The party arrived safely at the STRIKE FORCE Protective Custody apartment, and tucked Lassard and Thomson into bed - one bedroom each.
Worried that something might pop out of the ether directly into Lassard's bedroom, ether-capable creatures: ghosts, mages, werewolves and fae being the likely candidates, Sledge and Reggie settled down with Lassard in his bedroom. Theo took up position in the living room. Jacob and Ebony were down the road, on guard in the Communications room monitoring all the security cameras. Everyone was in contact with everyone else with headsets.
Ebony's mobile rang. It was Juan. Juan was still embedded with the Morte Christe bikers, still in Salisbury, Maryland. This turned out to be very serendipitous.
"Morte Christe on its way to Philly. To Fishtown. Three hours." He hung up,
Fishtown was the suburb where they were.
Jacob made the call.
"Abandon the apartment!" he shrieked.
They put Lassard into one car, and Thomson in the other.
Sledge stayed behind in the apartment, just a bit, to go through Lassard and Thomson's gear. It had been a rushed evacuation, so the two charges had left everything. This was a perfect opportunity to see if there was anything suspicious. Nothing struck his eye except for a plastic doll, the size of a small cat, very old, missing an eye. It belonged to Colleen.
Lassard was taken to Reggie's safe-house with Sledge, Jacob and Leon.
Colleen was with Ebony and Theo. They found a random motel.
The rest of the night passed uneventfully.
Before Ebony and Jacob left the comms room, they left all the cameras recording.
Thursday morning, July 10
The returned Lassard and Thomson back to STRIKE FORCE HQ then headed back to Fishtown.
The front door apartment had been blown in, and the entry porch was charred and blackened. Inside, there were bullet holes all over the place, and the floor was littered with hundreds of 7.62mm cartridges. The beds were totally shot up; someone had stood by the beds and fired continuously into the mattresses.
But nothing seemed to be missing. They picked up Lassard and Thomson's gear, including the doll.
The group took the thumb-drives from the Comms room.
Thursday late morning, July 10
Back at STRIKE FORCE, the party played back the night's events:
A bunch of bikers, maybe twenty, armed with AK47s and two rocket-propelled grenades, had arrived about two hours after the evacuation. They blew open the front doors and ran inside firing madly about. The party didn't recognize any of the faces; none of the attackers were the four prison escapees.
Reggie phoned Angel but got nothing useful from him.
 |
| Terrence Montana |
Juan never answered his phone.
Thursday sunset 8:31 pm, July 10
The trip to Mina's residence was uneventful. The Fleischer Art Memorial was all decked out for the Terrence Montana Exhibition. There were 240 guests, including Lord Defacto and his seven vampires plus both Siri and Cello, and the artist himself.
Lassard really enjoyed Terence Montana's work. It was abstract. Many of the pieces looked like someone had thrown a bucket of paint on a canvas; several buckets of paint. Another piece was as if someone had loaded a super-soaker with paint and squirted it at the canvas, then done it with some more colours.
 |
| "Reclining nude on the hoof" |
On the plus side, it was safe to say that all the works were big and were colourful.
Theo was in the Veil security room, next to the big "mushroom". One of the operators pointed at some lights on the surface of it. Theo had a close look, and sure enough, there were four moving lights. The operator said these were out to the south, about 500 metres away, out in the surrounding Queen Village streets. Mina's security were already onto it. The party weaponed up and headed with them. Sure enough, four bikers were there. They took off.
Reggie got Prospero out of bed, and he sent out two squad cars.
... which was uneventful.
Friday morning, July 11
Reggie tried to contact Juan.
Juan wasn't answering his phone.
Neither was Angel.
Friday sunset 8:31 pm, July 11
Again, following the unexpected, the party dossed Lassard and Thomson down in Prospero's very own STRIKE FORCE office in the police station. They didn't tell Prospero,
The night passed peacefully.
Saturday morning, July 12
Lassard & Thomson were booked on the 10am flight to New York. So the party took them early to the airport and put them on the 8:30am flight.
All was uneventful.
Saturday late morning, July 12
They reported back to Prospero. Job well done.
As a reward, Prospero said they could keep two of the borrowed magical items from the STRIKE FORCE magical armoury. They had a wee think and decided upon the Worm of Toulon, to be held by Theo, and the No-Eavesdrop ruby, to be held by Sledge.
Reggie pointed out that the STRIKE FORCE constitution strictly forbade non-humans from joining its ranks. Colleen Thomson was a fae, so was classed as non human, yet she was an adjutant. She'd have to be an honourary member. But if that was the case, then she should not be able to hold rank. That said, Prospero had not heard of the rank "adjutant" any way.
Prospero was planning to make some enquiries with the New York STRIKE FORCE big cheeses: Major Ewing and Lieutenant-Colonel Spalling.
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