sysadmin

Serafíne

The bright washing sun competes with scudding clouds for dominance in the April sky and you'd never guess from the raucous game of ultimate frisbee on one of the big grassy swaths of greening lawn that there's a winter storm watch currently looming over Denver and its environs, that spring ski enthusiasts will have another foot or so of fresh snowfall if they go high enough into the mountains.

Right now: shorts and t-shirts and a frisbee that looks like a pink-frosted donut with a bite taken out. Fringe and beads and bare feet and painted toes and gladiator sandals and the musky scent of marijuana in the air and it's too early (she just woke up an hour or so ago and she's still nursing a particularly intense acid hangover) for a certain Cultist to join her friends chasing around the donut-frisbee, but hey, she can watch. Or pretend to watch? Who fucking knows, her glasses are both ridiculously dark and remarkably large and she could very well be napping behind them.

There's a big bottle of orange juice parked in the cool grass beside her. It is early evening. The sun is only just starting to fall.

Grace

Ahh, Denver. It'll be warm today, sure. Then, the weekend brings a high temp in the 30s and more snow. This is Spring, for you. It can never make up its mind.

Grace has dressed herself in jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt, and her bite-proof grey jacket today, although the jacket is unzipped to let the air in -- so one can see the giraffe wearing ten neckties on her tee, with the text "Trust me, I'm super professional".

There is, perhaps, more of a spring to her step than there has been, of late. Winter's melting, for now. Water's flowing in rivers. Things are breaking free, and soon Summer will make that a little more permanent. It's a good day. One that has Grace walking the trails here where monsters tread, with her attentions place firmly into the trees and sky, and not, apparently at her surroundings. Monsters should be afraid of her, not the other way around.

[Awareness?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nicholas

It's become a habit, walking in the park after work while he tries to process and decompress from the day. Nick finds his home to be a pleasant place, somewhere he looks forward to going to at the end of the day, but settling into his office or having dinner isn't a substitute for taking a few moments of silence where he doesn't have to listen to anybody else or try to project this air of detached competence or quiet empathy.

There aren't any winter storm clouds looming on the horizon, just the soft wash of sunlight that speaks to approaching summer. That, and the smell of marijuana that usually lingers around places like this, in Denver. He still isn't fully accustomed to walking out in public and seeking people smoke; and it doesn't bother him - it just is, and does.

The sailing frisbee catches his eye as he makes his way down the path. No shorts and T-shirts for him, just light gray pants and a pale pink shirt, the color of a first blush or of a drop of blood in a puddle, slight intimations of color. His hair was cut recently, which is to say that it's no longer as wild and overgrown as it had threatened to become last month. As is the style at present, the back and sides are shorn more tightly than the top, which spills out in front of him.

He watches people throw the frisbee back and forth as he walks, and he would have nearly passed them by had a familiar face not caught his attention next. Sera is behind a pair of sunglasses, but he makes note of her nonetheless and his trajectory changes. He lifts a hand as he approaches.

Serafíne

Well: see? Her eyes must be open behind the dark glasses, because the creature lounging on the plaid picnic blanket lifts a hand to return Nicholas' wave. There is a hint of a smirk in the curve of her mouth, or maybe that is simply a grimace. Some little protest against the movement required.

She is as she always is: or at least as she always seems. Long and lean and lovely. Or: the intimation if not the fact of length; the suggestion of hunger, of desire, of want in both the concave curve of her bare stomach; and - well. Not lovely. Arresting perhaps, in that way that Grace, and even some of the sleepers around them, must certainly feel. What else can Grace sense? That sun-drenched, soaring resonance that that eminates from old bronze ring that Sera always wears on her right index finger. Nicholas, of course. And no suggestion of monsters.

Other than that wave, Sera doesn't much move or acknowledge Nicholas' approach until he is within actual hailing distance. Then she turns her head - gingerly, gingerly. This is the day-after. Every part of her aches. Every part of her welcomes the ache. The spread of her neat little mouth beneath her glasses: a wide flat smirk and Nicholas mirrored in the convex surface of her dark glasses.

"You look like you're about to sell someone some goddamned insurance."

So says the creature resplendent in British-flag bikini top beneath a faded black hoodie over denim cut-offs and torn fishnets. She has, at some point, taken off her battered combat boots and her almost-bare feet rest in the grass.

Grace

Mmm. Sera. That gut-wrenching feeling has her attention now, drawing her sight, making her change course. The trees, no longer the source of her fascination, don't honestly care.

Sera might.

"Sera!" she says, strolling up, sitting down next to her on the grass. There is also a wave to Nick somewhere in there.

"Do insurance salesmen wear pink shirts?" she says, honestly curious.

"I've been meaning to talk to you," she adds, quieter.

Nicholas

Nicholas has a talent for mirroring other peoples' expressions, for picking up on their moods and reflecting them back and sometimes twisting them just so. He makes use of it in his job: it's how children learn to identify what they're feeling, having an adult frown when they are saying something sad or smile back when they are happy. It's equally important for adults.

So: he sees Sera, and there is this quick cut of his mouth, this way in which the corner snicks upward as though hooked. "That's because I am. Have you heard about our new life insurance policy?" A thought, a beat. "...I might actually consider that if I were terrible. I'd make a fortune."

He has stopped in front of her, though always always with an eye on the frisbee as it cuts the air. Nick got a black eye from a frisbee once, years ago.

Grace catches his attention next when she comes up on the two of them, and almost without thinking he shifts his stance to allow her space into the conversation and also to face her, or at least pull her into his line of sight. His brow furrows at what she says. "To me?"

Serafíne

Oh, here's Grace. Asking a very honest question about a very wry quip tossed off by a very hungover Cultist and again that sensation of arrest, of cessation as she shifts the direction of her dark, reflective glasses from Nicholas to Grace. A: very slow lift of one of her flat blond brows, expressive enough that it rises above the curving frame of the glasses. And lingers, because she's not really quite sure how to take Grace's question about insurance salesmen. For example: is it the sort of question that requires an answer?

Something in her decides that it is not the sort of question that requires an answer. Or: that she is too something-something-something after last-night and this-morning and hell, the last few weeks, the last few months, the last few years to have to answer if it does.

Her attention cuts back to Nicholas. Something about the cant of her head suggests that she catches the hint of that smirk carved back to her. And he cannot see her eyes but he can still somehow almost feel that flick of her attention: minute and precise and animal: to his mouth, then back to his eyes. The gleam of the dying sun in her glasses, his shadow long over the blanket, the grass. Might make another quip in that moment, but no. Sera mirrors Nicholas' question, though she does so wordlessly. Inquiry stitched into the lift of her chin.

Grace

"Well, not... I mean, sure I could talk to you, but I don't have anything specific in mind," she says, to Nick, as though that question caught her off guard. It can be rather hard to tell who Grace is talking to, considering she so rarely makes eye contact.

"Sera. I had a run-in with a sysadmin. I got traced, but I'm not sure how bad. I'm no good at looking back in time to figure out what happened, you know? But you..."

Are totally unaware of what a sysadmin is, or why one would trace her... Right. Grace frowns, tries to figure out a better way to say this. "I felt something. Subtle. A hint of resonance."

Nicholas

Nick shifts his weight to his other foot as he glances between the two women. He, too, is rather unaware in any specific sense of what a sysadmin is, other than what conclusions he can draw from the words themselves, and so: he listens.

Serafíne

And here is Sera who can very well unhinge time. Pull it apart. Reel it backwards. Create within it currents as slow as molasses or as rippling-fast as some ever-accelerating black and white montage of a movie-bender and who does not know what a sysadmin is and who, on some deep and really rather important level, does not even believe in them.

When her iPhone works, it works by magick.

Sometimes, some nights, it does not seem to want to work at all.

Her attention hangs on Grace. She has been leaning back on her elbows, but now - a ripple of her flexible frame - sits closer-to-upright. Ow. Her head hurts.

"Like - " here a furrowed V of thought appears between the enormous discs of her glasses. " - yesterday? Someone was spying on you?"

Grace

"No. It was a while ago. Month or so. When I was trying to figure out what happened to Alex," she explains, hopefully that's enough. Not going to go into specifics here in the park, is she.

She seems strangely okay with this -- accepting of the fact. What's done is done, and all. But what was done?

"But yeah. Possibly spying on me. I fought it off, but..." she trails off, waves an arm in the air.

Nicholas

Nick looks between the two of them again, his eyebrows cutting a delicate arch as he listens to the talk of spying and figuring out what happened to Alex. It occurs to him that he has not yet met the man.

"Should I give the two of you some time?"

Grace

"Why?" she asks Nick. "I don't mind you knowing. You're as welcome here as cupcakes, man. Stay. If you want."

Kiara

Washington Park was a sort of nexus for the athletically inclined in Denver, as it happened. There were no small number of them tonight as the sun began to dwindle and sink into the horizon, cutting pathways around the lake and appearing only to weave a steady track over inclines and down again; vanishing into the distance.

Joggers. There was something so mundane and expected to them.

Amidst a world of chaos and uncertainty, lying on the grass surrounded by Frisbees and dogs being walked and the occasional carrying cry of laughter or the smack of a ball hitting the backside of a distant basketball court - there was an easy comfort in the banality.

Breaking away from behind a young couple pushing a stroller down by the glinting lakeside is a familiar figure; tall and lean with long dark hair sailing out behind her. Another runner by any other name but also - a Witch. The pagan known to some here as anything but a nameless addition to the Sleepers. She's slowing to a clipped walk, the Verbena; breathing hard and holding her hands against her side; her pace directing her toward a bench to warm down her muscles.

She's a surge of the Springtime Kiara, as she sets her leg up and stretches it out; a sweatshirt laced around a narrow waist; navy workout gear encasing her form. If she notes the presence of the others up on a shallow rise of grass, she's yet to make it clear.

Though the presence of earbuds and a small MP3 taped to her arm would suggest she's unaware - yet. Here then, was one half of their rescue team that had extricated Alexander from the Union. Nicholas alone perhaps knew the current condition of the other half - for her part, physically at least, the brunette seemed to be coping with the aftermath reasonably well.

Serafíne

There is rhythm behind them. The slap of plastic against strangers' palms. Bare feet against that solid spring grass, the cold soil beneath, warming yeah but still somehow in the grip of winter. The whir of the discs through the air: the twin miracles of propulsion and flight. Aerodynamics or what the fuck ever.

By now Sera is sitting forward, legs crossed beneath her, the picnic blanket rucked up beneathtthem from the movement. Golden curls a messy tangle in the failing light. She takes off her sunglasses here and gives Nicholas a brief, apologetic flash of a glance. Neat little compression of her mouth. Her eyes are a little bit bloodshot and her pupils are still rather-too-large. This hint of bruising beneath them: dark circles, something. That ache more evident without the shield of the glasses, but what the fuck does one expect? She's hung-over.

Breathes out here, Sera. Tried to order her thoughts for Grace and then: a flicker of something else. "You asked to talk to me," Sera reminds Grace, though there is something gentle in her tone. The bravado of her greeting to Nick earlier is long-since drained away. " - remember? Not him. So, you haven't made him feel quite as welcome as cupcakes, Grace. You know? Nick may not want to be a spectator to our conversation. He might even need to get home to start dinner."

Brief curve of her mouth here: the lilt of her chin, this neat, apologetic little gesture toward Nicholas before her attention cuts back to and rests wholly on Grace.

"Have you felt the resonance since then?"

Kiara

[Oh yeah, we should do this for our next post. Mage-dar.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Grace

"Oh," Grace says. It honestly hadn't occurred to her that she might be edging someone out. "I'm sorry. I'll just..."

She takes a breath. Sera asks her something. "No."

But, she's distracted, giving that no to Nick's face, as she radiates confusion with hers. This is one of those times, right? When the rules of social interaction seem to have been missed. It makes her uncomfortable. Makes her want to...

"I should go. You think about it, okay, Sera?" she stands up, gets the attention toward the trees again. Trees are easier to understand.

Nicholas

It doesn't take an especially perceptive person to note the confusion, as boldly as it has been sketched across Grace's features. Nick reaches out toward her as she stands up, motions for her elbow and ends up not grabbing hold just letting his fingertips rest there on the back of her arm. It's meant to catch her attention; little more. "Don't leave, Grace. I just stopped to say hello to Sera. You two should talk."

Kiara

It's a slow progression up the hill when she does notice the others gathered.

The earphones curled around her neck; her face flushed with recent exertion. Kiara Woolfe approaches feeling like the whirl of energy she is, at her core. Thriving, pulsing with life and the promise of vitality and renewal. She smells like sunshine and sweat, the Verbena and somehow; the sheen of it; the essence of that - absolutely feels at home on her.

She makes a slight outward arc to avoid collision with the game at play nearby and approaches from behind a tree; her fingers chasing over the bark.

"Hey."

A breathless greeting that seems to encapsulate them all from the dark eyed female; her mouth bent into a small match for it. The corner curled upward. She settles back against the tree and resumes stretching.

Serafíne

Sera's quiet, as Nick stops Grace. Doesn't pull her dark eyes with the too-large pupils from Grace except briefly, to greet Kiara with a wordless touch of her gaze as the Verbena approaches. A flicker back, and the Cultist slides her dark glasses back over her eyes and rises.

"C'mon Grace, we'll go talk." Except for the fishnets, her feet are bare. Damp grass clings to her skin. Tomorrow, they say, it will snow. Tonight, the Cultist starts to walk, barefoot in the cool spring grass, ambling pass the ultimate frisbee game in the warm spring park. She leaves behind: everything. The orange juice and the plaid blanket and her favorite Doc Martens and her pack of unopened kreteks and her favorite lighter lost somewhere on the blanket, everything.

Maybe she plans to return.

Maybe she assumes: effortlessly, naturally, that someone will always be trailing behind her to clean that shit up.

Serafíne

(I am really sorry but as usual it is my bed time and I have to go to bed. Sera will go off with Grace and talk. Noel: IM me sometime and we can continue the scene. Andrew and Jacqui: I want a real scene sometime soon!)

To the wall and back again.

amaranth

They disperse, each to their chosen task. Within a handful of days, a week, perhaps a fraction more, they return with thoughts, ideas, answers. A location; not simply a magickally protected void in the city map, but a target - a certain wing, underground. A number: for both subject and study. Knowledge of something else (a change) of which they were unaware. The ward number; the room number. A date certain when routines will be disrupted enough to ensure that strangers.

An ally whom neither Kiara nor Andres have met or will meet, but who has provided the with security badges, names and clearance; transfer orders for a certain subject. Parking passes for the underground garage. They are informed that the subject will be sedated, as any would for a land-transfer. They must make arrangements to remove him without drawing undue scrutiny. This is a highly classified project, so few have access to the wing. Once the subject is removed, the records will be scrubbed. Agent Weston has already received his own transfer orders.

To Novosibirsk.

This is what they have; and little more.

amaranth

(Note: dice are in emails!)

amaranth

The staff of the laboratory, hospital wings, and offices of Amaranthine Labs at the Colorado School of Public Health were officially notified that all were expected to report for their regular shifts (day or night) on a certain day (Tuesday, March 15, 2016) or night mid-week (Wednesday, March 16, 2016) when operations deemed the disruption to normal routines and potential impingement on the ordinary life of the public to be at its lowest point. No one, of course, was given the exact time of the drill, nor the precise nature of the emergency that would be simulated on that date. The memorandums were terse but perfectly clear. The directive came from levels within the organization high enough questioning the order might have drawn the wrong sort of attention: so there was grumbling, but nothing beyond a few sarcastic jokes over whatever passed for a water cooler among their kind.

--

Kiara and Andres have a much tighter target. That is, if the information in the packet left in a waterproof envelope taped to the interior of the toilets in the lady's room at Zook's Coffee and Ice Cream (which: what the fuck?) can be trusted. Inside: a very small gadget. Three identification badges, another small gadget with a hook-hanger that clearly suggests the shape and form of a parking pass hung from a rearview mirror. Instructions (written, not drawn) regarding lab access. Date-and-time suggestions that mirror the dates of the emergency drills of which Grace learned (seemingly) independently. A set of transfer orders for Subject 88123-123 to Facility HK97-321, that is also marked HIGHLY CLASSIFIED.

The information is conveyed to Kiara and Andres with enough time for the pair to make arrangements. The former to alter her appearance; so secure for the pair of them appropriate(ly untraceable) garments that will allow them to slip into the stream of completely ordinary people, the latter to create (as if by DO NOT CALL IT MAGICK GODDAMNIT) an at least temporarily serviceable facsimile of an ambulance in which they can travel. The badges are left in a safety deposit box, shielded by correspondence and other wards that the warders remove only at the last possible minute before Kiara and Andres leave for their mission.

There is a point certain beyond which none of them have been able to scry successfully. A certain border of US 40 and some cross street, where the rather service-ably modern(ish) bulk of the UC Denver School of Public Health's CU Anschutz Medical Campus occupies 2-3-4+ (??) blocks. Dominated by a big semi-circular brick building with the bulk and presence of a mid-20th century lunatic asylum / fallout shelter, onto which have been grafted newer and shinier and more modern wings, all glass and steel. Night and the campus is largely dark. A few lights in what passes for the patient wings of the specialized facilities, elsewhere office suites all lit up as janitorial staff clean up from today to get ready for tomorrow.

After circling the campus once Andres (the technician to Kiara's supervising physician, and therefore, we assume, the driver) finds the secured entrance to Amaranthine Labs, marked not by the company's name, but by a subtly embossed insignia on the parking gate. Which opens, perfectly naturally, thanks to something embedded in the parking pass, transmitting their clearance to the security guard sitting in an observational kiosk behind bullet proof glass. Once they are in the underground parking garage, a voice asserts itself in the ambulance. The source appears to be the parking pass. The speaker: the guard in the kiosk.

"Park in Bay 2. Door A. Be prepared for security check and ready to present clearance and orders."

Presuming they follow instructions, they are met just inside the swinging double-doors of ambulance bay 2 by a pair of alert young security personnel. One has a handheld device ready to scan their ID passes. The other has... what looks to be an ordinary clipboard. He looks stoic but she gives them a brief, perfunctory but professional smile. "Orders here," she is holding out the clipboard expectantly and there is something about it that makes it clear she wants them to affix their orders to the device (??), while Carl scans their security badges. "Carl'll check your clearance. The usual drill."

Kiara

She's made minor adjustments to her own Pattern before, the Verbena. The occasional wave over her hair to invoke a particular style; the reduction of blemishes; the eradication of a virus building in her system; the modulation of her breathing; the dismissal of a particularly woeful hangover. She'd gifted herself with gills, not so long ago now to dive beneath the waters in Hawaii and rescue a long forgotten artifact.

But - this is another level.

The woman who meets up with Andrés to rescue Alexandr Brant is not the brunette he last saw, rather, she is a platinum blonde creature with pale eyes and a slightly rounder face than the Kiara he knows is beneath the glamour somewhere. Her cheekbones are not as sharp; her nose wider and her hair swept up into a severe knot. She's wearing the clothing of a medical professional and when they climb into the (I-can't-believe-it's-not-magickal) vehicle the Etherite has conjured, she puts a pair of half-rim glasses on.

Her only other hint of jewellery is a watch on a slender silver band.

It is an impressive disguise, if nothing else.

-

"Nice ride, Doc." She compliments when she slides in.

At least she still sounds like herself.

-

Perhaps they talk en route to Amaranthine Labs. Maybe Andrés puts the radio on and they listen to the banality of FM radio. Perhaps they ride in (near) silence, each lost in their individual considerations on where they could have been spending their evening. Kiara's thoughts, as they glide through city streets are mostly shapeless things; her fingers folded in her lap over the transfer orders.

If she is tense, the disguise face of Kiara does not betray it. Streetlights reflect off her glasses.

When they turn into the parking bay there is time for a brief look at her companion's newly clean-shaven features.

Time for a under-breath here goes nothing before the pagan schools her stranger's features into a stoic mask that reads polite, if detached, acceptance of the routine at hand.

--

The usual drill.

The blonde that slides out of the ambulance looks as if she's done this procedure before. She offers over the papers with a crisp authority and returns the female's smile with one of her own. "Evening." She greets, and presents her badge to Carl while her associate does the same.

She smooths an imaginary wrinkle out of her clothing.

Routine. Nothing but paperwork. The words drum in the Verbena's head loud enough to drown out the doubts.

Andrés

When Andrés picks up Kiara it is in a vehicle that had been, two days earlier, a shitty white Ford van. It's now close enough to a Union ambulance that they can drive on in without too much difficulty.

"Thanks," he says. "... Doc."

Getting in isn't the part that concerns the Etherite. It's getting back out.

He's sober for once or at least as sober as Kiara has seen him. He'd shaved his face and popped in a pair of contact lenses and combed his hair. Same fellow as was at the Chantry meeting but he looks like a medical technician now instead of a doctor.

Normally he wears a wedding band. Today he doesn't. Make of that what you will.

On the way over he chatters on about something he read in the paper the other day. Something benign. Nothing concerning what they're about to do. Just two people going to transfer a reality deviant to his new facility. Doo de doo.

Once they're there he does his level best not to appear nervous if he even is nervous. To look at him he's not. If he just expects something to go tits up he won't be surprised when it happens. They both look like they're supposed to be here at least.

Deep breath:

"Daring rescue time, motherfuckers."

And Andrés follows Kiara's lead.

Kiara

[Ugh, one sec. FIXING.]

Andrés

[TOO LATE YOU FUCKED IT UP]

amaranth

The young woman takes a moment to fuss over the placement of the orders on her clipboard, frowns over them, then fusses again. Meanwhile, the young man reaches for their badges and scans them with a device no larger than an iPhone. Something flashes over the screen when he scans Kiara's that pulls his already dour mouth slightly further down at the right corner. Then there is Andres. Another something-of-a-flash. He steps back and shows the device to the young woman, who whistles, low, glances up at both of them, and then: straightens her spine.

"Sorry this is taking so long. The frequency dampeners down here always seem to interfere with the - " a sudden, supple, electronic glow that seems immanent rather than sourced. "Oh. There it goes." She lifts her chin and gives the other officer a subtle nod. He holsters his own device and retreats back to the guard station while she offers them the now-glowing blue clipboard and a stylus. "Just need you to initial here, here, and here," she says, indicating three separate locations to Kiara. She repeats the instructions to Andres. "And then a thumbprint - " another indication, "here and we'll get your clearance set up so you can access the restricted area."

The other officer has returned by then, with two small bugs he offers to them. Their function isn't immediately clear, but neither officer seems to think it a mystery and neither offers instruction. It is Andres who notices first that both officers have similar insignia affixed to lapel or collar.

"Fair warning, we are slated for an emergency drill sometime this evening. You clearance gives you priority and if you require additional assistance the override code for team members is Control Alpha Eight Niner. Control channel's always monitored, but most of us hang out on Denver's Finest."

After all of that, she hands back the orders and gives them fairly clear instructions to the secured lift that will take them to the restricted wing of the facility. "Give us five minutes to get your clearance set up."

--

It takes them no more than two minutes to follow the empty, antiseptic hallway past a junction with another equally empty hallway to its terminus at an elevator bank with four separate lifts. Three of the four have standard up/down buttons. The fourth though -

- cameras, everywhere. Five minutes to get their clearance set up? It is a long five minutes.

--

Eventually: the small control panel leading to the secured lift comes alive at Kiara's touch. Her: thumbprint, matched to the signature from the device attached to the lapel of her scrubs. The lift arrives; the doors whir open, smooth and silent. The interior smells faintly of vanilla. Two strangers are already inside, apparently having come from the schools of public health, above. They are in the midst of a conversation -

"That's what I'm saying, if you just try to impose that shit from above, it never works. You've got to speak their language. You've got to get in there - "

- and glance up, somewhat startled, give those strange-frozen smiles one gives to strangers, then resume the conversation in quieter tones.

" - and make it make sense from within. It can't be this top-down structure. What we ended up doing to teach the infection control protocol was to find community leaders - not the political leaders but the social leaders - and teach it from the inside out. Every projection I've done says we got the outbreaks under control from 40 to 65% faster, and saved hundreds, maybe thousands. You really need to read Ementalier's paper on the topic. Evidence for these best practices - "

The elevator opens again. Not their floor. Both of the other occupants exit, with one backward glance, the conversation fading between them. Between them? Amongst them, at least if Sepulveda's assessment of the 'bugs' is correct. They are identification badges, transmitters, and communication devices. Whether he can operate one correctly - another story entirely.

--

Another fifteen seconds, that supple hum, and the doors open again. The restricted labs.

--

There is another security checkpoint immediately beyond the elevator bay. Down here, the secured lift is the only lift that serves the floor. Three corridors branch off beyond the security kiosk behind locked and closed doors. Here, the guards scan their identification cards again and buzz them through one of the sets of double doors, this time with much less chatter. Directions, and the day's security codes, and no more.

This is what Andres fucks up: unhappy with the slow-response of a Technocratic Device to the day's security codes or perhaps convinced that he has input the information incorrectly, he repeats the code. Nothing, nothing. Then again: this time, the screen flashes once a bilious green. Andres feels something like a small shock, really no more than the brief bite of static electricity, but Kiara takes note that the door is, in fact, now open. The first try was all that was necessary. With so many of these Technocratic things: it works, or it doesn't. The circuit is open, or closed. There is no gray area.

--

They come to the cell in which Alexander is being kept. One guard outside is playing Crossy Road on a tablet. He also requests their orders. Fits them to the device. Glances up at them with a bit of apprehension (he is thinking of Agent Weston. He is trying to remember to forget the subject behind the door. He has already received orders for a transfer to Miami, an assignment he much prefers to Novosibirsk.) then back down. "Subject received a titrated dose of the Orpheum cocktail thirty-four minutes ago. We calculate a minimum of four hours, seventeen minutes before the first signs of life return. Subject may be combative on emergence from hibernation. Within the facility, subject's identity is highly classified. You are to reveal it to no one. Got a body bag and a gurney inside for you and far as anyone here knows, you're retrieving a radioactive corpse.

"What you do when you get back to your own rig, well. That's your business, not mine."

Kiara

He's playing Crossy Road on a tablet.

It's funny that this, of all the things the Verbena's taken in throughout this rescue mission thus far, feels the most like some dirty, unclear line being stepped over; being seen for what it is as she does. The Technocracy, the Union ... the Enemy, as she knows them; that bone deep, grief driven hatred of them jangled down to its root. It changes from black and white to murky grey.

The evidence of humanity, of such banal, normal activities here - its distressing. It's bizarre as hell and if anything were going to disrupt their plans (other than that damn door) it's the sight of it right there, at the door to Alexander's room.

(She wants to scream and throw his damn tablet across the room).

--

The bugs.

The sterile hallways and elevator banks and all those cameras.
The way down feels (is) a sort of torment all its own. Kiara can feel a trickle of sweat between her shoulder-blades, beneath her scrubs. Her palm itches as they stand behind two strangers calmly (professionally) discussing tactics for changing the status quo. Seeding belief among the masses from within. Kiara will remember their voices; the fixed smile she'd returned; forced her facial muscles to shape; the eerie normalcy of it all long after tonight is over.

(Assuming she doesn't wind up inside one of these nice numbered rooms).

--

"Understood." Her voice sounds tinny and far away, when she does speak, casts one of the first glances she's allowed herself Andrés' way. There's a body bag and a gurney inside. They're going to reclaim Alexander as if he were nothing more than a corpse.
She nods assent. They're here, there's no going back now.
He's playing Crossy Road on a tablet.

It's funny that this, of all the things the Verbena's taken in throughout this rescue mission thus far, feels the most like some dirty, unclear line being stepped over; being seen for what it is as she does. The Technocracy, the Union ... the Enemy, as she knows them; that bone deep, grief driven hatred of them jangled down to its root. It changes from black and white to murky grey.

The evidence of humanity, of such banal, normal activities here - its distressing. It's bizarre as hell and if anything were going to disrupt their plans (other than that damn door) it's the sight of it right there, at the door to Alexander's room.

(She wants to scream and throw his damn tablet across the room).

--

The bugs.

The sterile hallways and elevator banks and all those cameras.

The way down feels (is) a sort of torment all its own. Kiara can feel a trickle of sweat between her shoulder-blades, beneath her scrubs. Her palm itches as they stand behind two strangers calmly (professionally) discussing tactics for changing the status quo. Seeding belief among the masses from within. Kiara will remember their voices; the fixed smile she'd returned; forced her facial muscles to shape; the eerie normalcy of it all long after tonight is over.

(Assuming she doesn't wind up inside one of these nice numbered rooms).

--

"Understood." Her voice sounds tinny and far away, when she does speak, casts one of the first glances she's allowed herself Andrés' way. There's a body bag and a gurney inside. They're going to reclaim Alexander as if he were nothing more than a corpse.

She nods assent. They're here, there's no going back now.

Kiara

[Seriously, I don't even know.]

Andrés

The moment the keypad zaps Andres for hitting its buttons too many times would be the moment a certain Mercurial Elite would point to as evidence that she was right about his personality and its suitability for this sort of operation. It doesn't impede their progress. It just confirms for Kiara something she may have already been beginning to suspect.

After shaking out his hand, they move on.

This place does not cause the visceral response in the Etherite that it does in the Verbena but then again the Society of Ether used to belong to the Technocratic Union back when it was still called the Order of Reason, when they were still called Electrodyne Engineers. If they're caught, that won't matter.

Once they arrive at the cell, he adopts an at-ease stance with his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped loose behind his back. His propensity is to fidget.

A radioactive corpse.

His eyes flick up to Kiara's face to catch the glance she gives him. On camera it looks as if he's waiting for permission to proceed with his job. Deferring to rank.

amaranth

Kiara nods assent. Andres glances at Kiara as if for permission, deferring to rank. The tablet glows the same electric/electronic glow. This time, the guard does not request thumbprints and initials in triplicate. He makes three quick notations, cocks his head as if he is listening to a far-off voice (hint: he is), finishes the third notation with a flourish and returns the set of orders to Kiara.

And then, there's this awkward moment. An interruption, an interregnum. Kiara waiting and Andres waiting and the guard... waiting too. Looking at them somewhat expectantly, until finally he just says: "Uhm, I don't have clearance to open that door." Brief pause. "I think you do - " and beneath that suggestion, (and this is modestly transparent on his face), he is frowning at them and is entertaining the brief and mildly heretical question: what if they don't?

One or the other of them figures it out: a thumbprint and a thumbprint and a hydraulic sigh and the door whooshes open and they see inside the small cell in which Alexander has been held for the past... weeks. Yes, weeks. He is still and unmoving on the cot, scabs on his knuckles, dressed in a loose set of scrubs. Thinner than he had been.

The promised gurney and body bag are indeed just parked just within the cell.

Kiara

The last real occasion Kiara Woolfe had to come in contact with a body had been her mentor's. She's seen variations of gore, since. Smoldering and dismembered things in a park. The pitiless black of a Nephandus' eye. Stitched pieces of her associates back together and scrubbed more blood off her hands than perhaps any young woman should have need to before they were even thirty.

The gore and blood and physicality of it doesn't connect for her any longer: not in the moment. Not when that awful hesitation passes between Andrés and her and the guard and the door glides open to reveal Alexander on that cot.

Maybe she will berate herself later for the slip up with the Guard but as soon as they figure it out, the brunette-now-blonde is in the room and supervising the dead man's shuffle of the Orphan into the body-bag. She doesn't think about who it is, it is, in the moment, rather imperative that this woman in scrubs with a sombre, severe expression and cool, measuring eyes moves in and smoothly assists in securing the body into the bag.

The zip slides over Alexander's face and there is a reprieve in that.

"Subject secure." She works to inject a certain amount of tedium into her voice. It seems easier to play along, in this skin. "Let's go."

She sweeps back out the door. Best to leave your sentiment in that cell until this is over, Woolfe.

amaranth

Alexander is larger than both of them and he is: absolutely dead weight. They have a modest struggle to make the transfer from cot to body bag to gurney. The guard outside the door might have guessed they would, given their relative size compared to the subject in question. Or perhaps he had not made such a guess. It is not uncommon for members of the order with clearance high enough to be involved in a secretive operation to have some sort of strength enhancement, mechanical, medical, pharmaceutical, or otherwise.

The room itself has a strange feeling to it. A sort of humming absence that makes it feel even colder and more clinical than the corridors outside. That must be the Primium on the walls. So it isn't just the body that seems dead, but the air itself. Neither of them attempts a flare of life magick to determine whether or not it really is a living person in deep hibernation or an actual corpse they are retrieving. Wouldn't be wise to risk it now that they're inside. If this has all been a warning of some sort, an elaborate and macabre hoax, intended to return to them a body, they will know that soon enough.

So they hope.

"It's done." The guard mutters into as they wheel the body back out. Ridiculously, the gurney has one slightly squeaky, slightly bum wheel and the error in it seems all the more absurd in the sterile hallway. There are, further down the hallway, other doors, closed and locked.

There are no other guards.

--

It is a long way back the way they came. The first security check; the second. Three strangers gathered at the secure elevator bay, two with Starbucks cups in hand, chatting quietly. "I'm just trying to figure out whether to start a new generation or not. I need at least an hour and a half to get through it. You'd think they could give us a ballpark or something for the drill. I'm supposed to give a talk on my results in three weeks we're trying to get out ahead of the summer weather, I mean, the last thing this country needs is a new epidemic of birth defects and - "

Two thumbprints. One body in a bag on a squeaky-wheeled gurney. Two of the strangers listening to the chatty researcher flick their eyes over the body bag, glance up at Andres, Kiara as they are wheeling it into the elevator, then glance away again.

Everything in reverse, right back to the ambulance bay and the security kiosk. One last check with the same pair of guards they saw coming in: the glowing clipboard, the presentation of the orders. The initialing of documents. The guard waits expectantly for the bugs and badges to be returned.

Kiara

Somehow, it's worse on the way out. The glimpse of an end to their little staged rescue mission makes every sterile corner and squeak of the gurney's wheel seem harder to bear. Sound abrasive and distorted to the Verbena's ears; makes her want to flinch behind her glasses. To her credit however, she resists. Maybe to the extent she bites down on the inside of her cheek, tastes the blood in her mouth.

Finds the tactility in the pain and the sensation of it comforting.

--

They stop by the elevator bay, two glance their way and the Verbena meets the eyes of one. Offers a brief, curt nod and follows the gurney bearing her associate into the elevator, papers tucked under her arm.

--

She half expected there to be music playing as they glide upwards. Soft, background noise as obscure and jarring as the fact they were wheeling a comatose Orphan in a body-bag out of a facility on a gurney with a squeaky wheel.

The inside of Kiara's cheek throbs as they greet the same guards they'd encountered climbing out of the faux-ambulance. She passes across the documents without hesitation, initial here. Sign there. Bugs and badges unclipped and handed over. Manages a have a good evening to the female security guard with what could have passed for professional courtesy.

All that remained: getting Alexander in, and getting out.

Andrés

This is the part of the operation that would have the Etherite convinced they were fucked if he were letting himself access what's left of his limbic system.

It isn't as if it has gone entirely smoothly thus far but the fact that they got in and got Alexander loaded onto a stretcher and are in the home stretch ought to bring a sense of relief to them. It does not. Until they are out of this dead spot of a building, and are certain Alexander is not bugged in some fashion, Andres is not going to relax.

Even if he does look bored out of his skull. Like this is just another day at the grind for him. Schlepping a corpse from one building to the other. He makes eye contact with one of the fellows who glances back at them and gives him a What are ya gonna do shrug before looking ahead again.

That squeaky wheel is proof enough that the Technocrats are just as flawed as anyone else but every time it makes a noise Andres wonders if they aren't about to find out someone in the course of this operation decided this was a fortuitous opportunity to betray the fuck out of both of them.

At the last checkpoint before they get back in the ambulance and drive off. Andres removes his bug and his badge with all the enthusiasm he's displayed thus far. Signs whatever he has to sign. Lets Kiara answer whatever questions they have to answer.

His hands are steady as he, when he has some sign to go ahead and do so, opens the back doors of the rig and starts to load the gurney into it.

amaranth

"Okay then," the female security, "I think that's everything." She is handing off the site-specific security pieces to her co-worker, glancing at the insignia on her clipboard/tablet. Quick flick of her eyes at the body bag. Neat little shadow then, in that particular moment, across her brow. She glances back at them, on some cusp between apprehensive and aware and hushed, really the way one is in the presence of death. "You guys have a safe - " she is saying as they are loading the body into the rig. This is a parking garage, all concrete, and her voice has a depthless echo in the solidly grounded space.

Her partner, though. Listening. Mutters something to her, not in her ear but in her proximity and she glances back to Kiara and Andres with a wave. Quick and supple.

"That's our drill. Better get on the road before we're on lockdown. Be safe."

--

They get back into the rig and: drive. The ambulance: rises, rises, rises out of the underground garage. Past the final guard. And: up, up up.

Kiara

They drive and the ambulance rises.

They slide out of the underground garage and into the night and somehow, the glint of starlight and streetlight and the resurfacing feels like a layer of suppression being peeled away. But - it does not quite give over to relief, not yet.

Not while they were still within the limits of the facility.

Kiara's seatbelt clicks into place and for a tense few seconds all she can muster is to stare into the rearview as the entry to the garage grows smaller and smaller behind them, her fingers curled around the edge of the belt. She can't keep her eyes from the mirror long, but her cheek continues to ache and her shoulders feel tight with a thrumming tension.

Breathe, Woolfe.

She does, a hiss escaping through her lips. A look shot across to Andrés. "Nothing yet." Alexander won't stir for another hour, maybe two, if her timing figures out. The question was - where on earth in the city was safe to take him.

Andrés

A bit of shuffling around. They did not come up with a comprehensive plan as to how they were going to handle the extraction let alone who would sit where when but Andrés loads the gurney into the back of the rig more or less on his own and he clambers into the back and hauls the doors shut behind him more or less by himself.

If Kiara climbs into the driver's side that's all the better. If she gets in on the passenger's side he's in the back already unloading his equipment to prepare to examine the Orpheum-infused body and ensure he is just infused and not expired. Beyond that: if the body is bugged he wants to be able to tell the body is bugged. He doesn't trust the Verbena to locate a bug. Call it intuition or experience. Matter tends to be a Sphere far from the average Witch's experience.

At any rate:

Nothing yet.

"No shit," he says without malice. He has the body bag unzipped now and is introducing his stethoscope to the cop's neck. "Drive fast, drive far. This place is giving me heartburn."

amaranth

Nothing.

One block. Two. Three and they are starting to feel safe. Four and the city unfolds around them, in all its unutterable chaos. Four and five and now they are skimming past Sand Creek Park, where Kiara and Nicholas summoned a murder, the interstate above them like a ribbon of uncertain light.

Everything left behind: everything, everything, everything.

amaranth

?

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( botch x 1 )

Andrés

[matter/prime 2: you good, bro? -1 diff for taking his time.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 9) ( success x 1 )

Andrés

[come on, doc.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

amaranth

There is residual magick there diffuse throughout his body. There does not appear to be a focus area like an implant. Easy deduction: the Orpheum has a magickal component and he can sense the prime in that.

Kiara

Drive fast, drive far.

The Verbena's foot depresses the accelerator. She speeds up, but within limits. There would be no justice in coming so far and bringing Alexander back if all of it ended with the police pulling them over for speeding. Still, she zigs and zags where she can, sliding between cards and weaving through the traffic - outside, lights flash overhead and the city unfurls around them.

She has no clear direction, the pagan, but to keep the momentum up. But to take them as far from those sterile rooms and inane conversations about disease and outbreak and changing things from within as she can. Soon enough, though, there does seem to be a route sliding into place. There is a sense of purpose to the route Kiara takes, turning here. Diverting there.

Across the city limits and out again, toward the outskirts.

A tick of her eyes into the rearview where the Doctor was pressing a stethoscope to Alexander's neck. Her jaw tense. "How bad is it?" His state. Whatever they'd done to him. The Verbena's eyes return to the road and she focuses on it; her eyes have changed color, from pale blue to their regular brown. Her glamour was slowly wearing off. "I'm taking us outside the city if we need to - " she trails off, frowning.

Need to, what? Destroy what they'd created? Pull bugs and who knew what out of Alexander's body? The choices, apparently, were endless.

Kiara

[edit: cards and also - cars.]

Andrés

"It's not bad."

No emphasis on any of the words. She can hear the frown in his voice but cannot tell at what it is directed. Others might refer to what is draped over the Orphan as magick but he has other words for it. If it's keeping him subdued he's content to leave it where it is. Suffuse as it is he would have to circulate the man's blood if he was hoping to remove any tracers from his blood that might be there. He does not trust that there are no tracers in his blood but how the fuck would he know there aren't any. He isn't versed in the study of Correspondence. At all.

"... I don't think it's bad. Keep driving."

He scrubs his hands down his face. This is the part of the journey that begs the question: Now what?

"Did the collective think this far?"

If the answer is 'no' she knows what his answer is going to be. She had better hope the answer isn't 'no.'

amaranth

Alexander isn't breathing. Not that Andres can see on site. Thus far, he has confirmed that Alexander's 'corpse' does not seem to contain a bugged implant. There is still the matter of the parking pass hung from the rearview mirror of the ambulance.

Except there is not. The pass proper begins to... disintegrate when they are four blocks out from the UC Schools of Public Health. A self-destruct mechanism. Apparently: their allies (Allies?) are not interested in allowing the Traditionalists an opportunity to reverse engineer their tech.

Around them a chilly, snow-laden March night. The flat city unfolding, golden on the plains. The teeth of the mountains. With the go-ahead, Kiara heads toward an anonymous, cheap motel on the outskirts of Denver proper.

After fifteen - twenty minutes, Andres feels a ... bit of an itch. Near his left ear, on his neck. Within approximately twenty-five seconds, his entire shirt has... fallen to pieces, to nothing. Disintegrated, just like the parking pass. And his pants are starting to...

Kiara

It's not bad.

Then:

... I don't think it's bad.

Kiara curses.

Under breath and quiet, as she tugs her hair out of the confines of the updo she'd secured it into for the extraction. Her features have begun to change, too. It's a strange sensation, like subtle knives sliding around beneath her skin; her cheekbones shifting, her chin sharpening. The cursing doesn't seem directed at Andrés, rather her agitation has a more focused recipient.

It would be enough to make a Chorister blush, that whispered recitation of disgust. It may have been enough to convince a frightened villager they'd been hexed, in another time.

"Hang in there, Alexander." She instructs. "There's a motel up ahead. Sera paid in cash, warded the hell out of the room. We can hold up there at least long enough to figure out what the hell they've put in him." Kiara's fingers grip the wheel.

"And get it out. After that - " She doesn't say we'll figure it out. She doesn't add that it all hinges on whether or not the man who currently didn't appear to be breathing made through this (relatively) unharmed. There would be time for formulating their next move, time for blame and disbelief and inter-tradition politics.

For now: she drove.

Andrés

Don't blame his lack of shame regarding nudity on his ethnicity.

His grandparents on both sides were prudes. If his father were around more he might have a better bead on how his father felt about the matter. His mother was a nurse. She didn't give a shit about busting in on him or his younger sisters when they were growing up but if she forgot to lock the bathroom door while she was in there he'd get holy hell slapped out of him. Usually with a sandal. He was well into his twenties before he could abide the sight of a sandal.

Anyway.

Someone within the Amaranth Laboratories rigged the keypads to tag an offending party with fiber-consuming nanites and being as he had been the last person to get zapped by a keypad it isn't exactly a shock that he's the one whose clothing starts to dissolve.

"We know what the hell they've put in him," he says. "Santo Cristo, you're acting like they're from Neptune."

This, as his clothing is dissolving.

"You, ah. Might not wanna look back here until you toss my jacket back."

amaranth

The motel is a motel. That's what its sign says: MOTEL. It is lost amid a chaos of other similar structures: old, low, concrete. There is an outdoor pool in the parking lot, now covered with snow. A half-dozen semis and a set of small soccer goals pushed up onto the walkway between rooms. A Jack in the Box and Frisch's Big Boy and Carl's, Jr. and on and on in the parking lot.

The room is on the first floor. Sera gave Kiara the key, When they get there, if and when they get inside, they might feel another resonance, different from Sera's, lingering in the walls. Stoic and psychedelic, among other things. It is no accident that she picked this place.

For now, though, a half-full parking lot. Snow drifting between the tractor-trailers. The world muffled, shifted, changed. The wind sharp, bright and cold. The stars up there. Andres with his clothing disintegrating in the back of the rig.

amaranth

HOW MANY DAYS IS ANDRES NAKED?

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Andrés

[I just want to recognize that this is the best dice roll title I've had in my three years of Mage'ing on this site.]

Kiara

[Awareness, etc. Cuz!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kiara

"Doc, I attend sky clad festivals. Nothing you've got going on back there is going to offend my sensibilities." This, with raised eyebrows into the rear-view mirror.

She does reach over and toss his jacket back to him, though. If she catches sight of anything, she has the grace not to comment on it, though all things considered, it's probably not the top of the pagan's list of pressing concerns, glimpsing Andrés naked.

They pull into the motel and the Verbena is careful to park as close to the room number on the key Sera had given her as possible. The engine ticking as the brunette leans forward over the wheel; her eyes roving the drifting snow and covered pool and winking lights of the fast food chains.

"Hang on."

She instructs and they're moving again, shifting. She reverses them into the spot and kills the ignition.

There's a precious moment now to breathe. "I'll get the motel door."

Andrés

It may well not be her sensibilities he's afraid of offending. May be he doesn't give a shit about anything he may offend. He wants his jacket because there's a cold front blowing through. Doesn't matter. Whatever prankster nanite has implanted itself in his skin will consume it in a few moments.

She tosses it back. He holds it over his crotch and midline. It does not last long. That is all the catalyst he needs to consider what Spheres and what strains of fabric this shit is honing in on.

In the meantime Kiara brings them to a place that once warded the people of this city against a member of the Fallen. It will ward them against the Static.

He holds the jacket over himself until it gives out or until Kiara comes back to undo the doors. Whichever comes first. Worst people to see naked in the back of an ambulance. He is shorter than the average female among their constituency but Kiara can read all of the muscles in his upper body and some in his lower limbs. That which is not covered by the disintegrating jacket. This is a problem. If he were trying to seduce her this is not the path he would take.

I'll get the motel door.

"Great!" he says. As if he isn't about to be nude in another thirteen seconds.

amaranth

The parking lot is still except for them. It is the middle of the night; a handful of lights are on. The low-hum of the highway. Inside, the room is still, quiet. The low-throb of Sera's resonance, felt from within rather than without. No indication to Kiara or Andres why she chose this room. Only Sera and Dan know that she has paid the rent on it for ... nearly three years.

She does have the money to spare.

She always hopes, doesn't she? that Jim might come back. Might need it again: a place to crash. A place into which to disappear. A bathroom. An old CRT television and a microwave and a fridge. Which is: stocked a bit, heavy on the booze, light on the food. Because.

Now they need it. inside, two double beds. A place to put Alexander's body. Enough time for Kiara to engage in enough life magick to confirm that he is: alive, absolutely, and not a corpse. Then there is the awkward interregnum, waiting.

They can amuse themselves however they want.

Andrés

Maybe the jacket she tosses back to him lasts the extent of the ride. Maybe it doesn't. His concern is not so much for his dead-turned client but for the driver. The driver is concerned with the road ahead. She knows where she's going.

Alright. Jacket over his crotch so long as it lasts. So long as it lasts. If it does not last her clothes are intact. She can go in and get the key and the pass and let them in and they can both struggle the corpse-that-is-not-a-corpse into their room.

Blame it on whatever you want. His heritage or his age or his tradition. His prime physical condition or the fact that despite his deplorable social ability he is still a disgustingly attractive man. His junk is covered when they wheel Alexander into the warded room. Either by his discarded jacket or some other bit of clothing. The body bag.

Once the door is closed though the adrenaline kicks in. Andrés grabs Kiara by both jaws and kisses her square on the mouth.

Nothing in it that she does not want to be there. He is a once-doubled creature halved by virtue of his other half dying after all.

And adrenaline. Let's not forget adrenaline.

Andrés

[JAMIE IS GOING HOME SHE LOVES YOU BOTH <3]

Kiara

Kiara Woolfe wasn't shy about many things. If the brunette had an inclination to seduce the good Doctor, the chances were fairly strong that he'd know about it. She'd had a reputation in New York and it hadn't particularly occurred to the Verbena to mind. That had not, overly much, changed since she set foot in Denver with her wild hair and blood red lips.

It would have been a stranger thing, perhaps, to meet a self professed witch who had inhibitions about embracing all facets of life. Nudity, sex, heartbreak and death.

Andrés was married to one of Kiara's kind, after all: he knows full well what to expect from a Verbena.

-

Kiara pulls the doors open on the back of the van; her disguise has disintegrated likewise; though she still wears the glasses she'd procured. Her hair is a violent tangle around her face and her expression, when she sights him attempting to shield himself from the frigid temperature, ventures somewhere south of drastically amused.

Her eyes glint.

"Let's get him inside."

-

There is no manner that it isn't awkward, piling Alexander's dead weight into the room, carefully laying him on the mattress. Kiara sheds layers and pushes her sleeves up. Leans over Alexander's body and carefully flits her hands over him; touches his face with a surprising degree of tenderness.

Surveys and declares him whole (enough) and safe enough that she can finally (desperately), put her mind into some semblance of ease.

Turns around and is -

promptly kissed.

-

The door is closed. Alexander spared. And adrenaline was a hell of a thing.

the murder

twilight

Rules:

- I don't have much time tonight, but you are my priority!

- ask me for difficulties before you roll. I may elide / narrate through some bits, I may ask for rolls for others.

- this scene is largely based on what your characters would do, so I'm going to ask you either for OOC direction or IC direction as to where they are starting and what their primary goals are (learn info? set up a distraction? et cetera?)

- if you ever do not understand something I have written but think your character might, feel free to ask for clarification. I may offer to let you roll to learn more.

- you can at any time ask to roll detection / knowledge rolls if you'd like based on the posts. they won't always get tons of info!

twilight

The mercury still dips below freezing at night and each and every frame and edge of the day is ccool or chilly or cold or frigid depending on one's perspective and state of dress but 'round about three p.m. basking in the warm rays of the sun, surrounded by the golden waves of prairie grasses, the low scrub trees, that sense of: space, openness, the mad, endless dome-of-the-sky that inspired some pioneers and drove others mad mad mad. Well, here is Sand Creek Park. The odd sign about construction projects through summer 2016, but otherwise greenspace naturalized enough that the grass is left to go wild, naturalized. Sand Creek proper is low and flat and undulent through the landscape, dark and cold where it runs through its rocky course, and hard to see in the flat sea of waving grasses except when one stumbles upon it, or where a pedestrian bridge arches high over.

Hard to believe a Technocratic lab is little more than a golf course away.

Kiara Woolfe

There's a fine tension here. An undercurrent of it, it rattles through them, rattles bone deep.

Being so close to them. The Verbena can almost taste it; their unyielding trudge toward so-called unification and strength. The idea that Alexander was with them, that they were working to bury their mechanics beneath his skin and twist and distort all that he was to suit their needs had, at first, nearly unwound Kiara Woolfe's carefully built armor.

It kept her safe, you see. That emotional buffer. Kept her from striding across that gently trickling creek into their turf. It was keeping a many great things at bay for the brunette right now - things she carried in those dark eyes of hers when they ticked over the parkland as they arrived; their movements seeming unnaturally loud and echoing.

There were insects singing in the wilder grasses growing by the creek. The Verbena paused only long enough to pass a flashlight to her companion and direct him a slight, brief check of her mouth upward at the corner. Still red, that mouth.

Tonight it feels brazen in a different way - a slash of bold declaration. The pendant around the female's neck glinted as she moved toward the water's edge; adjusting the strap of her backpack.

The insects quieted as they drew nearer, watching.

[Awareness!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Kiara Woolfe

[And, activating Mind Shield! Base Diff 4, -1 Taking her time.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas Hyde

Nicholas called in sick to work today. It is not the first time he has done this in order to pursue some Awakened agenda, nor will it be the last; and yet it seems to him as though the space between these occurrences grows nearer and nearer. Last year he went on administrative leave from his old job for nearly three months, and when he came back he was so changed and Quiet-riddled the Sleepers in his life all assumed he had cancer. It was the only explanation they had for: holy shit, man.

He is not quite so phased by being this close to a Technocratic stronghold. Nicholas works in a hospital; the risk of running into a Union operative, and the assumption that they perhaps even share some beliefs and aspects of paradigm in common, is a part of his day-to-day life.

Today when he arrives he is also carrying a backpack. Some of his more cumbersome items (the yew staff, in particular) are resting at home in his study; it's fortunate the park is nearby since he will have nearly everything he needs to assist.

Maybe he's a little nervous, today, evidenced generally by fidgeting, by sometimes plucking absently at the curls at the back of his neck. Can she see it? Nick doesn't work around other mages familiar with his preferred Sphere very often.

They arrive at the creek together. His movements are not loud and echoing; he might as well be floating over the landscape here, as though he already stands with one foot in this world and one in the next. They come to the river, and Nick draws in a deep breath that inflates his lungs down to the very bottom and expands his shoulders and chest and lungs.

[Mind shield for Nick too. Base diff 4, -1 taking time. Extending if necessary.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 3) ( success x 1 )

Nicholas Hyde

[Extending.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 5) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas Hyde

[Aaaaaand awareness.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

twilight

If there is some monstrous construct, some mad, consumptive, mechanistic, devouring amalgam lost somewhere in the orange glow of Aurora's ambient light pollution (on snow-bound nights, doesn't it all feel a bit nuclear? some assault, some war at the edge of the horizon: Kiara feels not a lick of it. She's open to the sky and oh there's Orion finding a way to shine through the haze and here is the murmur of the creek and the rush of the brace of interstates surrounding them quite as low and susserant as the coursing of any waterway and hum, hum, hum. Come summer the noisy chorus will be loud and lewd, the rush and need, the drive to consummate, god, something, anything, before the sun falls away from the earth again. To be remade, reborn: perpetuated.

Now though.

Now.

Not many in the park afterdark.

They cut through the popular jogging trails heading for something perhaps deeper. Somewhere where the seams between the worlds are thinning, thinning, thinner.

Night all around. Prairie grass rustling in the constant wind.

No evidence anyone knows they are here.

(Gauntlet is generally 7-8 in the park. Kiara's awareness roll is enough that they can probably hike to an area where it is 6-7 at least at night. it would be higher in daylight.)

Kiara Woolfe

In some ways the solitude feels worse. The normalcy to it; being in the open; surrounded by the soft grasses and beneath the sky. It feels like belonging and home to the pagan. She feels as much a part of the earth beneath their feed and the lush, verdant growth all around them as she does within her skin.

The essence of the brunette was twofold, here. A thrum; the pulse of nature; her perpetual, never-ending cycle. Nicholas takes the time to breathe when they reach the water's edge and the Verbena stands silently for a moment; staring out into the distance; her shoulders straight, a trace of that lingering agitation drawn into the curve of her spine.

Her fingers fall away from the quartz around her neck. "It feels wrong, doesn't it." She offers simply, quietly. Her eyes shifting to rove Nicholas's face. To search it, before she looks back over the water. "It feels like there should be something more. This close." She takes a few cautious steps off to the side and then gestures up a small crest.

There's a gentle gust of wind that sends the smell of summer-turned earth their way; traces over their skin as if to beckon them on. "I think we'll have a better chance up there, through those trees."

Kiara Woolfe

(feed = feet, I can spell, honest.)

Nicholas Hyde

They've reached the water's edge and as Kiara looks over at his face Nicholas seems to be scanning the water itself, for a moment. There is something in the Chakravanti's demeanor that could lend the impression that he is not particularly paying attention as they walk through the park: there are points at which his eyes seemed to be focused on nothing, or when they are looking at something that neither of them are talking about. They go unfocused, hazy.

Nick needs other people; they are a tether.

As Kiara speaks it draws his eyes over to her, and to her comment he only nods. "They might even have some sort of operation here that's being concealed. It's close enough, and there isn't a lot of other green space on their campus." Perhaps he might not otherwise have been so suspicious but: construction projects.

Kiara leads them on, and Nick follows, shifting the shoulder strap of his bag.

twilight

They have to hike to find it. In the dark, unfamiliar ground. The sea of grass helps. Easy to see where others have tramped then down, particularly when winter keeps them dry and dormant. What trees are here are low and scrub; lonely, scrabbling outposts, strange little copses grown up where the water table is high, where an old half-forgotten oxbow of the stream has become a boggy wetland.

Thirty minutes, forty minutes, and: here.

Kiara Woolfe

While they hike, Kiara's narrow beam of torchlight bounces across the grass. Casts a strange, feeble little yellow orb arcing out. She keeps it low, focusing on swinging it out before their feet so they can navigate around the wild grasses that have thrown themselves into re-growth everywhere their roots can reach. Straining even where they've become trodden and flattened by constant human traffic through the park.

She speaks, after a few minutes of silence. She has a melodic voice, the pagan. Somehow sweet for all the ways she clearly was anything but. There's a sense that perhaps she does it - talks, murmurs into the rustling trees and the gurgle of water - for the sake of distracting them from the task at hand as much as anything.

"There was another Node here, you know. Not here, but - out in the trees. In the wilderness. Annie - one of the Cabal at the Chantry - took me out there once. There's a clearing where the world just sort of - stops." Kiara's movements slow and she waits for Nicholas to catch up, glances at him.

The torchlight sliding along her arm, shoulder. Casting shadows into the lines of the Verbena's face. "On the other side, through time. It's just a void of nothing now. After they came and tried to take the Node. It was too wild for them, though. To powerful. It wouldn't yield." A flare of something like pride at that. A vicious sort of satisfaction that fades soon enough as she begins careful steps forward again.

"So they did what they're good at. They destroyed it. Killed more of us. Left the earth stained with blood." She stops after they've walked onwards a good way; dipping into a silence not fraught with but stained at the edges with a particular sort of grief. One not entirely hers but - felt. But understood.

"I think this is it." She turns a small circuit, the Verbena. Sets her pack down carefully. "I think we might be able to reach across here."

twilight

It is as dark a night as one will find in Sand Creek Park. The moon is absent and the clouds have cleared away. The ambient glow is ever-present on the horizon: impossible to forget the labs, the facilities, the hospital a holes of golf away: but beneath the loose sky and among the dark grasslands below: they work. They have come deep enough that they have to push through the waving grasses like ships through the sea, but so they do. The circle is drawn: physically. The landscape means that it lingers physically even as they feel it taking shape, their resonance twined, the magicks woven together like reeds.

Kiara Woolfe

It feels like a key, turning in a lock, once the circle is cast. The faint hum of energy surrounding them; rising up around them in a small diameter on all sides. Kiara presses her fingertips to the bundle of sage and snuffs out the smoking tip; moves quietly over to her pack and carefully replaces it inside.

There's a sobriety, now, to the witch's movements. As if the casting of the circle had signaled some change in her demeanor. The dark eyes that find Nicholas, twin glimmers in the twilight, are full now of a steady sort of determination. "I think we're ready now," she offers and rises to her feet, gently brushing dirt from her knees.

"Crow won't be able to cross the circle but hopefully he'll be willing to bargain information. You've dealt with him before, you can speak for us, once he's here if you like." Her mouth curls a touch, she holds her hand out to the other Awakened.

"Ready?"

Nicholas Hyde

Nicholas always has a sort of sobriety to his movements; there is no discernible difference in him once that quiet hum of energy seems to spring up around them. If anything, perhaps there is some tension that has crept into him just now: he is unused to Working with an audience, or speaking to spirits with an audience, especially not when that happens to consist of someone who is more experienced than he is.

Still, he levels a look at the Verbena as she rises to her feet and he says, "I'm still learning to summon. If you call him here, I can speak with him."

There is this glance to her hand when she offers it to him, this moment of quizzical hesitation: unsure of its purpose. But he places his hand in hers, nods, and says, "Ready."

Kiara Woolfe

[Right! Let's do this. I think ... we're gonna roll with Spirit 3 to Summon and add in Prime 2 to assist with drawing Crow over. So, we're starting at Base Diff 6, -1 for using Instruments, -1 for taking her sweet time and -1 for using a Quint. GO BIG OR GO HOME. May extend! I think they'll need a few suxx to get Crow's attention. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Kiara Woolfe

[Extending! +1 Diff and adding a WP.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 7, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Kiara Woolfe

[Once more for flavor.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

twilight

Not silence here, but the distance of human-crafted sounds give their circle a strange sense of isolation that should feel rare in an urban setting: anywhere, except - god, it is night, and it is not quite as hard as one imagines to become lost in a cityscape, after full dark has fallen, particularly this close to one of the doorways of the year.

What is that near? That noise that feels like woosh and lift, shadow-against-shadow with this fey hint of gleam, that shadow-without-shadow-without-shadow because tonight there is no moon.

Breathe in: and there. Stippling the bare limbs of the nearest scrub oak, this impression of - oh, a half-dozen dark-winged birds, roosting in the trees. Gleam-of-a-querying eye from the other side of their well-cast circle. And:

?????????

This push of query/question that embodies so many all in one. Who/when/how/why?

And, perhaps also: what do you have for me?

Kiara Woolfe

It takes time, to summon a spirit. Not - endless time, they don't quite have that to spare but - time. There is a drawing in of focus required, you understand. A need for this small, lean woman with her wild hair and eyes to pull at the very fabrics that knit their worlds together and unravel them. To part the seam between and draw out one that resided on the other side.

There was good reason why the Spirit touched Awakened often seemed so displaced - at any given moment prone to staring off into space; to gleaning things that were not quite there. For the Umbra, such as it was, was a profound spectacle to behold - hard to ignore that much wonderment, once your eyes had seen it once.

Kiara grips Nicholas' hand at one point; her eyes fixed ahead; at some point in the inky darkness. There's a thickening; a syrupy gathering of energy and then - the swoop of wings. They are, quite suddenly, not alone and being observed by a gathering of crows nesting in the tree branches.

The Verbena's fingers loosen and she turns dark eyes to her companion. Her expression seeming to read: you're up, batter.

Nicholas Hyde

Nicholas, when he has spoken with spirits, has typically engaged them in this random way: whatever happened to be in the area he was. It so happened that crow spirits and raven spirits and coyote spirits happened to find him, more often than not. He does not know how long he walked in the dead lands when he was there, but he knows they became as friends, or as close to friends as something otherworldly can really ever get.

His gaze is intent as Kiara grips his hand and focuses her eyes (unfocuses them? who can really say) on the black that surrounds them. The swoop of wings: his fingers loosen too at that moment and he looks around toward the winged birds that are roosting in that tree, from the other side of the circle.

"Hello," he says to them, and there's this way that he talks to them without pretense, as though they were people. The two of them are battered by questions, which merit answers, in their turn. And then, "Nicholas Hyde, and this is Kiara Woolfe. I've met others like you before, and I know you're clever and quick, and I know how much you know.

"We called you hoping you'd be willing to trade. Secret for secret?"

twilight

Secret for a secret?

Secret for a secret.

There is something elegant and elegaic about the dark shapes shrouded amongst the bare tree limbs. This sense of communal awareness, of communication, of chorus that ripples from one suggestion to another, dancing through murder, each to each.

At last the foremost among them rears back and opens its body up to the full width of its wingspan, and rears back and takes such soaring flight only to swoop back downward, hopping and backwinging like it intended to land just outside the circle.

And so it does. Somehow the waving grasses sink all around the creature.

Gleam, that eye. Finally:

Assent. Secret for a secret. and

Tell me what you know.

Greedy thing.

Kiara Woolfe

Kiara watches on as Nicholas speaks to the spirit(s). Her stillness could either signify tension or grave, total consideration and a look spared the Verbena's way speaks far more of the latter. The edge of her jaw in the moonlight a finecut thing; she's all hollows and dark, shining eyes.

When Crow assents, when he dives and settle-hops to the ground near the edge of the circle, then Kiara stirs and glances at her companion. Their secrets were a precious commodity and perhaps, given their nature, not to be shared without considerable caution. "We can each offer something," she says quietly, with a tinge of some unidentifiable strain in her voice.

"The more we do, the more he may be inclined to offer back." There's a beat, then Kiara walks to the edge of the circle proper and lowers herself to a crouch; observing the spirit's gleaming, bright eye. "Hello, Crow." The brunette murmurs and then leans in. Her body perched there at the edge of the circle.

She says something, the pagan and then after a beat, pulls back and rises again.

Nicholas Hyde

Greedy thing: he had expected no less. Finding something equitable, that's always the trick; bargaining ethically, without giving away secrets that aren't his to give away - that's the other.

"I will. Do you know anything about the tower back that way?" And here, a significant look over his shoulder toward the Technocratic compound. He can only imagine how it looks to them: he has never been to such a place, not in the Umbra. An infinite network of steel and glass, perhaps. "The web. We want to know everything you know about it."

He watches them with steady eyes, hair dark as one of their wings. Perhaps they, too, think he is a greedy thing. He watches as Kiara moves forward, whispers to the murder. "I'll offer more once we know what you have to tell in kind."

Kiara Woolfe

This is the secret Crow receives from the Verbena: Our friend was taken hostage and when I heard he was the first thing I felt wasn't pity or fear but envy. To be that close to them, to look them in the eye and have the chance to destroy them.

I want to watch them all burn. I want to exact revenge for my friends. And for myself.

twilight

We know it.

Ruffling, rustling, the murder responds. The foremost of them bobs its head. That whole and strange and oddly human movement, the too-intelligent gaze.

An echo: rising, whistling, whispering, brightening, query after query after answer after query:

Spiderhome.

Another frission, this dark, lyrical glance from Nicholas to Kiara, Kiara to Nicholas, back again.
--

Everything we know is much and little. Ask what you will and we will answer.

Kiara Woolfe

The brunette's arms fold over her chest and for a beat she frowns into the distance, as the spirits mention the tower; call it the Spiderhome. The spirits of stagnation and the cities; spinning their webs across great divides of gleaming glass and steel.

She exchanges a look with Nicholas, then presses: "We seek someone inside the Spider's domain. He feels like Ice. Frozen things. We want to know what protections there are to reach him. Where are the dangers?"

Nicholas Hyde

Spiderhome, they say, and Nicholas, this is the first time he's heard it described as such: he had some sense of the way these places looked to spirits, from things he has heard others say. He had perhaps been unaware until now of how apt his conceptualization of the place was.

The crows rustle on their branches, and Nicholas shifts his weight from one leg to the other, folding his arms as he thinks. Perhaps he is still thinking of what to offer in return; it is not a decision made lightly. "We also want to know the best way to reach him, the most direct and with the fewest dangers. Are there any places near the web that they haven't touched - any safe places?"

twilight

There is a sense of cessation there. Kiara says that they seek someone inside who feels like ice and there is another flutter from within the murder, ths humming, humming query that comes back to them, in a ricochet:

Many frozen in spiderhome. Frozen-one-who-sought-and-changed is the friend-you-seek?

Another bristling from within the murder, which feels like a shivering sense of refusal or disagreement, some sense of disorder. They do not know the best way to him; where he is being held, except in the heart and here there is something else: an impression from the murder that has flown-over spiderhome, that sees it from above the spinning web of the grid, that sensed this person and this change, some surging change like growth growth growth (flowing and boundless) from deep inside. Later: Kiara and Nicholas will be able to transliterate this impression of space into at least a certain (still large) wing of a certain hospital south of where they stand. Another sense of being: beneath, buried, perhaps - perhaps? Belowground?

One of the murder tells them that noplace is safe but again: that bristling of disagreement, a rustling rising of a secret coming to the surface: The Greenway. Oak still lives.

Scoff. Slumbers.

Lives.

The dangers? Many: myriad. Stasis, says one. Death, says another. Devouring.

Kiara Woolfe

Frozen one who sought and changed is the friend you seek?

Kiara's mouth softens a touch, tilts up at the edge into a slip of a smile; she inclines her face. Nods, briefly. "Yes, that's our friend. He was taken and we want to bring him home." There's this tiny fleeting tremor in Kiara's voice that registers on home. As if she were uncertain of saying it aloud, as if, deep down, she knew there may well not be a home for Alexander to return to.

How did you simply pick up and resume a life after what he's been through, anyway?

Oak still lives. Slumbers. The Greenway.

The Verbena's smile fades a little. "Oak can help?" Aside, to Nicholas. "They might be referring to Greenway Park. It's not that far from here." Then, her dark eyes back on Crow. "I can awaken Oak from his slumber."

Nicholas Hyde

The Greenway.

There is this sharp glance to Kiara then, something that Nicholas tries to shadow more or less as second nature but cannot quite. It is a thing that sounds significant to him, even if he is fully unaware of the area. Fortunately, Kiara expounds, lends color and form to the sketch he is beginning to lay out in his mind.

He heard Kiara's uncertainty too. His jawline is firm: Nicholas had expected to find the man changed. If you wish to be reborn, first you have to die.

"It sounds like we're headed to Greenway next, then." And he takes a few steps closer to the edge of the circle, regards the murder in his somber way. "Thank you, Crow. You've been very helpful to us. Is there something specific you would have of me?"

Kiara Woolfe

[Enigmas + Intel]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas Hyde

[Enigmas + Intelligence]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

twilight

There was dissension amongst the murder because they were debating whether or not a certain oak (somewhere: perhaps close) was even alive. It sounds a bit like an old wives' tale, as much as a secret. But: if that oak is in a nearby park and if that park is threatened by the technocrats, slumbering is the only way that spirit has of surviving. Waking an oak spirit (which is tied essentially to its rooted-tree) would probably be the death of the tree and its spirit.

If anyone needed a distraction the murder might be the best way to go: they are mobile! and can fly over/away, but I am not sure that they need that right now since they aren't attacking (yet).

twilight

The murder seems to confer amongst itself and they returns to Nicholas. It wants: one shiny secret. And two tears.

Counsel/Council [In Progress]

Sera

Some morning some strange stupid ordinary morning; sunlight or maybe shadow-fall, dark clouds, the strange anemic light of a clouded wintry morning and a jeep (circa 1990s) with Colorado tags and nothing else to distinguish it pulls up outside a certain luxurious home set away from the others on its own acreage. Normally they'd come bearing gifts today there are no gifts. Gatorade and an acid hangover and a Sera and a Dan. He was able to sleep, a bit. She wasn't. Still has that jittery rawness that comes in after a certain kind of rush, sick-ache in the back of her throat, her head, her body. Sick-ache elsewhere, too, someone underneath her skin, enough that he has to coax her a bit down out of the Jeep's passenger door. Pulls her into a hug and kisses her on the crown of her head and she curses beneath her breath, resists because something in her was meant to resist.

They head inside. Sera and Dan find Annie and have a talk with her. Then maybe all of Trinity. Dan puts tea and coffee on and starts cooking something potato-y. Sera curls up in the kitchen while he cooks. She expects, hopes, that other mages will start arriving soon.

Grace

[OOC Note: If you are known to Grace yet (Except Alex, because she thinks he's mad at her and will instead tell Kalen to do it for her), you will get a text message at the very least with some nonchalant message like "What's up?" or the like, since the original Ginger message said that people should "Check on their friends and family". She knows Pen and Nick don't have Ginger yet, so would not follow that up with a line about having "Spoken to Ginger lately?" but the point of all this is to make sure that everyone she knows knows about the meeting. Sorry ALL YOU FREAKING NEW MAGES WHO ARRIVED WHILE SHE WAS IN AUSTRALIA. You get nothing. ;_;]

[[ Addendum OOC Note: Rolls for that Corr ward

Grace @ 12:06AM [Making a Corr ward about herself! Corr 2, Diff 5 - 1 for taking time.] Roll: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 5, 9) ( success x 3 ) Grace @ 12:07AM [Extending, with WP!] Roll: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 3, 7) ( success x 1 ) Grace @ 12:08AM [With Actual WP!] Roll: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP] Denver @ 12:20AM ~♥~ Welcome to Dedicated Dicing Den, I love Vesta. ~♥~ Vesta @ 12:20AM [Witnessed!] ]]

Of course, Grace attends, but not until after she has texted everybody to check on them and generated a somewhat solid ward about her to keep the sneaky spies out. She knows all about that sort of thing, being a sneaky spy herself and all. The wording of that IMPORTANT message has her unnerved. Not too many things are of the type that can't be spoken of on Ginger. One of those things is the War.

She really vanished to Australia for almost a month to relax and try to forget anything that had to do with the return of the Technocracy (and Vampires and a band of Stupid Wizards) as an actual, pressing threat to everyone's continued existence. It wasn't fear that drove this, or avoidance (as if Australia were some mythical land without Technocrats, right?). It was preparation. In order to stand up and keep fighting, you have to occasionally indulge in self-care. For Grace, this meant doing a lot of penguin-watching. In other words, she had expected such a call to go out, in just such careful language for quite some time. Preparing for it only makes things slightly easier.

The first thing she does upon arrival is try to find somebody who will tell her, right now, what is actually up. What has changed the precarious balancing act Denver's been going at for months now? So of course she wanders into the kitchen. There was mention of breakfast, after all. Someone is cooking. Aha, that someone is Dan...

"Dan. I love a good breakfast potato and all, and I love you for making them," she says, and then turns her attention more toward Sera. "But what's going on?"

Sera

"Alexander was kidnapped by a technocratic agent." It is Dan who answers Grace, his voice low and steady over the sizzle of peppers, potatoes, onions. Sera's tired, quiet. Still the suggestion of hallucinations at the edges of her vision from the drugs she took to access Lakashim. Feels so strange to be back, anchored in her body, in a solid room. "right from his precinct, a few weeks ago. He didn't answer some texts or return a call, so Sera scryed for him. Thought he might've gotten lost or maybe hurt, hiking or whatever. When she couldn't locate him in the here-and-now, she searched for the last time she could find him in the timeline."

The consor looks up from the mildly meditative work of cooking.

"Let's see who else shows up. Probably best if she doesn't have to repeat the story too many times today, you know?"

Grace

Grace's eyes go wide and stay that way, before she raises a hand to her mouth, and those eyes start darting in different directions while she thinks of what to do. She knows people to talk to. She can hack the enemy. She can do things, and she wants to do them all right now immediately, except that nobody else knows.

"Oh."

Words just aren't the best, most easy thing right now. Her insides are churning too much. Wide, searching eyes find Sera, and she approaches slowly, reaches out with her arms. Sera may be still hallucinating at the edges. Maybe this might seem like one -- Grace willingly hugging another person? But yeah. Yeah.

Nicholas Hyde

Nicholas is in attendance, perhaps with Pen in tow.

He hadn't had occasion to go out to the chantry yet - though perhaps this is not exactly true. He has meant to go, in the way people mean to check out the cool art museum right across the street for months and months after they move in; and yet things have a way of coming up in the life of a busy mage. He is with Pen again! They have a new place in a new city! He has a new job! He is meeting new people! There are rumblings about Technocratic presence from everyone he has spoken to! So: chantry is on the backburner.

The smell of cooking breakfast and brewing coffee greets him, and his stomach rumbles. The sight of Grace and Sera, both among the few new people he knows, brings a slight smile to his face as soon as he has followed the sound of voices into the kitchen: there are hugs happening. Nick does not yet understand that the context of the hugs is terrible and potentially tragic. Dan he does not know: he catches the man's eye in one of the moments that he looks up from the stove, and nods to him.

It does not take him long to figure out that Sera is minimally responsive right now. His expression becomes concerned, questioning, as he looks between the three people present. He says nothing, preferring to take context from what they are doing; there is, after all, the tacit understanding with meetings like these that things will be explained.

Kiara

The front door opens and closes with a hushed urgency. As if even in doing this much, it was trying to play tribute to the reason for their gathering together like this. The sound of buckles and leather and boots and that sudden flutter in their bellies. The swoop and flush of inspiration anew; the bloom of hope - that's what the Verbena felt like, you know. That all was not lost because here, nature was still thriving. Here in narrow shoulders and a slim figure with long, wild hair as dark as her eyes.

She cuts an impressive sight, the Verbena known (and to a few, unknown) as Kiara Woolfe.

She's dressed in black boots that don't quite reach her knees and jeans and a flowing top; the material looping and gathering at one hip so it falls over the other; hangs against a shoulder. There's a rattle of jewellery that accompanies her - lips made up with a bright red shade part a little as she reaches the gathering; hand to the doorframe.

Overheard, perhaps. Some of that last.

"Sorry I'm late." She has eyes for Serafine, the pagan. They flicker over the others, though. Pause on Grace, Dan. Nicholas (and Pen) warranting a hitch of her eyebrows. Uncertainty. Surprise. She's somehow always surprised by newcomers, as if Denver should somehow have been impossible to discover.

Sera

Well, Grace is reaching out to hug her and Sera, who is now seated on a counter or a table or a stepladder, which is to say: seated, but seated on something that is definitely not a chair, opens her arms. What else would she ever do when approached with a hug? She smells likes cloves and ash and snow and orange juice (orange juice!) and the morning-after fumes of a long, long night. Dan might've napped while she was scrying, but Sera has not been to sleep.

Hell, that's usually the case if she's up at this hour: it simply means that she has not yet been to sleep.

Somewhere in there she kinda - rouses, right? Contact is so very necessary for the animal-in-her, and she presses her nose into Grace's hair. Something strangely bracing about the solidity of that contact, of her spare frame and the strange, undeniable strength if not of her frame, at least of her resonance. The promise of: magick beneath her skin.

--

Dan, cooking. He's a tall, skinny guy with blond hair and a blond beard and tattoos covering his arms. He's wearing skinny jeans and a plaid button-down with the sleeves rolled up his forearms. If he started yesterday evening with a bow-tie, he has since untied it. Gives Nick an appraising glance: up and down, you see. Just so, while still somehow managing to attend to the peppers, onions, and potatoes in the sautee pan in front of him.

"You must be Nick." With a glance, you know? Sera tells him everything. A quick smile, crisp and warm framed by the beard, and then: an apologetic shrug with a glance at the pan in explanation. "I'd offer you my hand, but - "

They're kinda full.

Then Kiara joins them, and Dan is pouring breakfast onto both a plate and a platter, and says, "Kiara. Have you met Nicholas or his wife, Pen?" Deftly making introductions all the while. "There's a loaf of ciabatta warming in the oven. One of your want to grab it? We can sit in the dining room and we'll fill you in."

As Sera disentangles herself from the unexpected Grace-hug, Dan steers her toward the Gatorade in the fridge. Electrolytes or something. Sera makes a face and grabs both Gatorade and whiskey, which Dan helpfully points out sounds like the world's most disgusting combination. Well then: Sera will put it in her tea and just skip the Gatorade, anyway. Who says it works? She thinks it's a myth. She prefers: magick, anyway, when the time comes to heal her hangovers.

Kalen

Kalen has been, also, in Australia.

He was, briefly, back in Denver to meet with other Hermetics. Stopped off in Santiago on his way back to Grace and penguins. There are pictures from those first few days, before he told her what he knew about the coming war. Not that she would not have known. There are many people in the world that Kalen will hide from and lie to when it suits him, but Grace is not among them.

Sun or no sun, Kalen is still pale. There is a little dusting of very faint freckles over his cheekbones. His eyes are, if anything, more haunted than when he left. Kalen Michael Holliday is as terrible at vacations as he is at being Flambeau; though, one of those is a more recent development than the other.

He is quiet as he surveys them. There are no warm, excited greetings. A faint dip of the head to each of them, and then he is getting coffee. He holds Grace's eyes perhaps a few seconds longer than anyone else's and he brushes against Kiara as he slips past her, and in that this is unlike the grim and withdrawn creature he was when he first arrived in Denver; still, this is Kalen a little guarded, and a little quiet, and entirely reminiscent of what he had been haunted.

Nicholas

Once Nick is there only a little longer, people he does not recognize (as though he'd recognize so many) start to filter in. He is standing near Grace and Serafine, his arms folded across his chest, his limbs loose in a way that belies his actual feelings about this meeting. See, he's picked up on the fact that Sera has been up too long, that there is some whisper of a Working that she wears in her hair, wound around and beneath her skin. These things in conjunction with a meeting everyone is invited to: they usually mean something.

Dan, the person who is in front of the stove, catches his attention with: You must be Nick. The Chakravanti appraises him then, perhaps searches his memory and the relatively few conversations he's had since arriving in Denver, before returning with, "You must be Dan."

He goes to grab the loaf of bread that is warming in the oven, after a momentary pause to cast around for a mitt. As much of an impressive (foolish) entrance it might make to grab it barehanded with nothing but magic as a barrier, Nick is not that sort of mage, in any sense. Mention of Kiara's name draws his eyes to the woman that entered shortly after he did, and there's a glimmer of recognition there.

The bread he sets on the counter, close enough to Dan for convenience but not so close that he'd risk inadvertantly burning himself on the pan. "Hello, Kiara. And - ?" This, to Kalen.

Kiara

The brunette's eyes are a very dark brown. They've been highlighted today with liner and the lashes that frame them and drop, briefly, against her cheeks as she feels Kalen sweep past behind her, are curling and long. A lovely creature, by all accounts, Kiara but the manner she cut a brief, bright appraising look Nick's way reads a fair amount into there being far more to her than a charming little heart shaped face and cheeks with a tendency to dimple when she smiled.

(Only honest smiles drew them out, that being said).

"Hello," it's a murmur as much as anything, a hand idling to bury itself in all that dark hair and cup the back of her neck. "Welcome to the party." A notch up of fine dark eyebrows; one wings just slightly higher than the other and while Dan assembles plates of food - the Verbena kicks off from her resting perch and sets herself up with a glass of red wine. Unhooks a glass and pours it out, delivering the rich aroma into the mixture Dan's efforts had already let loose.

"That," a gesture with her glass here, Kiara's rings gleaming, toward the man who had pressed in behind her upon entry. "Is Kalen. Can I interest anyone else?" She sets the bottle down, the Verbena and leans into a counter out of the stream of activity; holding the glass against her body without any particular fuss about sampling it. Her tone is light enough, but beneath the glamor of it (not even magickal, this time, just posturing, just brittle play-acting at some notion of normalcy from the earth-witch) there's a sense of tension; lacing into her shoulders, the set of them. Her fingers curled around the stem a little too forcefully.

"It sounds like the occasion for it."

Sepulveda

He is not late. He was invited only by association and his associate such as she is arrived ten minutes ago. Came into the kitchen and started garnering information and he traipsed the periphery of the property smoking a cigarette and having an argument under his breath with himself.

Maybe Nick saw him on the way in. Kiara may have. Kiara is attuned to this land in a way he will never understand. Tried to understand. Kiara may have known Hinata who went by Eloise when she went by anything but that's a story for another time. At this time the Etherite who came as Grace's plus-one is chain smoking.

He is a forensic pathologist. A medical examiner. A doctor. A Scientist. Shouldn't be smoking. Does anyway. That is irrelevant. In time he finishes his cigarette and does whatever it is that Disciples of Matter do with their cigarette butts and lets himself into the Chantry.

A short man. Five-foot-six in his shoes. Came from an inquest this morning so he's wearing a navy blue suit and a white shirt and a conservative tie even though he hates ties at all let alone ones with still patterns he had to comb his hair and trim his beard didn't have to but he chose to and he's wearing black-rimmed glasses and a wedding band on his left hand and soon as the door's shut he's surveying the room intruder that he must think he is.

Everyone is in the kitchen. He calls out as he walks. A deep voice belies a slight frame. Light accent.

"Marco?" He follows the smell of food into the kitchen. Green eyes find Nick and then Grace. Eyebrows flick. Greeting in it and also expectation.

He expects Grace to introduce him since she's the one who ran his background check. He will absolutely take a glass of red wine. Breakfast be damned. He has two apprentices. They won't be joining the congregation. They have work and school and a propensity for freaking out at the slightest hint of impending doom.

Grace

Grace has been happy, up to the point where this call went out. Vacation agrees with her, when she's allowed to be somewhere very warm and work on her Work. Right now, though, she looks like she just got punched in the gut. When Kalen's gaze meets hers, she tries to hold on to it, tries to tell him with her eyes that everything will be okay. He's going to be... even less happy. Let us hope that the emotional outcome doesn't lead to doing anything rash. Not that she expects it of him, but still.

She's about to accept Kiara's offer of wine when Dr. Sepúlveda shows up in the entryway to the kitchen. For the life of her, she can't quite grasp that it's her 'job' to do introductions until a few painful seconds have passed. Maybe he has to look at her and cough.

"Oh, yeah. Um. This is Andrés Sepúlveda. Doctor. He's with the Society of Ether. Andrés, everybody. Everybody, Andrés," she says, with sweeping arm gestures in his general direction. Sorry, dude. Your invite to this shindig came courtesy of a Mercurial Elite with only the weakest grasp on what normal human interactions entail when she's on the scent like this.

"I could use some wine," she says to Kiara, and then seems to change her mind immediately. "No. Actually, no." She puts her thumb knuckles up to her eyes and leans on the counter like she's got the biggest headache. "I don't need to do everything that needs doing while drunk..."

Pen

Pen did arrive with Nick!

And then she was quiet, because there is a reason she is nursing a very strong cup of coffee as if the coffee'll have enough edge to scrape her into brightness. Quiet is relative. Chain-smoking Andrés got a what's up outside. Grace also got a what's up, probably coupled with big concerned eyes given how worn the Mercurial Elite looks. Pen's a softie. Serafíne and Dan, two Good Mornings, an incisive little this is really early isn't it? look for the former, but of course it is because 'meetings' like these are never good news you see that doesn't change one city from the other. Nick didn't get a what's up. Kalen got a wiggle of fingers, a half-smile.

There's a certain wistfulness to her regard of the wine, wine's as red as rubies in a fairy tale or it's the color of a gown the color of stars, but wine and coffee don't go together, do they? Then again, dare not!

Anybody she doesn't know gets the (semi-full) introduction, Penelope Sylvia Mercury Mars bani Flambeau ordo Hermes. There don't seem to be too many of those. Neat.

Pen is: mistress of languid aplomb, at least right now. Asks Dan if he needs help, chopping or any such thing, carrying plates into the dining room, c'mon people give her some busy work.

Sera

Dan wasn't really cooking for a (the) crowd, so the spread laid out in the dining room, or maybe the living room, is modest. He just wanted to get some solid food, some carbohydrates and potassium, some liquid other-than-booze, back into Sera's body as she is coming-down from whatever-it-is she uses to fuel her magick. The ciabatta, though, that's a good sized loaf, not exactly loaves-and-fishes but it's not exactly a loaves-and-fishes crowd.

It's Dan who starts,

"Alexander hadn't responded to a couple of voice mails or texts. Sera was concerned he might've gotten hurt while hiking or something, so last night she decided to scry him out. But she couldn't find him anywhere."

They're sitting close to each other, though at the moment Sera is not inviting touch the way she is often wont to do. No, something about her scrubbed-raw senses has her in want of: space, boundaries, singularity. Feels so strange to be one, when sometimes you can be: all, every, any.

"So I looked back," this is Sera, and if she looks as if she has not slept for quite some time, well: she has not slept. The edges of the room have a sort of brilliant smearinenss to them and everything from her temples to her fingertips aches. She doesn't mind the ache. In fact, she invites it. "Searched out the last time I could find him.

"Several weeks ago, Alex was approached at the police," a slight handwave. Unlike the rest of the western world, Sera has never watched a Law and Order marathon. She doesn't have a ready lexicon of crime-show language, " - thingy by a guy who said he was an FBI Agent named Paul Mason. Wanted to have a chat with Alexander.

"Took Alex into a room inside the place and started asking him about a 'case' he was investigating. Showed Alex a picture of Leah. Mason said he was investigating Leah for the murder of twelve people, and asked if Alex had seen her.

"Alex was pretty clever. He managed to answer without lying, without really answering, but Mason was not taken in. He kept questioning Alex, pushing him to give her up - or, well," this narrow hitch of the creature's spare shoulders. The movement framed with an elegant simplicity. "testing him, right? Weston asked Alex another direct question. Alex tried to leave.

"But Mason shot him with something: a tranquilizer, maybe. Alex tried to run, but the guy came after him and the drug he'd used was pretty fast-acting. Alex started to shout, and he went for his gun but they were grappling over it and he couldn't really get it out of the holster. He still managed to get a shot off that went into the floor before he passed out.

"These other cops came running. Mason convinced them that Alex had gone nuts while they were talking, that Alex started talking to someone who wasn't there and was going for his weapon and that Weston had to do tackle Alex to stop him from hurting himself, then Alex passed out. Mind magick, yeah? The cops believed Mason.

"They called an ambulance.

"The paramedics - two women - started toward the hospital, but changed course halfway there. Drove East instead, toward Aurora. Kept going until they ended up in one of those boring-ass looking developments with the low bland buildings and the sod and the fake ponds and shit. Dan says it sounds like a research park, and we put it together to be close to the UC Denver schools of public health and dentistry. That's where I lost track of him. The vision closed-off and I couldn't find him anytime, after."

Grace

After Sera's spiel, Grace chimes in, perhaps sooner than the impact of all that has really hit. She's been waiting to get a few things off her chest, although she's still speaking to the kitchen counter.

"So this means, if you knew Alex, you're in danger. He also knew where the Chantry is, and he had Ginger, so chances are they know we're having this meeting right now."

She doesn't stop to explain Ginger to those who don't have it. Priorities and all.

Her head comes up, and her eyes flit to people, but seem to pierce through them, until she settles on something non-living -- non-emoting.

"I know a guy. Mercurial Elite who has been watching the Technocrats in the area. I'm going to find out what he knows. And then I'm going to hack their shit to within an inch of it's life if I can. We'll find out what we need to get him back."

She says these things with conviction, like she is going to do them, and if anyone had any ideas about stopping her, they have another thing coming.

Sepulveda

Sepúlveda did in fact stare at Grace and give a bit of an open-armed You gonna introduce me or what? gesture when she didn't do so within about five seconds. File that one away under the Virtual Adept living up to her name.

He's silent during Dan-and-Sera's explanation and the clearing of things off Grace's chest. Keeps one hand in his pocket if he has been offered a glass of wine. Keeps both hands in his pockets and fails the Don't Make Music with the Random Coins and Other Jangly Junk test.

"So..." A hand leaves Sepúlveda's pocket to scratch at his beard before he goes on. He's a hand-talker. "If they know about all this, the Chantry and the Ginger and all that, how are you so sure they aren't expecting you to try to 'hack their shit'?"

Grace

It was a long drive to the Chantry with the doctor in tow. Grace has the feeling it's going to be even longer on the way back.

"By that logic, they're expecting everything, so we should do nothing. But I'm open to other ideas if you have them."

Sepulveda

He points at her.

"I'm going to ignore your unsound accusation of logical fallacy for the moment. We can discuss that later." Yes, Grace. Yes it is going to be a long ride back. "Other ideas!" He indicates their fellows with a sweep of an arm. "You have a room full of associates who I'm sure are very bright and more than capable of gathering data and contributing to a plan that's a little more nuanced than 'Go in the back door and hope they don't notice or do anything about it.' Like, where's your support? What are you gonna do if it does go wrong, and you don't find out shit, and now we gotta go after you and Alex? Where's this building they took him to? Can we use, eh, what do you call it, social hacking to get additional information? What about a two-pronged approach? Divide and conquer, eh? That's how they get new members, they pick off the ones who want to be cowboys."

Nicholas

Nick listens to the long explanation Sera offers, largely without expression: no surprise, and no fear. He is still digesting when she finishes, and when Sepúlveda and Grace begin their back-and-forth. He does not know Alex. Nicholas knows of Alex, but due to his and Pen's habit of rarely Naming those they run into even when they discuss - well, he doesn't know that yet.

"I think it's clear that this meeting was called because we have no intention of leaving a man to die," Nick says, and this is perhaps directed mostly to Grace. He did not miss her defiance of them, the lifted chin: and it's true, in many chantries there would be discussion of whether or not, in fact, they ought to retrieve Alex. "So I'm glad to skip ahead with you to planning." A pause. "It sounds like first we need to find out where he is. How much do we know about their operations in the area? Has anyone met or seen any of their operatives?"

Kalen

Kalen was expecting that the news would not be good. This is a different shade of horror from perhaps what he had thought that he would encounter. Still, this is Alexander. Whom he has referred to as both his brother and his griffon; among those in Denver, only Grace has also been referred to with any kind of possessive terms. His fox. His Virtual Adept. His partner in crime. And here she is, ready to charge in.

In these moments, he can remember a girl who did not yet know that she would be this marvelous creature. He has always known. Though, perhaps, not which of all the possible variants on that creature she would be. That, to him, is irrelevant. It is only all the blazing possibility crackling at the edges of his awareness ready to be made manifest he is drawn to. It plays out from there as it must.

There are other worlds and other lives and he does not believe any longer that any loss can be eternal. Love can be eternal. Hope can be eternal. Perhaps struggle and war and horror will also prove eternal. So:

His fingers tighten on the mug cradled in his hands and he is quiet at first. He listens. He breathes. And, let us be honest, he prays. Of course he does.

But then his attention is wrested away from divinity and faith and abstract concepts to a single moment, through a series of related moments, and then to this particular moment. Nick's cutting into the exchange between Grace and the doctor earns him a brief smile. It even hits his eyes for a second, because whatever is going on, Kalen can feel a dizzying array of emotions at once. Usually does, in fact.

"I can request a detailed report of the findings of another member of the Order who came here to assess the Technocratic threat and weigh our options for war. We can speak with one other contact I am aware of, others with have them, and reassess from there with the full whole of what we know from there. If he was dead, it would seem improbable that any such effort would be being made to hide that fact; so we may reasonably conclude that he is alive, at least, for the moment."

Kalen has to take a careful breath before he speaks again. Measured. Controlled. As though this control could possibly extend to his thoughts. To the too-fast pulse he can feel in the hollow of his throat. "What we cannot reasonably conclude, is that the person we reclaim from them will be the same person that they took." What he is not willing to conclude is apparently that they will be unsuccessful. Reason can be damned there, apparently.

"We will need to be prepared not only to find him and to go out and get him, but to handle whatever complications there might be." Whatever complications there might be. You know. In case Alexander's mind has been overwritten. His memories taken. Kalen does not elaborate there.

"If that is not something that we can do here, there is somewhere I can take him. Though, Alexander would prefer, undoubtedly, to remain here. This is our home."

Pen

Pen is alert and attentive. And sitting, now. Ankle on her knee, legs crossed like a man's, one hand on her ankle. Nicholas has heard about Alexander, Pen has met Alexander, but Pen doesn't connect Serafíne's story with anybody she's met.

"Two rumors going around could be factored in here.

"One, and I personally count this as confirmed fact because of its source. The Technocracy's lab in Denver has recently had a 'fairly sizable influx of personnel.' This could actually serve us quite well. New staff means unfamiliar faces, an unclear pecking order, and loads of paperwork. Even if the lab in Denver happens to be hyperefficient and without flaw, they can't all be untouched by the callous hand of human error and now there are some new guys. This provides us with a -- decent -- stage to enact a Daring Extraction. Send someone in, undercover, to rescue this fellow, outfitting this someone with all the advantage we can scrounge together. In and out. Difficult, yes. But… with the right information - " Naturally, flicker of her attention to the Mercurial Elite here. " - and enough gumption, not impossible."

"Two. And this one really is a rumour. Possible allies on the inside now, the inside being the Technocratic Union, the rumor being there is a group made unhappy by the choices the Union is making… especially as relates to igniting another Ascension War. Now if this is the case -- be prepared, ladies and gentlemen, for heavy speculation! Obviously, this one would be a really nice rumour to confirm. If this is the case, and members of this faction are already in Denver, could we presume they would be interested in a Traditionalist taken in for questioning as this Alex was? And, presuming that, could we not presume they might be on his side? Or, if not on his side, open to persuasion?

"What I'm getting at here is IF we have Magi skilled in Entropy Time Correspondence, if we have friends of Alex's who might possess some meaningful personal effect could we not roll the dice practice some form of -omancy and, using Alex, or rather the idea of him and the fact of him, to sort-of boomerang find these potential allies and make contact with them.

"We can presume he is being held somewhere heavily warded," and this time her graylight eyes flicker-flame in acknowledgment of Serafíne. "I wouldn't be surprised if the Union's facility was in the UC Denver school of public health and dentristy, but this is because my prejudice says there cannot be a more thoroughly boring and yet also terrifying fortress for 'Reason.' The other member of the Order who Kalen mentioned should know."

Wandering, Pen. Refocus: "Anyway. Although Alex's person would be always heavily warded those we might contact will not be -- and thus vulnerable to a Find You Out spell."

"Be nice to have somebody already on the inside to help with that Daring Covert Extraction."

"As for his current state of mind, how much of a threat is the Union likely to deem this Alex? What is he like?"

Kiara

The Verbena frowns down at her glass as Dan begins.

That frown only intensifies when Serafine chimes in and by the time she's done the brunette's knuckles are almost white from the ferocity of her grip around her wineglass. There's voices, then. Grace and the Doctor and then over to others but all Kiara can truly hear is a ringing in her ears and the hot trickle of anger.

Worst fears can come true, too and this has (always) been one of hers. Only she had made certain assumptions regarding who would be the one taken. Perhaps that had been a gross sort of egotism on Kiara's behalf, to imagine she'd be the only one they'd target because of course they'd position the cross-hairs on someone like Alexander, with his connections and the ease of access to him.

Of course.

"Dionaea muscipula," she says quietly, after a sip of wine. "The Venus flytrap waits for insects to trigger not just one, but two tiny receptors before it springs shut. It waits for that exact moment. It's very clever." There's a sharp inhale, the Verbena lifts her eyes. "I agree with the Doc in that we need to be cautious about how we do this." A cut of dark eyes to Sepúlveda. She'd handed him off a glass of wine earlier - half the pagan's is already consumed though the flush that's risen to her cheeks doesn't seem entirely of its doing. There's a degree of anger in the Verbana, a tremor of unvoiced fury present there.

She pauses, waits for Kalen and Pen to speak, then, head tilted at the latter, says with the slow framing of forming speculation: "Advantage like altering their appearance. A new employee, a recent transfer. It would be incredibly risky, but - not impossible." A beat. Kiara's narrow shoulders curl in, she seems, momentarily, quite beaten down by the goings on, her fingers lifting to touch her temples, eyes closing briefly. "This building where we think he may be being held, it's possible that I can see into it from the other side. Step across and gain some insights.

I may be able to get some help from the spirits in the area, too. They see a lot more than we imagine."

Sepulveda

His wife was Verbena. Some of the gathered know this already. Some of the gathered know what befell that woman already.

Sepúlveda's anger is not Kiara's anger. Though his love belonged to her tradition their furies do not well from the same spring. The Etherite does not seem angered by this though by the sounds of it he is informed.

As Kiara speaks he listens. His glass is as emptied as is hers. His eyes flick to Pen's after she has finished speaking.

"This new laboratory." The fuck does he have to lose. "I'll go." For those who don't know: "I work for the county, as a medical examiner. I have some training in Mind. Say I go in after this Alexander, under official pretense. If I had another backing me up, I could gain some intelligence." A beat. Aimed towards Grace: "Do not mistake the Technocrats for gods, Gracia. They have the same hot blood as do we; they have no choice but to cooperate, though, eh?"

Sera

"Alex is an apprentice." Sera answers Pen's question, "He's an orphan and he's always seemed pretty straight-laced to me. His magick isn't strong enough to break reality. I can't imagine that he's a prime target for the Order. Ever. Kidnapping him and holding him - "

Flat-mouthed, here. Something sharp and angry cuts through the scrim of her exhaustion. Her small hands are fisted and there is something something something -

Dan cuts in. "The way we see it, there are two ways we get Alex back. One is go get in there somehow and take him back. The other is to get them to give him back, and hell, maybe to think it was their idea to give him back all along. If we have to do it the first way, it sounds like everyone here is willing to do whatever is necessary to make it happen.

"But if the second path is viable, it seems like it's the safest for everyone here, and especially for Alex. Hell, if they let him go, there's no reason he couldn't resume his own goddamned life and job. Now, I don't know much about the internal workings of the Technocratic Union, but I watched a helluva lot of the original X-files, so I am pretty convinced I have some idea about how shitty, controlling bureaucracies work. If we, somehow, get the less militant faction to frame this Agent Weston as a crazy Fox Mulder type, kidnapping innocent fucking apprentices who are suspected of nothing more than being wrong-place wrong-time wrong-day, maybe they can force his release."

Dan takes a deep breath: inhales through the nose. Exhales the same way. These little gears turning as he marshals his thoughts.

"We've got what, two - " a glance at Sera, " - maybe three ways back to them. That guy who contacted Will last summer. This - entity? - who's been in contact with Kalen. Which, I'm not sure I really understand? And Pen's idea, which I think Sera has the magick to pull off if no one else does."

"Grace, I think it's fair to conclude that Ginger is compromised, but they don't know that we know. Maybe you start putting your hacking skills and magick to work by making it seem as if we are still using it. If they've cracked our code and we know they've cracked it, we can use Ginger to feed them false info, or false leads, or hell, just string them along until we really need to feed them something. I'm also thinking that maybe you could do something with any compromised phone numbers: some kind of rote spell to replicate pre-compromise use. You know: make it seem like someone's still calling, texting, surfing the 'net just as much as ever. Amplify the noise they have to sift through to actually find us."

"Then there's Leah. If you haven't met her, you probably shouldn't. Best to be able to say, truthfully, that you don't have any goddamned idea who the girl in the picture is. But I don't know: maybe we take it another step. Maybe we fake her death far away from Denver, dramatically and convincing enough that the Order mothballs their investigation of her for another five years. That, I'm not sure if it's achievable, or what we'd need to make it real enough to convince the order. But it would give her - and us - and maybe Alex - some breathing room.

"I mean, if it has to be daring rescue, it'll be daring rescue. But maybe it doesn't have to be."

Kiara

Oh, she wants that. Dan is discussing going in and taking Alexander back by force and there's that scratch and illumination, like a match-head drawn against the side of the box. That flicker of fire that dances through Kiara's dark eyes where she stands cradling that wine glass against her chest. She's silent for much of this - the debate, the turning over of decisions and probable routes.

In her mind's eye she sees it: the reckoning.

The laboratory up in flames, Alexander freed and the others - fleeing like rats from a sinking sink. Cowering and ruined.

There's little room for mercy in the Verbena's fantasy, in the hot-blooded whiplash of it as blood and vengeance play out their pretty imaginings in her grim little tucked in expression; the fine pull in of her brows as she pours another glass of wine. It trickles out with a tidy little glug, droplets of dark red painting the sides of the glass.

Then she frames the bench with one hand. Lets the wine scrap away the edges; dull the roar of payback. The jangle of it against her nerves; pulsing in time with her heart.

It doesn't have to be a daring rescue - but part of Kiara Woolfe desperately wants for it to be. "Faking her death might not be impossible if it comes to that. With the right tools. Manipulating certain aspects. It just has to be convincing, not perfect." She lets her eyes tick to the Doctor, then Kalen. "There are ways we could probably pull that off." Kiara doesn't offer details on what that idea might require. DNA altering. Pattern changing on a base level.

"Especially since at least two of us have medical training." Her dark eyes tick away, she breathes in sharply. Says no more.

Grace

She squints at Doctor Sepúlveda. He must think her extremely stupid. She never claimed they were gods, so why is he telling her that? Except if it's to tell himself, even as he signs himself up for an undercover mission -- with his inability to say five sentences without pissing somebody off. Martyrdom complex? Maybe. He's also the one most likely to pass himself off as a scientist, because he, well, is one. If he's willing, Grace won't argue with that.

But, Gracia?

Nevermind. Arguing is a distraction.

Sera gets a quick nod. It was already in Grace's plans to use Ginger for whatever it could, be it passing messages to whichever person now holds Alex's phone, or spreading disinformation. Making it look like it's being used would be easy enough. Generate some fake threats, generate some fake messages about the fake threats.

"I can do that. I can also try to confirm if Ginger has been accessed, although if they're smart, they're hiding that. Anybody who has it, though? Might want to ditch your phone. At least, for a while. There's protections in place to keep the network from being sussed out, but anything's possible."

Usually, that is a good thing. Anything is possible! Go, ride your T-rex into the oceans of possibility! But it goes both ways.

"Kalen can provide you a replacement," she volunteers, for him, because she can, and because she knows him well enough to realize that's about as much an imposition as asking him to grab her a beer from the fridge.

She's not so much thinking about it when she wanders over in Kalen's direction. It's just a thing that happens. She bumps up against his side, like a cat showing affection. No arms, no hugs, just that. It'll be okay. It'll be okay -- that's the thing that she's trying to tell herself.

Pen

Kiara's head-cant and the slow dawn of speculation. Advantages like, the Verbena says, and the spark of some acknowledging light sifts up through Pen's serious eyes. Quiet thumb and middle-finger snap, ending in a Yes Like Those finger-gun point. Sepúlveda volunteers. Pen leans forward. Rests her elbow on her knee, chin on her thumb, forefinger curled around her mouth. Serafíne. Attentiveness. Dan. The bells of Ys are drowned and silver; they only peal-out sorrow, fog-drenched and soon-lost; shadow-dappled, salt-wave sea.

During all the listening, she takes the top off her coffee spares a quick glance into cup damn it empty puts cup back down on the table. Pulls a moleskine out of her coat pocket or a pencil out of her bag and makes a few illegible notes.

"Let's see. I have Andrés and Kiara - " Questioning flick of a glance. (?) " - interested in the physical role of going in to rescue Alex. I have Grace manipulating lines of communication we might now expect the Union to now have access to or be aware of to spread misinformation and miscommunication. Grace: might you also use your contacts to attempt to get information on Technocratic protocol in this city or elsewhere? Risky, but an appropriate use of 'hacking,' I think. And that goes for anyone who might have contacts with knowledge of the Union's ways. If we do send Andrés and Kiara or whomever in to the lab, we will want to arm them with the very best ability to spin bullshit into gleaming sterile badges of Technocratic union. That is, belonging. We also want the least danger possible, yes?"

"I believe with what we have discussed what IS most clear is that we should make a concerted push to see about ... well, if we have ourselves, or if we have more than ourselves. To that effect we have Kalen and a partner, or even better, two partners! exploring one avenue of information. Sera, and a partner or two, exploring another. Even if no one else has the power to pull off such a boomerang pow-chicka-plao Finding, surely there may be some who are not quite as advanced but are able to Work with you and lend their support to the ritual?"

"Huge help in case of daring rescue, huge help in case of daring rescue that involves lying and getting them to 'give' us your Alex. I'll be honest here: I don't believe we can convince the Union in Denver to just release Alex back to his old life sorry old boy about that misunderstanding dust-off dust-off. I'd like to be flexible here: if it looks like we can arrange something to that effect, great! But there are no 'innocent fucking apprentices' to the Union. There are potential recruits, there are Sleepers, and then there are those who are dangerous. I believe we are to them what Nepha - no. What Marauders are to us. Or rampaging Spirits. Too dangerous… a problem to be solved."

Her spine straightens a little: oh! Struck by remembrance! Right!

"Speaking of problems to be solved and spirits, earlier you - " (Kiara) " - mentioned talking to spirits and potentially going over to the Other Side in order to get perspective on the area in question. I don't know if I'd personally recommend going across just in case one got stuck in -- I don't know: I don't know what kind of anti-spirit Magick wards the Conventionalists might have put up. But I like the idea of knowing what they know or having some sort of spirit ally on tap to distract the Union with at a key moment or, or, well in reserve for later if needed.

"Nicholas here is adroit when it comes to dealings with spirits. Perhaps you two can come up with something together?"

"As for Leah, I like where the discussion is going. I have let's see hmm Andrés, Kiara, and Kalen? on 'fake a body' duty. Leah and her cabal should probably be told about that plan and they can probably, should - certainly, help with the faking of some outrageous magickal - " Pen wiggles her fingers " - Leah catastrophic burn-out elsewhere."

Her forehead crinkles: concerned and her mouth slants to the side. Fingers go tap-tap on her ankle.

"What are we neglecting to think of...?"

Glance around.

Nicholas

Kiara's head-cant and the slow dawn of speculation. Advantages like, the Verbena says, and the spark of some acknowledging light sifts up through Pen's serious eyes. Quiet thumb and middle-finger snap, ending in a Yes Like Those finger-gun point. Sepúlveda volunteers. Pen leans forward. Rests her elbow on her knee, chin on her thumb, forefinger curled around her mouth. Serafíne. Attentiveness. Dan. The bells of Ys are drowned and silver; they only peal-out sorrow, fog-drenched and soon-lost; shadow-dappled, salt-wave sea.

During all the listening, she takes the top off her coffee spares a quick glance into cup damn it empty puts cup back down on the table. Pulls a moleskine out of her coat pocket or a pencil out of her bag and makes a few illegible notes.

"Let's see. I have Andrés and Kiara - " Questioning flick of a glance. (?) " - interested in the physical role of going in to rescue Alex. I have Grace manipulating lines of communication we might now expect the Union to now have access to or be aware of to spread misinformation and miscommunication. Grace: might you also use your contacts to attempt to get information on Technocratic protocol in this city or elsewhere? Risky, but an appropriate use of 'hacking,' I think. And that goes for anyone who might have contacts with knowledge of the Union's ways. If we do send Andrés and Kiara or whomever in to the lab, we will want to arm them with the very best ability to spin bullshit into gleaming sterile badges of Technocratic union. That is, belonging. We also want the least danger possible, yes?"

"I believe with what we have discussed what IS most clear is that we should make a concerted push to see about ... well, if we have ourselves, or if we have more than ourselves. To that effect we have Kalen and a partner, or even better, two partners! exploring one avenue of information. Sera, and a partner or two, exploring another. Even if no one else has the power to pull off such a boomerang pow-chicka-plao Finding, surely there may be some who are not quite as advanced but are able to Work with you and lend their support to the ritual?"

"Huge help in case of daring rescue, huge help in case of daring rescue that involves lying and getting them to 'give' us your Alex. I'll be honest here: I don't believe we can convince the Union in Denver to just release Alex back to his old life sorry old boy about that misunderstanding dust-off dust-off. I'd like to be flexible here: if it looks like we can arrange something to that effect, great! But there are no 'innocent fucking apprentices' to the Union. There are potential recruits, there are Sleepers, and then there are those who are dangerous. I believe we are to them what Nepha - no. What Marauders are to us. Or rampaging Spirits. Too dangerous… a problem to be solved."

Her spine straightens a little: oh! Struck by remembrance! Right!

"Speaking of problems to be solved and spirits, earlier you - " (Kiara) " - mentioned talking to spirits and potentially going over to the Other Side in order to get perspective on the area in question. I don't know if I'd personally recommend going across just in case one got stuck in -- I don't know: I don't know what kind of anti-spirit Magick wards the Conventionalists might have put up. But I like the idea of knowing what they know or having some sort of spirit ally on tap to distract the Union with at a key moment or, or, well in reserve for later if needed.

"Nicholas here is adroit when it comes to dealings with spirits. Perhaps you two can come up with something together?"

"As for Leah, I like where the discussion is going. I have let's see hmm Andrés, Kiara, and Kalen? on 'fake a body' duty. Leah and her cabal should probably be told about that plan and they can probably, should - certainly, help with the faking of some outrageous magickal - " Pen wiggles her fingers " - Leah catastrophic burn-out elsewhere."

Her forehead crinkles: concerned and her mouth slants to the side. Fingers go tap-tap on her ankle.

"What are we neglecting to think of...?"

Glance around.