to imagine the hell they'd been through. The very first body to be recovered was that of a boy who'd died standing in a pool of his own blood. He'd been seen from afar by the rescue team on their arrival. His hands and forearms had been shredded like string cheese. He was not wearing a collar. There was a note written in blood on a wall nearby, containing enough information for one of the other guys on Ackridge's team to scribble a tentative ID on the body bag. Ackridge did not know what the information was. He had photographed the note; he had avoided reading it. In another house, the team found a girl. Her state of decomposition was far enough along that her cause of death wasn't immediately clear beyond the bloodstains soaked into the floor around her. Over her face, she was wearing a rubber witch mask. And then, another - he'd seen - he'd seen someone from one of the other teams wheeling an empty wheelchair out the front door of a house. He hadn't seen the body; he didn't know if there was a body. But the wheelchair had to belong to someone.
It was - you know - it was, it was... it was hard. It was just hard. He didn't know why it was hitting him the way it was, but it was.
He didn't think he could do this again tomorrow. Honestly, he didn't.
...
It was a breathtaking night. The way the stars glittered and danced against the sea—to him, the view looked like it could have been something out of a Tourism Alaska ad.
He raised his camera. The shutter clicked.
Attention all handlers!
We are pleased to announce that with the V8 island wrapped we can give further information on what will be happening next with regards to V8.
Primarily this means The Aftermath. This phase of the game will cover everything that follows the rescue of the survivors at the end of V8.
This will be handled with two distinct forums.
The first forum will be the military base the survivors will be taken to and kept at for medical attention and monitoring following their extraction from the island. This forum will cover the period of time from the 19th of December to the 3rd of January and will cover the rehabilitation period for the survivors along with any other stories the handlers would like to tell that involve their characters and take place on the base.
The second forum is open to all handlers to write in and is set in Salem following the announcement of the rescue of the V8 students. This announcement comes on the 20th of December. So if you want to have any pregame characters who didn't go on the trip, parents of your characters, or any other characters appear, this is the place for you. Additionally, survivors can appear in threads in this forum as long as these threads take place after the 3rd of January, which is when they all return to Salem following their monitoring period by the military.
For handlers with survivors, you are able to post in both forums simultaneously, you do not have to complete all your posts and have your character leave the military base forum before being able to enter the Back Home forum.
Below is a timeline to help keep clear what the general sequence of events is from the students rescue to their return home.
Timeline of events
18th of December 2021 - Day 12 of SOTF is disrupted as the rescue of the remaining students occurs.
19th of December 2021 - The surviving students of John Endecott Memorial Academy are taken to Joint Branch Lewis-McChord - Start of The Aftermath
20th of December 2021 - Interpol contacts the family of every student. Later, President Kirby announces the success of an operation launched against the AT, and the rescue of fourteen students. The names of the surviving students are also announced. - Start of events for the Back Home forum
25th of December 2021 - Families of the surviving students are allowed to visit Joint Branch Lewis-McChord for Christmas to see their children.
27th of December 2021 - Interpol and the Army begin to conduct interviews with any students willing to give information about the AT.
3rd of January 2022 - The survivors are returned home to Salem with their families. The arrival of their plane is broadcast live across the news - Surviving students can appear in the Back Home forum from this date onward
IC, the aftermath posts can span any length of time between the arrival at Joint Branch Lewis-McChord until June 16th, which is when graduation will be.
Aftermath and the Pregame Memories forums will remain open until August 1, 2024.