Episode 98: Cloak and Dagger

Written By Karl White

After the incident on the CIA outpost of Sedna, something changed for Larry Halford. The loss was deeply personal in a way nothing had been before. He’d buried men, seen cities nearly fall, and made decisions that would haunt him for the rest of his life, but this was different. Fred Pike wasn’t just another casualty in a hidden war, he was family. And the truth of what had been stored on that island, what’d been allowed to decay and spread, cut deeper than the loss itself. For it wasn’t the plague that failed him, it was the system he’d trusted to contain it.

In the weeks that followed, Halford stopped asking questions he already knew the answers to. The assurances he’d been given over the years, that the programs weaponizing the plague were shut down, that the work had ended, that the walking death was no longer being studied, always rung hollow. Sedna proved it. The virus hadn’t been abandoned, it’d been saved, set aside to be used again if the need arose. 

Roy Starling overseeing the containment on Sedna - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Though retired, and removed from the field, Roy Starling organized the response to Sedna himself. He’d seen what remained on the island and made the only decision he could, burn the entire site to prevent the sickness from radiating out into the world. But it had, as proof of the outbreak in the park in Vancouver. Dr. Mei Lin Zhou was in charge of that containment and confirmed the tag-banded homing pigeons traced back to Sedna.

At the Department of Defense, during a briefing about what happened on the outpost, Larry came armed with dots connecting to a still active virus, and the growing threat it posed.

HALFORD: This is the forth containment in the last few years. The two most recent were directly tied to a cache I was assured had been destroyed. This is a crisis, a wave of death that can bring the world to it’s knees and not enough has been done. There are bad actors, working from within, still seeking to harm the world. A national emergency needs to be declared. The CDC and Department of Health need to be mobilized and authorized to respond. The might of our great military needs to commit everything it has to eradicating this once and for all. We are well past the point of no return.

Halford warns of the growing threat - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

But his pleas fell on deaf ears. The officials who claimed to support his mission offered only deflection, and the weight of their indifference marked a breaking point.

At the same time, a quieter shift was taking hold. Efforts began to suppress Halford’s work entirely. A small, insulated circle emerged, one that believed the plague was too powerful to relinquish. They operated without a name or oversight, buried deep within the machinery of government where decisions could be made without record or consequence.

Halford spent too many years inside the system not to recognize what was going on. Language changed. Briefings suddenly became more controlled. Access narrowed. He was being stonewalled.

This wasn’t some radical cabal, as behind it, was something far worse. Proof the mysterious Dr. Bellian Vale’s influence reached deeper than anyone had imagined. A demon in human form, moving unseen, ensuring the plague endured. He understood what men feared, and what they desired. In exchange for their loyalty, and helping guide the world closer to extinction, he would provide.

If the plague had an architect, Dr. Ichikawa had been its builder. But Vale was something older. Something that didn’t disappear when kings died or regimes ended. He was the keeper of the flame of death. And no one, not even Larry Halford could stop him.  

But Halford, a man with decades of intelligence experience realized, Vale would never act unless the survival of the plague was threatened. Those in power that Vale manipulated would do all they could to keep knowledge of the virus from the population at large. That’s how the Black Wind continued to march quietly through history. So to create a situation that couldn’t be controlled or quieted, might just flush something ancient out of hiding.

Selena Rice meets with Larry Halford - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

In the summer of 1984, Larry Halford began compiling everything. Decades of reports, classified files, field recordings, internal communications, not just Ichikawa’s work, but the government’s role in preserving and advancing the plague. He knew what it meant to do this...not just professionally, but personally. There’d be no coming back. No forgiveness. He’d be branded a traitor and disavowed, but that didn’t matter. 

He gave the material to a young investigative reporter, Selena Rice. Someone ambitious and reckless enough to pursue it. He instructed her to assemble the narrative, then push it to foreign news agencies in complicit countries named in his treasure trove of information, and release it simultaneously. He warned her of push-back, but if the story could get out, it would do more than expose a staggering history of the plague as a weapon. A truth that, if made public, couldn’t be easily contained or denied. Selena saw a career-defining story, he saw a catalyst…because Larry doubted the story would ever make it to print.

The agency, and their foreign counterparts would quickly move to silence it, and they did. Rice’s home was raided, materials seized, and a warrant was issued for Halford’s arrest. But that was the point. The leak was meant to trigger a response. Halford needed to see who’d move to suppress it, and how quickly they’d act. 

Through trusted contacts in each of the countries that crushed the story, a list was made. Men and women who issued orders to restrict the information. 

Then came the second phase. Utilizing former assets and foreign intelligence operatives sympathetic to Halford’s cause, secret surveillance was set up on those on the list. With a little bit of patience, a trail began to form -- one that pointed, at last, towards Dr. Vale.

Larry and Bhekizizwe in Europe- © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

By 1985, Larry Halford was in Europe under an assumed identity, staying ahead of the agencies tasked with hunting him. He was working with Bhekizizwe, and his new network of Slayers. They, like himself, were disillusioned with the world’s elites and their willingness to preserve the very thing they sought to destroy. Together, they established a hidden network, in constant communication, on the lookout for movement.

Not long after sparking the fire, six names from Halford’s list, individuals in positions of power in different world governments, arranged a covert meeting together at a hotel in Vienna. It was organized quickly, whispers of secrecy. With intercepted conversations mentioning a summit with a doctor...

Halford arrived ahead of it and set up observation, waiting for Bhekizizwe. One by one the attendees made their way to the meeting point. When the final arrival stepped from their car, Halford recognized him immediately. The description matched. It was the same man Ichikawa described decades earlier. The blurry shape in failed surveillance photos.

Halford had spent years chasing this figment. The operation had worked. The leak, the risk, it had all led to this moment. Vale had been forced to engage, and in doing so, had exposed himself to the one thing he’d avoided for decades -- direct observation. Halford didn’t move, not yet, as he couldn’t go in alone.

TO BE CONTINUED…