Autumn is winding down here and temperatures are close to freezing - on some nights in the suburbs is at or just below freezing. And this allowed us to see that Markov was not breathing. His companion (a Frenchman) was, you could see his breath condensing as he exhaled or talked. We had suspected Markov of being supernatural, perhaps an alien, perhaps a summoned creature. We really did not know where he came from, but we did know that his intentions were violent. We became aware of and increasingly concerned about the Frenchman only when our investigation collided with another department's investigation.

The Frechman was a mercenary working throughout Africa in several of France's former colonial holdings. He was a recruiter, trainer, and most importantly, arms dealer. He was able to get his hands on some really power weapons and equipment. He worked for governments and rebel groups, sometimes on both sides of the same conflict. After a while he made a career switch and started dealing in girls. First in Africa then in Eastern Europe, where he appeared on our radar. The scam is awfully simple: advertise good jobs in western Europe and pretty soon families are paying the human smugglers everything they can scrape together and forcing their little girls to western Europe to work and send money back home. They think they are going to be maids or cooks in large rich mansions where they will work hard but not have a hard life; but what they are headed to is a life of service - and I use "service" very broadly - and little to no pay. The smugglers get their money and the bastards get what amounts to a slave.

There are a couple of years where he just seems to have disappeared. There is an utter void of information surrounding that period. No one knows where he was, what he was doing... nothing.

Until recently he resurfaced in Moscow. Teams picked up the scent and were following him for a week when our investigation of Markov brought us all together. The topic of their conversation - the target and method of attack and all the shit going down in the south - prompted us to move immediately. There was only one bodyguard who did not know his trade and once he was out of the picture the Frenchman was a fairly easy take down. He is up in years and lost of lot of his fighting edge - his last combat experiece was back in the early 1970s. Markov, however, was a real handful. It was as if he knew something was about to happen as he went immediately into action. Oleg was thrown across the street by an unseen force while my gun was ripped from my hands. Boris started choking. Markov turned into a puff of smoke and reappeared right in front of me. He grabbed me by the edges of my armour at my shoulders and threw me like a toy to the ground. That hurt, a lot. I rolled away avoiding his stomp. I came up with my handgun popping him twice in the chest. He waved his arm but nothing happened. A few shots from the team distracted him but he puffed again and had me by the throat with one hand and my gun hand with the other. I leaned back and as he shifted his weight back I charged forward easily bowling him over. A few of Alexander's shotgun blasts destroyed Markov's head. Finally, he was dead. Everyone was safe, although not without injuries.

That is usually how it goes when dealing with soupies: a body and more unanswered questions. But we got the Frenchman and bodyguard.

It turns out some of those girls were not sent to Europe. Rather, they were sent to secret medical labs where different experiments were being performed on them.

We got some pretty good information out of the prisoners. We raided some slums and rounded up a handful of interesting people. They led us to the other big fish.

Our first target, Yevgeny, was in another country for another couple of days. We contacted their security services and were cooperative. Ivan and I went to check out the address we were given. Real nice apartments, remodeled to European standards. The decision was made to pick him up at the airport when we got word that he was arriving 12 hours earlier than expected. We moved quickly.

There are two international gates which form a large room, then there is a small bottleneck to the escalators going down to Customs and then the exit. Goggles on, we were waiting. Yevgeny got off the plane and we moved to arrest him when there was a bright flash, a sword, and one dead Yevginy nearly cut in half lengthwise.

"The window!" one of my guys shouted.

A figure with very dark skin in an army green pilot's coveralls swung its psi-sword against the window and jumped out. We got caught up the chaos but Ivan was close to the window. He opened fire on the figure running "really fast" down the runway. Ivan hit it a few times and it went down in the middle of the runway.

"It's stopped crawling," Ivan said over the radio.

By the time we got to the body it had crawled about 5m (nearly 17 feet) according to the blood smeared from crawling on the concrete.

Turns out it was a human, a black skinned female (blacked skinned people are noticably rare in Russia); the toxicology reported a lethal amount of stimulants in her body.

The math is not difficult.

The raid on Yevgeny's apartment yieled a lot of information. He was less than careful with his computer, and from that a lot of information was gained.

What happened next (and especially where it happened) is mostly highly classified. What I can say is this, that is where I sustained my injuries and that given this recent post about the Order of the Celestial Oracle doing similar stuff going on, I am becoming increasingly more worried.

Roma just sent me a report about some experiments in human augmentation through chemicals rather than genes. I have translated some of the report for sharing the declassified stuff. Much of this information resulted from events that transpired in the original post a while back. Some of you might remember.

The exact nature of the chemicals I cannot say, but it is certainly an interesting mix or "cocktail" as they say. It amps the body like nothing else, but it also takes a heavy toll on the body. It enhances the body's reflexes, makes it stronger, faster, bigger, and in general better. But it also deteriorates the body rapidly. Someone under such an enhancement regime will not live for long. It is a very lethal process.

Nothing ever came of the investigation into the Celestial Oracle.