Showdown in New York City

They hit NYC. Jared talks to some Sluagh who can tell him where to find the ship that's smuggling the children. It always comes in around 2 AM, bribes the dockworkers, carries Italians and freaky ghouls. They've seen the Dauntain and the Slavic vampire accompany the goods being loaded. Aila learns from ghosts that it comes every 2 to 3 months and stays a few days before leaving again. Ambrose finds the name; "The Demeter." (Great, Sonya thinks; they're classic lit buffs.) The sluagh also know that they have to deal with the local vampires, who oversee the trade, coming in and out of the shadows.

Mary scrys the future to they can plan traps ahead of time. There'll be a guy with Von Allman's DeathsHead robots (five of those--and Ambrose makes a note), two Tzimisce with six war ghouls (Sonya hates those things), five Lasombra, three Giovanni, a bunch of ghosts, and the Tzimisce from Chicago. The majority of them can be leveled by fire bombs, sonic mines, daylight spells from the fae, and bombs snuck onto the ship.

This leaves three war ghouls, one Giovanni, a Tzimisce, two Lasombra, two robots, and a mysterious person. Aila stakes the Giovanni and Sonya stakes a Lasombra for interrogation. Jonas the unconscious enemies. RF takes out the other Lasombra, Nockers who came in to help clobber the robots, and Jared stakes the remaining Tzimisce. Ambrose fails to roll a knockout grenade at the mysterious guy.

The staked Tzimisce starts thrashing and...changing, so Rey throws water on him to freeze him. Mark knocks an equipment tower on a war ghoul. Somebody from a corner they didn't man opens fire on the other war ghoul, and Ambrose and the mysterious guy's heads both whip in that direction as they recognize the telltale sound of a Thunderhead gun. It's Ambrose's friendly MiB!

Then the mysterious guy teleports away with another Von Allman device, which Ambrose quickly puts a trace on. And one spectre flees the scene before anyone can catch him.

The MiB seems torn between the efficiency of their work and the out-and-out vulgarity of it, but he's here to talk while his people can't trace him under the clouds of Paradox hanging in the air. Their conversation resolves into learning the following:

Von Allman had a Nazi lab in Hollow Earth. It's still staffed by his people.

The Tzimisce are possessed by things called Soul Eaters (a Void Engineer turns up with the ship's log, and stops to peer at the frozen Tzimisce, and explains). Vicissitude is an infection of these soul eaters, which grow into the cells of the people it's used on, contaminating them too. It activates in vampires when they diablerize, and in other people when they perpetrate horrors. The soul eaters seem to call to one another, and have a sort of hive mind. He theorizes it's pieces of something...and the Garou realize what of: It's Eater of Souls. Sonya pieces it together: Rastov was Embraced only weeks after the Croatan sacrifice. He may be the source host. He's doing all this to help it pull itself together. And that explains why the Nephandi are helping him, and his falling-out with Dracula.

The MiB didn't know about Dracula. Sonya mocks him for it. "He hasn't even bothered to move from his old castle."

"That cheeky bastard!" the MiB exclaims.

And Sonya thinks it's Rastov's activities that woke Baba Yaga. The Voivode wield ancient magic that connects them to the land. With an evil like that arising on her border, it may have disturbed the Crone's sleep enough to rouse her.

Ambrose asks about Project Invictus. "Do you really want to know?" the MiB asks, leveling a significant look on him.

"Oh no no no," Ambrose protests. "Don't be like that!"

The MiB scans the vampires' brains and digitizes the information for the group. The Void Engineer extracts the soul eater from the frozen vammpire, from which Ambrose takes a core sample. The Void Engineer starts talking about ways to handle the Tzimisce now, when Sonya grabs a plank, shifts to Crinos and stakes him. "Or you could do that."

Ambrose argues a little with the Technocrats over the Etherites, and the MiB gives in and explains that Invictus is bringing the Technocracy back to its true purpose. He starts reciting the compact of the Ivory Tower. Ambrose shudders at the first line, but irritatedly finishes the recital. The Etherites know it too; they were the first victims of its breaking.

Sonya keeps a war ghoul to see if they can be purified.

They turn over the various upcoming events and information. The Circus is due in Chicago soon. Can they summon Cara and make a pact with her? Free passage in return for helping her in Texas when the time comes? They need to talk to the Texas vampire again to learn more about Cara.

And the thing in the lake: a dream of Eater of Souls? Sonya muses on its captivity: the Fomorians were trapped in the Silver Sea, this thing in the lake, mirrors...the mirrored underside of the water. They're held by their own reflections.

They get in touch with gypsies, Aila's kin in Eastern Europe. Sonya sends information to Sergei. Ambrose goes to the Gernsback to help study the chair and gather information on Hollow Earth. He and Mark are both highly creeped out by the MiB just dropping in like some James Bond/Deep Throat character. It's so...not antipathetic. They wonder what that was really about. There had to be an ulterior motive. Was he sizing the group up? Collecting the werewolf side of events? He mostly speaks to Ambrose, after all.

Jonas goes on about writing a letter to Dracula about Rastov and signing it as Ambrose. "No," Mark tells him, "because in five years when we actually meet Dracula, he'll pull out that letter and I'll fall down laughing and piss myself in front of the Lord of the Undead, and I just can't do that."