Chapter 1 - The Crash

As Statton hands Sonia her beer and takes a sip from his, he grimaces, Astyocan spice beer isn't really his thing, a little too strong, he had learned the hard way... a nice Halianti ale on the other hand...

He whispers to Sonia, trying to look as casual as possible, "Did you recognize that woman's voice earlier?"

Elan is a bit uncertain about Graham's plan - direct confrontation? - but Graham is at least from this world, which might buy him a bit of credibility.

Elan ducks into one of the meeting rooms with Sonia. The sight of the spice beer makes him a bit queasy. He knows that it will be a bit suspicious if someone finds him with an open spice beer that is still full, but it will also be suspicious if Elan is retching all over the place. He'd like to pour a bit of it out but, alas, there are no potted plants - real or fake - that need watering with spice beer.

Inside the meeting room, he slips over to the window and looks out, wondering if it might be a possible exit in duress. This doesn't seem to have risen to the level of a physical confrontation - Taelor  apparently walked out on her own, without being escorted or chased - so perhaps this will stay at the verbal level.

Even so, once he's done at the window he listens at the closed door for Diogenes and the woman to race by and/or interact with Graham, which will be his cue to slip out behind them and exit stage left.

Elan, Statton and Sonia slip into one of the dark meeting rooms and close the door behind them. Sonia crouches next to the door, clearly out of her element and visibly stressed.
Elan walks over to the window and looks outside. It is a window towards the backyard of the center, a bleak concrete area with two dumpsters and a parked vehicle. The drop is about 5m down.

Graham strolls down the hallway, pretending to sip his beer and to appear nonchalant. It's only a few moments until he hears someone coming upstairs and two people discussing heatedly. Almost immediately he is seen and Diogenes familiar voice sounds "What are you doing here, G... Gr... Gregory? You are not on the committee! Explain yourself." . Not giving Graham a chance to speak a word he continues, "You know what, I have no time for this, get out and do whatever it is that you do." . Dismissively waving his hand in Graham's direction, he and Tamara continue to the closest meeting room, but before closing the door, Diogenes stops and waits to see Graham leave.

Graham turns around, and his familiar smile flashes across his face. His free hand leaves his pocket to tug at the end of his mustache, then he extends it to shake Diogenes' hand.
"Ohh, Hey, it's good to see you again! It's Graham, by the way, but you get full points for trying. Were you expecting somebody else? There were a couple of workers up here (well, I guess they were workers). They were headed down that way in something of a rush. I apologize, didn't mean to get in the way. I'll finish my beer and make my way out."
He looks at Diogenes' companion, again with the smile, and says "Is this where he takes you for a first date? The community center? I think this is the day of the week when they give away free bowls of soup..." He grins broadly, and winks at Diogenes. "Have a pleasant evening, you two, and I guess we'll see each other tomorrow, eh?"
He saunters towards the stairs, 'inadvertently' putting himself between Diogenes and the door to the meeting room.

Elan listens at the door. This is all fairly standard stuff, and the consequences are fairly low, so his heart rate and breathing are normal. He expects to hear Diogenes and the woman go skittering by on their way to the gallery. But, no, there's an exchange with Graham, then Diogenes and the woman go into a different meeting room.

Elan signals Statton to go. He presses his hands down in a 'gentle' motion to indicate that they should walk softly.

As he passes by the meeting room door, Elan slows down to see if he can hear Diogenes and the other woman talking. If he can clearly hear voices, he will pause for a bit to see if he can get a sense of their conversation. If it is too muffled to hear clearly, he will proceed toward the stairs leading down.

Statton and Sonia follow Elan out of the room. Statton walking as quietly as he can. He sees Elan stop to listen at the door, but he continues to the top of the stairs, quietly putting a foot on the next step down and motioning Sonia to follow.

The group shuffles carefully out of the room and down the hallway. Elan motions the others to slowly proceed and elegantly, almost catlike slides over to the door from which sounds of conversation are audible. Unfortunately the volume waxes and wanes, so he cannot hear a coherent conversation. "... doesn't matter... proceed tonight..."
"... risky... of them... postpone...
"... know... to do... take... and Mike... Just make it happen!"
Suddenly Elan can here shuffling of chairs inside. He quickly crawls over to the stairs and bent over rushes down two landings, then stands up and proceeds nonchalantly, as if he is coming downstairs from his chores on the gallery. Upstairs he can hear steps coming down the stairs.
He motions to the others to hurry up and hastens his step as well, rushing for the door. His neck tingles, expecting someone to call him back. But he does not dare turning around. Another three steps until the safety of the outside. Two... One... He slips out, right behind the others and turns sharp right to get out of sight.

Graham allows the others to hurry past. His story hinges on not appearing to be part of the group. His ability to act independently tomorrow hinges on not appearing to be part of the group. He saunters, slowly, raising his beer to his lips. He ignores his companions, just slowly makes his way to the back entrance, nodding and smiling to any employees shuffling through the hallway, and dipping his beer bottle in greeting as they pass.
"I have no idea whether this went well or poorly, but Diogenes is agitated, and that's something to celebrate", he thinks to himself.
As he approaches the back entrance, he tucks the bottle under his arm, and gets out his commpad. He taps a quick message to Statton. "Let's not join up again until we're out of view of prying eyes. He doesn't know we're connected, and that's an advantage."
Satisfied, he retrieves the bottle from under his arm, takes one more fake sip, and backs out the door, taking one last glimpse back down the hall before the door swings shut.

"I need dinner," Elan says, the spice beer rumbling in his gut. "Even if it's just a ration bar."

He looks to Sonia and Statton. "It would be best not to meet in public. Sonia, can we use your place? I'll need to scout it out a bit first. If they managed to get in and out without being caught on camera then they knew what they were doing. Either they have a skilled thief" ("too" he thinks to himself) "or they had enough surveillance to know where the soft spots were."

Or a teleporter? he ponders to himself. Psychics are rare enough, even those with half-baked talents like Elan. He wonders if there are any others on this rock.

He looks for something simple to eat along the way, just something to settle his stomach. When he gets to Sonia's place, he cases the perimeter, looking for signs of surveillance or weak spots in the security that might suggest how a (non-teleporting) thief might get in and out.

Elan hurries ahead to get to Sonias before the others. He quickly slips into the convenience store, grabs the first best thing to eat and is on his way.
Arriving at Sonias, his instincts take over. He walks secretively around the property and prods possible points of entry.
But quickly he comes to the inevitable result: too many. Sonias security is more of a personal gadgeteering and installing convenience helpers. A light barrier here, a camera there, but anyone with a bit of experience can slip past it. Dead end, he thinks. Disappointed he sits down on something that looks like a fridge on wheels and eats his snack awaiting the others.

While Elan is initially disappointed not to find a smoking gun, security-wise, finding lots of gaps is actually reassuring in its own way. It means that he probably doesn't have to deal with a teleporter who is going to BAMF into position in the community center with no warning, then BAMF out with no one the wiser, leaving behind the container to do its negative pressure thing on its own. No, in this case loose security might be a better sign than watertight security. Plus it probably means that Sonia's house isn't being actively watched, so he can sit on her wheeled refrigerator with reckless abandon.

He waits for the others while munching on a nutritional bar that blends some sort of processed legume with some sort of multivitamin in a way that is both chalky and unpleasant. "Sawdust?" he wonders aloud, considering the brown bar that crumbles into powder. "How can something so flavorless taste so bad?"

Statton stays mostly silent on the way back to Sonia's place, absentmindedly swapping his mostly-full stolen spice beer from hand to hand. It takes the entire walk for his heart to start beating at a normal rate.

Graham, on exiting the community center, sets down his beer prop and wanders off. He casually looks around, in case there's anything of interest to see, but once he gets out of sight, he makes a beeline for home. He reaches his apartment without incident, and carefully hides the contents of his backpack. He pulls out the commpad, and shoots a quick message to Statton.
"Where exactly are we meeting?"
Thoughts crowd his mind. "This evening's been weird enough, what else am I going to need? A stun baton? A Lazarus patch? The instapanel? A helicopter? No, a helicopter is too much. And I don't have a helicopter."
He throws a few just-in-case items into the backpack. "You never know when something's going to need stunning, patching, or...paneling, I guess." He waits for a response on his commpad, and when it comes, he heads out.

//<drftiz5>: We're meeting at Sonia's place if you don't know where it is...// he continues on, giving directions to Sonia's house.

The slight vibration from the commpad draws Graham's attention.
"There we go. I know where that is."
He steps out the door, turns to lock it, slings the backpack over his shoulder, and he's off like a shot.
When he gets to Sonia's, he knocks on the door, suddenly annoyed that he didn't stop to pick up a pizza.
"Rookie mistake, never show up empty-handed."

Thelonius wrote:

"Hi Taelor from not around here. Do you mean Tamara? Yay high, black pony tail and a bit bitchy?" , the speaker turns to his companions to check the reactions to his joking description. With a satisfied smile over the chuckles of his peers he turns back to Taelor. "Don't worry about about it. We've all been there. She'll come around. Want a beer?" He offers Taelor a bottle.

"Sure, thanks!" Taelor takes the beer. She looks it over, checking to see if it's a twist off. It's not. She notches the beer cap on the edge of the van's bumper and slams down on the ca with her other hand. The cap pops off and Taelor smiles triumphantly. Her celebration is short-lived as the beer starts to foam and overflow. "Shit!" she exclaims, bringing the bottle to her lips before too much of it spills out.

The group of laborers chuckle at her all-too-familiar mishap. Taelor spends a while with them, chatting, trading jokes, and drinking. After a few more beers, when she notices her vision blurring a bit, long after the community center has closed for the night, she pulls out her dataslab. Slowly and clumsily, she types in a message for Satton. //Were teh fuck ar yu guys. i bee wating for houra out her//

Statton signals Taelor to meet at Sonia's place. While they are waiting for her, Sonia prepares some light refreshments from her fridge-on-wheels. Meanwhile, the group has an opportunity to explore some of her inventions. Elan's scientific knowledge is woefully incomplete, but the look on his face when he encounters the coal-powered air freshener must betray some skepticism.

"No, it makes sense!" Sonia explains. "Coal is mostly carbon and carbon is a wonderful filter through adsorption, the adhesion of atoms, ions or molecules from a gas, liquid or dissolved solid to a surface [blah blah blah]..."

Elan politely listens without paying attention while he continues to dilute the spice beer in his stomach with coal-filtered water and coal-fired dough. He's beginning to feel more himself when Taelor finally arrives.

Once everyone is settled - although Taelor sways somewhat - Elan relays what he had overheard from Diogenes and Tamara.

Thelonius wrote:

"... doesn't matter... proceed tonight..."
"... risky... of them... postpone...
"... know... to do... take... and Mike... Just make it happen!"

"It sounds like Diogenes told her to proceed tonight, and a 'Mike' was mentioned." He looks to Sonia and Graham, the on-worlders. "Do either of you know a Mike? I suppose he he could have meant 'microphone', which would make sense in the context of a community meeting, but at the time I understood it to be a name."

He checks the time. "It's about 8pm now. It's dark outside, which is good for dark deeds. I still think my original plan of revisiting the premises tonight has merit, as it would allow us to work undisturbed. If we don't discover the canister then I would also keep watch in staggered shifts. Everyone should be as rested as possible for the morning. What time does the meeting begin?"

The five counter-conspirators sit huddled around the table, deep in various discussions. Sonia is obviously happy to be back at home and out of the unfamiliar 'danger' at the center. She is cheerful, happily discussing her various inventions and ideas (the steam towel let's a heated debate flare up, over whether hot water can dry someone or not. It eventually ends on an agreement to disagree) and once everyone ate a bit the spirits are lifted again.

Eventually Elan focuses the attention back on a plan for the next hours. His question about 'Mike' however just receives shrugs and blank faces.
"What time does the meeting begin?"
"It's at 3pm, but in the mornings the center is used for courses, classes and day care. So it's fairly busy then. "

"Diogenes seemed to have a hard time with my name, but he should know it. He called me Gregory.  Is it possible that Mike isn't a 'Mike' at all?" Another short name, starting with the letter M?"
Graham pauses for a moment.
"I should have called him 'Dickhead' in response. Ah....well, opportunity missed." He smiles, and snaps his fingers in a 'darn the luck' kind of gesture.

The food had helped settle Taelor's stomach and she felt more solid on her feet. Still, she had claimed a seat on the couch.

"Going back tonight sounds like a good idea to me, since we didn't get to check the whole place."

She turns to look at Graham. "If D-man was off about the name, he might have meant Matt. But if Tamara's off 'making it happen', we might want to try and find her, you know, before it happens."

"I would take it to mean that Diogenes is so terribly important that he can't be bothered to remember your name," Elan tells Graham. "That's a common trick that the powerful use to try to dismiss others and put them in their perceived place.

"If the meeting isn't until the afternoon, then we have some time. Finding Tamara would be good, but that could be a needle in a haystack. We shouldn't exhaust ourselves needlessly. We have finite resources in terms of time and manpower, so we'll need to take a targeted approach."

He looks around the group. "I don't think we all need to go back to the community center. In this case one or two people might be more effective by being less conspicuous."

Statton is too nervous. Graham could potentially talk his way out of trouble. I like Taelor, she has some spark. I admire the way she didn't back down from Tamara and wasn't afraid of making a scene.

"I mostly need someone watching my back, maybe ready to cause a distraction if I need a second to slip away.

"So should we split up? Taelor and I can return to the community center later while Graham and Statton work the social side of things, searching for Tamara's whereabouts."

Taelor could feel her mouth twitch into a smile. Confidence and competence had a certain charm. You just had one too many beers. She takes a sip from her glass of water. Focus. You're a badass space adventurer, she reminds herself.

She puts her glass down and nods sagely, considering Elan's suggestion. It made sense, but there was one issue with it. "If Statton or Sonia can lend us a bio-scanner and show us how to use it. Not my area of expertise, but it doesn't look too complicated."

"Tamara has it in for me, so it's a good idea to have someone else looking for her." She turns to look at Graham. "Be careful, she has a fight in her," she pauses and makes a face, her distaste showing, "but she's not unreasonable. I was able to get her to back down this morning."

Graham could probably get through to her, he seemed to have a way with words. She wished Jasper was here to watch his back, though, but the ship was more important. Statton was smart, but he seemed like the kind to run at the first sign of trouble. And Tamara was most definitely trouble.

She looks at him. On the other hand, he had followed them into danger. Maybe there was hope for him yet.

Statton is hunched over his compad, looking up occasionally at the conversation, his face illuminated by its bluish light. His eyes scan whatever he's looking at, then he smiles broadly and turns the face of the compad in Sonia's direction, whispering "Ha, told you the Scavs would make the playoffs!"

At the sound of his name and the word bioscanner he turns in his seat to look at Taelor, oblivious to the fact that she had been looking at him. "Oh. I could show you the basics of bioscanner operation... I-if you'll be careful with it..." he gets out of his seat and sidles up to Taelor "Detecting Gamma and Beta Thanotic radiation with this is simple really. First, this button here allows you to switch between the three Hemograph correlations, now you'll want to be in mode two because... [blah blah blah]..."

After giving the explanation and handing over his bioscanner with a worried look i his eyes, he turns to Sonia "Sonia, you still have the formulas on your compad, right? Could you try to synthesize a few more doses before the town hall meeting tomorrow? Just... be careful, alright. Comm us if anything happens." His face becomes even more worried.

Statton calls out as everyone begins to gather their things. "Hey, w-wait!" He digs around in the antidote case, pulling out 2 injectors and 4 vials of antidote. He pockets two vials and one of the injectors, giving the remaining to Elan "Do you know how to use one of these? ... just in case"

As the group leaves Sonia's house and begins to head their separate ways, Statton turns to Graham. "I think one solid lead that we have is that mike (or was it matt?) fellow that Taelor mentioned earlier... unless you have another idea..." he trails off.

The group heads out once again, leaving behind a busy Sonia that is cleaning up and then synthesising antidote.
It is a fresh clear night, silence covers the city, despite the early hour. Roughly 9:30, but still hardly anybody about. The group splits to head their respective ways, leading Taelor and Elan back to the center.
The way is already familiar and the walk flies by in eager expectation of the pending task.
The center lies dark and silent, like an enormous dead animal, gone are the busy workers and with them all live.
Street lanterns cover the street in front of the center with dim unnatural orange light. A small animal crosses the street and disappears silently in the dark.
Elan and Taelor approach the center from the familiar back entrance. It's closed, as are the windows and other doors on the ground floor.

Elan and Taelor debate sports while they walk. They're both a bit buzzed (Taelor more so) which adds fuel to the fire. Elan doesn't actually care that much, but he keeps it up because the banter is good cover in case anyone passes by or sees them.

"The Hornets? Nothing but a bandwagon fanbase. The league likes them because they look good, so they put them in the creampuff Gamma Quadrant division where there's no meaningful competition and they have a straight shot to a first-round bye. The playoffs, with their one-and-done nature, devalue the marathon grind of the regular season. Compare that to the Seatown Screamers, who play in the Delta Quadrant - the 'division of death' - and built for the long haul. But that doesn't translate well to the playoffs, where the depth of their bench is devalued by the playoff format and the [blah blah blah]..."

Approaching the back of the community center, he indicates that Taelor should follow in his footsteps and watch if she wants to learn something, unlike, say, the Hornets, who simply get the Rules Committee to further tilt the playing field in the favor every offseason.

His produces his metatool so smoothly that it's obvious that he uses it regularly. He hardly misses a beat as he slides the doohickey from the metatool into the thingamabob on the door. The magnetic lock is compromised so quickly that Elan might as well have had the key. He opens the door smoothly and gallantly offers to let Taelor get shot go inside first.

Taelor was enjoying the banter a bit too much. She hadn't had many occasions for it since leaving the militia.

"Sounds like the excuses of losers. Oh," she says mockingly, "the league is against us, it's a conspiracy." She scoffs. "The Screamers are all defense, no offense. They got the physical game down, but no skill! And their GM is a caveman, wouldn't know talent if it hit him in the face. They traded Harper while he was still wet behind the ears and now, look at what he's doing for the Green Knights!"

As they approach the community center, the banter dies down. Taelor follows Elan to the back door and waits as he gets it open, looking out for prying eyes.

When he gestures for her to go first, she smirks at him. "See," she whispers, "that's the problem with the Screamers: they don't have a ounce of daring."

She winks at him and slips in through the door.

Elan catches up to Taelor as they start to look around.

"Do you know the secret to being a world-class thief?" he asks under his breath. He gives her a long look waiting for her reply. "No? Dang, I was hoping one of us did."

He starts to scout the place, looking for any workers or security, including cameras or other sensors.

"Be bold, be bold!" he whispers back over his shoulder. Then he pauses to listen, holding his hand up as if he heard something. "But not too bold."

Taelor rolls her eyes and chuckles. She fishes the bioscanner out of her bag and adjusts it as per Statton's instructions. The device's output of data still feels arcane to her, but flying a ship was all about the instruments too, so at least that part felt familiar.

"Hey, plenty-bold-man. I'm going to start in here," she whispers before heading to the kitchen to begin the sweep.

The center has the eerie feeling that busy communal place have, when it is dark, silent and still. It takes a moment until the eyes get used to the dark, only the orange shine of the street lanterns illuminates parts of the rooms, throwing odd shadows and making it awkward to orient oneself inside.
Taelor first turns into the kitchen. The daily chaos left little trace here. Everything is cleaned and tidied up. On one side are the food trays on wheels that were filled earlier. Taelor slowly walks in, keeping a close look on the little needle on the scanner. No movement. She carefully opens cabinet after cabinet, but finds only relatively tidily stacked pots and dishes. Then she sees a metal door, towards the back, locked by a large lever. She pushes the lever down and pulls on the door. With a a slight swoosh the door opens and fog floods into the room. Taelor throws a up her arm, in order to breath into her jacket. But it is too late. With horror she sees the cloud washing over her.


In the meanwhile Elan slowly slides into the storage room. He listens closely, even holds his breath. But nothing can be heard. No other people are in the room except for him. Shelves with cans, toilet and kitchen paper and towels fill the room. He walks past each shelf carefully checking for suspicious silver containers that don't belong. But the most exciting thing he can find are a box with pulseball trading cards, probably sold in some kind of kiosk, between activities.
Suddenly he hears a suppress cry of surprise and fear from the kitchen. He jumps, turns around, reaches for his gun and runs towards the kitchen. There he sees Taelor in the middle of a small cloud breathing into her arm and staggering backwards.

It takes a few moments to shake the first shock but they realise Taelor had opened the the walk-in refrigerator and the cloud was just cold air. She relaxes visibly and let's her arm down again. The refrigerator contains various foods, but nothing of any interest to the group. She closes the door again tightly and locks the lever.

The two of them decide to continue together and head downstairs. After all the hope was to find a room with ventilation or heating. The stairs towards downstairs are again bent twice and end in more simple hallway. This is clearly the maintenance area. Pipes run along the ceiling, albeit small ones, likely for water rather than air. The corridor again runs left to right, like upstairs. The couple chooses to turn right in order to see what is located under the large hall.
Turning on the torches on their compads they slowly and quietly walk down the hallway towards the door at the end. It's a plain metal door, one handle to open it, no other signs.

Suddenly Elan freezes, motioning Taelor to stop. Both stand still holding their breath. Elan felt, he had heard a sound upstairs. They listen intensely. There it is again. There are definitely steps upstairs. It's hard to say how many people, but clearly more than one. They must be in the hallway on the ground floor. Tap... Tap... Tap...

Elan hears a cry of surprise from the kitchen. When he gets there he finds Taelor breathing into the crook of her elbow. Elan looks a bit smug. "With lungs like that, you'd make a good Screamers fan," he quips, spinning on his heel to continue his search while Taelor explores the walk-in refrigerator of doom.

Not finding anything, it's time to go downstairs. Elan slips on his low-light goggles and they go right at the bottom of the stairs and come toward the door at the end of the hallway. But before they can open it, Elan hears a sound upstairs.

Two options, through the door or back the way we came. Not wanting to get trapped in a dead-end he opts for the latter, grabbing Taelor's hand and pulling her along.

"C'mon," he whispers, pulling her toward the stairs. "Turn off the flashlight but leave the compad screen on, pointed down." His low-light goggles need a bit of ambient light to work, but even the amount reflected off the floor should be sufficient.

The goal is to go past the stairs - effectively taking a left at the bottom instead of a right - and to look for more doors in the other direction. Elan is guessing that if the steps come down the stairs (and he suspects they will) that they'll take a right and head toward the room underneath the great hall. Since the people with the footsteps will know where they're going, odds are good they won't even look to the left. But hopefully by then Elan and Taelor will be behind a door. He has his metatool ready in case any doors they find are locked.

Taelor had placed the bioscanner on top of her dataslab, lighting and scanning with one hand while keeping the other one free to open doors and in case trouble found them. She frowns when Elan grabs her empty hand and drags her down the hallway, struggling not to drop Statton's expensive piece of tech. Great, you get startled once and now you're being treated like a child. They were looking for a gas that could turn people into zombies, was it so strange to be on edge?

Tecumseh wrote:

"C'mon," he whispers, pulling her toward the stairs. "Turn off the flashlight but leave the compad screen on, pointed down."

She manages to slip the bioscanner back into her bag one-handed, and then turns off the flashlight on her dataslab. She turns it over to light the ground with the dim glow from its screen.

"Elan," she whispers as they skulk past the stairs, "you're going to have to let go of my hand so I can draw." He turns to look at her like she's crazy. Fucking hell. Her eyes flick down to the holster on her thigh, then back to his. "My gun. So I can draw my gun. If we run out of options."

Elan and Taelor slip past the stairs and lean into the dark of a door. It's locked, but the frame is deep. The sound of steps comes closer and as expected the unknown group comes down the stairs. It's two people, whispering to each other, lighting the way with flashlights. As they hit the hallway they stop whispering. "Man, why did we have to do this so late, not like anyone would have noticed had we taken care of this earlier today. The fucking game is on and we are lurking around the dark for that prick."
"Ah, quit whining. If it wasn't for him, how would you have paid for your new car, eh?"
Taelor listens up. The voice she knows. Tamara. In the silence between the conversation a quiet beeping chimes from Taelor's backpack. The scanner! Fuck! Taelor forgot to turn it off. One of the dark figures freezes and turns around, flashlight pointing down the hall, searching and then flashing right at Taelor and Elan. "You again!? I right about had enough of you!" Blinded by the light Taelor and Elan cannot see well what happens. One can barely see shapes and movements. But Taelor knows the moves. Tamara seems to reach for something and starts walking towards them.

Elan sighs and silently (unlike Taelor) raises his telekinetic defenses. He briefly contemplates kissing Taelor to pretend like they were making out - she's pretty okay looking - but that opportunity has passed. Now he has a flashlight in his eyes and it's blinding his low-light goggles. He reaches up to yank them off.

So what's it going to be? he thinks to himself. Murders? Maiming? Melee? He'll dance the tune that Taelor calls.

Elan is alert and acts first. He closes the distance to engage with Tamara. He knows that Taelor has a pistol but isn't sure what she's like in a fight. Plus pistols are often a mess at melee ranges, and the hallway down here is definitely confined quarters. Elan does his best to intercept Tamara, even knowing that it will complicate Taelor having a clean shot. He swings with his mind, trying to kneecap her with an invisible crowbar, but the light in his eyes makes targeting difficult.

Tamara curses as an invisible force strikes over her leg, "What kind of freak are you?" The strike unfortunately does not slow her stride and with all her anger she throws a punch into Elan's face. A wet thud sounds through the hallway and pain explodes in Elan's head. He tumbles back two steps but quickly regains balance and focus.

Taelor starts backing away, hesitating. Her hand strays towards her gun, but she's loath to escalate things. She looks around and spots a cleaning cart. She grabs a box of powered cleaner (Maxiscrub! For those hard to remove stains!) and chucks it at Tamara's head.

Taelor's aim is true and it hits the side of her head with a dull thud.

Tamara, fully focused on Elan does not see the improvised projectile coming. The box hits her head and bursts open, powder puffing in her face and eyes.
She gasps and then yells, "Now would be good, Mike! You can paint your fucking nails later."
This shakes Mike out of his startled shock. He leaps forward, trying to punch Elan in the stomach, but an invisible force redirects the blow to the side and Elan evades with ease.

Tamara comes charging straight down the middle at Elan. His powers - such as they are - are mostly good for deflections. If an attack is just a little off-center, Elan can usually nudge it ever-so-slightly away. Combined with his natural evasiveness, that's often enough to divert a blow.

However, when the attack comes straight down the middle his defenses aren't as effective. Tamara, to her credit, snaps a wicked straight punch right down the middle directly into Elan's nose. He sees a bright SLAP of light behind his eyeballs, which immediately begin watering. His nose may or may not be broken but it will almost certainly start bleeding momentarily.

But for all its strength and pain, it's not a knockout blow. Elan staggers a step backward, which gives him a little room to maneuver when Mike closes in from the side. While Elan doesn't want to be flanked or double-teamed, an attack from the side is much easier for him to deflect. A quick mental flick sends Mike's punch off-center. It was a good punch and would have connected on someone else, but Mike's hand is batted away at the last second.

"No more playing around," Elan tells himself. (Whoops, did I say that out loud?) Scoundrel that he is, he's not really into fair fights. Fighting with an invisible force isn't exactly sporting and he intends to use it to its fullest effect.

BONK! He cracks Tamara over the head with a solid blow. Or, at least, he thinks that he does. The problem with invisible forces is that you can't really see whether they hit or not, and you're often left to judge their effect by how the other person reacts. He thinks he clipped her in the brain box but, who knows, maybe she has armored shoulder pads and he hit one of those instead.

Tamara just pulling her fist back for another devastating blow (who would have thought she was this strong) when she suddenly stops mid-motion and a surprised look shows on her face. Then her eyes roll up and with a meaty thump she slumps down on the floor. Mike, already rattled by the invisible force that deflected his punch, stops still as well watching his comrade going down.

Taelor hand flashes to her hip and her pistol seems to materialize in her hand. She keeps it pointed at the ground in front of her, her finger off the trigger, making sure Mike can see it.

"Stand down, Mike! No one else needs to get hurt."

Mike sees Tamara on the the ground, the freak stranger with the invisible forces and suddenly the girl has a gun out of nowhere. "Oh fuck!" With a hunted look in his eyes, he turns around and starts running out.
He leaves behind his fallen companion, a mess of powder and a small crate that one of of them must have carried. In the silence after the the fight a small 'bleep' reminds of how it all started.

Taelor holsters her pistol and walks over to Tamara's prone form. She squats down and checks her pulse, making sure she's okay. Her vitals seem steady to Taelor, but she's no medic. She types a message to Statton on her dataslab. //Got Tamara, but she's hurt. Come by the center asap.//

She then moves to where the small crate lies and pulls out the bioscanner, checking to see if they found the spore sample. Please let this shit be over.

The scanner beeps excitedly and some numbers and letters start scrolling down the display as soon as Taelor holds it close to the crate. If this is not the sample, then it's definitely some other bio agent.

Elan spurts after Mike in order to tackle or knock him out. Mike is already half up the stairs, Elan can hear him stomp on the top landing. With a few leaps he runs up the stairs, but by the time he reaches the door, no sign of Mike can be seen.

While Elan and Taelor are confronting Tamara, Graham is wracking his brain to gain an advantage over Diogenes. He knows Diogenes is a political figure. A thought forms in his head, "Who are his political enemies? Who would want to expose him as the danger he is?"
He flips through his contacts on his commpad.
"Too damn many....I have really got to clear some of these out...wait a minute, here's one..."
He taps out a number on the commpad, and a groggy voice struggles to get out a raspy "Hello?" from the other end.
"Sorry to wake you, old man -- what is it, 8:30, 9 o'clock? Hey, you know Diogenes, right? I thought you might have a name for me, someone who knows folks less-than-friendly to the scumbag. I have a bit of a situation, but if you don't have anybody for me, don't worry about it." He's hopeful, but sleeping people don't always have the best memory, so this may be a dead-end (or at least a sleepy one).

"Well that's just great," Elan pouts, his hands on his hips. It had been a pretty good run by his standards but Mike's head start and knowledge of the terrain let him open a big enough gap to break line-of-sight.

Smart thing too, because I woulda brained ya, Elan thinks to himself.

He heads back downstairs to Taelor and Tamara. "Mike got away," he admits ruefully. "He called Diogenes a prick and seemed skeptical of the whole enterprise, but we still have to assume that he'll report what happened. That means the clock is ticking. Did we get a hit on the bioscanner?"

He takes a moment to dab the blood from his nose, which aches. He also goes down the hallway to the door where Mike and Tamara were headed. He wants to look inside to see if there's anything suspicious inside. If the door is locked, he will pick it.

Statton starts a little when his own compad lets out a muted *bleep-beep*. He quickly reads Taelor's message, responds with // On our way!//, and begins rocking back and forth on his heels, unsure whether to interrupt Graham while he is on the compad. After a few seconds of consideration, he quickly says: "Graham! We've got to get to th-the community center, quickly! They've got Tamara!" and begins speed walking in the direction of the community center.

Tecumseh wrote:

"Did we get a hit on the bioscanner?"

Taelor looks up at Elan and grins. "We did."

She types another message for Statton. //Think we found your sample too//

Tecumseh wrote:

He also goes down the hallway to the door where Mike and Tamara were headed.

Taelor puts the bioscanner back in her bag and stands up. "Statton and Graham are on their way," she tells Elan as he walks away.

Taelor walks back to Tamara's side and pats her down, looking for weapons. She takes the knucks and pockets them. If she finds any others, she takes them and puts them in her backpack. Once she's done, she settles in to wait for Statton to arrive or Tamara to regain consciousness.

captain_hoyt wrote:

"Sorry to wake you, old man -- what is it, 8:30, 9 o'clock? Hey, you know Diogenes, right? I thought you might have a name for me, someone who knows folks less-than-friendly to the scumbag. I have a bit of a situation, but if you don't have anybody for me, don't worry about it."

" Really Graham? Man, you know I have the early shift tomorrow. Who do you need? You asking me about politics at this time a day? Fuck, let's sit for a beer tomorrow and gossip, but now I will sleep!" <Click> the call is gone. He must have hung up.