TIME July 3rd, the small hours (continuing) LOCATION Pine Street, then the Section House, Chuza
BACKGROUND:
The first beast lay dead in Stephan’s ruined apartment; the second had gone through a window with Jules slung over its shoulder, badly hurt and heading nowhere fast. Stephan, and the hole in his roof, were the least of what the night still had waiting.
WHAT HAPPENED
Krusha confirmed the dead beast wasn’t getting back up. A thump from the stairwell sent Raven to investigate – a homeless man, dead, blood already running in the rainwater pooling from the hole above. Crowe snapped the still-wailing Stephan back into the corner as another of the beasts dropped in through the apartment’s own hole, sniffed at its fallen comrade, and let out a wail of its own.
Raven went straight at it with her silver blade; Crowe flanked in with his silver dagger. The beast answered with a vicious headbutt of its own before bolting for the window and climbing out onto the wall outside. Krusha shattered the brickwork under its claws with a word of KemerLexi’s power – it nearly lost its grip but held on – while Crowe simply jumped after it, riding it down to break his own fall.
The beast dropped the last fifteen feet and turned on Crowe with another headbutt. Raven took the stairwell down rather than the window; Krusha, out of better options, threw himself out after Crowe and took the fall damage rather than lose the moment. Crowe landed another hit on the creature before it caught him with both claws, reared back, and slammed its skull into his with a sound nobody in the alley would forget. He went down and didn’t get back up.
Krusha reached him first, calling on KemerLexi’s aid and fumbling the words in his hurry to dodge the beast’s claws at the same time. It didn’t matter. Crowe was gone. The badly wounded creature retreated into the rain as Raven arrived to find Krusha bent over the body.
There wasn’t much ceremony to what came next – loading Crowe onto a cart alongside the dead beasts and the homeless man’s body, the mood as grim as the weather. Back at the Section House, they ran into John Kraven of the Communications Guild, badgering Bowlohr for anything on the child abductions. He recognised Raven and Krusha on a double take and pushed for an interview – poorly timed, to put it gently – and was fobbed off with a suggestion to talk to ‘Agent Crowe’ while Stephan was quietly moved to a cell to be cleaned up before questioning.
Brin took the news of Crowe’s death as gravely as it deserved. A second closed ceremony was already being arranged for two Agents in as many weeks when Kowalski limped in nursing a bandaged side, still finding room for his usual humour.
“Guess sometimes people do bring knives to a gun fight… There was a note delivered at the front desk for you. Who wants it? Hmm – is that perfume on it? Guess one of you has an admirer. Perks of the job, perks of the job…”
Kowalski
Krusha took it and opened it.
“I hope you get the message. You didn’t keep your beaks out, so now I must unfortunately clip your wings!”
unsigned letter
The parchment detonated on the last word, flinging Krusha and Kowalski across the room in a hail of splintered table and worse. Brin came out of his office with a hand already on his sword hilt, demanding a headcount. A second, distant thump answered him before anyone could speak – another detonation, somewhere else in the building. Kowalski’s body lay broken against the wall. He didn’t survive it.
New recruits poured up the stairs as the Agents pushed down toward the infirmary and mortuary, meeting Sam running the other way, distraught.
“Jones is dead! Some sort of bomb! Shelly, what happened here…”
Sam
Brin called a full lockdown of the Section House and sent for Bowlohr to go through every letter that had come in recently.
Volok, it turned out, would be present at the Get Stuffed debrief – and pushing Stephan for more, sooner rather than later, suddenly looked like a very good idea.
What came out of him pointed at something called Aramis pods as a possible vector for the infection.
EXTRAS.
OPEN THREADS
- Crowe and Kowalski are dead – Kowalski by letter bomb, in the Section House itself.
- Agent Jones also killed by a second, separate bomb the same night.
- Aramis pods – a possible vector for whatever infected Jules, the beasts, and the earlier victims.
- A new recruit is being drafted in from another Section House to replace Crowe.