Back in Ukraine, Parts 5 and 6 (conclusion)

The drive she dropped had some interesting images on it. They showed a burned out site from an aerial perspective. It showed signs of green regrowth. The GPS coordinates imprinted on the image indicated the site was about 45 minutes away by car ride. Spark identified it as the site of her laboratory. Blitz didn't recognize it but admitted if he was ever there he may have been sedated or unconscious.

Next up: we were going to hit the school.

We rented the motel room for two extra nights and left our hostage secured in the bath tub to be found by room service after we were long gone.

We took the last evening ferry across the river then meandered around town as the light died and evening took over. By the time we got near the campus via winding roads it was night. The soft glow of a video screen could be seen reflecting off the glasses of a security guard in a booth at the gate. The older man glanced over at us and hopped off his stool. He walked over to the van and motioned for me to put the window down. "Can I help you? It's after visiting hours." I held up the expired visitor's pass we'd obtained the first time we came here and he conceded the point. "OK, just check in with me on your way out." He went back to the booth and seemed to write down our info in a log book.

The campus was quiet on a week night. Since it's a military academy, it was pretty low key anyway, only a few students out and about. I parked in a lot with other vehicles to give us a little cover. No time to waste so we moved out straight away. Clock said 10 p.m.

"I knew under normal circumstances I don't have to say this but given what happened with Albina make sure your head is here tonight," I told Blitz as we walked toward the building.

Spark had found a side door to access the site. The walking path dipped and curled around a corner to the side door, which was just a heavy exit door with a small window in it. There was a dim red light on the door from the outside. Spark tried the door hesitantly. It was not locked. She checked for additional security and found none. Blitz went Astral, peeking in the door as Spark opened it for him. The inside was a whole different world. It was just as mundane in its shape but there were strange vibes. All of a sudden Blitz seemed to just figure it out, like he'd been in here before. People in the next area beyond this hallway, he motioned. Light was coming from that direction but there was no sound. It was a sitting room or a library. But we did trip a motion sensor on the door. Blitz motioned us toward the people ahead intent on quick physical subdual. Spark bent at the knees and started sneaking up. She arrived to see a big room, an antechamber of sorts before an office or dorm. A Trid was playing on an old view screen in the middle of the room. Two guys were sharing a couch and another guy was in a chair. They were all asleep. Another hall went off in one direction and a few doors also left the room we were in. An indicator showed stairs up and down. We tried to sneak past the men to go down into the basement. Spark led us, pointing out a few obstacles to avoid. Luckily the thick carpet baffled the sound of our movements. Left side door, up. Right door, down. We headed right. The glow of an orange light on the wall spilled over us. The stairs down were marble with metal along the lip. The old wooden railing was probably expensively crafted decades ago. There was a motion detector at the bottom of the stairs, which we high stepped over.

We'd reached the lowest level. Spark got out some equipment to hack the door lock. The door opened into darkness, though we could see ahead there was another orange security light. There was also the faint hum of what was probably an air purifier system. We arrived in an open finished basement. Several low circular pieces of furniture sat around the room, most with people on them in repose. Most of the people had lights and wires from devices hooked to them. They all seemed in some type of suspension. The monks? Hard to tell if any of these people were from the temple. Some cables ran to the wall where a terminal was located. Spark moved to it swiftly and I walked between two people to one with only a few gadgets attached to them. I looked at him, hearing the breathing. He was in a tank top and athletic pants, an outfit most of the people in the room were also in. He sat in lotus position, breathing slowly and twitching infrequently. He was asleep. The gear seemed to be enhancement like neural boosters, but of an arcane or hermetic nature as evidenced by icons where a brand name might usually be on such equipment. I called Blitz over to show him the runes. He seemed to react to it with memories of his own experience.

Spark was searching for evidence of her old research being used here. She had found some bits of her Project Red Spark on the system.

There were a dozen test subjects, men and women alike. One, a male, had a device on his forearm, a sort of bracer. He also had a datajack that ran to a computer device. Spark tried to deactivate his seat, #9, at the terminal, so we could get him out. It was a 30-minute deactivation cycle, Spark said. She could try to speed it up to just 15. Do it, we agreed.

We had those 15 minutes to search out Spark's project. The far door should have led us to it. But the door was locked. There was a panel next to the door. When Spark tried to hack it, an alert of a breach attempt went off. Then the screen went blank and there was a faint dimming pulse of the lights in the basement. I moved to Subject #9, unlimbered my crossbow and snapped it into place with a bolt ready to fire. The subject's breathing was shallow and he was still twitching a bit.

Then Spark shot out the door's glass with her silenced pistol - POP, POP, POP. She punched out the spiderwebbed glass.

Blitz moved toward the door we came in, seemingly investigating something there but he came back our way soon after with nothing to report.

"I know you would be back," a Russian man said to Spark as she exited the basement room. A shot rang out and Spark reeled back into the doorway, shot in the chest plates of her armor. "I'm surprised you waited so long," the man continued. "What did you think you'd find, that you could leave with?" Spark replied, breathing hard. "Enough to stop you. To stop you from getting your greasy palms on it and corrupt my research." He replied: "Augmented selection is all corrupt. Did you think you were being virtuous? We were all playing with fire." Spark returned fire, literally, shooting Maxim in the chest, in the same spot he shot her.

"Take it. Take your files. You can't stop this thing," he chuckled through bloody teeth. "We have all we need."

Blitz ran to the scene. Spark was on the ground. Maxim was in a swivel chair. Both had been shot in the chest. His computer screen was positioned facing us. Spark shot him again, hitting him and silencing him. She moved to the terminal.

Meanwhile, Subject #9 was slouching, leaning. He was coming around.

Spark downloaded as much as she could and then tried to delete as much as possible.

The subject was awake by then, gasping. His cyber eyes were glowing eerily as if lit from the inside. In slow, halting Ukrainian he spoke. I called Spark over to communicate.

"We're getting you out of here," she told him. "Why?" he said.

We started withdrawing, Blitz on point. I helped the man to his feet. The sounds of maybe two people coming down the stairs toward us rang out. We hid. The footfalls stopped at the landing above us. I handed off the patient and told Blitz to follow me. I lunged into the hallway and fired my crossbow at one guy with an Ares Predator. He fired too but I hit him in the neck and his shot went wide. Blitz followed me through the doorway and made a finger gun, using it to focus on casting a spell at the other guard. A blast of energy hit the guy and knocked him off of his feet.

I ducked back to take the patient by the arm. I was bracketed by Blitz and Spark. The guy I shot surrendered and let us past. Up the stairs we went, and we could hear the third guard shout the names of his two fellows. "Whoever is coming up, slow it down. I will use deadly force," he yelled.

"I will too!" Blitz shouted back as he exited the stairwell toward the guard. He cast another spell as the guy fired on him. The bullet went wide. The spell knocked him over, pinwheeling him against the door jamb. Time to bug out. It was surprisingly quiet outside. No sirens? Well it's not like the black site would want to make a scene, I thought. We got to the vehicle and prepared to depart. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the patient was alternating between groggy and reacting swiftly and almost in a preprogrammed manner to the gun shots and other stimuli. He was big and powerful but surprisingly agile.

Who is this guy? Blitz said his magical signature is that of a physical adept. In speaking to him, it doesn't seem like he was one of the monks. He was from another city in Ukraine but it was hard to tell if he was being up front or telling stories. The only other thing we learned from him was that he was a martial artist. He was semi-lucid so it was hard to get a lot of information out of him. But he said he joined the program willingly.

We talked about where we would take him. Spark suggested we take him to the monks as evidence, which sounded good to us. When we met up with the monks they were happy we rescued someone but were obviously disappointed we didn't get any monks out. They met us at a prearranged location. We dropped him off and gave them the information as best we could.

"This is an effective first step in rebalancing this catastrophe that's been happening," one monk told us. He gave us a credstick and sent us on our way.

Spark sat with her heaviness after the importance of the mission. She had killed Maxim and denied the Russians her research.

We had GPS coordinates and satellite images of where Blitz's mother might be. He handed it over to me noting that he didn't know much about the place, the site of Spark's former lab. It looked like scorched earth but nature had reclaimed some of it, like fences grown over and parts of the asphalt cracked and green. But we wouldn't really know until we saw it for ourselves.

I found a route that left the main roads a few kilometers before the site. There was a service road to a power hub down an old gravel trail barely capable of accommodating a truck. It wound through the woods. Inbound we saw just how disused it was.

"You guys feel that?" Blitz asked but there was nothing to feel. Magic users are strange. Maybe it was the psychic juju from where we were headed.

We got within sight of the place, through the tree line. The towers of the power hub loomed ahead of us. We were there.

A small hangar was on the site, with other smaller prefab buildings huddled together nearby. Bombed out was the motif, per the satellite images. We couldn't see any more from our position.

Looked like we'd be on foot the rest of the way, as there wasn't room to drive. We got through an old compromised fence, stepping through it and out into the air where the creepiness was palpable.

With my gear secured I let the focus on the work push the creepiness to the margins. I led the team via a path through the underbrush. There was evidence of recent activity here. I got us up to a pair of old water tanks to snoop a bit. There was a small military car parked nearby. It was matte black and bore no markings or emblems to designate it as an official government vehicle. I checked my watch and saw that dawn was coming too soon. The first few birds were waking and chirping.

Spark snuck out to check on the vehicle. With thermographic imaging she saw the engine was cold. "They came in from the front," I mentioned quietly.

Spark trotted out again, looking for tracks. About 10 to 12 meters away she stopped when she kicked a glass bottle laying in the dirt. She heard voices and movement, and she looked for a place to hide. She ducked behind some kind of rack that had been grown over with brush. Two guards came out of a nearby building speaking German.

"I don't know who would be snooping around," one said. "Let's check it out." I whispered to Blitz: "Two from the building on the right." Blitz: "I guess I have to test these gloves some time! Stun? We split up. You distract them and I hit them from this side."

I set up a shot to shatter the guards' vehicle window. POP, POP. One guy ran toward the vehicle to inspect the noise. Blitz stepped out of his hidey hole and extended his hand with the glove on it. The two guys were close enough to each other that his spell flashed out toward both. One guy was dazed but still looked about for what was causing all this ruckus. The other guy stumbled about looking in our direction but not directly at us. The two men looked like operatives but without being loaded out with gear.

"What the hell?! They got you too?! DREK!!" one yelled. Both men were grabbing at their guns. Spark was still the entire time.

I stepped out and fired my Predator III at the guy further from the car, with a clear shot and unconcerned with staying hidden. I fire without a silencer, and hit him center mass. He went down in a heap, unmoving.

Blitz also stepped out from behind cover, and threw more magic at the other man. He hit the side of the car and slid down the side and into the gravel.

Spark popped out and headed to the building door to secure it. It was still open.

I checked the tires to see if they were run-flats, which they were not. So I immobilized the vehicle by slashing two tires. Blitz, meanwhile, was checking the car's doors, which were unlocked. We dumped the body in the passenger seat and put the stunned guy in the back, zip tied and gagged. The only things Blitz found in the car were a walkie talkie and a go bag.

We could hear static and intermittent voices coming from the building, but only faintly and totally unintellegeble.

Spark went inside and found an analog short wave radio set up, empty coffee cups and a wall-mounted household computer with intercom, as well as a rifle. A pair of chairs and a small couch are also there. She tried to hack the computer. The radio chatter was benign and uninteresting but a strange voice seemed to come in over top of the chatter from time to time, as if phasing in and out.

I sent Blitz inside while I scuttled the car, hiding  it along the side of the building. I flagged down Spark when she emerged from the building. We brought the captive inside. He came to, and we shoved him down onto the couch.

"You didn't have to take down Hans," he said in German. We asked him who he was working for. "I don't even know his name. Mr. S? I think he's downstairs." Then he realized he probably shouldn't have shared that much.

"Cooperate and you'll walk away from this," I told him. He said he wasn't going to stop us, "but what's down there might. I don't know what's down there but it's magical stuff. Not nice." He told us how to get there but didn't know who was down there. "It's some kind of old military research or something like that."

Spark asked Blitz: "Do you have a sense of whether your mother is here?" He said he wouldn't really know until he was in her presence.

How can we get in there? What's there? "I like you Blitz," I said, "but I'm not storming the beaches of Normandy to rescue your mom without knowing what's down there." Were there vents? Other ways to get in there? The guy, who I learned later is called Tim, points us to a panic button wired to the wall. "We never had to pull it."

The other two went check out the area to see if there are any vents or secret doors, etc. I sat with Tim. No reason not to be polite. I planned on both of us surviving this so I just chatted with him.

Spark and Blitz had plenty of success. Spark found a power box. Blitz found a sunken driveway that descended underground. There was also a set of big metal doors, which Tim told us about, but those were locked from the inside. We made a plan: Spark would cut the power while Blitz and I set an ambush at the doors to see if someone came out to check on the outage. Hopefully we could pop them and then infiltrate through the doors they came through.

Go Time. Spark cut the power and hid. Blitz and I hid at the ambush site. A few minutes passed with only the sound of movement beyond the door. Then a door screeched open and footfalls came our way. Blitz heard the radio on my belt chime. From a few meters away we saw two guys come up, carbines in hand. One motioned the other toward the power box in the distance.

We let them pass us as the door hung open. I shot one in the back of the head with my crossbow. Blitz blasted the other with a spell, flinging him forward into the dirt. He tried to struggle to his feet but I jumped on him and pinned him in place, slitting his throat with my big knife. Blitz grabbed the walkie from me. "Can't you hear that?" he asked me. I shook my head negative. There was nothing. He pushed the button and listened. I still heard nothing.

Spark headed our way. I checked through the doorway, seeing stairs descending. We went that way, using our cyber eyes (and Blitz's natural low light vision) to travel in the dark. There was a burnt smell in the air from when the site was razed, with a dampness mingled in. A faint drip-dripping lingered in the air ahead. At the base of the stairs I headed into the corridor beyond. Cables of all sizes ran along the walls, even hoses and rundown plumbing. Some original, some new.

Ahead was an opening in the wall, doorways on both sides. More sounds: steam hissing and sizzling, a low hum off and on.

Blitz had the walkie to his mouth, whispering "Why?" He paused, then told Spark: "We gotta turn the power back on," and turned to retreat.

I saw a shimmering coalescence advance on me from up ahead. The burned smell sharpened as it approached, becoming acrid. "Spark: get on the power! Blitz: help me with THAT!" I barked.

Elemental?! I thought that that was what it was, and then pondered how to kill it. I drew my Predator III and fired on it, hoping bullets worked. It seemed to absorb the bullets and I could hear the metal of them tinkle on the concrete under the magical entity. It dimmed in its brightness, however, so maybe it was wounded?

Spark fired at a second Elemental beyond, deeper in the corridor as she retreated past me. Blitz sent a magical attack at the one I shot. The thing bursts in brilliant light but did not return to form.

A light show beyond me at the doors ahead seemed to feed the Elemental Spark had shot. As Spark turned to run she stopped and her hands went to her throat. Blitz commanded of me: "Stand back." He advanced to attack the Elemental. The attack seemed to peter out as it hit the thing.

I turned and ran, intent on turning the power back on. Even if we freed Spark, it would take too much time. For whatever reason the power needed to be back on immediately.

While I was gone, Blitz cast more and Spark freed her rifle and gun arm enough to break free of the magical beast. Blitz led them to a doorway to a dank basement, a big open area.

Meanwhile, I found the breaker and flipped the switch, slamming the box door closed before turning to run back the way I came. I returned to the site of the fight but found an Elemental and no sign of my teammates. "Are you guys still alive?" I asked hesitantly into the group comm. Blitz only advised me to head to the third door on the right. I hugged the wall but the Elemental moved to intercept me. I just put my head down and ran. I succeeded in dashing past it and I caught up to the other two in my group, to find Blitz guiding Spark along. I took the Elf's rifle and allowed her to lean on me as the mage led the way through the darkness. We seemed to be coming to the epicenter of the initial fire that ruined the place these few years ago. We could hear the Elemental still trailing after us. Blitz turned and unleashed a vicious spell at it, reducing it to a slight shimmer that no longer felt the need to pursue us.

"Power's back on," I told them. Blitz, in a sort of lingering haze, merely mumbled, "Yeah." He started to walk faster. Our comms flickered to life, crackling and hard to hear. "She's here!" Blitz shouted emotionally. I hand Spark her rifle back and drew my pistol.

"Otto, my son, I'm so sorry I left you those years ago and looked the other way while those bad things were happening." It was a woman's voice from deep in the basement. My fellow Ork was running by now. "It doesn't matter. I found you!" We arrived at a back wall, dimly lit. A tank sat there, clear glass and tall and square. Floating in the tank was an Ork woman. Her dark hair floated loose, and tubes ran into her nose. She was in a sort of wetsuit. Machines surrounded the tank.

"Once I started down this track, there was no way I could come back."

Blitz stopped short of the tank. "What is this? What happened?"

"I was Patient Zero."

"We have to get you out of here."

She gestured to a console and explained that the tank, which was about two meters wide and three meters tall - was mobile. "Look how tall and strong you've become. I can feel the power in you," she said to her son.

"It was all to find you," Blitz replied, frantically looking around for a way out. "Is there a vehicle? We're getting you out of here."

She motioned and lights came on. It seemed we were near the loading dock we'd seen earlier from above ground. "Who are your friends? I sense their power as well."

Spark introduced herself. "I also was a former guest at this facility."

"This is Topo. He got us out of here," Blitz tells her in reference to their original exodus from this house of horrors.

"I'm glad you made a profession out of this but you made two friends in the process," she said. Her voice had a remote quality, like she was beyond human at that point, post-human. It was spooky but amazing. Haunting and captivating.

"It wouldn't have happened without you. Now it's my turn." He asked if she could leave the tank, but she was unsure of the answer.

I took the time to head back up to free Tim, and asked him if there was a vehicle that could move her.

Spark spent some time on the computer system to learn what had happened to Blitz's mother. Could she be moved? Also, to assuage her own conscience she checked to see if any of her own research had helped lead to this. But no, it had not. In fact, this was FAR beyond what Spark had envisioned. So she destroyed anything on the system that could allow this to be done to an unwilling person. She said later that she was had the realization that she got her research back and took revenge on someone she hated and all that didn't matter compared to doing what we did that day.

Blitz opened the bay doors while asking his mother what should be taken with us and what should be destroyed. He also asked her what had happened at the site. She told him about an attack by the Russians, who had taken it over and nationalized the research. She had been off-site and then come here knowing it was no longer a viable site. Her volunteerism went far past intent so she sequestered herself to make this process wasn't used on anyone else. She'd been here in secret ever since. Maybe she and Spark could engineer a way to undo the process, they all wondered.

"No matter what state she's in, she's my family and she's back. And Spark and Topo are my family too. And I'll do anything to keep them all safe."

Back in Ukraine, Part 4

 ....

One of the monks sat on a bench while the other man stood nearby next to a pond, tossing bread to the ducks that are floating around in lazy circles. Spark joined the man on the bench and initiated a conversation. The man, speaking Russian, took up the talk. He offered the names of monks taken, noting that some came back but were unstable. They couldn't, he said, mediate anymore, unable to maintain calm and connection. Those who returned had greatly improved power but were chaotic, unpredictable and dangerous. He also confirmed the black site's location: the campus we'd been to. It wasn't the only site, they noted. Spark asked about other sites but the monk said the other one he knew about didn't seem to operate anymore. "We do know of another one, though I'm not sure how active it is now. It was the site of the first meeting we ever had. The main one know is attached to the school."

The monk asked Spark and Blitz some questions of his own. First he wanted to know our involvement in the situation. Spark recalled to him how the Russians stole tech research secrets from her. The subject of Blitz's mother's story also came up. It didn't seem to ring a bell with the monk. Blitz seemed to be detached, likely drifting in Astral space during the exchange. My teammates also confirmed how to return to them any monks we rescue. Spark tried to offer them a secure comm unit but they rejected it, saying the method we had already used to communicate with them was adequate. With that, the monks wished us well in our mission and took their leave. "I hope you are prosperous in your endeavor."

We stayed in the motel room the rest of the day and night, scheming. What to do with Albina? How soon do we hit the black site? Because I wanted to flee the city basically as soon as we hit the black site I suggested we follow the lead on Albina first.

Using his computing skills Blitz found Albina's home address, corp housing on site at the company complex.

Meanwhile, Spark did some research about the campus, and found a side entrance to the building we wanted to raid. She did some digital casing of the site to find it. She plotted a course that would allow us to move around the campus stealthily based on a knowledge of the security.

My job was to plan a route out of the city once we'd hit the black site. The important part was to make pursuit as difficult as possible in case we were followed. I found a winding path that used some local wetlands to cover our getaway. There was even a good spot to drop off any monks we rescue. The key was not having to go back on the ferry after the mission so we were limited to leaving the city on that side of the river.

The next morning I took Blitz to Albina's corp complex. He was exceptionally nervous so I urged him to go Astral. He got out of the van and headed her way, and I circled the area in the vehicle. He approached her as she walked to the office. When she saw him she reacted in a visceral manner. "No, no, no, no....." backing up and walking fast away from him. Her messenger bag swung as she accelerated. She weaved toward other pedestrians. "Please, Albina," Blitz begged. "I need to know. I need to talk to you."

Albina stopped and turned back to him. She looked him square in the face. She warned him off with a hand gesture, keeping him five meters away from her. Blitz went to sit at a nearby bench. She stood close to the bench without engaging, looking around with her hand in her pocket working at her phone. "I don't know if you want to know," she told him. Blitz: "I have to know. If you know something about Emilia, please tell me." Albina replied: "She's out there but I don't know if you want to see her this way." She shook her head sorrowfully. "I've probably said too much." She turned to go and a small cred stick fell from her pocket as she fumbled with her phone. Blitz left, and scooped up the cred stick with a fake shoe-tying maneuver.

Back in Ukraine, Part 3

Now we had to find a way out and somewhere to take this stolen van and our hostage. I recalled some of the details of how I extracted Blitz and Spark when I first got them out of this city - the way we met. I was using the GPS to help. It was a slow process, full of paranoia, with Blitz following me in the stolen van. He kept bugging me over the communications, asking where we were going. At a traffic circle I got separated from the other two. I caught sight of Blitz as he veered off in a different direction. After that they seemed to have swapped seats, putting Spark in the driver's seat. I sent them my GPS coordinates.

I headed for the side of the city opposite of the airport, where far fewer vehicles leave the city. There was a small DIY rest stop out in the sticks. Blitz and Spark showed up, and Blitz swept the stolen vehicle for devices (tracking, homing, bombs, etc.) while I hopped up on the roof of our rented van. Spark filled a canteen with her piss, and then she showered our captive with its contents to wake him up.

"Ugh, what the frag?! Where am I?" our captive shouted as he came around. He went for his gun but Spark had it. "You looking for this?" she asked with some sass. In a calmer voice and with his Ukrainian accent more discernable, he replied: "You guys think you're pretty smart, pretty slick."

Spark: "Why you follow us?" Him: "I work security. Part of the job."

Spark: "Who is the employer?" Him: "It doesn't matter."

Spark: "Where did you follow us from?" He pauses but doesn't answer. Spark piled on with some threats, including suggesting she might take some of his fingers off. Him: "When you left the school. That's when I started following you."

Spark: "Who are you working for?" He provided the name of a small independent firm in the city: Kamin Security. I wanted to know the name of the company.

We \zip tied him and threw him in the back of the rented van. We scuttled the stolen vehicle in the woods and headed back to the city. He tried to suggest we let him go way out here and he'd walk back, and that he wouldn't say anything to anyone. No dice, chummer.

Back at the motel, Blitz stunned him and we carried our 'drunk friend' through the lobby to our room. I put him in the bathtub and closed the door. Long day, time to hit the sack.

The next day I found an unobtrusive place to park near the Buddhist temple where I could see the other two as they went in to find the monk Spark had already spoken to. They track him down. The convinced him to get us a superior monk to talk to. They set up a meeting with some representatives of the temple. Meanwhile, Blitz uses the temple's Matrix access to search for the teachers from the list he found, still in the system but not actually working on campus. His search resulted in one hit: Albina Kalyznyk. She works in the Recruitment Department. The search showed that she works now in the city as a consultant in the private sector. Put a pin in that.

They called me for a lift, as they were leaving. I told them, in order to disrupt surveillance I'd meet them inside a nearby three-story parking garage. No drones or guys with mag-vision cyber eyes would be able to see us meet up. Next we were headed to Albina's office.

It's a tall modern glass building, corporate but modest. The name on the side: Zaporizhia Automobile.

It's the same tactic: the other two go in and I sit behind the wheel. Here's how it went down....

A central hub of a front desk. Albina's not in, sorry. Spark and Blitz would have to head up to the floor she works on, in order to make an appointment. Which they do NOT do. Soon they returned to the vehicle. No luck yet.

The monks made contact so we headed to their preferred location, a wide open public park. We met at the benches by the pond. Two men were already there, and it's obvious they're who we were looking for. Shaved heads covered by their hats. I watched the exchange from the car. Here's what happened....

Back in Ukraine, Parts 1 and 2

 I still wanted to keep a low profile after recent jobs where we were a little too public. One option was to get work out of town. Spark contacted a colleague, Kresk, to find more information on Maxim. Where could we find him? We needed some answers. She pitched him on a revenge plot and though he wasn't interested he did help us. "You had a run in with old Maxim? How did he look?" Spark said, "Cool as a cucumber and doing better than I'd like. Which is to say: breathing." Kresk said Maxim is operating close to the old lab and school in the Ukraine. Seems he and others are working for a branch of the Red Army in Cherkasy along the River Dnieper.

Spark proposed selling any recovered research to finance the mission. She was going to work on how to put cyber tech in Awakened soldiers, so any information she could steal would accelerate the process.

Interesting. The academy where Blitz was enrolled is active again.

I talked to Oskar before leaving home to see if there were any contacts known to International Spotlight where we were headed. He said he'd look into it. He also noted that where we were going, they put on a veneer of being OK but the place was simmering. One point of interest is the Temple White Lotus, a modern Buddhist temple where the lab had obtained Physical Adepts for test subjects.

I rented a vehicle for the trip and planned a route through Poland and about three-quarters of the way across Ukraine. The 20-hour drive was uneventful but no 20-hour drive is enjoyable. We arrived along the river. The forest landscape showed more maintenance the closer we got. There was a ferry ride across the river to the city proper. The city was surprisingly nice, almost disarmingly so. We settled on a motel near the airport to keep a low profile. Of note: there wasn't a big metahuman population, so two Orks and an Elf might stick out a bit. Spark got a room and we Orks share another one. Boots on the ground to do some recon and look around. First stop: the temple, which is on the waterfront. We walked around the garden for a while until Spark got the attention of one of the residents, a monk by the look of him. She chatted with him, trying to get an opportunity to find out if they could be an ally. If the Russians were still taking Physical Adepts maybe we could rescue them? Hard to tell how it was going from our vantage. Eventually the priest moves with Spark to a more secluded spot, where they spoke quietly. He was looking around nervously. "Our next tour is at 3:30! Thanks for visiting!" he said overly loudly as he walked Spark back to us, trying to avoid suspicion. He then hurried off.

Spark confirmed that the monk told her it was still happening, the kidnapping. It happened as recently as six months ago.

We headed out to catch the ferry across the river with our vehicle. It's autumn so our cover story was leaf site seeing. The main road eventually branched off into smaller roads as we got closer to the school. Spark was riding shotgun with a cover story for the school of being an architecture magazine writer doing an article about the campus.

As we arrived on campus we crossed paths with a delivery van. There was a gate with an attendant. I stopped so Spark could talk to the middle aged man with a rather informal windbreaker who approached the vehicle. In Ukrainian, he said, "Can I see your parking pass?" Spark: "I'm Maria Skovo, a reporter with Eastern Architecture Weekly." And blah, blah, blah. "Oh, OK. That's nice. We do have a nice campus." He ducked into the booth and came back out with a day pass. He pointed us to an administration building, showing us on a map. I recorded the campus layout with the camera in my cyber eyes and saved it. The buildings were an old style and austere, just as Blitz remembered them. A distinct difference was the lack of usage in certain places, formerly busy buildings now vacant, wilder growth of vines in places. The other two in the crew got out at the admin building so Spark could get access or get a tour. Blitz was intent on finding evidence of his mom's old department or leads on her former co-workers. I found a visitor parking lot, parked and tried to keep a low profile until Spark and Blitz got back.

Here's what happened to Blitz and Spark inside the Tulyakbay Academy:

Spark came out with the hard sell, attracting attention with her over-the-top art house flamboyance. It seemed to draw a little too much attention.

Blitz got into the computers and found his mother still listed on the staff with a dead link to her faculty profile. He noted the others with dead links and then, after attracting the attention of an employee for accessing what was supposed to be off-limits to students, he got out of there.

There was a black golf cart  with the school insignia coming my way while I waited. Another security guard was at the wheel. He stopped and was eyeballing me and making notes. Then he drove closer, looking for a parking pass, which I had displayed. He headed back out along a narrow path, too narrow for a full-sized vehicle, I noted.

Meanwhile Spark got a pair of students on the quad to tell her about an incident a few months back when there were vans on site working from "that building over there," they said, pointing to one of the seemingly unused older buildings. The people in the vans were speaking Russian, they recalled.

We got back on the road soon after, as it was evening at that point, and we needed to get to the ferry. It was a quiet ride to the ferry. We used the noise of the boat to cover our chat to catch each other up on the day's results and what our next steps should be. I saw a man on the level above us lock eyes then take off toward the stairs. We decided to follow him. I split off to go to the vehicle, to make sure the guy doesn't frag with it by putting a tracking device on it, damage it or otherwise tamper with it. I shouldn't have let my ride out of my sight in the first place, I chided myself as I moved. Spark tagged along then split off to follow the stranger. I got to the vehicle and went over it looking for signs of tampering, but found none. I looked around for another parking spot where I could move the vehicle to throw off pursuit. Soon after I had moved it, Spark showed up and looked around, confused that the vehicle was not where we left it. I flagged her down but was distracted because when I relocated the vehicle it was making a grating noise for which I could not discover the cause. A quick review had shown me nothing, so maybe I was just being paranoid, I thought. Then the ferry's horn went off and people started heading toward their vehicles.

Blitz apparently encountered someone trying to obstruct us. Spark used the comm to tell him to knock the dude out and take the van he'd been using. We could steal it and meet up later to see if it held any useful clues. Blitz hit the driver with a spell and the guy went slack, dropping a camera and comm. Spark hopped in the guy's van on the passenger side as Blitz took the wheel.

Spark pulled the guy into the back of the van as Blitz waited for the green light on the ferry that would allow us to take the vehicles out onto dry land. The all-clear was given and we headed out.

Help for the Trolls, part 2

With the Queen defeated and the Nexus closed, a swarm was incoming.

Blitz said they'd be less resistant to mundane weapons since the Nexus was destroyed. Could we lure them to a spot where we can detonate the explosives Spark had brought along? Yeah, there was a place back toward the front, where we came in - a depression with water in it. I led the way, slipping a bit on the crumbling dirt. We got a good head start but the beetles were gaining on us and more were arriving from other directions. A couple bugs made wild jumps at Spark as they closed in. They emitted flames but they seemed weaker. Another tried to spew flame at Blitz, and cooked his armor pretty good. I took another glance at the digital display and we were where we wanted to be. I threw on the brakes as we arrived at the confluence of a few tunnels with a 20-meter drop off straight down. Spark set the explosives and then pointed out an access ladder we could use to get out of harm's way.

Spark headed up first then Blitz. Then me, of course. Blitz sent a blast of energy at the rear of the swam, to send them steamrolling toward our trap. It worked, as they started piling up on themselves in the bowl-shaped area below us. Spark activated the explosives. Nothing. A few agonizing seconds went by as we clung to the access ladder. Our hearts sank. Then the explosives went off. BOOM! Smoke ripped up toward us and a strange smell of burning assaulted our noses. It seemed more chemical than death.

Then the ladder started to loosen. I frantically looked for a place to connect my grappling hook in my climbing kit. I saw part of the infrastructure above us that I could loop onto. There was a separate I-beam that ran parallel to the one the ladder was on. I fed the stable rope to Blitz after I'd secured it, then I leapt five meters to the ground. Blitz got down safely. Spark followed but none to gracefully.

We retreated back the way we came, with Blitz checking out Astral space to see if there were more bugs out there. "Let's get out of here," he said. "These things are toast." We got back to the place where the Nexus had been. Now there were piles of carapaces almost fused into the "altar" as if they climbed onto it as they died. I found a "smaller" beetle shell intact. Its legs were gone but the rest of its Rhino beetle-style body was there, albeit fragile.

After we'd collected some material we headed back to the surface, realizing it was hard to process how long we'd been down there. Ben was there waiting, feeding wood into a big iron cooking stove. "Do you bear good tidings?" he asked. "Yes," Blitz said, pulling out a beetle horn and tossing it to the Troll. It landed on the ground near his giant feet. "Done." Ben shouts a hurrah and called out to the camp to rally to him. "Our home is saved, and we have these little fellas to thank!" As more Trolls emerge, a few grabbed me and Blitz and tossed him in the air in celebration. It hurt our sore bones so much. Elias poured something from a gas can into a tin cup for Spark. "Drink up! It's a good day!" Grain alcohol by Trolls.

I uploaded the footage from my cyber eyes to Ben's tablet so they could watch the Run. A young female Troll hooked it up to a widescreen TV that had been hidden under a tarp. They played it like a movie.

Later Schroeder broke the material link on the glove Blitz had acquired so he can use it in the future without being traced by the former owner.

Help for the Trolls, part 1

Owing to getting the drek shot out of me in several recent jobs, I went under the knife to get dermal plating. The things are visible under the skin so I guess we're doing this all the way now. No looking back; this is my life.
After showing our asses on the last job, I was keen to lay low for a while. Spark and I had to convalesce after surgery (she got dermal plates too).
Blitz was trying to trade the glove he got of that mage on our last job, guy named Schroeder. A Troll fixer he knows of offered to help him, perhaps to acquire it perhaps to help him retool it so it was attuned to him and NOT traceable by the old owner any more. Blitz was also trying to find a way to get a SUV in the deal, since he wanted a functional vehicle. The Troll offered him a job too, something about helping some other Trolls who got chased out of their warren. What the fuck chases a Troll out of its home?! Bugs, he told Blitz. Yikes, some bugs! We take the gig. Healing goes well and we were finally ready to hit the streets again.
It was time for some legwork. We had the name of the contact and where his warren is. Their crew is called The Little Guys. Cheeky.
We headed over to the address, a place on the edge of the city where they started to build infrastructure like a subway stop, but it seemed they abandoned it. There were big, man-made 'hills' and piles of debris and materials like scrap metal that sat between buildings. The place smelled like a cafeteria - cooking and smoke. A big Troll sat on an economy car like was a couch. "Who goes there?" he asked, as if he was under a bridge in a children's story. He tapped a metal staff against the pavement. Blitz introduced himself and us. "Thought you'd be bigger," the Troll bellowed. Blitz motioned to me: "That's him." The Troll replied: "Thought you'd be bigger too. And you have a wee one too," he said of Spark, the Elf. He goes by Ben, with Leon and Elias by his side.
They showed us footage on a tablet of meter-long beetles with large jaws chasing Trolls! Their movements seemed not quite corporeal. Then their mandibles shot out flames! Another clip showed a nest. How many were there? "It's hard to say," Ben said. "Those seem to come and go. Maybe a dozen? Two dozen? They also seem to be of the same mind. It's hard to explain."
The warren was a couple stories below ground. Ben drew me a crude map of the tunnels, rooms and the bug nest.
We did some research that showed that the beetles - Insect Spirits likely - could be harmed by mundane weapons but magic worked far better. So we grabbed some mission-specific gear. Spark wanted explosives. We all got flame-retardant clothing.
A couple days later we returned, to find plenty more Trolls milling about. Ben gave us a pep talk and then we headed in.
I led the team down the subway stairs to where passengers would get tickets and go through turnstiles. The Trolls had ripped out those same turnstiles and decorated with wild street art mosaics of all kinds of found items. Blitz was trailing me and Spark was covering our six. The plan was to protect our magic user, as he was the one would likely do the most damage to the spirits.
Up ahead I saw and heard a burst of flame. Paused; no movement. Then scuttling. SmartLink rangefinder said targets - three of them - about one meter tall each were advancing on us. I fired off probing shot at the smallest and it went down dead. Blitz went astral and saw the others coming, spurting flame. They were scary fast. Blitz blasted another with magic energy, and it too went down for good. Spark fired a shot too, at the last one as it jumped at us. It hit Spark then hit the ground injured.
I broke into a jog as we fled toward the nest. There were mounds of dirt that I wasn't prepared for, which lengthened our route. We saw a downward stairwell covered in a crust of wispy material, though it wasn't spider's web. Man, I don't know much about bugs, I realized. We could hear them skittering about down below. I rushed down the stairs and quickly headed for the door we were seeking. It smelled like earth, where the Trolls were digging. But right above me in the beetles' wisps was one of them, and it sprayed us with the flame attack we'd prepared for. The fire-retardant gear helped soak up some of the damage though I could feel the effects seep through to my armor. The other two team members seemed to dodge it. Spark peppered it with gunfire and it fell from the ceiling. Spark rushed past me and through the door, taking point. It looked like inside the Trolls were making some kind of aquifer. We had to get across, and the place where we were headed was flanked by a group of smaller beetles. Spark headed at them, spraying bullets to chase them off. Blitz moved quickly to the door, taking the lead.

We arrived in a Troll dwelling, with big stuff all around. Blitz was practically face-to-mandible with a much bigger beetle with many legs and prominent insect features as it sat in a multi-tiered nest made of mud. The nest had a geometric pattern quality to it. The bug rose up, a prominent ridge on its head. It's times like these that I'm glad I can't see in Astral Space. The thing was the size of a step van and that's enough for me to know.
It raced at Blitz, with flames starting to manifest. Spark unloaded another spray of gunfire. I checked around for any other beetles hiding, and found none. I pushed against the door we came through, in order to keep any other beetles from getting in.
The queen raked Spark with her mouth as the Elf back pedaled and grabbed her with her mandibles, crushing her in her grip.
Blitz yelled "This is the source!" and motioned to a gaping black hole of nothingness beyond the nest. He hurled magical energy at it. "Keep her off me!"
Spark slipped from the queen's grasp, clearing me for a shot. I dropped to a knee, bracing my back heel against the door to keep it jammed shut. I swung my rifle up and poured all me focus into the shot. With the queen's 'crown' in my scope I fired, tearing a layer away to expose an interior with an orange glow.
It washed flames over Spark and Blitz but they seemed to weather the attack. Blitz then unleashed another spell, pouring so much effort into it he wobbled, nose bleeding and spent.
A howling noise and air rushed toward the darkness. The queen stood up tall, fire licking, then she froze in place. As the noise stopped, I could hear the sound of a distant stampede coming at us from beyond the door.

Stealing the tech, part 3

We only had an address for where we were going to find Kurtis. So we didn't really know what we were dealing with. The place was basically a nice neighborhood apartment complex. I asked Oskar, a contact of mine, if he knew anything - perhaps how to get in, physically or electronically. All he knew is the area is packed with international corps and a lot of in-and-out traffic. Also, those in town for extra-governmental work wind up there - as Crescent Moon Tower.
We took the subway to the site, walking there and noting possible getaway vehicles we might steal later. The tabled we stole from the first site connected to the Matrix and seemed to give indications of a general location to seek. We found a maintenance man we bribed to get information on any new arrivals with serious medical equipment. He told us the room we were looking for and we headed off to the 12th floor. We tried to walk with purpose past a lounge full of suits who glared at us as we passed. I saw one nudge another and make a note of us. We went to an intersection and headed left to a locked door. Spark buzzed the intercom and said she's from Alder Tech and was verifying security because of the incident at the other facility recently. A doctor answered the door and let us in. Spark gave her a once over and saw she was of similar build and size. Then she stunned into unconsciousness her with her Narcojet pistol. Blitz and I dragged her inside and shut the door. As we went past the bathroom, there was a bodyguard sitting on the toiler - not shitting, just sitting there with the lid down. He held a Ingram SmartGun on us, almost casually. "Why don't you put the lady down," he said. "Guns in the tub." I did, walking slowly toward the tub and putting my gun in. "You next," he said to Blitz. He opened his jacket to show him he was disarming. The merc tossed a black hood at Blitz and told him to put it on. "I know guys like you. Put it on." Blitz tried to hem and haw and buy time. I looked away for a second and thought he was complying, but then he managed to cast a stun bolt. The merc wobbled and dropped his gun, then collapsed in a heap. Spark saw another bodyguard come at us from a room deeper in the apartment unit, and she fired a stun capsule at him, knocking him out cold.
We rushed to the bedroom to find Kurtis in bed. "I'm not going to resist, just make sure my doctor is able to care for me," he said. We told him we were not there to hurt him. We grabbed the wheelchair for him and found another to put the still-unconscious doctor in. We scrammed, and I suggested we go the opposite direction of the lounge on the way out. There was a corridor that circumvented that area, so we took that way. It led to a service elevator. It went down and opened to a direct access to the back way out of the building and onto the street. The maintenance man who we'd bribed earlier was standing nearby. He told us the way was clear and stepped aside. We spotted a small utility vehicle just inside the building. I told the man to act like I'd tased him as I raised the Taser at him, telling him it will look on the security cameras like he tried to stop us. I pretended to zap him and he went down. We loaded up the truck with the two wheelchairs and I grabbed the wheel while Spark rode shotgun. Blitz headed off on foot, splitting up with us.
A quick call to Mr. H and he gave us a place to meet to make the money drop and exchange of the tech.