Clusterfrag

((Can I get my spell rolls?))

"Agreed, let's get security on our side first. Do we have any idea where the sample is located in the building?"

Tyros moves towards the ramp into the facility, vision switching to the astral spectrum periodically to ensure there are no threats coming at the team unseen.

The team descends the ramp, weapons free. At the bottom of the ramp is a partially rolled up security shutter which Tyros has to double-over to fit under. Peeling around the corner in two teams, Firestarter finds themselves staring down a long corridor of small workstations. Fraggin' cubicle farm.

Tyros moves out in front of the group, trusting his invisibility to let him get the drop on any would be ambushers. Slowly, he makes his way towards the security center.

Max presses forward-- visually at the head of the group behind the invisible troll. His shotgun is raised as he sweeps around corners and double checks the hiding places inherently created by office decorum. There's a stillness about the place that is unsettling as the team can see disturbed dust in the shafts of light created from their flashlights.

Tyros slows in his tracks. A perimeter of astral wards have been set up, preventing further progress without stepping through (and dropping his spells.)

((So you can't carry active spells across the wards? How do I break them?))

Tyros studies he wards with significant curiosity (roll assencing). He has studied the theory behind wards like these, but this is the first time he has encountered them in the field. Tyros makes a mental note to look into adding similar wards to the FSRS compound.

Adams pauses. The ultrasound in his helmet shows him that the Troll has stopped for some reason. He holds out his arm to motion to the others to do the same.
His eyes continue to scan the desks and cubicles. Too damn many places for someone to hide.

"Tyros, what've you got?" He asks.

(( See p.194 in the main sourcebook for passing through barriers, though if it is an alarm ward, it will alert the original caster. Masking can also be used to pass through undetected. ))

A faint thump echoes from a cluster of workstations 20 meters or so ahead of the team.

Max raises his shotgun in the direction of the thump and squints hard through the gloom. The elf starts to step forward, but stills himself once more behind what he has deduced to be some kind of unknown obstruction to their progression.

There's another thump, and what appears to be a body rolls out from behind the corner of a partition and wriggles.

Doc sights in on the body, his stomach convulsing in time to the wriggling limbs. He holds his fire.

Even with magic and all the crazy drek after the awakening, we've still been allowed one immutable law: The dead stay dead, dammit!

Upon closer inspection, Doc determines that the body is a bound and gagged individual in a lab coat. The wriggling is an attempt to free him/herself.

<"It's a magical ward. Should pose no threat to anyone but myself and I can handle it.">

Tyros examines the ward and gives a small shrug; the terrorists obviously know the team is present already, given their dramatic entrance, so stealth is a lost cause. Hefting his claymore, he swings the astrally active weapon focus at the ward, attempting to tear a gash in it large enough to step through. To the mundane, the sight of the big troll swinging his claymore repeatedly at thin air appears somewhat mad, but the astral plane is filled with explosions of mana as the sword rends a hole in the opaque ward.

Satisfied the ward is open and Tyros can get through without his spells being disrupted, the troll quickly moves through the opening he has made before it seals up again.

Adams nods as Tyros gives the all-clear, and moves to the struggling form on the ground.

He pulls the gag out of the person's mouth and says,

"You all right? What happened?"

Max steps toward the detained lab worker and listens intently to the conversation as he keeps his eyes and weapon active in their search of the room.

The bound individual is a young ork in a labcoat. It's clear he's been roughed up some, as he is sporting several bruises on his face and a bloody nose. He coughs and sits up as Doc unties him.

"Thanks. You must be an extraction team...? Man, they hit us so quickly and so hard."

Max kneels down next to the man and says,

"We are. What the frag happened here? Tell us everything you can."

Adams does a quick once-over for any signs of obvious wounds.

"Do you remember what kind of questions they were asking you? What did they want?"

The ork rubs his head.

"They kept going on and on about the spirit link. I couldn't make any sense of it. I think they're a bunch of radicals, fresh off the reservation..."

Sinjin listens to the conversation, peering down the walkways between cubicles for signs of which way the enviro-militants may have gone.

"So you work in the labs...what exactly were your duties? We're here to recover a certain... material sample. Any idea where something like this would be stored? If you offer your cooperation in recovering the package, we can offer you a way off this compound."

Max stands anxiously and listens to the conversation with a cigarette in his lips.

Max makes eye contact with the man and says,

"We should get moving, then. We'll walk in formation-- stay in the center of the group and direct us."

Before waiting for any kind of group affirmation, the impatient elf is on the move.

Tyros' eyes roam the floor, "We taking the elevator or the stairs?"

Max suggests,

"It's harder to geek an entire team of chummers on a flight of stairs than it is dropping them down an elevator shaft."

Doc nods, then shudders,

"Yeah, I think I've been put off taking elevators in lab environments after our last job. I vote stairs."

Max heads for the stairs with Marlowe at the ready. It may just be nerves, but the elf feels like he can't wait to shoot something.

The deserted offices are eerie. Maybe it's the unusual silence that pervades every corner of the meticulously organized working areas, or the shafts of Mojave sun-light that penetrate the photo-reactive windows.

The team creeps towards the center of the floor, weapons free.

"I don't have a very good feeling about this," mutters the ork lab assistant. "I feel like they were talking about the stairs when I was coming to."

Adams checks the chamber of his rifle for the third time,

"Drek. Well, we can take the stairs, or maybe we can force the elevator doors open, and drop down the shaft. Either way, I'm not trusting my life to the elevator itself."

Max nods ands says in agreement,

"Tyros could always fly us down if they've booby trapped or sabotaged the stairs. Sounds like a plan to me."

A dry groan reverberates between Sinjin's ears, filling his head with a dull resonance unheard by others. Abruptly, the noise abates as he catches himself grinding his teeth, and stops. The anticipation is killing him. Eyeing the dim corridors and many vulnerable blind spots created by the array of desks and cubicle walls, he follows the team in silence. Unbidden, his hands move stealthily to the leather braces on his chest and draw a pair of keenly sharpened knives, as though they share his palpable need to do something.

"Where is everybody else? There's no bodies, blood, nothing....How many people were stationed here, chum?"

The ork stops at the door to the stairs and eyes it with trepidation.

"There are about 100 staff working here. I haven't seen hardly anyone since the attack started."

Max considers the missing staff as he continues to the elevator. Propping Marlowe against the jamb to the right, Max crams his fingertips into the crack between the doors and grunts faintly, asking,

"Sinjin? Gimme a hand here, amigo?"

The elf pulls with all his recently more considerable might. Sweat beads on his forehead as he tugs at the door. There's a sickening moment where Max can feel a snagged fingernail on the road to giving up the ghost, but he presses on with the task. Frag it-- he'll grow another.

And he can always turn down the volume on that pain.

Nodding to Max, Sinjin steps forward to lend a hand. Using his knife, he shims it between the lift doors till he and the elf manage to pry them open enough to get their hands firmly in place. Using their combined strength, the two heave mightily to pull the doors apart.