When they get to Wales, they find that Tillingtast's place is subtly surrounded by the Technocracy. So Ambrose calls him and arranges to meet him in a nearby town (of course Tillingtast has a back way out of his secret lab). Tillingtast missed much of the context, so he believes that Ambrose is still on his side, having narrowly escaped from the savage killer werewolves.
But when they get to the town, they find it infested with living killer mannikins and everyone human is dead. What's more, they find they can't leave. When they try to head back toward the edge of town, it just stays away from them. While they ponder this, a mannikin comes out of the dress shop, dragging a dead Man in Black behind it.
Spotting them, it attacks, but the Garou kill it easily, and then the MiB wakes up. Apparently he's got nanites, which doesn't make Ambrose happy. He tells them that his group came to deal with the situation. Something had clued them in a while back, so last year, they genegineered the wheat crop so it'd let them track the town's inhabitants, as well as act as a dead man's switch. They can activate some enzyme and kill anyone who's eaten the crop.
He's not about to let this stand, and right now, killing him is more trouble than it's worth, so the MiB comes along while the group tracks down anybody still alive in the town. They get a bead on three people. One is a Nocker, holed up in his barn, who got hold of the Technocratic helicopter and...modified it. It can't fly anymore, but now it can turn into a giant robot. The MiB is displeased. The Nocker comes along, figuring hanging out with living death machines is better than waiting for mannikins to eat his face. His unusual arsenal gives Ambrose an idea; he grabs some shotguns from empty houses and starts to tinker with them.
The second guy is a pale mage who lives in a house with a vampire in the basement: a Tremere, judging by the weird altered Hermetic symbols Ambrose finds marked on the house in blood. The guy tries to chase them away, but the Garou sense badness in the basement and are determined, so a fight breaks out. The MiB pulls out a Thunderhead, second-B-est FG to be found. Jonas uses one of Ambrose's modded shotguns (now operating something like rocket launchers) to blow a hole in the roof, which works out well when someone else puts a hole in the floorboards, leaving the vampire exposed to sunlight. They knock out the mage, a ghouled Verbena, and take him along in some kind of extra-dimensional sack Tim has.
The third person is holed up in the general store. He's a totally normal guy who's just hiding out and has managed to survive. When the MiB voices his admiration, Ambrose recognizes the gleam in his eye and argues with him over recruitment. The man tells them that the mannikins showed up a week ago. Just before that, yellow-brick roads and scarecrows started popping up. Ambrose invites the guy along. Sonya, realizing he'll get totally messed up by the Delirium (not to mention other things, most likely) instead has RF knock him out and stuff him in Tim's bag.
Then mannikin police show up outside the store, and get blown up by Ambrose's shotgun-cum-rocket launchers. The Nocker calls his car and has it transform into a giant robot, at which point mannikins swarm out of the surrounding houses. The group runs.
So now they get to follow the yellow brick road, which yes indeed, runs through town. They get attacked by monkeys, of course, which draw back and simply watch from a distance once they realize there are Garou in the group. When they hit the poppy field, Ambrose and Jonas pass out and have to be carried out and woken up. To everyone else's combined amusement and irritation, Ambrose and the MiB keep sniping at each other: "Your fake ether..." "It wasn't fake until you published that essay!"
In thiws way, they reach the "Emerald City." Which looks like it's half city and half hospital. Nurses, doctors, and orderlies wander about, ignoring the group completely. Aila, the Nocker, and Tim start nattering about Silent Hill, which annoys Sonya and the MiB.
The group splits up, one half going upstairs, and the others down. Ambrose notes that some of the "people" wandering around are only illusions of people, or maybe after-images, visible memories. Others, the fae say, are chimera.
Upstairs, Sonya and the MiB spot a drug-runner they know works for some eastern European vampires. He looks deformed. Sonya thinks he might be a fomori. She also notes an unusual number of burly orderlies. Jared gets to a computer, where he's able to confirm that this was a mental hospital.
Downstairs, they spot a weird-looking, crazy-eyed doctor with bad dress sense and a special badge that says "Access Area O." There are huge orderlies down there, too. Following Wild-eyed Doctor through the door, Ambrose memorizes the passcode he enters. The doctor seems kind of...more real than the rest. He follows a long hallway with a door at the end marked "Patient prime," where he talks with a nurse about a 'worsening condition.' The employees here wear "Autumn Health Care" logos. When Ambrose tries to memorize the code for the "Patient Prime" door, he gets caught in a flash of light and goes missing. After the flash, the doctor talks as if he's just come out of the room, and he's carrying a blood sample he didn't have before. They keep along in the doctor's wake, accumulating more passcodes, to a large lab. In there, the doctor waits until lab techs leave, then he drinks the blood.
Upstairs, the fae feel a pulse or tremor and an orderly heads upstairs. They spot the Autumn Health Care logo, too. The orderly heads to a man in an office who seems relaxed, menacing, and in charge.
Ambrose wakes in the hallway, but he's not in the fuzzy-edged dreamworld anymore. He sneaks into another hall, avoiding orderlies, then hides from some giant freaky Silent Hill-looking dogs in an A/C vent. In there, he hears voices echoing through from a nearby room where two men are arguing over a patient. One sounds Russian, and talks like he's in authority. They sound angry that something hasn't happened. Spying through the vent, Ambrose sees a doctor saying something about "you can't rush Awakenings." The Russian ignores him, wanting a timetable stepped up because a Tremere from the "camarilla" is in town.
The group downstairs continues to observe the wild-eyed doctor, who is typing notes on a dangerous experiment with the patient that he thinks should wait due to her instability. But it's "James'" orders (apparently the annoyed guy who was talking to the Russian isn't really a doctor). The group wonders if the experiment is what caused all this. They want to find Ambrose but don't know where to look.
The upstairs crew follows the orderly and the menacing man down an elevator behind the office that exits below basement level, where they overhear the same conversation Ambrose just heard. Speaking of whom, Ambrose pops back into the dreamworld when his friends enter, and slithers out of the vents to join them.
Heading out, they meet up with the other half of the group, then catch up to the doctor who's carrying a horrible helmet covered with spikes and hermetic symbols. Ambrose waves the MiB up, and they look it over, wondering if it's Nephandic. At any rate, they confirm that it makes them both feel sick.
He heads back to Patient Prime's room, where Ambrose catches the door code this time. Patient Prim is an 8 year old girl. The doctor straps the repulsive helmet to her head and pumps in quintessence (they do indeed spot a Nephandic symbol on the helmet when the doctor moves his hand). Something seems to go wrong with his readings, because he suddenly calls in the other doctors, and then pulsing colors and waves of energy erupt from the little girl.
The surroundings start to fade in, edges sharpening. The Dauntain comes in, quite pleased with the result. Then there's a rainbow explosion, which throws Ambrose into the wall.
When it clears, there's a twisted black tree that rises as far as their eyes can follow. Nothing to do but climb up--at which point, Ambrose and the MiB both demonstrate that they have anti-gravity devices. The little girl is lying unconscious at the top. Jared gets the helmet off her, and they note that the tree wasn't made by her. She's fine, but her chrysalis energy was corrupted by the helmet. Noting that the tree looks like a prison that got busted open, they work out that the point was to do exactly that.
Closer inspection shows that the helmet was created by a Thig Hermetic. Rey does psychometry on the tree: he sees it transplanted from the Milderwood. He sees the tree split open and a person all in white with a mask, beautiful but frightening, emerge. She leaves with the Dauntain--a Fomorian of the White Court. The mage was tossed away by the explosion, the crazy-eyed doctor--a vampire--simply fades out of sight via some power of his.
They need to get the girl out of here. Emily wipes out the MiB (the sudden violence toward a guy who'd been helping them alarms Ambrose), Ambrose removes the quintessence batteries from the helmet and has them smash it. He plans to rig a car to explode and send it at the building, but they run into more mannikins outside. He lobs a smoke grenade and frag grenade at them. Garou smash! Ambrose hardens the smoke to trap mannikins; the Nocker summons the copter-bot. Rey hides the girl. Ambrose uses electro-magnetic fields to wrap fire around the robot, after which the trashing reaches its climax.
Letting the robot guard their rear, they get the hell out of the town. At the edge, they see an overturned Bentley and a copter taking off. Sonya throws Aila at the copter. She grabs the side, tears the door off, snags the klaive and Dr. Tillingtast (who's wrapped up and drugged), falls backward in a flip to land on her feet.
When the copter comes around to confront them, Ambrose shoots the copter with one of the rigged shotguns, taking it out.
His phone rings. "Dr. Quintrell..." "You blew up my house!" he shouts, and hangs up.
Dr. Tillingtast, still uncionscious, teleports away. He must've been on a dead man's switch. The group, with more important things to do, heads toward the freehold. The canister the Klaive is in is locked up to crazy levels and wrapped in anti-magic. Sonya considers simply tearing it open, but gets distracted by HITMarks on motorcycles chasing them. Rey, driving, takes off. Sonya shoots out a bike tire, the bike flips, the HITMark lands, throws the bike at them and keeps chasing. Aila starts tearing out seats from the car and throwing them. Ambrose dives under the dashboard to soup up the car, then his phone rings. "Dr. Quintrell," the MiB asks, "why do you keep answering your phone?" A horrible screeching dissonant noise erupts from the speaker, disorienting everyone in the car. Tim grabs the phone and calls back with a Gift that gives the answerer a bladder control problem. Jared turns the pavement to mud.
Then a guy on a motorcycle and a man on a goat joust with the HITMarks, which lets Rey outdistance them and reach the freehold.
Jonas opens the Klaive case. Jared looks sick. Ambrose's phone rings again. Ambrose almost doesn't answer, but this time it's Mark, asking if things are okay, and if he ran into Technocrats. "I trust you, but people are talking about you plagiarizing your last two papers." Que one enormous rant from Ambrose about the Technocracy being jerks.
The group takes care of the Verbena, arranging for him to be shipped off to a Verbena chantry, and the shopkeeper, who will pleasantly not remember his trauma, and then they spend the night at the freehold. The next day, they head back with the Kin Jared saved.
It's three days from Halloween, and the fae go on the warpath. There's a Fomorian loose!
The Garou, anticipating a nice calm rest for a couple of days before the next crazy adventure, return to their caern in Chicago. It's surrounded by Weaver-smelling police tape.
Aila: "Oh my god, they took our caern!"
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