Time is Out of Joint
General Summary
December 21st through 22nd, 2005
Jarissa Paxton log:
Still winter. It's snowing MORE. The brownouts have stopped since the MATRIX fight a week ago or so.
We're going to the Phoenix Industries warehouses, where there has been a theft. The prototypes for the regen enhancement units (destined for hospitals) were stolen from a vault in the warehouse.
Some claim that Oscorp is to blame. That's who the police suspect, but Dr. Gironde does not agree.
We need to find the things before the government figures out exactly what got stolen and WE get investigated! As in the entire Phoenix Industries group of businesses! NOT. OKAY.
We also need to find it before Oscorp finds it, since they're probably investigating to find out who framed them.
We are specifically to look at how the thieves managed to get past the time-locked door without breaking it.
Oscorp and Stark Enterprises have nearby warehouses. The cargo ship is still sitting there, waiting for outbound cargo.
There're some Oscorp guys moving around in that area, more than would normally be present.
Toward the back of the warehouse are five vaults; one has Crime Scene tape all over it. Doc gets to work looking for DNA to gather. Amythyst starts using the diagnostic equipment on the time delay lock. Calliope starts looking at one of the other vaults to see if he can figure out how to bypass its security.
A's diagnostic says the vault normally can be opened twice a day: once at 8 am and once at 5 pm. The last time it was opened was at 5 pm last night but 5 pm happened 2 hours apart.
I don't smell a person having been in there but I do smell Neoprene residue. Calliope studies the ceiling of the vault and figures he would've hidden out up at a certain spot, which matches the concentration of scent nicely. I figure if there WAS someone wearing a neoprene suit in this corner, they held their position precisely 2 hours. The largest individual piece was no bigger than a few feet across in a cube. The plastic crate woulda been about a yard square?
There would've been six individually packed objects inside the storage box. Total weight of objects probably thirty pounds of weight.
Calliope thinks they used a magnetic clamp on a small spot of the interior vault wall!
After being spun up, Silverwing and ShadowStar clean up the security video. A guy all in black with a backpack is stepping carefully out, staring at the ground as he does so. He scales the shelf. As he's coming up there, he has to hesitate above the guards at one spot on the shelf. While the guards are searching, he comes back down the shelves and shadows the guard with the cellphone hurrying out to get a clear signal.
Doc comes up with something that has a heart rate: it's precise and calm and reminds me of the Bat. Or that Ra's dude. Or a sniper maybe?
I follow the route the security guy with the phone took to get outside, and then look for where the guy in black neoprene went: right up against the edge of the building, heading away from the security guard, down to the edge, stutter-stepping a few times, and then dashes across to the Oscorp parking lot.
I'm getting shot at! Not by Oscorp dudes, but some guys hunkered down Intergang style! Their guns will have to go. They may be in Oscorp security uniforms but feh.
After being significantly and quickly disarmed, and threatened with arrest, three of the not-Oscorp guys take off in various directions. Doc, Amythyst, and Calliope each have a good shot at the runners, while I'm taking down the one closest to me who has a bloody nose from getting smacked with a sonic grenade. That leaves the fifth guy, shot unconscious via tk-created "friendly fire" in the first round of combat.
I figure we got about six minutes before the cops show up. They don't have Oscorp ID on them, astonishing!, just regular driver licenses. Their Oscorp "badges" are certainly forgeries.
The cops are on the way, a minute earlier than I estimated. Dammit. We trade Oscorp security a chance to cooperate with the police investigation into the Oscorp falsies in trade for security footage of their parking lot. Meanwhile the awake guy says they were hired to show up at exactly such-and-such time in exactly such-and-such place, wearing provided uniforms, and shoot {description of me} as one of 4 or 5 people who would be coming out to investigate/fight.
We have a SERIOUS security compromise! Feral, or at least what I look like, is being associated with Phoenix Industries. We gotta get out of here before the cops arrive. His schedule printout even says I'll attack the weaponry first.
As the cops pull up they are trying to decide whether the driver of the SUV is a match for a description they have. We park at a Friendly's and depart the vehicle. We're planning to cut through a small portion of Suicide Slum, cut around the edge of the Hollowing, and hole up in or near the Botanical Gardens.
Mama Trace had other ideas. We haven't gotten out of the Slum yet.
Silverwing has his analysis of the Oscorp parking lot security footage. The guy in black snuck up to get under the Oscorp semi, rode it out of the parking lot, then dropped off to head toward the barge.
Blackjack and Grayson arrive with replacement "civilian" clothes for Calliope, whose civvies got left on the roof of the Phoenix Industries warehouse. Tina is trying to find the barge's ID so we can know which one to search. Blackjack looks at the swiped forged Oscorp badge and thinks it was made by the Painter as Calliope suspected.
Since we (a collection of mask-wearing metahumans of whatever type) are in Hob's Bay a.k.a. "Suicide Slum", unless we are excrutiatingly circumspect it is a guarantee that we will encounter local masked mystery man The Shadow. These are the rules. Anybody who is not prepared to live with them should not have suited up in the first place.
The Shadow knows the enemy tends to blend into crowds.
Truck has been abandoned.
"Look for the barge on the Old River Dock," he tells us, "which does not get a lot of attention.
"If he went to such great lengths to try to frame the four of you, when he was able to work his way into a very high security warehouse with no bloodshed ... there must be something about the four of you that worries him."
Animatronic squirrel = camera hidden in tree at "abandoned" warehouse where the truck was left.
On the driver: 2 small keycards, some kind of nameless badge with magstripe, backup weapon (handheld taser with extra components) not fried, smartphone that's EMPed, rest of his commgear, standard Intergang armor but colored black, night vision lenses in his mask
guy in a 3piece suit and a bowler hat is standing next to a 4-door sedan, has his back to the camera
Might be inside the warehouse
Calliope has the prisoner, Amythyst has the device turned off inside the glove compartment, Doc is floating over at a window and peeking inside the warehouse. There's a single piece of paper that says "tic tock". Inside a window visor is a set of keys that fit the ignition for this truck. It's also got a smallish, thin, brass key, maybe for a very large locker.
We do a lot of yes-no-maybe trying to track down the engine of the car. There are a bunch of falsies set up.
Also bombs, but Calliope disarms them with no trouble and Doc takes care of the one in the truck.
We get a text message from the enemy.
Also sirens for the Harbor Patrol are approaching. It'd be bad for Mama Trace's military vintage Hummer to be involved in a police action.
All the engines spark and you all get a text message at the same time... it says:
Tick-Tock. Time flows. 2 min 12 seconds late, but not a Corporate slug. Stay out of my way. You need not be harmed in what I must do. The ‘humanitarian’ must PAY for what he did to HER. I will no longer tolerate his monumental ego towering over everyone! From Hell’s heart I’ll strike a timely blow he’ll never forget! But now that I have picked up my supplies, I must fly, it never pays to be fashionably late to those events.
I find a concealed door that takes me down. It's been jimmied on the inside, instead of using the cardreader. Somebody cut part of the mechanism and forced their way in. I descend a short set of stairs to a very Intergang small listening post. Six unconscious Intergang people are on the floor. They were hit with very precise strikes. Last thing they remember is some guy in a suit walking around upstairs; they sent a couple "warehouse security" guys upstairs to convince him to leave. They never came back, there was shouting and smoke and something hit him and lights out.
The Intergang guy that I'm interrogating thinks he has a backup of the video from the guy walking around. I get a copy of the backup. We split up, they go their way, I catch back up with the guys.
The decoy vehicles are visible on the backup. They all come in about the same time, and the drivers look incredibly similar. Right before some interference began on the other camera, on the Intergang backup we see a gentleman in a 3-piece tweedish brown suit, thin, with a pocket watch, bowler hat, perfectly round glasses. He checks the pocket watch, puts it back in very precise motions. He taps into a security panel on the side of the warehouse. He leaves as Intergang sends security to get rid of this guy. They come up to talk to him, he pulls out his pocket watch, looks at it, looks at them, shakes his head: "You're late." He closes the watch and proceeds to beat the piss out of them like Elliot Spenser. He seems to know exactly where their fists are going to be, and he may have superspeed.
Body language says he found the fisticuffs distasteful.
(rest is on the desktop we swiped only)
Then he jimmies the lock on the secret door and walks in. He is using canisters he picked up from the "abandoned warehouse" detritus to make smoke bombs. They even try to use the taser pistol and he blocked it with whatever environment was handy.
When he's done, he looks something up on their computer, looks straight at the camera, checks his watch, looks back at the camera, and says, "You're late."
Silverwing takes the image of the enemy to Dr. Tafey to find out if the boss knows anything on him. Some results are from Metropolis General.
Name: William Tockman Fugit
Inventor
Hospital Records say he and his sister were diagnosed with very serious heart defects. He invented a timer for a new kind of artificial heart that would've corrected this. He had a backer for the invention: Lex Luthor. Sister was the only one who actually had the condition, William's diagnosis was a paperwork screw-up. Sister died while waiting for a transplant of the new heart. Somehow it went to somebody else. Silver can't figure out how it got into the donor system, nor how the recipient wound up higher than her. Luthor apparently has full legal rights to the Fugit Heart for LexLabs' exclusive use.
Of course William Fugit was diagnosed by multiple doctors with massive grief.
Silver's able to track down an alternate physical address associated with the whole invention of the artificial heart and all.
Character(s) interacted with
- assorted Intergang hirelings
- The Clock King a.k.a. William Tockman Fugit
- Mama Trace
- The Shadow
- Dr. Jean-Claude Gironde
- Wyldfire agents and associates:
- Amythyst
- Blackjack
- Calliope
- Feral
- Grayson Paxton
- "Doc" Steven Reynolds
- ShadowStar
- Silverwing
The Rest of That Story
Doc Reynolds' player explains his character's secret plan to infiltrate and defeat the Clock King
(And yes, the scene plays like a Leverage Flashback)
So, Stephen, you wish to be a mole then in the Clock King's operation? I see the logic of this plan. Hold still.All right, as far as everyone else is concerned I've suggested we work with this Clock King guy to prevent collateral damage. What I really I have in mind is convincing Clock King that's our plan and to make it believable we need to actually believe it too. I figure it would be easier just to mess with my mind instead of everyone's so all you have to do is make me forget about this and believe you okayed the plan everyone else is going for. Then, at a crucial moment where it looks like we have the best opportunity to sabotage his plans and nab him my true memories will be triggered and we'll get him. He won't see it coming because not even we will see it coming.
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