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.

Mad Blind Faith

Ms. Gray

It has been two or three days since Alexander received a visit from Keller. Meals come and meals go. A guard is posted outside his door, day and night. For the last several days, he has been provided with a copy of the daily Denver newspaper with his morning meal. At lunch: a copy of Time or The New Republic. At dinner: Science or Nature or National Geographic. It is as if someone were preparing him to be reintroduced to the world.

And some of the unbelievable news therein. To-wit: Donald Trump's status as the front runner in the Republican primary election.

The date on this morning's newspaper is Sunday, March 13. They have left everything in. The comics, the sports page. The endless array of glossy ads.

Sometime during the no-time that comes between one meal and another there is a hum, and a voice that is either in his head or in the room, which seems to be female, says -

"I have some good news for you, which requires some planning and which I would like to share confidentially and in person. To do so, I must have your word as an officer that you will not attack me should I join you."

Alexander

The time between trips to the white room to meet with Keller had seemed oddly separated, but Alexander just assumed that it was some way that his captors were trying to mess with him. The papers and magazines go mostly ignored, except the first. That one is skimmed over for a date: it’s a date which makes him toss the paper back to the floor, discarded, and makes him sink down onto the floor.

“Shit.”

Assuming that wasn’t some other attempt to mess with his head. (Assuming they were trying to mess with his head: the jury really was still out on that one, from Alexander’s point of view. Would he really know if he was the same man he arrived as?) Assuming that were true, he’d been here that long?

So Alexander doesn’t pay much notice to the delivered extras that came with his meals. They stay ignored; much like the food was beyond the bits and pieces that he pecked at to stave off hunger pains. No, he spends more time inside his head these past days than outside of it. He may have no power over this world now, but his dreams and meditations are another matter.

He’s lying on his bed, eyes closed and mind drifting, when the hum and the voice arrives. It asks for his word. His eyes open looking at the blank ceiling. “Good news? You’re done with me and releasing me back into the world, a better man? Oh please, I think we both know how much bull that is.” There had been time when he had been a good little prisoner, following the rules and trying to toe the line. More recently, especially since he went unexpectedly Seeking, he’s less restrained. He refuses to walk to the sessions with Keller. He has periods where he tried to punch and kick the walls, looking for some way to break free. Dry scabs still cling to his knuckles from the last one. He hasn’t made an active attempt to attack the guards again. Not yet, at least.

“Just do whatever you’re going to do and let’s get this over with.” Alexander’s eyes close again. He has very little expectation that the bluff will hold for much longer, or that Keller will make good on his promise to try to get Alex out. Whatever happens, happens.

Ms. Gray

It is not Keller who joins him. There are fewer trips out of the cell. Fewer guards. Fewer strange faces. A low hum and the doors whoosh open and a slender blond woman joins him. There is a quiet crisp-ness to her demeanor, her features are equal parts plain and attractive, distinctly unmemorable. The door closes behind her.

She has a small file folder in her right hand.

"I'm happy to tell you that arrangements are being made for your release. The Agent who arrested you has been transferred. Records are being wiped. You should be able to resume your previous post in the police department. The record will show that you were briefly hospitalized after being injured by a suspect, and required an extended period of rehabilitation up to your release. It will take several more days to get all the pieces in place, but an end is in view."

Alexander

This woman arrives, the sound of her shoes echoing slightly on the metal walls. Her entry doesn’t get much of a reaction from Alexander. Her little speech, however, does get him to open his eyes and look up at her. Maybe she keeps her distance, news of his first waking minutes here travelling. He sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so that he can sit up there, feet planted on the floor.

And all Alexander does is look at the woman, studying her, for some time. He’s silent. Watchful. There’s no threat in the silence, but maybe it’s something uncomfortable for her. It takes some time for the conflicting thoughts running through his mind to settle a little.

They settle on a question: “Why?”

Ms. Gray

"I'm not sure that you'll believe me, but the why is really quite simple. For me: I would rather spend my time working to put an end to the Zika virus and improve the lot of those families afflicted it than fighting a war with a handful of Ptolomeic Flat-Earthers over whether the earth is the center of the universe. Those are my reasons.

"And I am not the only one in my organization who feels that way."

Alexander

I’m not sure that you’ll believe me...

“I don’t know if I do, but then I don’t know if it really makes any difference. Either I’m free, dead, or as good as dead. But it’s clear that you and yours are the ones with all the control here.” He pats his knee, to emphasise the point. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t feel much sympathy for your situation.”

“So what’s suddenly changed? Doesn’t the world still need protecting from reality deviants like me?”

Ms. Gray

She is very quiet and very self-contained and she does not allow herself to be goaded. Instead, she stands there slightly apart from him, holding that file against her body. There are no obvious weapons on her person.

"The world does require protection from those who would - under the aegis of faith or voudoun or magick or allegiance to an alien named Xenu - exploit others' weakness and superstition for their own benefit. Ask the Untouchables of India whether they prefer a world of reason or a world of mad blind faith, they are condemned to the dungheap based on an accident of birth.

"With that said: I don't believe that it requires protection from you and I have worked very hard, with Agent Keller's supervision, to effect your release and to ensure that you are released in a manner that is least disruptive to your life. Had I been the agent you encountered, I would not have taken you in to custody. I hope that you will understand that he did so because he believed that you had information about a young woman who caused the deaths of twelve people."

A quick, crisp half-smile. "Please understand that I tell you this not with the hope or expectation of convincing you of the righteous of the Order of Reason, but because I would like you to understand the context of our meeting. And your release.

"Which brings me to the next subject. We have made contact with some of your kind. One or more of them, I expect, will come to retrieve you - under cover - within the week."

Alexander

Alexander stands and takes a few steps – truthfully that’s all that he can take before facing the wall – and there’s a reaction that this woman may not be expecting. A shuddering of his shoulders that come along with a brief, joyless laugh. He turns to face her, but keeps his distance.

“I always thought it would be someone from the Order I said this to first, but fuck you.” There might be more that he wants to say, but he holds it back and turns to face the wall again. His hands balls into fists and relax again, while the movement of his shoulders show an increased depth to his breathing; whatever he’s holding back is enough to fan his anger. But this woman is apparently offering a way out. Although a way out that doesn’t make an awful lot of sense.

He speaks, but his voice is controlled. “If I’m so insignificant that you can release me, why can’t I just walk out of here? Why do they need to retrieve me? What aren’t you telling me?”

Ms. Gray

Ms. Gray whethers Alexander's verbal assault with an admirable degree of equanimity. There is, however, a certain spasm of something that curves her mouth and knits - so briefly - her pale brows. Some internal shadow darkens her eyes: a moment's deep consideration before she expels a slow breath.

" I never said that you are insignificant. I said that I believe the world requires protection from a whole variety of charlatans who use superstition to wield power over others to their detriment. You do not appear to be one of those charlatans.

"Therefore, I am putting both my life and my freedom on the line to get you the fuck out of here. I am not the only one who is risking my own life, limb, and autonomy in order to give you back yours. You cannot walk out of here. We have to erase the records of your arrest or render them so highly classified that no one in Denver will ever know who or what was held in this room for the past several weeks. The officer arrested you has been transferred to another facility more than 6,000 miles. Most of the guards assigned to you have been transferred, or will be transferred, too. That is why you cannot walk out. As far as most of my associates will ever know: a subject was arrested and held here, and transferred to a more secure facility with all appropriate precautions in place.

"Do you understand now?"

Alexander

She can’t see his face, but she can see that his hands relax once more and don’t ball up again. Instead, Alexander plants them, palm flat, against the cold metal walls. A strange feeling, that. Cold in a way that normal metal isn’t. His breathing relaxes, too.

Quiet, this. “Hardly the release you were happy to announce then, is it. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be sorry if this does turn out to be the last few days I see the inside of this metal box.” One way or another. Alexander still isn’t entirely convinced that this isn’t some game; some scheme to get him back into the Awakened community in the city as some kind of unknowing infiltrator. Given this conversation, could there be any question as to whether the conditioning had taken? Or maybe it had..?

“What happens after? You say I can return to my life, but can you really say that I won’t always have to look over my shoulder for you guys? Or your more... aggressive colleagues. Someone manages to find the files, or works out that I never arrived at whatever hole I’m supposed to be shipped out to, or you and Keller get caught and someone goes fishing in your heads.” Alexander turns at this, but there’s still no approach. Instead he rests back, back against the wall, with his arms crossed in front of him. “Or another agent just happens to pass through the department and works out what I am? Assuming that’s even was what happened with Weston. That puts you at just as much risk, if not more.” It hadn’t, after all, been any great challenge for Weston to get him here in the first place.

“What happens then?”

Ms. Gray

"All of those things are certainly possible. And I cannot tell you what will happen at the end of any of those eventualities. If you would prefer to stay here and avoid those risks, I will see about calling off the operation.

"For whatever it is worth, I am not without allies, and we have enough access right now that the records of your arrest should be destroyed. You will have to live with the risk that you will encounter another Agent in the course of your work. Most of us do not arrest Disparates and Throwbacks on sight, however, not without clear provocation or a reasonable belief that the subject repesents a danger to unsuspecting civilians.

"Still, that risk will always be there."

Alexander

There’s a sigh as Alexander knocks his head back against the wall several times. They’re gentle, a dull thud against the metal, until the last one: a little harder, a little louder. “Given the option of those risks or the certainty of worse if my presence gets noticed here again, I’m hardly going to stay. Whatever happens, happens.” Fatalistic? Maybe. Fated? Never.

“Would you believe me if I said that of the Awakened that I have met who live here, all of them have been trying to remove dangers to the Sleepers? Tradition, Orphan, whoever. This is our home. Nobody wants to get back into any kind of conflict with you.” Some of the others come to mind, making him quietly add: “At least, I hope that’s still the case.” Whether the disappearance of a single, Orphan apprentice would be any great concern to those of the Order who hoped to stir up a battleground in the city was something that he would, hopefully, wait to see. “Just so the lines are clear, do the Traditions get that same courtesy?”

“And what happens now? I assume you need something from me to make this work.”

Ms. Gray

Her pale brows flick upward as he assures her that all of the 'Awakened' work hard to remove dangers to 'Sleepers.' Something about her expression is plain-as-day: she does not like either term. She does not favor the implications. No, more than that: she rejects them on a real and fundamental level. And the somewhat patronizing egalitarianism inherent in that rejection is clearly evident on her face.

But: she is not going to tell him why she believes he is wrong. That, too: hopeless. "I prefer that we simply stay out of each other's way, and avoid reigniting some ruinous war. As for what happens next: I do not require anything from you. Simply your awareness and your consent. Once the arrangements are finalized and we know that your team and on site, we will give you a preparation that will take you into a deep hibernation and conceal your life signs so that you will appear to be dead to both physical and superficial magickal examination. The cocktail will last for several hours. That will be enough time for your associates to remove you from the facility and for us to move the pieces around and destroy the electronic trail.

"Until then, I suggest that you read the periodicals we have supplied you with: enough, at least, so that you will be as conversant with recent events as your co-workers when you return to work."

Alexander

In a different situation, there might have been some pleasure in getting such a reaction from someone so intensely arrogant. (Hell, Alyssa would probably be proud.) But all that exchange does is reinforce the basic differences between them: differences that may well have come from as early as her Awakening, or whatever she chose to call it, and from the way they had each been introduced into this life. Neither was at fault in that. They were simply different.

There is hesitation when she talks about this preparation, though. He didn’t trust this woman, any more than he’d trusted Keller, and he was still sceptical about the whole situation. The distaste is equally obvious on Alexander’s face. “Is that really necessary? I mean, wouldn’t it be quicker and easier to get me out of here if I didn’t have to be dragged or carried?” Unspoken: I’ve hardly touched the food and drink you’ve given me, and now you want me to neck something unquestioned?

Ms. Gray

"It is absolutely necessary. A living person will trigger every security check and be seen by every camera in the facility. A corpse, in a body bag - "

She is not reading his mind. She does not follow the natural progression of his thoughts to the unspoken question.

Alexander

“And two strangers roaming around won’t be noticed? Won’t be picked up by every camera they walk past?” Given the degree of organisation that she’s talking about, it’s a question is likely to have already been asked and answered. But, still, there might be some way to manoeuvre out of having to take Alice’s Drink Me potion.

Ms. Gray

"Not if they wear an appropriate skin. Beyond that, the less you know about the arrangements, the safer this project will be."

She does not know that he is trying to avoid Alice's potion; and in any case: she intends to use gas. As she said: she does not need anything from him to put the plan into place.

"If there is nothing else, I will bid you goodnight."

Alexander

Alexander’s eyes close again as he rests his head back, gently this time, against the wall. He’s motionless until there’s a small, sharp nod. Acceptance. Consent. He really doesn’t like this plan, but it’s really the only possibility he has for getting away from here. There are no other options. So he agrees, still expecting to see a little glass vial with a hand-written note roll through the door at some point in the future.

He stays like that as she turns to leave, but tries to catch her before she reaches the door with a, “wait.” He opens his eyes again, studying her as he pushes off from the wall so he’s standing on his own two feet. His arms are crossed across his body, some subconscious barrier between them. “Assuming you’re telling the truth about all of this, thank you.”

Again, something unspoken: If you’re not, I will find you in my next life... The words may be unspoken, but there’s a fire in his eyes as the thought passes through his mind.

Ms. Gray

She does turn, briefly, her chin lilted upward, her pale eyes fixed and intense.

"I am sorry for what you've been through, officer."

"Goodnight."

And then she turns to go; and he is alone, once more.

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.

ginger

ginger

Okay, so: rules!

- any questions ask me, no worries. if something I say is confusing you can always ask to roll other stats to get a better understanding of what's happening.

- please touch base w/me re: difficulties before rolling magickal / computer feats especially since we are dealing with the Techs.

- there is obviously some danger here since we are dealing with the techs.

- if I head anyplace uncomfortable for you please let me know.

- I have about three hours today!

- I will do a quick intro post.

ginger

So.

A certain chilly morning, a certain day, a certain hour. Certain news unwelcome enough that it leaves a sour-slick at the back of the throat. Here: a disparate band of disparate Traditions of differing temperments with differing levels of background and information and drive and desire. Still, for all of that, they take their leave of the chantry that morning with the roughest outline of a plan and (for some) a newfound paranoia, or (for others) a new focus for a longstanding enmity.

Grace has her own charge: more solitary than most. Perhaps the only one of those present who could really fit within her paradigm, even tangentially, is the Dr. Sepulveda, and hell, doesn't he seem a little bit mad?

Grace

Grace doesn't waste much time getting back to the Office and starting on her work. Preparations must be made. Plants must be watered, and some programs have to be written. She tries to get in contact with Atreyu, to no avail, and that is a bit concerning, but no matter. She can get her information. And she will. A nap, then. Naps are important.

Rousing herself from sleep, curled up on her couch in her office, she heads straight to the desk, currently occupied by her laptop and a sprawling, many-armed English ivy plant, whose scaffolding enclosure reads "Chloe III". The scaffolding has three small, articulated robot arms attached, with doodads at the ends. She flicks a switch. Those doodads send thin strands of green light straight to Chloe's leaves, powerful enough that the laser beams can be seen in the air.

Next, she drains the dregs of old coffee from a handy cup, because why waste caffeine?

She's not really used this planty apparatus for its intended purpose yet, and that puts a bit of a thrill through her, as she opens up her laptop and starts it, waiting for the few seconds it takes to rouse it from sleep, and then instructing it to go directly to her Special Programs.

A black screen. A little blinking cursor. And then, a chaos of activity, as she attempts to hack into the plant's photosynthesis. The lasers, with their specifically attuned light frequencies help. Because, you see, all the green things that grow on the earth owe their energy production to a bit of quantum calculation. Photons once captured must be shepherded to the right cells for processing, and they calculate the right path to take by taking all of them. To hijack that process, make it work for her -- that is Grace's goal.

[Life 2, Entropy 3, Forces 2 and Corr 3 -- Plant-Based Quantum Computing. Diff 6 - 1 (personalized instrument) - 1 (taking time)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 5, 8) ( success x 3 )

Grace

[Extend!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace

[Extend again!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Grace

[again!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

ginger

Must give her a sense of genuine satisfaction: nay, actual thrill when she focus, when she digs, when she reaches into the fundamentals of Chloe's cells and hijacks those native processes in which she believes, entirely, whole-heartedly, and finds them humming brightly beneath her own fingers. This strange, electric sense of a sort of sub-atomic chaos, the wild rattle of greenery, briliance sorted beneath her hands.

Now, the rest of the work begins.

Grace

First off, Ginger has to be 'secured'. For a given value of 'secure'. She's got to hack a small company in Denver who runs 1-800 lines of a seedy nature, which shouldn't be too hard. There's backdoors left behind after the first attempt, and having the ability to break any non-quantum encryption scheme known to man, thanks to Chloe, that will help too.

The universe-code runs in the background, while she brings up a special suite of tools, with a splash screen of a cartoon penguin holding a pirate flag. It slices through 1-800-FAT-GRLS like butter.

Once inside, she looks for traces left behind. Looks to see if Alex's number has called in lately, checks the archives to see if anyone's viewed the older files -- all hints that the Techs might be watching.

ginger

????

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )

ginger

???+

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 2, 4) ( success x 1 )

ginger

???+

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 9) ( success x 2 )

ginger

???+

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace

[Hacking a thing: Diff 9 - 3 (Chloe)]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace

[Oop, actually 4 successes, I forgot to double tens]

ginger

o_O

Dice: 8 d10 TN4 (3, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )

Grace

[Again with the rolls!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]

ginger

There. Fucking there.

Subtle as fuck. First she does a cursory review and she can see it all in layers: Sera's post and the various views without response. Quiet before, right? Been awhile since there was anything of anything urgency shared between them and for that reason access is sometime sporadic until something: some instinct, some quiet urgency, some hint of foresight -

Little after, though it has only been a day. Nothing since the meeting at the chantry.

Back, though: one step. One quiet step. Another, another. Here, the last direct access to Ginger by Alexander weeks and weeks ago and initially even this appears benign to Grace. Ironic or maybe a little bit tragic: the day of, the day before. Nothing left behind except these miniscule suggestions of information, like the hint of perfume left in a close space when its wear-er exits. Alone; except, no.

Wait, no.

There is something that stands out; something off, something wrong, the subtlest catch in the weave and she finds herself following - following - chasing these illusory traces of information feels like trying to catch the edge of a breaking wave. But: there, there, there - the subtlest hints of a presence that she discovers to be branching in the logs: forward and backward. A command of time, perhaps: sign-ins from Alexander even during the period of his self-imposed exile from Ginger, and earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier: all from his most current point of access, before it was ever obtained.

Ginger is compromised. Is she?

Grace

Grace looks, and she finds. Alex has been a busy man, accessing Ginger when he didn't have a phone, accessing it before he Awakened even. I mean, it's a neat trick, nice try there. Still.

Gotcha, assholes.

And also, it's kind of sad, confirming this. Ginger is, for all intents and purposes, dead. It's only useful now for passing on information to the enemy, really. And she's going to have to make a lot of phone calls after this, to keep people from using it. The spare thought of "I could just let people know on Ginger" comes and goes with a sigh.

Nope, not anymore.

Now, the trick for her is obfuscation. She's got a story in mind, a program to make it look like people are discussing this new story. It had to be fake, believable, and rather a minor threat -- one the Techs might not want to look at too hard. So, for the next few weeks, there will be chatter about the discovery of a body with no blood and fang-marks. There will be talks about how to cover it up. There will be newbie Mages doing a little freaking out about vampires and their existence. Grace saying she'll check in with some contacts. I mean, that sort of thing should happen all the time, right?

Just another day in Denver. Nobody's freaking out about Alex. Who would care about an Orphan Apprentice anyway?

And in time, when it's useful to do so, this same program can be used to come up with another story to feed the Techs...

Grace

[Computers/Programming -- Making a program up! Need 10 successes, diff 8 - 3 (Chloe)]

Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]

Grace

[Again!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]

Grace

[Corr 2, Entropy 3, Mind 2 -- Imbue with Emotional Depth -- We're trying to fake some personalities here, so that the messages seem real, and can't be easily analyzed as having originated from the same person. Diff 6 - 1 (taking time) -1 (personalized instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Grace

[Er, should have been diff 4, but it comes out the same...]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Grace

[And I, in my infinite rolling wisdom totally didn't mean to roll that, but okay -- I don't mind.]

Grace

[Extending again, spending quint to reduce diff to 4]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )

Grace

[Again!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )

Grace

[Last bit of quint!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 4, 7) ( success x 2 )

ginger

?

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )

ginger

?+

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

ginger

?+

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

ginger

???

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]

Grace

[Perception + Alertness, Diff = 9]

Dice: 5 d10 TN9 (4, 5, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )

Grace

[Intelligence + Computers, Diff 8 - 1 (Ability aptitude, Computers)]

Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

ginger

Grace starts this work in early afternoon, late evening. Hard to tell what the light is doing without from inside the depths of the office, and certainly somewhere in the middle of all of this frenzied work she begins to lose: first nanoseconds, then seconds, minutes, not quite hours but -

- hell.

Seventeen hours, thirty-eight minutes, twenty-three seconds later the masterpiece is finished.
The Work and the work and the richochet between them; this complex, subtle program that in the end feels rather like a living, breathing incarnation of one of her own short stories given a sort of machine-life, a complex iteration of presence and absence, ebb and flow. Her bladder is aching and her throat is raw and she has reached that point of exhaustion where she is so hungry and thirsty and wired and tired that it is difficult to decide which one to tackle first and much, much easier to linger in virtual space watching and speculating about the threads of her complex new program. Convincing enough - imbued with her own magick - that she can well believe in it herself.

--

And just as she is leaving, exiting, pulling herself back out of that server, perhaps never to return. She notices: not unlike a certain girl named by a certain author: Alice -

- a strange little door she had not seen before. And has the sense: nay, the certainty, that behind it is a language she does not yet know.

Grace

A strange little backdoor. A rootkit of surprising stealthiness, masquerading as a normal part of the server, and yet -- Grace knows servers. There's something not quite right about this.

It's enough to get her to forget her stomach and bladder and dire need for more caffeine.

What the hell is this? She's going to prod it, because why not? Server's compromised anyway and she knows it. Why not find out exactly what they did? Maybe it'll be useful. Maybe she can use this little rootkit to find out how to combat their techniques, or even...

Follow the door to where it leads.

Grace

[Stamina! Can she make it?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Grace

And then, she has to sneeze. And she's pretty sure if she sneezes right now, the result would not be pleasant. She's already trying hard not to unleash her bladder all over her chair.

Okay. Breathe. Pinch the nose. Make it go away.

It's a good thing Kalen built her this office as a hermitage of sorts, with a mini bathroom and fridge and sleeping couch, no? Prescient that. Like he just knew that she would want to use it like that.

She gets up from her chair stiffly, because sitting in one spot for so long will do that to you. Wanders off to the bathroom to relieve herself and then, it's only a few efficient steps to the fridge for leftovers (miso udon) to shove in the microwave. So convenient! After that, it's not so easy to forego sleep either. It's a challenge to her tenacious nature, as she glances over at her bizarre rig. Hmm.

Mike made himself stay awake while hunting The Artist. He had a damn good reason, too. She doesn't really have such a reason, other than time. But then, they might discover her actions during the time needed for a nap...

She slinks over to the computer again, occasionally dipping back into the udon, prepping a program to mimic sleep -- just until she has done what she needs to do.

[Life 2, Mind 2 -- Sleep is For The Weak -- Diff 5 - 1 (taking time), -1 (personalized focus)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 7) ( success x 2 )

Grace

[Hacking a back door! Diff 10 - 3 (Chloe)]

Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )

Grace

[Moar Hacking!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace

[Forgot to double tens... Should be 4 successes.]

Grace

[And, one more time!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

hallux

??

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 3 )

hallux

??+

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

hallux

??+++

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 2) ( botch x 2 )

hallux

! .

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

hallux

An hour passes. Two. The defenses here are rigid, sleek, impossible (not for her, never for her)Three hours and there is something that feels ridiculously fractal and elegant and elegaic about the code through which she is spinning, a thousand neat little fractals, too many dead ends to count, the strange symmetry that would be near-impossible to shatter were she not performing her calculations on some subatomic level, piggybacking her own work on that of Chloe's photosynthesis.

Four hours and -

- something - breaks/open. She can breathe in the connection humming through the otherside. No triggers yet that she sees except something in the access point itself seems to be starting to unravel. Some heretofore unseen programming now executing, an essential, entropic erosion of the rootkit itself, coming from within.

She's inside though - right? She's inside.

But the connection is already starting to collapse and she doesn't have much time...

Grace

[Int + Research, diff 7!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )

Grace

[Wits + Enigmas, diff 6! Spending WP.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Grace

The first thing she does (after finding out that what connection exists here is about to be shut down (of course, they would have automated protocols...) is look for Alex.

Nobody's been able to beat back their wards enough to tell what happened to him. She wants to know. Wants to be able to tell anyone looking to storm the castle what his condition might be. Hell, they may have moved him somewhere else. He may be dead now. It's all possible, right?

So, she starts searching. Quickly quickly through their fractal-laden servers she trawls. Have to be fast now -- she goes for the most likely candidates first. They aren't going to store this kind of thing on the same hard drives they store the office party pictures, after all...

hallux

Grace finds a fragment of a file and an origination date and there are not NAMES as such but she can isolate his file based on the date (Sera says) he disappeared.

There: Subject 88123-123.

Standard Protocols. Primium-lined walls, bed, table, cup, sink. 2000 Cal a day diet. Library including an array of standard scientific works, from Darwin to Pasteur to Curie to Hawking and everything in between. Notations beside any that Subject 88123-123 has shown interest in. Once a day he is removed from the cell for counseling. There are records documenting one surgery: a knee reconstruction. Dry medical language describes the degree of damage done to the knee, and the Subect's recovery.

He is being kept in Ward 2, Room 7. There is, however, no map.

Grace

[Wits + Research, Diff 7!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

hallux

Interesting. While searching through the protocols regarding Subject 88123-123 Grace finds several hidden notes she deciphers as dates and times for what appear to be two separate scheduled emergency drills. Dayshift and nightshift. This is clearly interesting: she follows the thread and discovers that both day and nightshift will be subject to separate emergency preparedness drills in the next [xx] days.

hallux

??

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

hallux

??+

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace

There is precious little time. Still, when she finds Subject 88123-123, she sighs out a breath she didn't know she was holding, and reaches out to touch the pixels that prove his existence.

The library concerns her, as does the counseling. The knee reconstruction, well... Bodies heal easier than minds, sometimes. It sounds to her like they are trying to convert him, which... Well, it's Alex. Nobody's been able to convert him, even the ones not currently treating him like a lab rat.

Searching further results in hidden notes, and that is a thing to pass on to the castle-stormers, yes? A weak spot.

It's then that the first hint that someone's found her trickles into her consciousness. The connection she has is steadily disintegrating (and damn, that's a nice trick, will have to utilize it for Ginger 2.0) so there isn't much time anyway. Certainly not enough to fight this intrusion and also find more.

She pulls the wifi card out of her laptop with a swift yank, and then goes to fight them back. Nope, can't piggyback on that connection anymore, jackass.

[Arete, Diff 8! Countermagicking! Spending WPs.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Grace

[Again!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 6) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

hallux

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 4, 7) ( success x 2 )

Grace

[One more time!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]