[WANTED ALIVE: Dr. Staus von Komari][IC / Open / Alltech]

[Purnelaw]

Chandler didn't look surprised, they had after all began the investigation looking for Dr. Komari, but it was nice to hear some confirmation for once.

He leaned forward, "If the package was from Komari, where did it go, exactly?"

---

Kessenger scratched his head. "I'm sure the materials research guys would love to get a crack at this thing."

The intelligence officer nodded, "We do have quite a few to spare."

"Gotta love the AAR teams and their thoughtfulness." He remarked, as he nodded his head towards the pile of CCTV cameras that sat in a crate across from him.

"If we reactivate one, do you think we could trace where it sends the signal?"

That got the wheels in Kessinger's head turning.

[The Cult of Xil]

"As I heard it, they had the van loaded with it set for Montreal. Black paint. Californian license plate. Same one driven by the newspaper stars a few days ago. They had to get some new drivers for it, of course."

He sat back, furrowing his brows and staring into the wall behind Chandler.

"Actually- hold the thought. Boss made me keep stock of the license plates on the backs of the vehicles that came and went. I think I might remember the number... let's see... 2STO942. Yeah. That, or one containing the same first number and three letters. Oh, and if I'm not mistaken, it was a Volkswagen Caddy."

tonie leaned back, hoping this would appease the agent in front of him.

"...Look, man, I'm tired. I'd blab anything at this point for some donuts and a good night's sleep."

---

Whatever the device was, it was hard to figure out. It was as if the electrodes acted not as a way to communicate, but simply to unlock the thing. But after a while of tinkering, Kessinger was able to get a signal out of it.

As predicted, it was stronger than anything of comparable size manufactured by human science could produce. The signal was so strong that it was all but impossible to pinpoint where it was headed - if it wasn't a directionless signal.

But directed it was. For a few minutes, the thing had sent some sort of unbelievably complicated and totally indecipherable signal in the direction of Cuba. To be exact, somewhere just off the eastern coast of it, in the middle of the Atlantic. The data was so encrypted and locked up it almost seemed corrupted or randomly generated.

Almost.

Just when the destination it was calling out to was known, it shut itself off. It stopped responding to outside currents, until a crackling sound could be heard from within. To the science team's horror, the crystal structure was deliberately baking itself under its own heat. But it was too late.

They knew.

---

Misstress Vastrada sipped from an elegant glass of the finest red wine that France had to offer, and that was on sale on the shelves of the fanciest stored Boston had to offer. In her hands lay a long and finely structured document detailing sales and purchases of various illegal goods and services. Drugs, firearms, assassins, mercenary contracts, the whole deal.

She did not break her gaze when the beautiful oak door of her fireplace-lit office crept open with minimal creaking and let stride forth a sharply-dressed man who clasped his hands together and stood before her. She lowered her papers, sizing him up with a lifelong-practiced poker face almost as cold as her... benefactor.

"Mistress Vestrade, good evening."

She nodded as she set her wine down to her side.

"Good it is today, yes. You know why you are here. I have the documents ready for you."

He smiled, and she turned her attention towards the drawers to her side. A manila folder was still there where she had left it two hours thirty-six minutes and forty-nine seconds ago as measured by her wristwatch. She handed the man the folders, and took another sip of wine.

"You must act quickly. There was been a... leak, so to speak, somewhere down the chain. A certain 'boss' under my charge has failed to survive, and his underling has fallen into government hands, it seems. Regrettably, that government happens to not be American."

His brows tensed up. "Purnelaw?"

A faint, almost undetectable smile bent onto her face. It didn't look natural for someone who never smiled.

"You are quick. There is a reason you have this job. The information you need is inside, courtesy of Doctor himself. You have one week from now, exactly."

He nodded, and turned to leave. But his shoulder was grabbed by her words again.

"Don't fuck this up. Doctor doesn't like loose ends. And if you fuck this up, you are going to become a loose end."

"Yes, Mistress."

[Purnelaw]

Chandler nodded, "That should be all. Get your rest, if we need any more answers.. you'll know."

He shuffled the papers back into a neat stack, and took them with him as he left the room. He stopped and turned to look at Tonie one last time, "Oh, we may not have donuts, but we do have bagels." He pointed at the table, where a cardboard box that definitely wasn't there before sat. The wall closed behind him as he disappeared from view.

The agent sighed, he had honestly expected a bit less cooperation from the man, but given Tonie's circumstances, talking was in his best interest. Perhaps he could go for a sandwich. Kessinger appeared from around a bend, "Quinn, we've got a problem."

"What kind of problem?" Chandler asked, he put his lunch plans on hold.

"We think the folks who murked the boss know we have his subordinate." Kessinger replied. "..we're putting the base on silent lockdown, Waskils are on standby. Gonna let them come to us for once."

Chandler cocked his head, "What about the current lead?"

Kessinger reassured him, "Don't worry, someone already Left."

"Why did you say it like that?" Chandler squinted suspiciously at his fellow agent.

---

And so the gears began to turn again. Some indeterminate building in a Purnelewian office district moved their sign from 'open' to 'closed', and locked their doors for the night. Deep below, gargantuan machines stirred from their slumber.

In another building, an army's worth of data analysts took to the combined databases of the US and Canada. Improved object recognition software, among other means, scoured the continent in search of their quarry. If a border crossing was involved, it wouldn't be long before it was found.

[The Cult of Xil]

Mister Konias watched the sun rise over a Purnelawan skyline. The weapons hidden in his suitcase were beyond his understanding, but he had seen so much strange stuff in this world it made no difference to him now. His life was on the line. It was do or die.

He stopped at Room 201. The dossier said it would be here. He knocked twice on the door where Agent Camiston was staying.

There was no time to react. The very moment the door swung open, every camera in the vicinity suddenly lagged on one frame, picking up what slight sounds they could. When they resumed, the door was closed, and neither Konias nor Agent Camiston were in frame. Several minutes passed.

Gunshots rang out from within the room. Security forces marched up the stairs to find Konias lying dead on the ground, in a pool of blood. Agent Camiston waved his badge at the officers and explained how the unknown man in front of him met his end attempting his life. He walked away that day none the worse for wear.

... At least, the man who now looked exactly like him. And had stolen most of his memories. And reconfigured his body to look exactly like his own, and possess his fingerprints and DNA. The spent nanite-dart gun in his pocket was discarded neatly in a trash compactor as he passed by, along with the vial that contained his cosmetic alteration nanites. He felt somewhat disoriented.

He hated assuming a new person like this. But he was good at it, and that doomed him to doing it more in the future.

The entrance to the facility opened into his view. He remembered what he could from his victim's memories, micro-practiced his old habits and bits of his personality, and entered.

---

There it was.

2STO942.

Volkwagen Caddy.

Interstate 87.

It had come through just fourteen hours ago, by the records. No complications. Further investigation of security systems and cameras tracked its journey into Montreal, Canada, where it parked itself into an underground lot. It was still parked there. The crew inside it had unloaded its cargo into another vehicle that could not be seen or identified with no camera coverage, regrettably. But they were clueless they had been identified. In any case, they could simply track anything that had left the lot later.

"Bingo."

---

While crunching the numbers, a strange blip was noticed amid the ocean of data. One analyst adjusted his glasses on a strange incident involving a seagoing vessel scanning the ocean floor's topography near the site of the transmitter's recipient, and it had caught something. The find was reported to an oceanography company by the name of Atlantic Research International. It was mentioned in several online messageboards, with many speculating it to be some kind of downed UFO.

Heh. How ironic.

Some strange, reflective object, about the size of a large, green garbage bin you might find in the back of a business in a city, was partly embedded in the floor. The ship that noticed it moved on.

Analysis of the paths of previous vessels passing near the area never intersected the object well enough to have seen it, so it was unlikely it had been taken there by an unsubmersible craft. It was taken there by sub... or, perhaps, it was planted there from outside the atmosphere. No airspace incursions or astronomical events correlating with such an object could be found, but if this thing was made of the kind of tech seen before, who knows what it could do to hide itself. Or defend itself, for that matter.

[Purnelaw]

From the moment Konias took the life of Agent Camiston, he knew he was on a timer. The information contained in the dossier provided to him about Purnelaw would spell disaster for any other assassin without his skills, or technology.
While a meandering explanation of the inner workings of Purnelewian bureaucracy would be appropriate, that fact that each individual citizen could be measured by their plastic consumption within a decimal point of error left a nagging voice in the back of his head. He pushed through the glass doors to the lobby.

He knew from Camiston's memories that it was just a front, all he had to do was ask the right questions, and from then on it was a fairly straight shot to the target. Or so he hoped, the internal layout of the complex he sought was vague at best from the dossier, and former agent Camiston gave no help either.

He would approach the receptionist. She was a middle aged woman, glasses perched upon her nose, and hair tied into a bun. Perfectly nondescript. Her expression of surprise upon his arrival, however, was not. "Mr. Camiston, welcome back! We, er.. Didn't think you'd be back so soon. How are you feeling?"

Konias felt eyes all around him, this wasn't going to be a typical job.

---

A man stood to the left of the garage entrance, dressed in a dirty looking woodland jacket over tattered layers fit for the northern climate. With a hunched posture, he shook a cup and held a cardboard sign. A truly pitiful sight, one of the many vagabonds left to drift this earth, and left to beg for its scraps. A truly wonderful performance, is what it was.

His eyes scanned the interior as he shook the cup. A perfect chokepoint to monitor any outgoing traffic, all he had to do was find the right vehicle.

---

Chandler and Kessinger enjoyed some lunch, it was nice to take their minds off things.

---

On the seabed, the strange new object would rest undisturbed until a new friend came to join its company. The object in question? A regular wooden door, complete with doorframe. It sunk down towards the the green fridge, coming to a rest beside it.

[The Cult of Xil]

(OOC: edited last post for clarity - Konias swapped appearances with Agent Camiston so he could fake his identity)


"I'm feeling just fine. The hotel didn't have any chicken gumbo. I wasn't going to simply let myself go hungry like that, so I think I'll stay here for a while in the meantime. It's Wednesday, right?"

As far as he could tell, he was hitting every note correctly. Agent Camiston was always one to focus his attention on his gourmandism and his own personal comfort, mixed in with a hint of sarcasm. To tell the truth, Konias would have loved to meet him, if he was still alive... at least, 'alive' in the usual sense.

He was an interrogator. He had the clearance for the deeper levels of the facility. He could call the cameras to stop recording for him to do what needed to be done, get out, never be heard from again, and watch as the target mysteriously died irrecoverably some days later. He grinned, for these thoughts reassured him, but he was wary to not let his hope delude him.

Just because he might make it out of this alive doesn't mean it's likely.

---

As time dragged on and the sun set over the chilly landscape, the lookout fought to stay awake. The cold biting at him through his heavy clothing was enough to help him just meagerly come out on top, along with the constant hum and bustle of the city above.

Another vehicle rolled past him. His dulled senses took some moments to recognize it, but it was the one. When his brain finally moved into position, his response was still swift and sharp as though he had just gotten into his post. Now was the time.

---

The object was in the shape of a cone, if a bit blocky. The design was solid and seemingly perfectly angled and constructed. There were no visible openings or seams. It looked to be made of less than three parts in total.

The material was unlike any other on the Earth. Shiny, smooth, hard and unpinging when struck.

It didn't look terrestrial. Not at all. Even Purnelaw couldn't make something like it, judging from the techniques it would have supposedly took to build it.

[Purnelaw]

"Only when it's not." She snickered, "Well, if you're hungry, know where the cafeteria is. They brought in those chefs with the bagels from building 11, for a visit, what a treat!"

The receptionist glanced down at her workstation, "Oh! Central just scheduled you for a counseling appointment today, mental wellness and all that. It's in a few minutes with Dr. Langsey. If you're lucky you can grab a bite to eat before you go, but you know how she is with tardiness." She smiled at him before she directed her attention to another new arrival.

---

The man took a shaky step off the curb, and hobbled out in front of his prey. His cup -in actuality, a tin can- rattled, as he called out to those inside.

"Spare change for an old vet?" He asked in a cracked voice, seemingly wizened by old age and years of living off the streets.

---

With a sudden force, the door swung open, the resultant differential of crushing ocean pressure and none at all wrenched the object free of the seabed, it launched through the door and into a stark white room. No visible doors, cameras, or windows, but does a strange entity really need to be able to see, now? A remotely piloted submersible drone trundled forwards as the door slammed shut, breaking the connection.

[Royal Frankia]

Astarra


The United Department of Intelligence man sighed as he sat his desk, noting the flow of information that came back and forth from the Realm... And beyond. Informants, agents operating in foreign realms, and observation posts across the Cosmos offered the UDI a chance to monitor the pulse of Cosmic affairs. Its success at interpreting that information had led to the prevention of wars and the start of wars, though Agent Halk felt that his Department's reputation had been called into question.

The Magistrum had been prioritizing its Fleet Intelligence Apparatus since the Great Clash, undermining the UDI's position within the Realm as the cycles ticked by. The Fleet possessed far more manpower from which to draw on potential talent, while the UDI had to rely on a much smaller cadre. This had not been helped by the Crown's taking an axe to the Department's head, though not literally as in the days of yore.


United Department of Irrelevance...


Secretary Haal sipped from his coffee mug and viewed the latest word on the feed.


Dr. Staus von Komari..

Haal had heard that name before.. In a moment Komari's file appeared before his display, noting both his crimes and his potential threat to the satellites of the Realm within that portion of the Cosmos.

Ah yes, cloning...

Some nations relied on clone armies, but such an abomination was condemned by Holy Script. There was no honor in sending droids or clones to fight one's own battles, the battles of the folk. The Mater Most High had condemned the realm of Vystranna to desolation, rending her continents asunder and bringing them crashing down upon their heads.

The Mater's wrath was scarce these days, though the UDI's was known to be always on hand.

Haal sent the information on to a team that was operating within the area, led by a Zendgraaf Ostfanna.

Zendgraaf Ostfanna hologram appeared within a moment, dressed as a modest tradesmen on one of the client states.

The Zendgraaf bowed his head.

What is the stance of your team?

The flock is scattered, but can be regrouped momentarily.

Good, good. Have you read Komari's file?

I have... A man that needs to find himself into one of our black cells.

Aye, if possible. Though I would much rather have him disposed of.

Have you further word of his location?

I have nothing more than what I have read in the dispatch.

Perhaps more luck could be had cooperating with the agents of this Cult?

We have had no prior experience with them.. They could be of some assistance.

What if they desire to take him, if my team has him under control?

Do what you must..

Earth

The shuttle dropped from ftl, slipping into stealth mode as soon as it entered Sol. It glided through the void between those bodies that orbited the sun, making for the third rock from the sun. The UDI agents aboard checked their equipment and reviewed the latest status report. Zendgraaf Ostfanna checked his PDW once more, testing his finger on one of the shards in the magazine.

Ouch.

Blood trickled down from his finger, landing on the deck.

Should get a bandage, Graaf.

No thanks.

Better a drop of blood spilled here than on Earth.

It had been ages since the Frankians had set foot on an Earth, tending to avoid it in whatever Universe they found themselves in. Wars were common, with the result that a strip of land was often overvalued .. And vulnerable.

Status report?

The ship's ai took a moment to register, before a woman's voice pierced the silence.

It would appear that the natives of this portion of the Cosmos have not yet detected our arrival... Would you like me to inform them?

No need, they will know of our arrival soon enough..

[The Cult of Xil]

Purnelaw

"I'd best get going then. Thanks! Erm, by the way, could you point me in her direction? My brain doesn't seem to be working in order. Doesn't translate from the civilian world to this wonderful ecosystem of paperwork too well, going this fast."

She perked her eyebrows up.

"That's... new... Are you feeling well, Mr. Camiston?"

Konias dropped a sweat.

"... Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks. Just need some directions to freshen my memory."

---

The black vehicle stopped in front of the man, its music still beating out audibly from inside and loudening when one of the people in the passenger side stepped out.

"Er, sorry, old man, but we could've just run you over right about now. You need to be more careful, yes?"

The man, sharply dressed, filled with a typical New York accent, reached into one of his pockets to bring out his wallet.

"How much might you need?"

---

The object, shiny and featureless, stood there unflinchingly. It was just over a meter wide at the base, but it felt as though it weighed so much more than an appliance of the same rough size. The drone that cast its mechanical gaze over it noted several anomalies right off the bat, as well as the sensors crammed around the chamber. The surface of it seemed to have similar qualities to both diamondoid materials and some of the most durable metal alloys known to high science.

It was ice cold. Deadly, deadly, deathly cold. Far colder than the surrounding ocean, in fact. For exact numbers, the surface read out something on the order of -93.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Geiger counters cracked off just a tick more than they ought to for the environment they were in. The thing was emitting a small bit more than it's fair portion of high-energy gamma rays. Aside from this, almost nothing else seemed to be going on in the thing's internal construction. No vibrations. No radio transmissions. Nothing they could pick up.

But, then again, if this had anything to do with the Doctor, it wasn't likely human science was advanced enough to detect whatever it was giving off. That realization raised some red flags.

It might be connected yet. Its creators or operators, somewhere out there, might notice it was captured, and it might have some kind of built-in anti-capture mechanism.

Time was of the essence.

[Purnelaw]

OOC: FINALLY! This post felt cursed, I lost progress twice on top of everything else. Sorry for the delay bros.

Earth, Ashekani Archipelago,
somewhere in Purnelaw, the reception desk.

"Just follow the light blue stripe on the wall to the left, you should find the GP offices down there. Doctor Langsey's office is number 334." The receptionist answered, her voice sounded a bit taken aback by Konias' performance as Camiston. While she couldn't quite place it, something felt off. Konias needed to disengage fast or he'd be caught on the first phase alone.

"I can have one of the security personnel guide you instead, if you like." She offered, her eyes flicked from him to her workstation. A man seated in the lobby coughed, and Konais felt the eyes from all around shift off his back.

Whether her offer was a product of malice or genuine concern was Konais' decision to make.

---

Earth, Ashekani Archipelago,
somewhere in Purnelaw, deep underground.

Somewhere much farther away, and much further down inside the earth, a gaggle of analysts sat surrounded by a chaotic mass of computer systems and electronics. It felt almost as if they had dug out a cave, carved from the jungle of silicon and plastic. The lopsided ceiling full of cables held precariously aloft by monolithic server racks that acted as makeshift columns.

A chorus of CPU status lights added to the murky haze of computer screens that displayed all matter of things, although it was hard to make out anything beyond the silhouettes of hunched analysts that tore through data and prepackaged meals alike. Not that they really needed any more light anyways, their eyes had long adapted to the dark.

A certain visitor, however, had not. he unknowingly slammed his face directly into a low hanging trunk-sized bundle of cable. The resultant noise of both shock and pain loud enough for the analysts to hear over the noise of the lively machines that entombed them. One whipped around and shone a flashlight on the man's face. Well, a head-shaped blob of scar tissue with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. While such a description could be considered bit cruel, it wasn't entirely off.

"Lukas!" The silhouette cried out, "I thought you were still busy being dead?"

"Used up all my leave last month." Lukas answered, "--also Christ! It took me like, half an hour to get here. Kinsey, was living in the techno-caves your idea?"

Kinsey laughed. "You can take your grievances up with the folks who built it! Also, living in here is a time honored tradition for us analysts, show some respect." Someone hidden much further into the complex gave a hoot at Kinsey's last remark.

"Somebody built this place..?" Lukas cleared his throat and brought himself back to a more pertinent topic. "So, uh, Central wants an update on the thingy."

"Well, it's cold, and radioactive. That's about it! We've done all the testing we can do normally." Kinsey shrugged.

Another analyst piped up, hidden in the dark, "We're gonna hit it with a bat next!"

"No. No we aren't!" Kinsey shouted, "Bat testing is considered 'too invasive', but since a field-" -she made jazz hands for extra emphasis- "-agent is here, and we've sent all the data already.. I'm guessing Central is authorizing something?"

Lukas gave a non-committal grunt, "I just got told to check up on you, but if you'd like to have something passed up the chain of command.."

"Oh ho!" Kinsey interrupted, "Central's being cryptic again, I see. Do they want us to use the-computer-who-shall-not-be-named?"

Lukas frowned -as best he could post .50 BMG to the face- and thought back to his dossier, "You mean the Dredge?"

A cheer went up from the surrounding analysts, they congregated in the large center section of the cave, additional silhouettes backlit by CPU lights began to emerge from the walls and joined the procession.

He could faintly make out Kinsey wryly saying 'Now you've done it', before her remark was drowned out by a chant of DREDGE! DREDGE! DREDGE! DREDGE! from the gathered data nerds. Lukas silently wished he had saved up more vacation time.

---

Earth, North America,
Montreal, A parking garage.

The man who stood to the left of the car coughed, the can grasped by his bony fingers rattled sympathetically. "Just a bit to get me somewhere warm for the night, fellas."

He coughed again and hobbled over the hood of the van and used his elbow to prop himself up for support. The can rested on the hood as his eyes scoured the interior for any sign of his target.

"I don't need much." He said.

---

Chandler sat across from Kessinger in the building's cafeteria at one of the small tables arranged neatly around a rather pleasing looking water feature. Chandler's attention, however, was on his fellow agent as he watched in a mixture of terror and awe as Kessinger finished yet another box of bagels. With raisins in them.
"I can't believe you like that stuff." Chandler commented, he put down his half-eaten sandwich.

Kessinger shrugged him off, "What? It adds texture to the bagel."

"Yeah, texture as in somebody filled the batter with insects." He argued, "Bread texture is supposed to be uniform!"

Kessinger cocked his head, "Ooh, you're just trying to stall me with conversation, aren't you?"

Chandler put his elbows on the table and leaned in, "I'm concerned with your carb addiction. --also raisins in bagels are disgusting."

His fellow agent shrugged, "I eat what I burn off, besides, when you've got ~physique~ like me, you gotta fuel your body. Not my fault you're a beanpole, Quinn." He flexed his arm for emphasis, as the rolled sleeves on his uniform strained to contain it.

"I'm not sure a diet of only bagels can maintain that much muscle." Chandler stated.

"That's what the raisins are for, Agent Chandler." The intelligence officer approached the table, she smiled at both of them as she grabbed a chair from an adjacent table.

Kessinger nodded in agreement, "See?"

She sat down, a manila folder lay upon her lap. "Do any of you know Agent Camiston?"

"Not personally, no. Why?" Chandler asked.

---

Earth, Ashekani Archipelago,
somewhere in Purnelaw, deeper underground.

Lukas and Kinsey followed the procession deeper into the maddening tunnels of the data farm, the gleeful analysts had begun the chant some time ago, and they didn't seem like they were going to stop any time soon.

He ducked another low flying branch of cables, careful not to snag any sensitive skin. "So, what's the dredge, anyway?"

Kinsey exhaled, "That's a loong story. Do you know how a Waskil Type IV Anomaly Stabilization Device works?"

"Does anyone?" Lukas asked.

"Good point. Anyways, a long long time ago, the data monkeys got their hands on a decommissioned one from AOCOM, and while they couldn't screw with Passek layers or anything fancy like that, they did find out that it still had some useful properties."

"Like?" Lukas prodded.

"Well if you remember from Anomalous Mechanics 101, the lower the Passek Layer, the less 'concrete' things get, and the more perception skews reality in a literal sense. Turns out, we found that objects in a lower passek environment began to transmit a very faint erm.. 'signal', I won't get too deep into it here, but this signal gets transmitted somehow to whatever perceives the object, even in abstraction like thought, or even physical media! We think it has some sort of correlation with how anomalies can manipulate objects not technically in their sphere of influence, but--"

"So.. a machine that can read minds?"

"Sort of!" Kinsey laughed, "As long as we have the target nearby, the Dredge can pick up just about anything that knows about or describes the object. Sure there's a lot of chaff, and we can't exactly tell the difference between different 'perceivers', but with enough time lots of useful data piles up. Since it's super powerful Cental and AOCOM are really strict, so we're unbelievably excited that you've authorized us!"

"I didn't.. do anything?"

"You seem to forget how cryptic Central likes to be." Kinsey chided, "Mindgames for friend and foe! --Oh, here we are now!"

The procession in front of them parted with a dramatic flourish, the constant chant slowly began to die down as the massed data technicians formed into a circle around an object in the middle of a massive central chamber. Lukas' eyes actively fought against his attempts to discern the machine in the middle of the room, and his brain filed a similar protest, a splitting headache suggested that he would best leave the exposed Waskil core unperceived. His eyes found a much more pleasant target to settle upon, an old desktop workstation connected by unknown means to the yawning abyss just behind it.

Kinsey sat down at the central computer, the analysts that milled about the object took positions around similar workstations that formed a wide ring about the center of the room. She ushered him closer, "You're gonna want to see this thing turn on."

Lukas crept forward as the workstation powered on, and the room began to taste blue as the machine was brought to bear. Kinsey began to type as she navigated a primitive text-only GUI, her fingers deftly fluttered across the keys. The room began to hum, Lukas couldn't tell if it was the ring of analysts, or something else that made the noise, but the low drone seemed to permeate every atom of his body.

Kinsey stopped typing and glanced about the room.
"Hold on.. connection to focus object established, everybody ready?"

She took the silence as a good sign, and pressed a final key.

The hum turned to a deafening screech before it fell silent, but the room wouldn't remain quiet for long as the analysts began to excitedly call out to the others in the room about a massive flow of text that poured from each of the displays.
While most of it was garbled, incomprehensible, and obfuscated by their own monitoring equipment, there would eventually be enough data to begin to recognize patterns, which the analysts hoped would eventually lead to answers to the plethora of questions they had about the strange object.
Chief among them, who sent it?

[The Cult of Xil]

Konias weighed his options. He decided that accepting her offer would earn him trust points.

"Yes, thank you. My head is really starting to disorient me as of late; getting to see the facility might freshen it."

Konias checked his watch. It had been nine hours now. He had to hurry. He leaned upon the desk, rubbing his hands as someone approached him, decked out in gear.

---

One of the crew took out fifty dollars from his wallet. It was not a mass of bills; but rather, a whole fifty-dollar-bill. The money he had on him was just that extravagantly great, and yet here he was, handing it over to this poor lowfallen man dressed in rags. It felt kind of regrettable, the way he wasn't even trying to collect his information to strike him up with a debt with the mob. Perhaps they didn't deserve to get wrapped up in all of this. Perhaps they were trying to make themselves feel better for the things they've done in the past. It was fortunate enough they did not focus on the man's old and tired eyes nearly as much as they did his hands and the tears in his pants.

His eyes were locked.

Sitting in the back of the vehicle was a massive strongbox, weighing something on the order of three hundred pounds, it seemed. It was wrapped in chain and duct tape, and a thick layer of it at that. It would take special time and effort to open it.

Bingo.

---

The analysts searched through the many walls of text, and after many hours past sunset, the sample size had swollen to a sufficient size. Running the specialized software in their toolset for just over a few minutes through the megabytes of solid text the machine had put out was a pain, but once it was completed, it stunned all those crowded around the monitor that read it.

Over the course of the past thirty minutes the machine had been running, certain words and phrases did indeed keep on repeating themselves. Many different kinds. There were verbs and nouns and proper nouns and specific locations.

Los Angeles. Boston. Montreal. New York. America. Earth.

Why was Earth included? Such a broad place to find something.

Insertion. Relay. Discovered. Destruct.

"New", and "Orbit".

"Vestrade".

But the ultimate bombshell, the one that crept up the fewest of the repeating words, the one that made everyone scream with joy and progress, stood near the bottom. Funny.

"Doctor".


...wait, did those past few words mention something about an "orbit"?

[Purnelaw]

The receptionist smiled at Konias one final time and nodded towards the security guard before she directed her attention to the line of people that stood behind as they waited to check in for themselves.

The guard in question was decked out indeed, the Purnelewian populace was well accustomed to soldiers in armor, so a security officer wearing a hermetically sealed exoskeleton standing in the lobby of an office complex wasn't exactly out of the ordinary. At least, that's what Konais' new memories told him. The officer's posture relaxed as they pointed with an open hand toward one of the many hallways that lead from the hallway.

Their voice was clinical and polite, although the distortion of suit mounted speakers made it impossible to tell the actual intent.

"Right this way, Mr. Camiston."

---

Meanwhile, an important discussion was being had in the cafeteria. The three agents clustered together as they wildly gesticulated and

The intelligence officer coughed, "Am I sensing a bit of hypocrisy, Agent Chandler?"

"No!" He protested, "Pineapple on pizza and raisin bagels are two different situations!"

"Oh really,? They're bread based, and both add a juiciness to the food at hand!" Kessinger shouted.

Someone at another table leaned out and shouted in return, "Weren't you guys discussing something important?"

"This is important!" Kessinger and Chandler replied in unison.

"Right." The intelligence officer cleared her throat, "Well, it may seem unrelated, but recycling authorities found something strange in the processing unit on the same day as the attempt on Agent Camiston's life."

She procured a tablet that displayed an image of an unknown gun-shaped device held aloft by a garbageman with a befuddled expression on his face. "We're not exactly sure what it is right now, but lab analysis has discovered some kind of.. complex metallic micro-residue on it. It's definitely not one of ours, and given that Agent Camiston survived, it wouldn't make sense that he would dispose of evidence like that."

"So, foul play?" Chandler asked.

The Officer shook her head, "It's still uncertain, Camiston is a trusted interrogator, but he's acting strange. I want you two to keep an eye on him."

---

The man who leaned on the left side of the van's hood eyes changed for a second, from behind the dull cloudiness of age, a more sinister gaze flashed across his face. He tapped his can twice upon the hood. There was a sharp crack, and the van's lights died as the engine choked and shuddered to a halt.

The man hobbled backward, the can clattered to the ground. "Oh damn. What happened?" He asked innocently.

---

The myriad analysts scurried about the chamber as they plotted all of the keywords that began to repeat and any other scrap of data they thought could be useful. Of course, the more they wrote, the more the Dredge brought up their own efforts that clouded the results even more.

Kinsey folded her hands and leaned onto the table, her eyes scoured the monitor for any more useful data, but they would soon need to set up a filter algorithm, and that was going to take time they most likely didn't have. After all, interfacing anything logical with the anomalous typically ended in disaster. "Los Angeles, most likely referring to the Los Zetas cartel, I'm assuming. --but why Boston? Is there another operation in place?" She mused.

Lukas -who purposely pointed himself away from the core of the Dredge- interrupted her thoughts, "Insertion relay.. new.. orbit? Hey, has there been any strange orbital activity recently? New satellites, especially those which give off radiation?"

She jolted from her trance, "Whuh? Oh, we can certainly try looking, I can send a request to Central."

He nodded, "That would work. Say, what does 'Vestrade' mean?"

[The Cult of Xil]

Konias complied with a smile. On the way, he took note of every tiny thing he could. His training let him think of an alibi in the event that his hosts suspected something without drawing his eyes to a corner of his vision, or touching his face. His silence, however, could not be faked.

"So, what's your favorite lunch item, Mr. Security?"

---

The mobsters in the rear of the formation silently and cautiously drew their weapons, though they did not have any current intent to use them. Their eyes glanced around the lot slowly and sharply.

The mobster to the front of the man turned his attention to their vehicle. With the black paint, it was somewhat hard to make out, but as he leaned in closer, he could make out a neat bullet-hole in the hood.

"Sir? What's thi-"

---

Cybersec workers poured over all of the newsfeeds they could get their cheesy snack-food-crusted hands on. They each typed with a demonic speed, something that almost seemed to not be possible for human physiology. A feat made unsurprising when one considered they were mostly in their thirties when they had been using computers since they were just seven years old.

There it was. While pilfering through the records of Japan's news, there had been a major satellite launch in the past month alone. The Blue 3 satellite, an oceanography study, had been sent into a low and inclined orbit around Earth that would frequently take it over the planet's oceans.

Quite interestingly, it also gave off radiation. Supposedly, this was the result of an onboard radioisotope thermoelectric generator. The design of the satellite, however, made this possibility slim. It didn't support the shape of the satellite at all.

Another search of the name Vestrade brought agents to the police records in Boston. Apparently, "Vestrade" referred to the family name of a local mob organization of Italian origin.

This set off some more red flags. The late "boss" that had been killed during the warehouse raid had several papers in his panic room that linked him with Boston.

---

The red irises of what might have been a machine, a monster, or some deranged scientist stared coldly yet furiously at a screen in front of him. He put his four hands - each with four digits - over the controls that stood beside it. Typing into the keys at their side, he called up one of his many hundreds of contacts around the globe below.

After many minutes of impatient waiting, he got a face back at him. A beautiful human female greeted him, clad in rich, silky red garb. He opened his teeth, his possum-like face still expressionless.

---

Mistress Vonica Vestrade tried to put on the best face she could. She knew Doctor was not going to be happy, but this was her contract with him.

The feed opened to his face once again. She braced her eyes.

Doctor's face looked like that of a possum's, mounted onto the shoulders of a somewhat scrawny human, covered in white fur. Four insect-like arms extended from those shoulders, ending in four-fingered hands that looked as though you had shaved the thumbs off of a human's and bent the index fingers into new ones. Beneath his waistline was a true anomaly, however. Instead of a pair of legs, there was only a long, tapering tail of nerve and muscle tissue that ended in many smaller tendrils. It trailed on for some fifteen feet. The way Doctor moved around on it was fluid and horrible all the same.

He was clad in his cleansuit, save its helmet and his gloves, as was standard for him. The unimaginable technologies that made up his suit and his lair cast a dark gloom about the dimly-lit room he seemed to hover throughout.

"Miss Vonica - or should I call you Vestrade?"

"...Vestrade would be preferred, thank you."

"One of our relays has been compromised. I've sent out the self-destruct signal, but it looks as though much of our position has already been compromised."

"We have one in my complex, Doctor-"

"That is not our problem, Miss Vestrade. You have been discovered. Purnelaw is coming for you."

Miss Vestrade's guts twisted in her core. She had ordered and witnessed men be skinned alive right before her. She had seen hundreds gunned out at once at her command. She had shot people in the face personally after making them to kneel and beg before her.

None of it compared to Doctor.

"I will-"

"You will hide. You must hide. You will die otherwise. I don't want you to die, Miss Vestrade. That would set my plans back by almost five months."

"I... I will hide."

---

For a few moments, it seems as though some systems glitch had broken out in the Dredge's monitors. Someone began shouting aloud to the rest of the room, prompting everyone to move over to the feeds monitoring the object.

To their horror, it was melting.

Melting was the only way it could really be described. Some strange black goop was causing the strange machine to disintegrate before their very eyes, and there was nothing they could do about it.

The temperatures in the chamber suddenly soared to over twenty thousand degrees, and held it there. By the time the blaze had died down, there was nothing left of the artifact but ashed and some bizarre metallic residue.

A bizarre metallic residue.

Strange. Where had that been seen before?

[Qhevak]

World Assembly Headquarters, Moria Offices

Bobby Tomlinson, Qhevak’s Moria hab’s ambassador to the not-so-hallowed institution that was the World Assembly, sat in a tiny office made even more cramped by gratuitous retro sci-fi memoranda while absentmindedly poring over documents relating to something involving land reclamation regulation. Fifteen seconds later - his Em brain could work quite fast - the work was done and the referendum voted on, allowing him to return to his real work, managing distribution of Qhevak made armaments and subsystems on this strange, fractal Earth.

As he poured through the files relating to the distribution of WT-440C recreational twenty-kiloton tacticals to a very wealthy blockbuster director, his secretary opened the door with a rather odd and much more exciting request.

“Uh sir”, she asked – she’d been recruited locally, and was still somewhat unused to Bobby’s form – “I, u, don’t mean to, uh, disturb, but have you checked your mail in the last few minutes? You have a new message tagged urgent.”

Bobby’s eyes would have widened in excitement if he’d had them. “Thanks. You can leave for now.” He accessed his email through his exocortex, calling loudly for his security team right after.

Ms Tanaka and Mr Villariel entered promptly, having already read the full mail in the intervening second, with the former rolling in as a goopy ball before attaining her more humanoid form and the later sauntering in on hundred of metallic needle legs.

“So what do you-“ Tomlinson began.

“What do I think? Next fucking LEVEL profit opportunity if we get our hands on this stuff first, that’s what I think.” Tanaka replied, part shifting her arm into a gun.

Tomlinson sighed – his security team never let up on reminding him that he didn’t really outrank them here. “For any hope of profit we’ll probably want to get moving fast” he replied. “From what I gather our office was towards the tail-end of the email chain.”

Worse yet was the present lack in terms of information and available resources, even accounting for their technological superiority to most local powers. Current local assets directly available to Tomlinson, aside from his personal security, mostly consisted of local sales representative, with a small bit of muscle to deal with poor customers. More promising was Shivastra PMC’s assault transport Yard Crasher, which had just left a local combat assignment and could be routed in within a few days – if they agreed, which wasn’t much of an issue with the deep coffers of Tomlinson’s armament distributors.

The next few days were therefore spent purely in tight WA offices, mindlinked to the point of total ego dissolution while spending subjective months running through hacked data, social media and newsfeeds from countless thousands of states – a titanic task even with some of the best machine learning on the planet sifting things for them. As they reached the Crasher’s arrival, initial plans mostly set, they were not quite tired – that was impossible with their level of augmentation, but nevertheless quite hopeful this could all end soon.

Geostationary Orbit, Earth
Thirty-six thousand kilometers above the Earth, the Grizzly assault transport Yard Crasher of the Shivastra private mercenary contractor left warp into a geostationary orbit, ready to unleash a broad menu of kill options with a push of a button. Running in full stealth mode, with metacloak on and all waste heat pumped into deep sinks, the craft was invisible to all but the most persistent and high-tech observer.

Huddled deep in the craft’s core under a comforting blanket of adamant armor, coolant and broad spectrum active protection, the CIC center was filled with silent activity as the emulation crew, wired tightly into both the ship’s systems and each other, thoughtshared at a pace incomprehensible to ordinary humans. Given how much of a dud the short-lived SETA-CHALICE conflict had turned out to be, a new opportunity for action was a quite pleasant surprise.

The target was Blue 3, a oceanography satellite launched from Tanegashima a month ago, supposedly for the purpose of oceanography. Surveys done by Bobby’s teams in the intervening days had tagged it as potentially anomalous due to a peculiar large radiation signal – the supposed use of an RTG was belied by it’s form.

A tiny dust flake, mere millimeters wide, shot from the Crasher’s side, propelled on tiny puffs of supercooled gas. It drifted for a time on an absolute minimum energy orbit, before a second tiny puff brought to a near standstill next to Blue 3. It slowly settled on the surface, hooking in with tiny nanofibers, before a horde of tiny machines, each mere micrometers wide. They slowly cut through the satellite with holes just large enough for a bacterium, moving closer to the radiation's source at a steady pace.

[Purnelaw]

The security officer replied near instantly, "Pulled pork on rye bread with honey barbecue sauce, had it once after a firefight. Tasted like victory ever since."

"Now, let's get you to that appointment." They gestured once more towards the hall, beckoning him to follow them deeper into the building, which despite how closed it insisted it was, there groups of people steadily arriving to and leaving the lobby in rapid succession.

If it weren't for the delicate ballet on display, it would be easy to be caught up in the undertow of uniformed employees, as he and the officer stood amongst them.

The clock was ticking.

---

The man ducked low as another metal slug whistled overhead, throwing sparks into the air as it sunk itself into the engine block.

A sniper.

"It's someone shooting at us, man!" He screamed as he scrambled for cover behind the van, his can clattering to the asphalt as he went. Coins littered the ground on the driver's side- a man's entire livelihood dashed to the streets once more.

Well, if he had ever been homeless in the first place.
In fact, the man owned many things. Most pertinent to now, of course, was command of a man with a suppressed rifle hidden in an apartment building some kilometers away. Obnoxious music poured from speakers adjacent to them that helpfully obscured their gunshots by drawing the ire of his neighbors in a more harmless direction.

The man behind the van studied the next movement of his plan, as he continued to play his part by panicking.

"It's the government, they've found me!" He yelled.

---

The shouts and cries of the analysts fell silent, for all the data they were hoping to uncover from the device, while helpful, they had certainly hoped for more.

"That's.. disappointing." Lukas remarked.

"Not quite!" Kinsey exclaimed, she gestured at a large screen that helpfully lowered itself as it was mentioned. Displayed upon it were the compiled notes and leads gathered from the most recent dredging. "We've actually narrowed down our search from an entire planet, to just a few cities, and we've also started to see a pattern, too."

She stood up and cleared her throat as the analysts gathered around, "It seems like Komari here has a certain affinity for.. non-law abiding organizations. Los Zetas, the mafia we hit a few days ago, and now-- Vestrade. They're a group based in Boston, so that's another link to our other keywords, if we're going to get close to their other contacts, that's probably where we'd start."

She tapped at the screen as she continued.
"Granted we're not sure what he uses Vestrade for, nor really why Los Zetas was involved, but hopefully we can get more answers once.. what's his face?" Kinsey's face contorted into a confused expression, "What's.. the one with Quinn the first time, who was he?"

Lukas snapped his fingers to bring her back to topic, "It's not important, but getting our hands on a sample of his product would come in handy, even if it's just keeping it off the streets."

He pointed at a thin line that bisected the map, "I'm more interested in the satellite, a whole lot doesn't make sense. Why have an RTG on a satellite with a low orbit? Solar panels should have been sufficient, and procuring that kind of material doesn't come cheap. It's definitely a cover story."

"Right" Kinsey shooed the other analysts back to work, "I'll get the PA/SC on the line and get eyes on it. As for us, we're going to keep sifting through the data, see if we can't find any more intel in the rough. Send my recommendations to Central that we should get agents over there right away. --Say, you're free, aren't you?"

Lukas laughed, scratching the back of his neck, "While we've got good momentum so far, too much pressure might make the Doctor lash out at us directly, and I'm not exactly looking for another hole in my head so soon. I'd much rather Kessinger get melted this time around."

"Speaking of melting.." An analyst ran up to the screen which swapped to a view of the containment chamber that once held the strange device. "We're coming across some similarities to a material found in the Camiston case.. Has anybody seen the 2008 remake of 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'?"

They both gave the analyst a strange look, "No..?" Lukas answered.

"Nanites. I think it's nanites." The analyst shifted uncomfortably, "Some kind of scuttling mechanism for sure, but I'm preeetty sure it's going to start eating the walls any minute now."

Kinsey shrugged, "If it does, get the stabilization techs to drop it into the void or something, it's no use to us now, anyway."

"So, the satellite?"

---

Earth, Ashekani Archipelago, North Feskan,
Purnelewian Air/Space Command Strategic Observatory "Oculus"

Technical Sergeant Vance poured herself another cup of coffee, it had been a busy day. An overwhelming load of strange requests kept coming in from various different agencies, increased surveillance of near-Earth objects, a billion questions about some blip a few hours ago, and now a brand new inquiry about a satellite that had already been launched by the Japanese months ago. It all had to happen on her watch, of course.

She sighed, raising the mug to her lips to take a sip when one of her Airmen burst through the door. "What?" She snapped.

"There's some guys outside, no patches, but they say they're IASPC. Got a big truck outside, too." They pointed out the window, to where a small army of technicians surrounded a trailer truck with a massive container on it's back. Whatever it was, it was heavily shielded, and important.

"What's Internal Affairs doing here, is this about the blip we caught?" She asked.

The Airman shook their head, "No they're here for the satellite thingy. Kinda surprised, I thought they'd be more interested in the UFO."

A third voice, "Well, we are, but the Blue 3 satellite tickles our fancy." A man brushed past the Airman into the room, his face sported a full beard, and an unhealthy amount of scar tissue. "I'm Agent Hartford, with the IASPC, if you could guess. Do you have anything that can get close to it?"

"There's an unmanned tug with a camera on it close by.." Her mind raced, "But I would need to make some calls first, propellant doesn't come cheap up there."

His face contorted into a smile, "No need."

---

Earth, Low Earth Orbit

With a few small puffs of propellant, the utility tug 'Popsicle' floated free of its dock onboard the Motherlode, a Purnelewian built orbital mining facility. Today's activity was an oddity, with maneuvering clearances being authorized in a matter of seconds rather than hours of deliberation. The tiny RCS thrusters that dotted its oblong body fired once more, rotating the craft towards its target. A supposedly Japanese built oddity known as the Blue 3 satellite, which had been passing by a convenient intercept point.

All Popsicle had to do was fire its main engine once to bring it lazily to its target, being in space rather than the depths of the ocean this time. It was better to take things slowly, as people might notice Purnelaw snatching a foreign nation's satellite in broad daylight. Protective lens caps retracted from high resolution cameras, mechanisms whirred as they brought Blue 3 into view, the strangely shaped craft growing ever larger as the tug approached.

---

Back on Earth

TSgt Vance watched her console intently, lightly feathering the throttle lever, and bringing Popsicle to a halt a few meters away from Blue 3. Agent Hartford -if that even was his real name- hovered behind her, his one eye squinting at the satellite. "We've definitely seen one of those before.." He muttered.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Vance asked.

Hartford dismissed her concerns, "Not something you need'ta worry about. Can we get this thing to grab the sat?"

"This is already pushing the limits of what's allowed by international law, and you want me to intercept a friendly power's sovereign territory?" She protested, turning her attention from the console to Hartford, who fixed her with a glare.

"That thing's not Japanese." He stated, nodding towards the screen. "Just grab the thing, if you don't-- I'm sure I can find someone who will."

Vance swallowed, "Aye."

She turned back to the controls, and Popsicle's spindly limbs reached out to touch the object.

[The Cult of Xil]

Konias could say anything to someone else and make it look convincing enough. While most people had heard the saying - that if one thought they were a good liar, they were wrong - Konias knew for a fact that he was. He had fooled countless people, countless times over. He had convinced billionaires to give up their life's work.

But now, there was no lie he could tell himself to convince himself he wasn't scared. He truly had no backup plan. He didn't have a first plan, either. All he had was a single, rogue thought, something he'd remembered from a map he'd seen on a wall somewhere back.

"I need to use the restroom."

Was it a cheap tactic? Sure. But the guards knew more than anything the feeling once got when you needed to go. It was a sacred code - if you had to go, you were taken care of and nobody asked anything. To abuse it was heinous -

- but he had done worse.

---

"Fuck!"

"Get behind the van!"

"畜生!"

"¡Hijo de puta!"

There were many nationalities that the crew recruited from. Their organization happened to be based in one of the most multiethnic nations in the world, one that promised freedom to everyone, indiscriminately. And they were defiling it.

They were about to pay the price.

Alone, isolated, they could do nothing but wait. Their leader - a tall Yakuza member - pulled back the hammer of his custom-fitted Desert Eagle. To say the Deagle was overpowered would be an understatement, but against a sniper's marksmanship? He contemplated swallowing the bullet himself.

He remembered. Cowardice would not be tolerated. He had no choice. Mustering his courage, he rolled out of cover and fired blindly into the darkness at a balcony fifteen feet away that looked like a sniper's nest was holed up in it. It hit nothing but empty glass. In the midst of shooting blindly, in all directions, he shouted in a thick Japanese-accented voice that reeked of the strength and brutality embodied by his entire organization.

"I will distract them! Run! Take the package with you! Do not let it be captured!"

---

Popsicle's thin little arm stabilized onto the hull of the Japanese satellite with no issue. It was, indeed, an odd design. All of the sensors mounted on one end, a massive compartment for... something, an oddly smooth construction...

And no RTG to speak of.

It made no sense to mount it internally - the heat would be too much. This thing, whatever it was, was not built in the slightest for monitoring the oceans. It did not even have the right instruments, as a focused and knowledgeable engineer would notice instantly. Blue 3's orbit was not even right for an oceanography satellite.

The moment first contact was made, Popsicle detected something else wrong with the satellite, one that was arguably far more interesting. It was vibrating. And cold. Very, very cold.

Just as cold as the object sunk beneath the sea had been.

[Purnelaw]

The guard looked down at Konias, the suit speaker crackling. "..of course, there's one right by the cafeteria-- It's on our route anyhow." They nodded towards their intended path, the cameras the helmet had mounted in lieu of a faceplate tracked Konias' face as they moved. Some kind of antiemetic buffer, if Camiston had anything to say about it.

Konias noticed the corridors widening as they walked further into the complex, walls sprouting heavy structural supports as if they were deep underground. Even the doors they passed became more reinforced, more fit for a vault than an office. Although he would have his doubts this was still a simple cubicle farm as the throngs of people moving past them were suddenly wearing grey military uniforms, rather than button-ups and slacks.

He felt the cold stare of optical systems slide off of him for a second, as the guard eyed a colored stripe running to a pair of doors just off of the main corridor, which widened into a massive courtyard full of tables --and even more people. They offered another open-palmed gesture towards the two doors, "Here we are Mr. Camiston. I apologize, you probably haven't been familiarized with this branch yet. Central's a bit of an odd one to make your way around."

They took up a post outside of the doors, "I'll wait for you here, I'm sure Dr. Langsey can excuse a few minutes." Whether or not the Guard laughed or just static was up to Konias to decide.

Pushing past the cold steel, Konias would find himself in a sterile, white bathroom. Stalls to his right, sinks and mirrors to the left, with a strange topiary in the corner. There was a pair of feet sticking out of one of the stalls, but other than that, it was all his.

---

The Yakuza man's shots rang hollow as the rest of his cohort took cover behind their van, and hopefully out of the sniper's sight. On their left cowered the homeless man, doing his best to look useful by peeking his head out around the van, shouting incoherently. Well, that was before the gangsters mentioned the 'package'.

He fell silent, quietly replaying his next actions in his mind. His coat flashed open, an integrally suppressed 9mm pistol --quite a departure from a Desert Eagle, but still effective flew into his right, and the neck of the Yakuza into his other. With surprising strength, he wrapped himself around the man, bringing him to bear against the other gangsters as a shield.

"NOBODY MOVE!" He shouted, the meek voice stripped away to reveal his true intent.

Whomever reacted the fastest would find two bullet holes in their center of mass.

The sniper adjusted their scope as a data link from the suppressed pistol's compact target system blinked to life. Blue silhouettes flickered behind the van, they chambered another round as the reticle aligned itself to a new target.

---

"Well, what are we waiting for here? Let's pop 'er open or something." Hartford said leaning uncomfortably over Vance, singular eye straining to make sense of the shapes on the display. Vance began to stutter a complaint, but was shushed by Hartford. Did she really spend her whole career in the PA/SC just to get pushed around like an E3?

"Come on, find a USB port, jack in!" He said, Vance turned to look at the molten wax Hartford had for a face.

"I'm kidding." He scoffed, "You're doing good, just keep a steady eye on it. I gotta make a phone call real quick."

---

Lukas' phone rang. He briefly mused on however he actually has cell service all the way down here as he snapped the device to his ear. "Hello?"

"Lukas! It's Hartford, we've got physical contact on the next probe, can you guys Dredge that thing remotely or something?" Lukas blinked, his partner was wasting little time.

He glanced over at Kinsey, who gave him a weird look. "The dredging chamber's already pre-ranged, what he's asking us to do is synchronize a destabilized Waskil core with something that's moving at orbital velocities a thousand or so kilometers above our heads, so unless he can bring the sat down to us, no way." She said.

Lukas turned back to his phone, "Did you get that?"

"Sure." Hartford replied, "So what can we do?"

Lukas tilted his head, "Well what is it doing? Anything we can measure? A USB port or something?"

"That's what I said! I'll see if I can't patch you guys a live feed from Popsicle... Hey, can you beam this data to another point in the system? I dunno, maybe it's vibrating morse code or something. It's either that or hitting it with a stick. ..Yeah, we're getting your data monkeys some more info, Hartford out."

The phone clicked, and Hartford was gone, but the data from Popsicle began to light up the myriad displays around the techno-cave.

[The Cult of Xil]

Alone, with time of his own, Konias was left to formulate a plan. He knew, though, in the back of his head, that he had almost no time at all. His train of thought boiled down to two choices.

1. Turn himself in and hope the Doctor doesn't find out about it.

Not a chance. His tech sees everything. He couldn't explain how, but just about everything that Doctor made was able to send some kind of signal back to him - he had noticed there'd been no lag time between him and Vestrade's calls, so as far as he was concerned, whatever magic it actually was went faster than light.

2. Guns blazing. Kill everyone here and hope you can kill the one that matters.

He HAD this option, sure. They told him it was self-aiming and powerful enough to punch through an M1A2 like it was sheet metal. They told him it couldn't be seen on their scanners, and in any case, his stomach was a great way to holster its self-assembling nanotechnic pieces. Even with that going for him, this was Purnelaw. He didn't want to take chances. Besides, vomiting up a superweapon seems weird.

3.Try to sneak out.

Not gonna happen. A nanite breach would hiss like hell and be way too noticeable.

There was only one other option.

"Hey, dude, I'm out of TP. Can you help me out?"

Konias flinched at the man in the stall's words. He had been so lost in thought that he'd forgotten to make it look like he was actually going to the bathroom. He was about to hatch his new plan - he had one other transfer gun in stock - before he noticed something odd with the man's voice.

"Sure. Hey, wait, who're you? You sound familiar."

"Oh. Well, I suppose it won't be any more harm to talk about my identity. They call me Tonie. Got me locked up here for a bit."

"...wait, what?"

---

The Spaniard fell onto the ground, blood oozing through his chest. Remarkably, - or perhaps, purposefully - he was still alive. Coughing and bleeding, but still alive. The bullets, he gauged, had hit him through the stomach and just missed his heart, respectively.

Three men hiding behind the van threw their weapons down, the little plastic pieces clattering onto the hard concrete ground. All three of them took nervous glances at the product inside - a small and unassuming wooden crate, strapped perhaps carelessly into the rear-left passenger's seat like a baby.

The supposedly homeless man held all three of them still, but in the darkness of the late hours, it wasn't possible to see just what one mobster with a thick Texan accent was doing with his arms, behind another man who had spent the majority of his life losing money in the casinos of Los Vegas. That was all it took. In an instant, some small and spherical object rolled towards the undercover agent and his hostage with malicious intent. Whatever it was was frightening enough to make the hardened and tattoo-covered Japanese mobster flash his eyes full of terror.

---

The interior construction of Blue 3 was given away, judging by the vibrations, as almost totally solid. Popsicle's arm gauged, by the effort it took to move it around, that it weighed in excess of five tons. That was far heavier than any satellite of this size should have been.

The lifter that JAXA had used to propel this thing was far too large for something of its class. It had supposedly been an effort to pack surplus station-keeping fuel for a high orbit, but this was evidently not the case. There was no way this thing could move.

... or could it?

Bizarrely, Popsicle's mass measurements fluctuated. It now weight three tons. Then two. Then one. Then... negative values? That probably wasn't right.

It was at this time that Popsicle's operators realized the probe was trying to get away. Moreover, it was not using propellant to get away.

[Purnelaw]

A hefty knock came from the door as it swung open, leaving barely any time for a normal person to react, "It's almost time, we've got to go."

Someone paced rapidly into the room, the taps of a dress shoe rather than the heavy power-armored boots Konias might've expected. "Mr. Tonie..?" Chandler asked, his question cut abruptly short as his eyes locked onto Konias.

"Mr. Camiston, funny seeing you here." His brow furrowed, "..we were just in the middle of transferring Mr. Tonie here to Albrooke." Konias searched Camiston's memories, Albrooke was a processing facility, much more secure than the haphazard operation they were running at Central. Other than that, he knew nothing about the operation, only that this could be his singular chance to get at Tonie.

---

The man reacted quickly. Using his knowledge of the diabolical weapons they had previously encountered in New York, he knew that attempting to reach minimum safe distance on his own was useless, but there was another way to make this problem go away. Nearly half a planet away, in fact, as he withdrew another one of his gadgets. The strange frame unfolded neatly into a cube as he ripped it free from it's housing, a strong gust of wind pulled into the empty side of the box as the air-pressure equalized between the street and.. somewhere else.

He threw it onto the small sphere, and gave a brutal kick to the back of the Yakuza's leg, collapsing him onto the box-- crushing it flat, making the strange device someone else's problem. He could take the courts-martial, but he had more pertinent concerns. One knee on the Yakuza, he brought the pistol to bear on the Texan, putting the man down with a well-placed shot.

The silhouettes from the sniper suddenly blinked red, and another member of the gang found themselves falling to the ground. Thigh and calf separated neatly at the knee, and a telltale hole through the thin panel siding of the van.

A proper tone established, he released his hold on the back of the Yakuza, but not before securing the man with a pair of zipties, the barrel of his pistol still staring down the last unscathed gangster. Well, not unscathed for much longer, as the glass of the windshield shattered, and a high-velocity slug buried itself into -and then through- his right shoulder.

The man strode over and opened the passenger side of the van, making sure the package had remained unharmed. He spoke matter-of-factly, "Central, eyes on the package-- Five perps secured. One dead, three wounded. My primary extract is burned- Advise MRS evacuate the delivery zone."

He donned surgical gloves and reached in, carefully extricating the crate from its resting place.

---

Meanwhile, a Materials Recovery Specialist peered over his tablet as a strange spherical object rolled into the delivery zone.

---

Vance ordered Popsicle to draw closer, a burst of propellant to bring it within range of the second manipulator arm, which together with the first brought the strange probe into a tight mechanical embrace.

Hartford tapped his foot, "Does this thing have a hatch big enough to fit the probe in? I gotta make some calls, don't lose that sat."

[The Cult of Xil]

This was it.

Konias wasn't waiting any longer. No-one would hear him in time.

"Oh! Hey, Chandler. I've got an appointment in a little bit." Konias said, reaching into his vest casually, as if to pull out a letter.

In a lightning motion, he pulled out a suppressed - by some odd device at the barrel, no more than an inch or so long - Colt .45 revolver out instead. With his lifelong-perfected aim, Chandler's right shoulder was blown off at the joint, his whole body sent reeling backwards in agony so intense he could hardly even scream through it. He levelled his weapon in Tonie's direction, and -

- his arm was twisted around his back in an agonizing submission hold, the force of Tonie's insane muscles pressing him onto the floor of that bathroom. His gun was almost casually ripped from his arms.

Tonie spun Konias around and slammed his head into the ground so hard it should have cracked. The first of his blows busted his jaw off its track. The second smashed both his skull and Tonie's knuckles open. The third sent him into unconsciousness, just before he managed to pull out the sidearm that was supposed to be on his holster, which was not even there.

Chandler stopped Tonie's raging arms from killing Konias outright. He was the only thing stopping Tonie's raging arms from killing Konias outright.

Tonie calmed down, slowly, as guards rushed into the room. He moved near Konias's vest, hoping to get picked up by a wire, if he was wearing one.

"You want to kill me? Meet in person, you creepy old sack of shit."

---

The crate, no more than a foot long, was deceptively lightweight, and secured with no visible openings by screws and nails. It wasn't meant to be opened - at least, not without tools. As the agent picked it up, he could feel something ruffle around inside the Styrofoam inside. It felt small and cylindrical.

---

Instantly, the whole of the MRS was left with their ears ringing. The specialist that had turned his eyes to see the little metal ball come in now laid several dozen feet from where he was only moments before, reeling and trying desperately to get something stinging out of his eyes. Then, in an instant, his limbs locked up, completely unable to move. His lungs still moved, his eyes still hurt, but he was alive.

---

The probe pulled Popsicle's weight with it prograde of its orbit. At this rate, both of them would reach escape velocity in ten minutes. The rate at which this thing accelerated was simply unbelievable for its size.

[Purnelaw]

Within seconds of the first shot, fully armored soldiers swarmed the tiny bathroom, intent on getting Tonie as far away from Konias as possible. Ripped from the would-be assassin by a flurry of steel and kevlar composite gauntlets, he was promptly whisked out the door and sequestered into the maze of corridors. Even though he was knocked out, Konias' body was surrounded, two soldiers keeping their rifles trained on him at all times while the rest went about their work.

Chandler walked into the hallway one arm poorer. He eyed Kessinger, who had posted up next to another group of soldiers guarding a perimeter around the bathrooms.
His fellow agent cocked an eyebrow, "So.. how'd it go?"

He gave half a shrug. "Could've gone a lot better, that maniac pulled a gun on us-- but went for me instead of Tonie. So there's that."

"Better indeed.." Kessinger glanced down at Chandler's lack of arm. "That looks bad, do you want me to call you an ambulance?"

Chandler glared back, "Can you get shot for once?"

The other agent laughed, "I'm not the one walking in front of assassins all day. But really, you should get that treated-- maybe they can re-attach it?"

"I'll walk it off." Chandler's gaze softened as all color drained from his face, the entire right side of his suit stained a wet, dark red. He faceplanted into the arms of a waiting medic, who dutifully carried him off somewhere else.

As for Konias, Kessinger watched as an object resembling a black sarcophagus was wheeled out of the bathroom. It was originally meant to contain belligerent reality benders, but Central wasn't planning on taking any more chances. It was fully reinforced, hermetically sealed, electrically shielded, and fitted with a constant SCRAMBLE field and even its own oxygen supply. Not run of the mill equipment by any means, but when a strike happens on your doorstep, you tend to have these sort of things close at hand.

Kessinger fell in behind as the container passed him, he'd want to be there when the interrogation started.

---

Sirens blared in the distance.

The man took a cursory glance at those who lay before him before he Left, stuffing his pistol back under his jacket. He walked briskly, the package nestled under his left arm, and his right pressed to his earpiece. "Central, LE units are converging, request ETA on next Slip point?"

"Negative, secondary extract will be No. 2's gate. Rendezvous with sniper team and proceed." The reply came quickly-- he broke out into a sprint, the team was a good while away, but a slipgate would be much preferred than attempting to smuggle the device out of America. While he would have preferred to keep witnesses, the information they could dredge from the container would possibly be much more valuable.

---

Popsicle's engines roared to life as TSgt Vance fought the sudden acceleration, Hartford yelling something incomprehensible to her in the background. "We don't have thirty seconds, I want it up there NOW!"

Something screamed outside.

The air blackened around the container parked beside the Oculus complex, it shook violently as technicians scrambled around it. Vance felt something reach through the back of her skull, she couldn't quite understand what she was seeing-- something new had just exited the lower atmosphere, and was currently heading rapidly towards a head-on intercept with Popsicle and its captive.

A wooden door.

[The Cult of Xil]

Konias stirred. The instant his mind touched the world again, it was racked with agony. His head hurt so hard he couldn't remember anything but that one time he threw up all over his mom as a toddler, when he was first given banana-flavored baby food.

But that wasn't now.

His body felt different. It was that small hint that told him off, and now he remembered everything. Finally, he had the awareness to lift his head up from a slouch. His head felt like it was in pieces. He could feel bits of bone moving unsoundly inside of it. He could feel his ribs creak, and his arm hurt like hell. It took special effort just to get his jaw moving.

"Where... Wh-whegere ami?"

Blood bubbled out of his mouth. Or drool from being out so long. It was hard to tell.

---

NYPD sergeant Reel Finch's boots clattered onto the hard surface of the parking lot, surveying the scenery before him. Two dead people in zip-ties. A box on the ground. A van. Guns on the ground. He already had his shotgun drawn.

"FREEZE! DON'T MOVE!"

Officers quickly surrounded the van, dragging and propping up those still alive on the ground and putting them in casts and bandages to quench the bleeding. Others were not so lucky, their blood loss too great and their brain tissues too far gone. One man, a Californian by the look and accent, was still conscious enough to speak.

"S-Snpp..."

"What's that?" Finch asked, leaning in closer.

"S-Sniper."

Finch's eyes widened, ordering his units to fan out and take cover against any nearby high-rise buildings. With a few lines in his radio, hundreds of officers would be on the scene in short notice. His eyes ere still hung on one object, in particular.

What was that black box thingy over there? Was it a bomb?

"Dispatch, be advised, we have a suspicious device on scene, requesting bomb squad. Over."

---

In an instant, Blue 3 changed the direction of its acceleration to match that of Popsicle's engines. What was once a deadly stalemate shifted into a disastrous alteration of trajectory that meant whatever was screaming towards the two would hit its mark one meter too far off.

On meter was all it took.

The door impacted smack dab into the main bodies of Blue 3 and Popsicle both, and the feed was lost. Ground controllers determined that the two spacecraft had been blown into a thousand pieces - some blown into a higher orbit from the impact, others set to fall down over the skies of China, India, and some parts of Iraq and Sauda Arabia. And none of them could get away from would-be interceptors.

Far away, gone from Humanity's prying eyes, two rows of flat, herbivorous teeth gritted themselves in fury.

[Purnelaw]

Konias would indeed feel strange, the world around him refused to come into focus-- it was there one second, and not another. His body felt.. lighter, as if he had been scoured completely clean of all the dead skin, oils, and bacteria that had once called him home. His clothes were different too. Stark white and simple, they seemed to glow against the darkness.

He felt a coldness on his wrists and ankles. Handcuffs. A chair, a table.

A voice? It felt like it came from all around. "Where? Take a wild guess, mate."

A tall black shape suddenly appeared in his peripheral vision, it paced around him. "Oh, still a little groggy, I see." The voice laughed, "I don't blame you. So, let's start off easy, it's not like you have anything left to lose."

"What is your name?"

---

Finch's scrutiny would find himself staring at a small folding box, the thin aluminum supports crushed by the weight of the Yakuza. The canvas wrapping made it seem more like a piece of furniture one would find at a sport supply store. Completely innocuous, rather than a portable gate to a top-secret facility halfway across the planet.

A good while away, a man skidded to a stop and ducked into an alleyway as lights and sirens screeched past him. Panting heavily, he tore off his disguise. Digging his hands into a hefty duffel bag, swapping into a fresh, more sporty look that hadn't been seen on any security cameras. A change of wardrobe was all he could do, considering how stable the reality here was-- just keeping the portable gate open for that long had taxed the MRD's capabilities, and he was sure his latest stunt was going to make sure they weren't going to make extract easy on him.

He slotted the crate into the bag and stuffed the old clothes into a dumpster. A messy disposal, but this whole investigation had been a veritable four-way pileup so far. --as long as he made it back, it would be worth it.

The Agent slung the duffel over his shoulder and stepped back out onto the street, breaking into a light jog towards his destination.

---

Vance sat quietly, staring at static. Hartford rubbed his eyes, "They were supposed to open the door.."

She placed her head in her hands, "I just.. killed Popsicle."

He patted her on the back, "Don't do that to yourself, it's my fault. --actually MRD's fault, but let's not get technical. I gotta.. make some more calls, put a spin on things-- don't worry."

Hartford continued to mutter platitudes to the Sergeant as he sidled out of the room.

[The Cult of Xil]

Konias remembered why he was here, but he didn't even bother trying to factor that in. His only objective at this point was staying alive for the next second, and the next after that.

"Konias Braymer."

---

When the bomb squad came onto the scene, they immediately drug the little box over behind a concrete barrier and ordered the rest of the officers to keep a minimum distance of fifteen feet from them at all times. Almost immediately, their head technician ordered them all to stop working as he turned the box upside down.

"This isn't a bomb... wait, what the fuck is that?"

---

Miraculously, the Agent had made it the whole way back to the sniper's nest without getting pounced on by faceless wolves, tall things with sirens for heads, or any other mumbo jumbo. To his dismay, the obnoxious music still blared up above to remind him just where to go. The police had only just started suspecting something. He was not noticed as he stepped off the elevator, and made his way to see his exfil point... along with the sniper team gorging themselves on a pair of bagels.

[Purnelaw]

OOC: woo 50 posts

---

"I'm glad we could get introductions out of the way." The rest of the room's features began to sharpen, but the black shape that paced around him refused to come into view, it hurt to look at.

---

Somewhere else, three Agents sat inside of a control room, dimly lit with red lights and the white haze of HD displays, currently broadcasting a live feed of Konais' chamber.

Kessinger leaned over to Kinsey and Lukas. "So what next?"

"What do you mean?" Lukas asked.

"Well," Kessinger gave a noncommittal hand gesture. "What do we ask him now?"

Kinsey piped up before Lukas could open his mouth, "We know that he was sent by Doctor Komari ..but given how he seems to use proxies to interact with his proxies, I'd say there's a safe bet he has no idea where our HVT is--"

She trailed off, but Lukas finished her thought, "But who sent him might?"

"I don't really want to beat around the bush, we know how well the raid on the mob went, maybe they've got a failsafe in him that we didn't find?" Kessinger protested, gesturing at Konias on the display.

The female Intel agent scoffed, "This is one of the most secure holding facilities we've got, the guards in there are wearing full fractal plating head-to-toe. I'd like to see those lasers pierce infinitely dense ballistic grade ceramic, doubly so for the walls of that chamber.. even if they can get a control signal down here. That room doesn't even have a door if we turn the Waskils off."

"I'd rather get another piece of the puzzle rather than trying to see if some hired gun has the street address of his boss." Lukas mused, "Just ask who sent him on Komari's behalf."

Kessinger keyed the radio, "Ask him who sent him."

Lukas' eyes flicked off of Konias as the operative inside of the chamber made his move, "..how are our two Blanks?"

"Benched. Chandler is still a bit loopy, but apparently whats-his-name caused quite an incident in MRD, so they're taking him to Allerton for probation." Kessinger said, "Not that he really had much personality to begin with.."

---

"Might I ask, who sent you?"

The shape moved to center itself in front of him again. He could make out hands as they planted themselves on the table in front of him, they leaned in close, his eyes burned as the shimmering took up more of his field of view.

"Well, we know that. Doctor Komari did, but who did he get to invite you to our lovely establishment?"

---

Inside the canvas lay a strange origami spider, the old newspaper construction crumpled by previous events. Strange indeed, but perhaps stranger than someone's art project at a crime scene, is that it was twitching.

Crinkling, the paper legs drug the broken body towards the opposite corner of the box where a plastic bag full of dark orange powder sat. The spider curled its few still functioning limbs around a metal ring attached to the bag, and it pulled with all of it' might. There was a spark, and then one pound of thermite ignited. The scuttling charge taking the canvas and aluminum cube -as well as the spider- in a brilliant gout of flame.

---

The team eyed their fellow agent, standing up as he stumbled further into the apartment.

"Look who finally decided to show up. Heard they're gonna court-martial you for that stunt back there."

He took a moment to catch his breath. "I am aware--" The agent brandished the crate for emphasis, "It was either them or the package."

One of the snipers scoffed, "Let's see which was more valuable." He walked over to a closet, wrenching open the door as a gust of wind fought to keep it closed. "Now go, get that thing to Intel, we've still got some equipment to pack up."

The agent nodded and walked into the 'closet', now an entrance to the Material Recovery Depot. It had changed quite a bit since had left, quite a few more medical personnel and decontamination teams. Those buzzing about paid no attention to him as he continued, the myriad causeways and passages aligned around him to guide him towards his destination.

He stopped short of a massive steel bulkhead marred with various biohazard warning labels, the metal surface shimmered ever so slightly, it hurt to look at it for too long. But he didn't have to, as the two halves slid open with a menacing hiss. Beyond it was underwhelming, a simple receptacle one might find at a library's book return. He walked in, but didn't make it more than halfway through.

"Hold it!" Screamed the intercom, the door slammed shut behind him. Nozzles unveiled themselves from behind sliding metal hatches, and he was subsequently blasted with a torrent of disinfectant and water. They shut off just as quickly as they had appeared, leaving him soaked head to toe. "You may proceed Agent Chandl-- wait, uh.. whatever your name is."

He grunted, sliding the crate into the receptacle. When he turned around, there stood two soldiers clad in jet black exoskeletons. "Serial Number ████, you have been placed on probation. Please come with us."

---

The package found itself in a chamber not unlike one that Konias and the first satellite did, albeit this one had quite a few more robotic arms and test equipment-- and it was a near-perfect vacuum. Controlled by a technician safely nestled away from the object behind god knows how many layers of reinforced composites, a spider's worth arms reached down from the ceiling.
One armed with a sizeable cutting blade that carefully cut through the wooden exterior, a second to lift off the lid and place it gently to the side, allowing a third to extricate the small metal cylinder from its cocoon of packing peanuts.

The device found a new resting place upon a shock-resistant pedestal, much removed from its original destination. The arms retracted away, allowing for a veritable cornucopia of various testing equipment and sensors to draw close and for once finally scrutinize one of Komari's projects up close.

---

Chandler's right arm felt funny.

He dreamt of bagels.

Bagels with raisins.

He screamed, a true nightmare.