Exerpt of GOC Report, A121290, with Group of Interest "Serpent's Hand".
Below is the report given by Strike Team Leader Wallace P. Haggerdy, of Strike Team Omega-Redoubt "Hope's Fortress".
…Me and my team were posted outside of a library in England. We, as usual, were on a need-to-know basis with the mission. Command told us we were after a some sort of staff within the library, which could manipulate ones cellular cohesion at will. It was a quick, in and out mission. Grab the staff, bring it back to our Quartermasters for inspection so that we could figure out how to destroy the thing before it hurt someone.
Turns out, weren't alone. We cleared every room, floor, and office within the library- in the dead of night. We were just about done, investigating the Third Floor Archives when Coleman shouted that he'd found something. Me and Beatrice came running. By the time we'd made it, he was a puddle of human goop on the ground. Worst part was- he was still concious. I could hear him trying to speak, gurgling and sloshing around… It was horrific. But it added up with how the staff worked. We pursued Colemans masked assailant- who carried the ornate staff with him, doing our best not to be spotted. We weren't sure how the staff worked, and couldn't alert him to our presence.
We eventually found ourselves on the roof. The man with the staff stood proud over the city streets below, unaware that we were there. Just as we prepared to engage, a pair of formally dressed individuals with strange tattoos snuck up the fire escape, across from us. The four of us sat in utter silence, recognizing silently that this was a peculiar situation. One of the individuals began to use ASL to communicate with us. She explained that the staff was dependent on emotion. Any sort of exreme emotion would lead it to decay the users sanity, and lash out violently at others.
We quickly figured out that they were The Hand. And in vice-versa, they discovered we were GOC. It took every ounce of energy I had not to blow our cover and kill them right then and there, but I managed. Working together, we managed to incapacitate the masked individual. The staff fell onto the ground, and as Beatrice was apprehending the man the two Hand Agents made off with the staff. I chased in pursuit, alone. Unwise in hindsight, I'm well aware.
By the time I had caught them, it was clear I'd wound up in their home turf. By the time I'd made the decision to retreat, it was too late. The library we were in initially morphed into this, strange, abominable library with endless shelves and endless books. My radio merely produced static- no comms with command or my team. By this point, my goal was no longer to retrieve the staff, but to make it back alive. No GOC who had pursued or encountered Serpents had survived thus far, and I wasn't about to be another statistic…
