[Mercy Merchant]

Snow quickly moves to Con and kneels next to him, her face full of concern.  She slaps her biomonitor onto his arm, but does not bother with the rest of the kit because she has already used it on him and it would be of no use now.  "OK.  The monitor indicates that you are still badly injured.  I can do nothing more for you except supervise your rest and recovery and Sammy is in no condition to use any healing magic on you yet.  You are going to have to take it easy.  Frankly, I am amazed that you are still even able to try to walk.  You must have the constitution of an ox to have taken this much damage and still be conscious."  Snow lifts her head and looks at the others.  "Sam, do you think you can help me get Con to the car there so he can sit more comfortably?  Afterwards, perhaps either myself or Clem can go check out the sniper point.  I also feel that the wounds Con has will limit his ability to go to that island.  Another wound could kill him."

[farothel]

"I suggest we don't investigate the island for now," Sammy suggested, "we're in no shape for another fight, not to mention that we don't have any means of getting there.  And if there is one thing you do not do, it's swimming here in the bay.  The water is highly toxic in most places and the magic of the Deep Lacuna is making it even more dangerous.  I'm only going on the water in a good boat and after some preparations."

[Thvor]

Watching O'Connor, Sam winced. For the tough guy to show as much discomfort as he was, he had to be almost dead on his feet. It didn't take a strategical genius to figure out who was most expendable at the moment. He sighed. "I'll go see what I can find. Snow, I'll keep my line open; keep an ear on me, ok? Clem, keep them safe. And get out of this damn light."

Before anyone could object, Sam started down the road. Once he was beyond the cone of light, he angled to the side of the road furthest away from the mage's island, doing his best to fade into the darkness, while scanning ahead of himself for any warning signs.


Sneaking: AGI[5] + Infiltration[3] + CM[-1]: 7d6t5 2
Perception (including thermographic from his lenses): Int[5]+Perception[5]+Visual Specialization[2]-CM[1]: 11d6t5 2

...Well, that could've been better.

[Mercy Merchant]

Snow nods at Sam as he gets ready to set off.  "You got it, Sam.  I will come running if you shout.  I am linking to you so that I can share what you see.  Be careful."

Once she has the man's image link tied to her, Snow does her best to get Con settled into the back seat of the car and as comfortable as possible before sitting back to look at what Sam is seeing..

[Crossbow]

Sam creeps up the highway, positive beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was not going to make it back to the cars.  Every thought is that the last thing that goes through his mind will be a bullet.  When the headlights wink into sight, he is fairly confident that he is having a coronary episode, and in spite of his initial concern about the mage's hill he shrinks as far as he can into the outside wall of the road, ready to jump in the water if the headlights slow at all.

The car passes him without incident, but it slows for a second as the occupants rubber neck his friends stuck on the other road.  Then they double their speed and zoom past.

For some reason, this incident calms the social adept, and he is able to continue with some semblance of calm.  He is 200 meters down the road when he finds what he is looking for.  Burnt rubber marks the road and a broken lamp above allowing the moon to light the scene.  A spot had been cleared among the gravel topping the median with a great sightline on the cars.  the funny thing is that the pebbles that had been cleared were neatly piled according to their color and makeup, and even the shattered plastiglass pieces were sorted according to size.

[Mercy Merchant]

Snow realizes right away that she has no visual from Sam and quietly curses in Russian.  Shrugging, she keeps close contact with his 'link while making sure that the others get some rest.  Twice, she is almost ready to sedate Con to keep him from moving too much, but he settles down quickly enough to not reopen the wounds.

[Thvor]

Staying as low and quiet as he could, Sam murmured into his subvocal mic, "Snow, I made it to the sniper's nest. No sign of him now. Looks like he bugged out in a hurry, for whatever reason. He'd been here a while, though." He pulled out his 'link and scanned it around the piles so she could see them, then started looking around the area.

Sam will spend some time looking for anything else out of place, especially any spent shell casings. If the sniper left quickly, he may not have cleaned up his brass carefully--and if he did, that might indicate professional/military training. Crossbow, let me know if you want another perception roll (or make it yourself).

[HydroRaven]

Clem didn't like the idea of sending Torley by himself out in hostile territory, but she was in no condition to do anything about it after the last encounter. The ork simply rested in the car, seated as comfortably as she could in a crashed vehicle. The rest was much welcomed, but her mind was racing for a way to get back to town. She knew the nature of their assignment was very time-sensitive, and this attack was either well-timed or a really unfortunate ambush by a random bunch of attackers. However, the retreat was pushing her towards the former, as it seemed the attacking party's retreat meant they weren't interested in loot or any other material gains, besides stalling the group for time.

[farothel]

Sammy was sitting next to the car so it shielded her from the location she knew the mage was at.  For now there wasn't much she could do, so she opted to rest as much as possible.  As she was fiddling a bit with her Pito profile, she noticed the extra icon that had appeared there.
"Snow," she said to the hacker, "when we get back, we need to figure out what that extra icon is doing there.  And how to get rid of it."

[Mercy Merchant]

Snow nods.  "Unless I am reading this incorrectly, our signals are broadcasting that we are people to be avoided.  Sort of like putting an ARO over our heads that says "These are bad people."  That is probably why that car slowed then sped off.  We will not get any help out here if we leave our stuff on.  I would recommend turning off all wireless functions when we see another car.  Hopefully my techie friends back at Horizon have a fix for this.  I hesitate to contact them in case doing so would transfer the virus to their 'links as well.  I am going to go dark for a minute or two and see if one of the remaining burners I have is infected.  If not, I will send a message to the guys."

Before shutting down, Snow contacts Sam and tells him that she is cutting the connection, then suiting her actions to her words, she turns off every piece of wireless technology she has.  She is not just going silent, but going dark.  Being completely disconnected is a strange feeling and one she would not want to experience often.  She walks about 50 meters away from the cars and pulls out one of her last two burners.  Flicking it on, she examines it for the virus tag.

[Crossbow]

Snow is able to reach Crenshaw, but it is clear that she is already to late to try and protect him.  The call is overlaid with a datastream of the risks of casual sexual encounters and the dangers involved with mail-order Russian brides.  An EXTREMELY embarrassed looking tech is able to remove the streams form the call after a only about 30 seconds of humiliation on his part.

"So yes, as you can see whatever this is has infected my gear as well.  I am glad you called, now I can shut this comm down and reformat it.  Tommy is still working on things here, and he is running down some leads he has, I think he might have even called his sister."

[Mercy Merchant]

Snow cannot resist a slight tease after hearing about the Russian mail-order brides.  >>You do know that I am Russian, right?  But I am glad that you are making progress.  We are stuck on the I5.  Sending you coordinates now.  Let someone know that we need a ride back as some fragging mage geeked our cars.  Pardon my words, but it has been a very interesting and dangerous day so far.  I am sending the code to my last burner so someone can contact me.  I am concerned that this one I am using will be infected after talking to you and will shut it down.  I am otherwise dark and I have to say it is uncomfortable.  I would like to see you after we get back and continue where we left off in a private location.  Tootles.<<

She signs off and checks the Meta to see if it has indeed been infected.  If it is, she turns it off before turning the last one on.  After setting the ring to as loud as possible, she places the burner on the side of the road and walks back to the rest.  "OK.  My theory is validated.  My burner was clean because it had not been on.  I called Crenshaw and told him where we are and asked him to contact someone to give us a ride and gave him the code to my last phone, which I set off to the side over there, but I think we can hear it if they call.  I do recommend that everyone go dark, and that is hard for a decker to say."

[HydroRaven]

"Go dark?" asked Clem. She realized what the elf was asking them to do as she was wording her question and reached in to her coat to turn off her commlink. This simple gesture seemed unusually exhaustive for the ork, and she simply went back to resting afterwards.

Here is Clem's resting rolls. Recovery ~ Body 5 + Will 3: 8d6t5 2 No glitches. Nothing extraordinary but enough to bring her modifiers down to -1.

[farothel]

"If we really have to," Sammy said while turning off the commlink, "this will be a problem as soon as we're back in civilisation."
It was strange to go completely without commlink.

[Mercy Merchant]

Snow grimaces.  "Yes.  It is extremely uncomfortable.  And inconvenient.  But unless you want everyone with a 'link to see the ARO above your head you should leave them off.  Otherwise we could face questions from the police just for walking on the sidewalk.  So for now we sit and wait for my guy to come through for us and get us a ride home.  Unless someone really has a need to roam about all banged up."