Dramatis Personae

• Chessur (NPC): It’s a cat! It’s a bird! It’s a Catbirb!. Powers: Unknown. Tagline: “Chirp?”
• Lynne C. Duane (NPC): Neurobiologist and neurosurgeon. Consulted doctor. Power: Telepathy. Tagline: “Please don’t, I’m already in your head.”
• Tabitha E. “Tabbs” de Orellana (NPC): Owner of Alchemia, LLC and wife to Harlowe. Mother to many (and counting). Can do it all and then some. Powers: Hyper-Intelligence and Kyberic Energy Control. Tagline: “No me respondas.”

Previously . . .

Back at Harvey’s convoy, the group stares at the bodies of the guards that came with Nash. There’s some discussion about what to do with them, Harlowe tells them to just call the non-emergency number or get Flit to teleport the bodies into the East Harbor. Harvey decides that the former is the better idea. The authorities are a bit busy at the moment and they suggest that Harvey just drop them off at a morgue and close down the area. Harlowe just wraps the bodies up in some sheets and dumps them into one of Harvey’s vehicles.

At Ends

Fiona, Flit, Harlowe, and Harvey
GeneTech, LLC Breakdown
Thursday, May 7th, 2020, 1930 hours (EST) 
175 Wireless Blvd, Hauppauge, NY 11788

There’s some discussion where they need to go next. It’s eventually decided that they should probably see Nicolades, the founder of the Meraki School for Education Institutes, or the board of trustees to see if they’ve had any threats occurring against them. Flit and Fiona spend time contacting the various people connected to them to see if there’s anything going on with them while Harvey and Harlowe head towards the morgue to drop off the bodies. The trustees are holed up in various places but aren’t really seeing anyone if they don’t have to, just huddled up with bodyguards. One man, Julio Lewis, a technopath of sorts that helped revolutionize the way that comms systems work revolutionizing modern cell networks, informs them that he was supposed to be having dinner with Nicolades the prior night but he hasn’t seen since. He’s tried calling him, but hasn’t gotten a response so at the least he’s incommunicado.

They’ve likely been to his place several times as they’re considered his star students, and they’re pretty sure that they’re unable to just teleport or flow into his apartment. They decide to just drop off the bodies via Harvey’s RV and then head to Nicolades. Harvey fills out the paperwork with Harlowe while Flit gets something to eat and Fiona keeps an eye out.

High Rise Dust Ball

Fiona, Flit, Harlowe, and Harvey
Xanthus Nicolaides’ Place
Thursday, May 7th, 2020, 1930 hours (EST) 
432 Park Ave, New York, NY 10022

They head towards Nicolades’s penthouse. There’s an odd feeling around the building, like when they look up at it, it feels odd. When they look up there, it’s like their stomach drops out a little. Harvey stares at the building through his goggles, seeing something that disturbs him greatly, that all over the city there’s some kind of energy in the atmosphere coursing around with shocks of the energy hitting the building now and then, but it’s unable to be properly analyzed as his database of comparisons have no idea what he’s seeing. It does seem to be paying particular attention to the building, though. There does seem to be a particular frequency in the energy and they probably don’t want to be hit by it.

Flit moves inside the building, there’s no one around the lobby. Harlowe looks around the lobby while the others check the elevator which requires a keycard to access and the stairwell is locked at the bottom for security. Harlowe goes behind the desk finding some keys, a radio, and a pile of dust. Harvey is able to tell that the dust is probably human remains. Harlowe, looking around in the rooms behind the counters looks for floorplan for the first floor to find a security room with Fiona’s help.

Inside the room, they find a pile of dust inside the room sitting on a chair. Harvey and Harlowe go through the cameras, finding that some are just pure static while others are still running. They rewind the footage, getting everything they could need onto their computers. They’re pretty sure, by now, the entire building has either been evacuated or in lockdown. The video taken of the front desk just shows a flash of light and the dust appears where the person was. The static cameras seem to be going out in a certain pattern leading upwards, like someone was purposefully knocking them out on the way.

Flit tries to get a portal up to the floor right under Nicolades’s penthouse but is having some trouble. The portal opens up but it’s a weird flicker in and out, much to Harvey’s dislike. Harvey, instead, goes up the shaft for the service elevators while Harlowe looks and investigates that they’ve got a repeating signal being sent out but it’s failing to, indicating that the lines from the building were cut. He looks over what’s going on the remaining cameras, noting the multiple piles of dust and the lack of any particular footage of a perpetrator, even towards the security room indicates that it’s likely that whatever happened to the building went through walls, so if there’s anyone alive then they’re either very lucky or they’re likely to be the perpetrator. Harlowe grabs the guard’s set of master keys and follows Harvey up the service elevator, enjoying the muzak that appears to be William Shatner’s Girl from Ipanema.

Up at the penthouse, they encounter what amounts to a fancy airlock before the penthouse. The doors do open up leading them inside and Harlowe grabs the keyring and looks through it before trying one with an Omega symbol on it, unlocking the door. Opening the door, there’s a distinct pop and a breeze blowing past them indicating that the room was overpressurized. The architecture evokes a villa in the Mediterranean. Harlowe notices something in the air, shift and shimmer in the light, a small cloud of particles or dust. Moving over to the security panel, Harlowe checks the keycard against it, looks over the options, and initiates an atmosphere purge to remove anything inside the room.

What happens, though, is that a long lockdown occurs and a wall opens up nearby and Nicolades walks out and they look at each other and then he curses. He was waiting for his people to come in to rescue him. They’re just going to have to survive the night now, or at least last the night there as his men will come in when he’s unable to contact them. They give him a quick update on what happened to his school and he keeps trying to catch up with them and mentions that he wants the Hobbs children at Meraki even going so far as being willing to buy any school the kids decide to go to.

Aftermath

It’s looking like they’re going to have to stay the night, once the door seals there’s apparently no other way out. Flit asks Harlowe why he vented the place which is when he mentions there looked like there was something weird in the air which Nicolades agrees with and said that’s why he was in the panic room. At this, Harvey looks through his goggles, noticing that it’s reflecting Kyberic energy back at them, not anything in particular, but everyday kyberic energy, and there’s lots of devices emitting and absorbing the energy. Looking around with his eyes, he starts noticing that there’s lots of gadgets sitting around from technopaths and savants.

Most of the team starts getting comfy and watching movies and eating snacks with Nicolades while Harlowe starts screwing with the security system to get out of the place and send a message out to Tabitha. Apparently Chessur has shown up on his shoulder, meaning he’s useless to get a message to Tabbs. The security system had no way to get a message out to anyone else and Harlowe just keeps fiddling with it over the night when they’re finally unlocked from the exterior.

After Action Report (GM)

We inch ever closer to getting to the good stuff. The stage is set. The cast of characters assembled. The die to be cast. What, ho? That remains to be seen. Overall, a good session with some good back and forth between the players and some random fun tidbits strewn about. The introduction of their long time benefactor to the foreground was nice and I would have did more with him if my damn glucose hadn’t dropped over a hundred points in less than 30 minutes. Still. We got to a good stopping point and everyone was happy. I know I was at least.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“The Girl From Ipanema” by Astrud Gilberto
“Dust in the Wind” by Kansas