Missing Persons Issue No. 1
Vigil is a mysterious government figure who approaches FBI agents, former federal employees, researchers, reformed criminals, and vigilantes in regards to the re-opening of the IPC. His search and selection process with each candidate is specific—with several rejections before he requests that Roth pay him a visit in his office.
He first recruits Roth by presenting him with a cold missing persons case involving a sex worker who vanished into a cloud of pink mist while working at a night club. At the same time, Vigil reveals he was approached himself to launch a newly structured IPC due to a paranatural influx.
Within this section, the cold case is presented in narrative format through the eyes of the victim Adelynn Abernathy, as she was secretly trafficked into a sex ring ran by notable crime boss Frank Hooper. She moves into a new apartment and is coaxed into a relationship by her neighbor Erick Spann, a drug dealer and addict who is affiliated with Hooper. He gets Abernathy addicted to drugs and convinces her to get a job at the local nightclub, promising it to be a bartender. When she’s there, she’s told she’ll be a dancer and has to perform strip routines. From there she’s brought up into the private rooms near Hooper’s office and finds Erick Spann waiting for her, eager to have sex. At this point she is too high on ecstasy and begins the act—only to evaporate into a pink mist, terrifying Spann. Spann is arrested and interrogated, with charges including drug trafficking used to hold him in the Hamptonville police station.
Roth proposes a few theories as to what happened and cites that Hooper is an individual who needs to be brought down regardless of his lacking paranatural concern. Hooper meditates on the case that night and sees a figure in his visions, reaching out to him with the sounds of laughter and moaning. The figure is silhouetted except for its eyes, which are pearlescent red orbs that give an evil and piercing stare. Roth snaps out of his meditation and takes a hot shower and goes to sleep, repeatedly thinking about what he saw and what it could have been.
Roth and Vigil go into downtown Tall Pines and walk along the street the next day. Vigil asks Roth to observe anything out of the ordinary in the city. Roth laughs and says the whole town is odd; the whole state is odd. Vigil explains that the state of Ghostwood didn’t always use to be this way. They discuss the history of the Government Hero Program briefly before a small electronics hardware store blows outward in a light explosion. A man with a scarred face stumbles out of the dust carrying tons of equipment (motherboards and cable). Roth attempts to thwart him Vigil follows behind, but The Board of Triumph shows up and brutally captures the man, destroying more property in the process, hauling him away to their headquarters.
Roth is shaken by the event and sees the suffering left in the wake of the mysterious scarred man and by the Board. He immediately tells Vigil he is ready to join. He wants to do anything he can to put an end to the nonsense in Ghostwood and restore the peace.
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