Excerpt:
Recovery Report on the Anachronistic Artifact Identified as the Betancourt Stone, following its tracking through one of the countless favelas in the marginal sector of Nueva Bolívar, locally known as Barrio Venezuela. Foundational Agents Rafael Sandoval and Frederick Rojas were assigned to the operation after clinical reports surfaced describing a man who spat fire… and another who suffered a sudden intestinal prolapse—meaning his viscera burst out of his abdomen—in the capital’s peripheral district.
IT specialist Victor Horacio, from the Department of Data Analysis, traced the artifact’s position to a cluster of desolate favelas in the area, inhabited by abandoned vagrants and psychotropic addicts. The dispatched agents—equipped with proper protective gear and the containment briefcase—swept through shacks built from plastic partitions and rusted zinc sheets in search of the extremely dangerous object known as the “Betancourt Stone.” After hours of searches and interrogations of the zone’s dissident population… the agents entered a derelict settlement infested with drug-addled beggars, where they found a grim scene centered around the artifact.
According to reference photographs and related documentation, the Betancourt Stone is a fourteen-centimeter spherical object, pink in coloration and rough in texture; (anyone who touches it will suffer intense hallucinations). That strange device sat atop an old desk, surrounded by unconscious vagrants and wide-eyed addicts who shouted at the top of their lungs in a deranged symposium triggered by psychotropic distortion.
The agents had been discussing the performance of Japanese and Venezuelan players in the American baseball league; but they fell silent at once as the communicator began transmitting audio from that den of addicts—most of them comatose from ingesting opioids, dead in all ways except the literal one.
“Then President Herrera Betancourt opened the Punto Fijo oil well, and he… and they… discovered what was thrashing in the black hole, so they sealed it under fourteen meters of reinforced concrete. But that didn’t stop the refinery’s output. Is the house shaking? —The man was a scrawny figure with curly hair and an unkempt mustache, the look of a petty criminal baked by hardship, and tear-rimmed eyes carrying a corrupt little satchel—. Hey, brother, are you the Ghostbusters or what?”
The foundational agents then donned their gas masks, drew their nine-millimeter Zamoranas from their full-body gray uniforms, and began killing everyone present. One of the addicts awoke—visibly unstable, according to analysts of the audiovisual recording—and opened fire with a machine-pistol. The agents threw themselves to the ground as a storm of bullets ripped through the air… and Rafael began cursing for having landed in a puddle of vomit, forced to crawl while rounds buzzed over their skulls. A voice rose above the chaos: “That belongs to Dog-Belly, you fucking government whores!” His partner, Frederick, managed to twist his body and dispatch the shooter with two shots to the chest.
The man collapsed with his eyes rolled back, struck by the orgasmic surge of cardiac arrest… and the agents quickly finished off the remaining vagrants of that favela, its cement walls gnawed by erosion and its corrugated roof eaten away by rust. Fourteen dead in total—whose bodies would appear in the newspapers as “a settling of scores between criminal gangs over product cut with garbage”—and one agent drenched in radioactive vomit, placed under temporary quarantine and subjected to preventive medical tests. Both men approached the Betancourt Stone, its rosy surface giving it the appearance of a fossilized red dragon’s egg… and slipped on their elastomer gloves, opening the reinforced steel case while trading jokes about the genital warts of a giant and how revolting the object was.
Frederick stared long at Rafael. “What are you staring at? —Rafael snapped—. Your mama’s the one who’s gonna grab this stone! I’m covered in shit, for God’s sake!”
“Fucking disgusting, brother,” Frederick muttered before pinching the stone with the tips of his fingers and placing it inside the lead-lined, rubber-cushioned interior. “Goddamn it, I’m gonna puke in this mask.”
“Don’t you fucking dare!...
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