[Mercy Merchant]

"I had hoped to be able to determine if this barrier is needed at all.  If the diagnostic device has been tampered with, it might be sending false records.  For most of us, the difference is minimal indeed, but it can mean a world of discomfort for my friend and companion.  I will do this under protest."

Robyn fastens the leash onto Al's collar.  "Will you be able to move him to the VM?  At 155 kilos, his dead weight will be difficult to move without help."  She takes a firm grip on the lead and does her best to comfort the Hell Hound as she takes him through the barrier.  The awakened creature senses something wrong as he crosses , but his faith in his mistress is such that he goes with her.  The effect is dramatic as the huge animal collapses to the floor.  Robyn is crying as she hugs the hound's neck and waits for ISaint to lift him up and move him to the VM chamber, where she straps him in carefully and lets the advanced medical instruments of device begin to do what they can.  She slips into the other compartment and begins running a diagnostic

[Jack_Spade]

Activate Focused Concern (Ignore 3 points environmental modifiers)
Body Boost: 7d6t5 4 [7d6t5=4, 6, 5, 2, 5, 5, 2]
Adept centering (Ignore an additional 4 points environmental modifiers)
Levitate F6: 7d6t5 2 [7d6t5=5, 5, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1]
Drain Resist: Drain resist: 14d6t5 2[14d6t5=1, 1, 3, 4, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 5, 3, 2, 5]
No Drain
Drain resist Body Boost: 10d6t5 2[10d6t5=5, 3, 4, 3, 4, 4, 6, 4, 4, 3]
No Drain

Autodoc: 12d6t5 4[12d6t5=6, 1, 1, 4, 5, 2, 3, 5, 1, 5, 4, 4]
Dog-Al regains two points of stun, but the autodoc will keep him sedated.



Isaint turned around to grab the hound. '155kg! That thing is over one and a half my body weight. Oh well, if the barrier manages to knock him out, it should be able to do the same to the bacteria. Time for some magic.'
He gave a short prayer to his patron to resist the ravages of power and felt his stamina increasing. "Vade retro"
With an effort of will and the rote Rick had taught him, Isaint began to lift the unconscious dog.
He felt the mana surge through him and carefully he moved the hound into the open VM unit. He made sure, the autodoc had awakened non-human biology in his library and had the whole system restart with wireless off.

"Don't worry Robin. Dog-Al is now the safest of us all. The autodoc will patch him up in no time."

#351

[adamu]

Knowing that he was neither a Satanist nor sick, Al walked through the barrier to keep everyone happy, fairly confident that everything they were doing was total guesswork.

"Alighty Jack baby, looks like yer with me inna suicide ride. Let's load that dingus up an' git gone."

[Aria]

[Sunday July 5th, 2076; Somewhere, London]
 
With Angel’s receding into the distance you make your way clear as quickly and surreptitiously as possible when Torrent’s message comes in
 
<<Ok, I can find you a safehouse for a day or two topside but I can’t say I’m happy about it…didn’t we have a conversation about ‘going your own way’?  What the hell is with the explosives?  There’s negotiation and then there’s…well, whatever the frag that is…!?  You say the J is being strung along by a techno?  Well that fits, I’ve just spoken to him and he has confirmed that he has been having communication issues but is still interested in the artefact once you are clean.  He clearly realises you are serious because he has agreed to let you organise the exchange rather than dictate the rest of the deal.  So, I trust you will agree it is in your interests to complete this deal with the minimum of fuss?>>
 
***
 
#34

[Jack_Spade]

Isaint replied to Torrent (team included): <<Thanks for the safe house. Regarding going our own way: It wasn't us that changed the rules midgame. The explosives are an insurance against any attempts of foul play. Making us use an unsecured diagnose tool has earned our client some serious distrust. He could have just sent someone with a hazmat suit instead of this whole shit show.
Good news about the exchange - he doesn't even need to meet us in person. I'll sent you details later, but in essence he gets the object + an armed bomb. If he sends us the money he'll receive the disarming code. Any third party interfering or double crosses will result in an expanding cloud of artifact.
We'll go dark for the moment. We'll contact you after we regrouped.>>
With that he once again rebooted and headed for the self storage.

Once he had a chance to check on his various transports as well as his own bio monitor he told the team:
"Good news, bad news time: Good news: Dog-Al is clean. According to the readouts he is completely clean - no FAB anymore. The bad news: I myself seem to have still an infection - and probably the rest of you too. Maybe it only worked because the ward discharged into he hound. Obviously this is no solution for us - we aren't dual natured and even though some of us can enter that state, it would knock us out completely.
Good news, the antibiotics I and you took seem to work - at least that's what my gizmos tell me. Bad news, in a few hours we'll probably feel like shit - especially since those FAB strains were developed from E. Coli bacteria. Those can do a real number on your intestinal tract.
Good news, as you read probably our Johnson still wants the goods and even lets us decide how we handle it. Bad news, we'll have to content with a third party who most likely has a serious leg up on us regarding information gathering. I don't pretend to understand how this Resonance stuff works that Technos use, but I've been told they have access to deeper layers of the matrix where they can extract information even if it was previously deleted completely. Covering our tracks will be extra hard and we have to assume that we'll face physical, matrix and magic based threats.

So we can either hole up in the safe house Torrent is organizing for us until we have beaten this FAB shit, or we do this transaction before we all develop rear mounted rocket propulsion."

#352

[pistolgrip]

Jackhammer was usually pretty silent around folks he felt were smarter than him, and that was at least half of this gang. But he'd fallen especially quiet for the rest of their trip to the surface, and even to Angels. Something wasn't right. That... *thing* was giving him a headache. And making him a bit queasy. He started feeling a little bit faint, and kept wiping sweat from his brow. He tried to convince himself he was just out of shape, but something was definitely eating at him. Had to be that stupid head-thing.

Then came the scans. He was having trouble keeping up with the discourse, but he picked up enough to figure out something had gone wrong. "Still sick? No wonder..." He let the medkit work on him a bit, and it helped him feel a bit more sturdy, but by this time his guts hurt as much as his head. Then there was some kind of business with a magic wall, but he didn't even have to walk through it before Isaint declared it wasn't working. While everyone else talked about what to do, including some foreign woman that had apparently shown up at some point, Jackhammer put as much brass as he could summon into walking up to Robyn and tapping her shoulder. He was careful this time though, just slowly tapping with a finger to avoid any accidental contact. He was even feeling too sick to be embarrassed at the recollection of that incident earlier.

"Uh, hey doc?" He said, trying to sound nonchalant, "Got anything for a headache?" Though he did his best to hide the extent of his sickness, he was clearly distracted and even slightly discolored.

[obidancer]

Deckard kept bragging about his mastery of telekinesis but was just being ignored. To his dismay iSaint usurped his moment by gathering what he knew of spellcasting and lifted the hound by himself. Now part of Deckard was proud of his friend for showing how well he had learnt under Deckard's teaching, but then, the pupil just stole the master's thunder.

Once everyone had gone through the barrier, he shrugged and dropped it.

As everyone was taking their place in or on their respective rides, he listened carefully to ISaint's news.

I must say sharing a safehouse with probably just one rudimentary bathroom with 3 or four sick people in it is not something I look forward to, and on top of that the longer we keep this thing uncontained the more I feel it will corrupt the mana around. So that would be acting fast before we get all blunt of the sickness. But on the other hand, should we encounter opposition, it would be crazy to confront anyone while we all get a fever.

He pondered for a second. We don't know what the opposition is going to be. Going there unprepared and sick would be risky.

[Mercy Merchant]

Robyn stands to place her fingers on Jackhammer and hooks him up to her medkit's diagnostic tool.  She smiles at him and parcels out some modern headache powders, knowing that the effect will almost certainly not last long.  Turning to the others, she says, "Hey, may I please counsel that the meds in the kits are only bloody stop-gap measures.  I recommend a visit to a mainstream medical hospital.  I serve as a visiting surgeon at London General and I do know people there.  We do not seem to be contagious any longer.  So far, my medical recommendations are not going very far.  I strongly recommend either going back Below to the Market and getting the mages, or other mages, to finish the job they started, or go to hospital for the proper meds.  In a few hours, all of us might be feeling like fragging crap and unable to defend ourselves or the artifact."

[Jack_Spade]

"I guess we don't have much of a choice then. Even though I'd prefer a hospital, magic is the faster solution. And we need fast solutions. Do you think you can convince those mages to come topside for a house visit? Say a down payment of 5000 for their inconveniences.

If that isn't possible we'll have to use plan B: We'll stash the statue somewhere with a remote trigger and a motion trigger as well as a drone to keep watch. Than as I laid out to the Johnson, we get the payment and he gets the disarming code. Al, I think you'll be more than able to rig up a detonator that is hard enough to disarm that not even a nova hot matrix jockey will dare to mess with it. Likewise Robyn, I'll expect you'll be able to rig up a databomb strong enough to fry anyones gear who tries to mess with the setup.

That gives us time to meet the mages at the entrance to Below, get healed and be ready to tackle the second part of this operation."
Isaint replied.
"Any one got a better idea, I'm all ears."

[adamu]

Al's mind started turning over nefarious detonator failsafes to confound and bamboozle any would-be defusers.

He also said: "Well, we could jist figure out what meds we need an' order 'em fer drone delivery."

[Mercy Merchant]

Robyn shakes her head at Al's recommendation.  "That is possible, Al.  but even my name might not be enough if the meds are controlled substances.  We would still need to have the diagnostic data sent to the hospital for analysis.  It is possible, though, and I am willing to try it."  She also sends a note to the mage she has the comm code for, outlining ISaint's offer.

[obidancer]

No offense, but Magic isn't  able to sure everything, believe me, I've had a acquaintance used that Spell before, and it wasn't enough to cure my wife. And the antibiotics will help our body fight the disease faster and more efficiently but I doubt they will be able to act before we suffer the first symptoms. In any case, it's gonna take some time before Robyn can get her hands on it, and it being delivered to us. So I press that we should really get going. It is very likely there are already people on their way now that the Bomb image is in the wild.

He turned toward the japanese woman who was silently waiting for the drone to depart. Ms. Karasu. Shinto Priestess. Would you happen to know of any place we could all lay low for a short time? They may know of us and anticipate where we may go, but you didn't come here because of Torrent. Maybe you're the 'unexpected card' we can play to throw the opposition off?

 

[DireRadiant]

[Yukika Karasu - Sunday July 5th, 2076; Angel's, West End, London]

"Please, I am so sorry but Torrent-San also I work with and normally who I would ask."

Do I want to risk it? It is a great gamble.

Of course I will.

"I may be able to find a place without Torrent-San. You will be putting great trust in me, do you all wish this?"

[obidancer]

No would have been Deckard first and simple answer. He didn't trust the priestess a bit. She was supposedly sent by Iris to help us, yet Iris had disappeared and no word of her about the Japanese woman either. Plus her silence had too remained suspicious.
But Deckard had always embraced Chaos. Trap or not, that would be an unexpected move, and one to possibly throw off their opposition.

The Magician looked at ISaint. What do you say, boss?

[adamu]

Al looked up from where he was affixing multiple radio detonators to the statue. His fingers were trembling and he was sweating. Working right next to the thing was reminding him how much he hated Satanism and its cousin, idol worship.

He interrupted with his opinion. "Hell, ain't no way the other side gon' guess our next move, cuz we don't hardly know it ourselves. But I reckon Karasu-san's a straight shooter. Bit standoffish I don't mind sayin', but good as 'er word. All them Japanese types is real inta they honor an' so forth."