A Lucky Escape

((ok, this is my first reall attempt at this sort of thing, so i would like anyone with asvise to contact me OOC, :) ))



Amber “Evalissa” Firefly is sitting in CTU HQ, filling out forms and paperwork on the weeks events when a high pitched beeping is emitted from the coms link

*Sigh* “as if I don’t have enough to do, Computer, open the channel”

After a short static a quiet voice is heard
“Ma’am, its Agent Stritzke here, remember that operation you sent me on?”

“Of course, I only assigned it the other day, what are you contacting me for? This operation had two weeks allotted to it”

“Well ma’am, I have been following him as you ordered, and it appears he is always guarded, but, at this very moment he is heading back to his office, seems he misplaced something rather urgent”

“And? What of it”

“Well ma’am, the office is only guarded in the day, I guess they don’t expect anyone to bother with it, but it only has automated defences and simple alarms, I doubt there will be another opportunity like this one, I would suggest you get up here and we finish this operation tonight”

“Ok, great work, ill grab Grebal and we will get there right away, where are we to meet you?”

“Uploading the co-ordinates now”

10 minuets later Evalissa and Grebal, an opifex fixer, arrived at the site

An agent detaches his cloaking device and approaches the two
“What took you so long, he entered the building 5 minuets ago, well anyway, as I stated, security is pretty slack, lets do it now, we wont get another chance”
“ok, agreed, Grebal Can you scan for the defences and get us a way in”

“yes ma’am, wont be 2 seconds” he said as he pulled out a complex hud unit
“Ok, this way quickly”

The trio approached a side door to the building, with the fixer in the lead pointing out cameras and sensors, when suddenly a small bleep is heard and they notice a camera has spotted them

“Damn it, I thought I told you to spot those things, never mind now, lets hurry and end it here”

They rushed to the door and busted open to see Psyco at a terminal quickly tapping away at the screen

“Quick take him out“ said Stritzke, taking aim and firing, only to miss as psyco dodges the shot, and starts to use a nano
Evalissa lets lose with her bib’s, hitting psyco in the leg, only to watch him disappear into a column of light as he entered the grid

“Drat, Grebal Quick, get what ever was going on with that file before any guards get here”

“Yes ma’am, he’s already imitated deletion, but there should be some info on this disk” he said, as he uploaded the remaining file onto a data-disk
“Something about RUR and a Qpt brain? Whets that about?”
Never mind that, the guards will be here any minuet so plant the detonation charges and grid us outtalk here!

“Done and done” said Grebal as he executed his nano and got the trio into the grid

"Bartender! You call this swill you serve me beer?" Benjamin Creed yelled out loud as the threw the bottle clear to the hallway, shattering glass and alcohol on the freshly mopped floor. He reached into the tub that the bartender was restocking from and grabbed another beer. He opened it, drank a deep sip and again threw the bottle across the bar where the other landed

"I have yet to taste leet urine, but I'd wager this must be what it tastes like", he slurred, barely prounouncing all the sylables as he staggered to stay on his feet.

"Yeah, you are gonna have to pay for those pal?", the female Opifex asked from behind the bar, remarkably unphased.

"You would have me p..pay for sush pafetic spirits assssssss these?" Creed asked as he grabbed a bottle of champaign, again took a sip, and flung it across the bar,"whut kinda scram are you pulling here, you hammerhdid cow?"

With lightning fast reflexes, the woman pulled a Nova Flow and had it leveled off at the trouble maker's head,"You got till I count to ten to leave this bar before I take your head off, mister."

Creed held his hands up and tried to steady himself,"I got nooo problum der, Maam. Im leefin."

He stumbled his way down the hall and almost sliped in the pool of alchohol but steadied himself against the wall. When he reached the door he turned around swaggering, but underneath his dark shades he watched the floor......

Damn it! His su****ions were correct. He was being hunted. The hunter stood not twenty feet away, his "footprints" displacing booze in the middle of the reeking puddle.

It was the doors. The doors that bothered him for some reason at first. Not really on a conscious level, it was just something distant that played on his mind. He only made the connection an hour ago as he walked in the bar and noticed the door took a bit too long to close. And then it came to him all at once. The doors would never open by themselves. This hunter was far too smart for that. But, there were times the doors stayed open too long as he entered a place, only by a second or two.

"Stinking dump", he yelled back before stepping out the door, slurring slightly, but trying not to over ham the act. Once outside, he counted to himself as he walked. Again, the door stayed open too long.

There was no telling how long he had been stalked, and that was unfortunate. He could grid out right now. Transfer his entire body into the grid at a whim. But there was something more important than his life at stake. There was all the work he had done for The Cause on an off grid terminal in the office. And damned if he would just give up all the blood, sweat and tears it cost to obtain that data. Relocation proceedures could be initiated later, but priority one was to get those project files somewhere safe.

And so he walked on to the whoompa, staggering a bit every few yards to keep the ruse up. He continued on to his office in Borealis, and pretended to have trouble remembering his access code.

Once he was in the office, however, he cast a nanoprogram on himself and began almost flying as he began re-formating all the terminals. All save the off-grid one that was busy copying vital data to disk.

Suddenly an alarm sounded. Creed looked up to a holo-screen that automatically appeared over his desk.

How the hell had they gotten most of the way through the defences without being detected. But the image could not be disputed. Evalisa and two of her goons were almost outside the door.

A fixer, had to be a fixer inside that armor and using that Manex. He had to be damn good to hack through the HellHound 9's security so quickly. Under better circumstances, Creed would have enjoyed going head to head with his "colleuge", but now wasn't the time for that.

The terminal slide out a disk that the hunted slid into his wrist comm. He then tapped in the command for the terminal to wipe its internal storage clean.

Their footsteps grew louder. No time to prepare for a fight now. A second later the door was down, and they opened fire as Creed initiated a hasty grid nanoprogram.

Almost as though it were happening in slow motion as his body was in transition, he saw Evalissa raise her weapon fire, and a round shoot through his leg a split second before he was completely in the grid.

Four minuts later, the escaped lay passed out in the doorway of Mackaelin's appartment. The bullet had struck an artery, too much blood had been lost the moment he exited the grid.......

*THUNK*

"What the hell?"
Mackaelin exclaimed as she ran to the door. After a quick safety scan she threw open the door to find Ben in a widening pool of blood. Kneeling down over him, she quickly assessed his body and stats, she found him to be in shock with a dangerously low blood volume due to a GSW to the right thigh. The smell of alcohol came out of Ben's mouth in strained puffs of air which explained why his blood was so thin it was spurting out of the wound.
"What have you gotten yourself into this time Ben!" Mackaelin half-shouted at him as she pulled him into her apartment and shut the door. She hurriedly set to work to stop Ben's bleeding, finding that the bullet was lodged deep into his musclemass, knowing that every second counted Mackaelin decided to let Ben keep that slug as a souvenier. She applied a stim of greater healing and watched as the nano-bots went to work repairing Ben's flesh before her eyes. As the nano-bots did their part Mackaelin did hers, casting every healing nano she could to restore Ben's vitality and to promote healing. Her hands flew at lightning fast speed as swirls of nano infused lights permeated Ben and mended him from the inside out. When Mackaelin had finished casting she cleaned him up and put him to bed where she applied a blister-pack of hibernation, a formulation she created to allow a body an extended rest. She knew Ben, his capabilites and temper, she knew a GSW wouldn't stop him from anything. He needed to rest and Mackaelin needed to think.
"Where is that damn chalice....." Mackaelin mumbled to herself. She found it on her desk next to her journal, she takes several long drinks and she opens up the book in front of her......

"Ben was right, there was someone after him. He showed up half-dead tonight. Who the hell is after him and what the hell do they want?! Time will give us answers and it will also bring retaliation. As a doctor, I am committed to healing people and saving lives, though in this instance I would be more than happy to rid Rubi-Ka of whoever did this to Ben."

Mackaelin taps her wrist-comm
Memo to Kingblade: " Time will bring answers brother, will be in touch soon."

Mackaelin hits send as she curls up carefully next to Ben, "You seem ok for now, let's see what morning brings."

The vid screen was the only source of light in the apartment.

On the screen a Redheaded Female solitus stood in front of the smoldering remains of a commercial building, apparently in Boeralis.
“As you can see behind me the building was almost completely gutted by the explosion last night. Omni-Pol investigators have been working since last night to determine responsibility, but officials say they have yet to find any leads. Back to yo…..”*mute*

“**** you!” shouts John as he throws the remote wildly across the room. “but officials say they have yet to find any leads” he says in a mocking voice. “those damn Pol investigators know exactly whose responsible.”

Scattered in front of him on the floor were various supplies, gadgets, and other odds and ends. Loading the items into a backpack john tries to sort through the details of the past evening. He only ends up asking more questions before he’s through. What was Psy doing back there so late, and alone, what had happened to him, and most pressing what had happened to the files that he had been working on there.

At an emergency meeting only 2 hours earlier his comrades were all very anxious about what had happened to Psy, as was he. But a far more urgent thought was occupying his mind. What if omni-pol had gotten their hands on those files? Psy must have been deleting them. What if he hadn’t finished?

“There’s the last of it”
He turned off the vid and picked up the bag he had been packing. The room was now about pitch black bar the light seeping in from the hallway.
“I don’t know whats happened” he muttered to himself feeling his way through the darkness ”but if they did get those files, this is not the place to be”

Quickly moving to his closet he retrieved a device what looked to be a coffee can size cylinder mounted on top of a box. He placed it right in front of his door then ripped off a small remote taped to the side. Throwing on his coat and grabbing his div 9 John closed the door behind him then hit a button on the remote. “That should be a nice surprise for any unwelcome guests”

Moving outside at a quick pace he moved towards the whompas trying not to look su****ious. Constantly looking behind himself and checking the life signals on his hud did not help his appearance though. Finally he arrived at the grid point. “Hope no one sets that off. It’ed take days to get the smell of that crap out of there” John then touched the final button on the console and was swallowed up in a flash of pure blue light.

“Still nothing worth anything on this disk”
Grebal looked up from a small terminal at a desk in HQ
“looks like he managed to delete most of the important data, simply a few codenames such as ‘Project Trinity’ and small amount of data on the capabilities of the RUR’s QPT Brain, nothing we can use against him, nothing even to get the ICC involved”

“have you decoded everything?” Evalissa asked, tired after working on this through the night

“Most of it, I wouldn’t recommend putting any more time into it”

“Ok, send it to the Data-storage team and get them to keep it for a few months, just incise”

“Will do” Grebal stood up and left the room through the door at the back of the office

Evalissa sat down at a second terminal near the front of the office and called up a data stream containing contacts and current operations, she touched one of the names and opened up a com port

“ Agent Stritzke, Have you found pyco yet?”
“No, looks like he’s still in hiding, not a trace, and no one seems to know anything”
“Ok, keep looking, we must find him!”

With that she got up and headed to the door, a little rest back at the apartment sounded like a good idea, and she could really use a good coffee, as she got to the door and turned out the light a beep was heard
“Ma’am, Bad news!” The inter-com buzzed as a warn out voice was heard over it

“And good day to you to” Evalissa sighs “And what is wrong?”

“That explosive device, the one that was meant to vaporise everything in the office, but leave the building intact, well, it blew everything to pieces!” he said in a worried tone

“What? Oh great, and who’s idea was it to trust that clan explosives ‘Expert’ The media are going to love this if they get there hands on it!” a tone of anger was heard as she had paid a fair sum for those ‘Vaporising bombs’ as a quick way to remove all files and data from a terrorist’s office, and not blow them up like the very people she was trying to stop would do

“ok, find out what you can from the site and try and talk to the omni-pol of ICC investigators at the site”

“Yes ma’am” The intercom clicked and the room was silent

Evalissa yawned and shut the door behind her, heading back to her apartment

“Ben……….Ben are you awake?” Mackaelin asked a fitfully sleeping Benjamin Creed. She sat down next to him and smoothed a few strands of hair back away from his face. She was beginning to worry about him, he had been tossing and turning now for the past 24 hours, seemingly about to wake up over and over, when what appeared to be another rage-filled dream, would pull him back in again.
3 days ago Ben had shown up on Mackaelin’s doorstep with a bullet in his thigh. Since then he had been dead to Rubi-Ka in a sense, engulfed in what could quite possibly be the deepest resting state of his life. Mackaelin’s “Hibernation” creation had ceased Ben’s bodily functions to the point of near permanent-death. In one sense it was to heal his body, but more of Mackaelin’s concern was that he heal his ego. The ancient adage from earth times was, “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”, applied to Ben completely. The thing was, he wasn’t ever fooled twice and for those who fooled him once? Well let’s just say Ben did not allow them that opportunity ever again. He was a man who prided himself on being the best and if he wasn’t the best, he figured out how he could be and achieved it.
“What are you dreaming about in there, Ben?” Mackaelin said to herself, knowing he was reliving something terrible and wishing she could help it stop.
“Maybe my formulation wasn’t quite what I thought it was, he’s sleeping too long. The only thing I can do……..”
She rushed across the apartment to her medical supply cabinet, pulling open a drawer and reaching far into the back. “Why didn’t I think of this 8 hours ago!” Mackaelin thought to herself. She pulled out a thin blue stim filled with something similar to what “earthlings” would call adrenaline. Knowing the stim could either wake him up or send him deeper, it was a chance she had to take. If he continued to be in this state of hibernation his bodily functions would cease and that wasn’t a possibility she even considered thinking about. Mackaelin hurried back to Ben’s side, and cast the stim on him, immediately his body began to twitch, as if all of his muscles were popping alive at once. She crawled up into the bed with him and held his flailing body down with her’s. The last thing she needed was Ben teasing her for injuring him, after he was better. If he poked an eye out in this fit, he would never let her live it down. Slowly, his body slowed down, the twitches became further and further apart, until his body was finally still again. Ben began to stretch, lengthening the muscles that hadn’t been used for three days. He rolled his body towards Mackaelin and slowly opened his eyes, looking at Mackaelin in surprise, then realizing he was in her apartment and in her bed no less. “You finally couldn’t resist me could ya Mack?” Ben said to her with a devilish grin. Mackaelin smiled at Ben and said, “No Ben I couldn’t, you finally got your way.”

Gerrad Freespring, better known as LordAnubus paced back and forth nervously in his apartment.

"He's been missing for weeks. We have to presume he is dead Sir." Damonmccain says slowly from his position on the nearby couch.

"I don't want to believe that Damon, plus I've heard some rumors that he is maybe with Mackaelin." Gerrad replies. Damon quickly jumps up from the couch.

"WHAT! Who told you that? Why didn't you inform the rest of us. We have been worrying sick about Ben and now you say you know he's okay, and haven't told anyone."

"First off, I said it was a rumor. I'm not sure if it is true or not but since Iona of Darktides was the one who told me I think it's most likly reliable. I didn't want to tell everybody and get their hopes up over just one rumor I heard. I plan to talk to Mack as soon as possible to find out what is really going on." Damon quickly replies with a nod.

"Well I have to go Gerrad, Carbonum deal I have today but give me a call when you talk to Mack." The trader says as he leaves the apartment.

"Ya, I will...I just hope what Iona told me is true..." Gerrad says quietly to himself as he talks a seat on his couch and flicks on the local news on his vid screen.