RF, Jonas, Rey, Ambrose and Te Hwan head to Youngsten's lab. Sonya, Aila, Olesya, Jared, Caleb, Mark, and Lady Alison take Sergei's path. Ambrose gives Jared some of the explosives he got from the Nockers.
Sonya's group find a wall and a stairway down to a cavern entrance.
Ambrose's group find a decimated lab. This wasn't done by Sergei. There are laser pistol marks. This happened maybe an hour ago. Ambrose grabs and ID and keys from a dead technician (the other technician is missing his), takes some photos, and gets a camera working to replay the scene.
He sees Youngsten working with his two assistants, complaining about being relegatedto a basement with all his hard work. "Once that Avatar is reprogramed, I'd better get what I want," the Nephandus grumbles. Then shots are fired--the Etherite cyborg girl enters the room and chases Youngsten upstairs.
Ambrose and the others follow. About 900 feet up, they find a security-locked transport tube. The coordinates go to somewhere above in the caverns--probably another lab.
And indeed it does: another wrecked lab. Schematics cover the wall. Youngsten lies on the floor in front of a machine. Looking it over, Ambrose judges that it takes a vampire's blood and distills its magic into an Avatar, then interfaces with another machine (which doesn't seem to be Etherite-designed) to re-program that Avatar and attach it to someone/thing else. A powerful Avatar, like some of the Traditions talk about the Wyck. Ambrose grabs the schematics, and they follow the next tunnel.
Sonya's group find themselves barraged by their greatest fears. Aila comes face-to-face with Set as he curses her tribe. It shakes her up. Sonya, who seems unaffected, hands her Turtle to hug.
Their tunnel leads out onto the mountainside, which is blanketed in snow. The path wraps around and back into another tunnel. Sonya has begun to spot Sergei's blood.
Ambrose's group follows their tunnel to a hangar bay, which is mostly filled by a big, ether-powered airship. Crossing over the catwalk, Rey strokes his hand along the ship's side and asks to fly it...then feels fine vibrations in the metal. A fight inside? Ambrose finds an access hatch.
In Sonya's group, Aila has begun to notice that the Shroud is very thin here. they come to a long room where Bone Gnawers of Sonya's acquaintance--some of the ones gone missing in Chicago--are suspended in sigil-scribed tanks into which blood is being pumped. Some of them are alive. Aila finds a living technician. Mauled by Garou claws, he'd been dropped in favor of the Giovanni who showed up. The werewolf chased the vampire upstairs. He tells them they've dragged in a lot of fairies to the main lab on the top floor of the castle's upper tower. He saw they had rainbow energy firing into a coffin, "via Dr. Von Allman's machine." They have the werewolves' wraiths trapped somewhere, so Von Allman can experiment on their spirits. Mark grumbles, not liking the mounting evidence of Dr. Von Allman being alive.
"Anyone else have any questions?" Aila asks. Nobody does, so she breaks the man's neck. Then they spot another guy trying to run. Caleb and Aila stop him. Sonya grabs passcards and a castle map from the dead people. The map shows that the top off the castle is really far, but there's there's some kind of tube nearby that runs all the way up through the castle to the top floor. It goes so deep, she loses track of it on the charts. Does it plumb all the way into Hollow Earth?
The airship Ambrose and co. find themselves in is big, very classy, and very Victorian. It's named the Fatherland. Ambrose patches into the computer system and downloads a map. The fight is in the ballroom--Youngsten and six robots against the cyborg girl. Ambrose uses the sound system to disrupt two of the robots. RF and Jonas smash two more. Rey and Te Hwan take the rest. Ambrose throws a flash grenade at Youngsten, who's blinded and staggers off the catwalk. RF catches him with his Coils of the Serpent Gift.
Ambrose looks around, but the girl is gone. They knock out Youngsten, and Ambrose strips him of his gear. He decides to pause in order to rig the ship in case they need a quick escape, and also notes that it's equipped with teleporters.
Sonya's group reach a room that contains the remnants of a truly massive fight. Two dead vampires, and some kind of scientific device covered in scorchmarks. Aila grabs the dead mens' keys. This used to be some kind of development lab. Whatever part they were working on, however, is not here.
Following the tunnel outside, there's no indication Sergei left the room, but his body isn't there. Sonya fears he was taken. Mark rewinds the events on a reflective surface: Sergei slashing through the room; Von Allman arriving; using some kind of weapon on Sergei which knocked him out; and then leaving with him. Mark calls the others.
Ambrose tells him he has a plan: rig the ship for a quick exit, and take the teleporters up to the top floor.
Calling up a map of the castle on the ship's system, he spots a satellite's ping on the radar, and realizes it must be the Technocracy. Mark's group will have to backtrack through the tunnels...or use the teleporter to bring them here!
Which works a charm. Now, they need to know what they're walking into. They wake Dr. Youngsten, who isn't inclined to help. Sonya asks Lady Alison if she can do anything. In reply, the Lady points her wand at the scientist, who starts babbling everything.
A lot of fae children are being held in shadow dungeons created by the Lasombra, guarded by the Dauntain doctor three floor below the top. Only Sergei is being held on the top floor. The tube Sonya saw is energy being piped up from Flux through a pipe driven all the way down into Hollow Earth. Rastov wants an Avatar back, and wants the one from the body the Giovanni gave him. Von Allman wanted to build a pipe fromFlux to Rastov because he thought it'd be cool to feed the thing inside him (which Rastov wants to swap out. Into the body?). Youngsten notices Ambrose's new watch and tells him it's awesome.
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