Episode 3
Invasion
The next day, Melba decided that the time had come to begin serious work on clearing the group’s names of the murder charges. She decided to start by trying to find out just who Saigow was and what reason he might have had for framing the group. Sitting down at the computer, she logged onto the Internet and, after exploring the remnants of Hunter-Net (which had closed down several years earlier for reasons unknown), started searching for information on Saigow. After a considerable amount of research, she found out that Mr. Saigow was a prominent and upstanding local businessmen with two major business partners, Martin Bowers and Selicia Fargo. Martin and Selicia were both on the board of directors for the Wells Fargo banks in the area and also had considerable dealings with Saigow. Melba found the address for Martin’s apartment, which was in downtown St. Paul, and made a note to go there and investigate it later. Selicia, however, did not appear to exist outside of the Internet, although she did seem to have an office at a Wells Fargo (the only one in the city that was open 24 hours a day) in uptown Minneapolis. She also learned that Saigow was the owner of Gower’s Nightclub.
After learning this, the others hatched a plan of their own. They reasoned that if Saigow owned Gower’s and had at least some concerns over what happened in its back rooms, if they were to threaten to expose what was going on it might force him to clear their names. However, it would require returning to the club to capture the inner rooms on video and prove the group could gain access. More importantly, to genuinely prove they were a threat the group would have to somehow make into the small private rooms that Will hadn’t entered. No one really knew how to do this without being caught.
At this point, Marta spoke up. Of all the people in the group, she’d had by far the most trouble
adjusting to their new lifestyle. This
was partially because of her young age (15), but mostly because her beliefs
about the best way to deal with monsters were all but incomprehensible to Melba
and Will. While the others seemed to
think that most monsters were evil and needed to be killed to protect humanity,
Marta believed all monsters possessed at least some small portion of good
inside them which could be used to understand them and coexist with them
without ever having to resort to violence.
Because of this, she’d had a number of arguments with the others after
they expressed their desire to kill Saigow.
Despite all this, she pointed out that she had an ability (Hide) that
would make her invisible to monsters, and that she was willing to use it to go
in with the camera—if the others promised not to use the information they would
undoubtedly gather to kill the creatures they’d found. Melba and Will agreed, and everyone planned
to go back to Gower’s the next night.
That night, Marta had a strange and rather disturbing dream. She dreamed that she was standing in a large white room, and though she could feel the floor beneath her feet she couldn’t see the walls or the ceiling. As she squinted into the distance, she saw a long, skinny creature about ten feet tall, like a cross between a fish and a snake, making its way toward her. It had long, sharp claws and pointy teeth, and just by looking at it she knew that it meant to kill her. Suddenly, another huge creature, this one looking like a cross between a lobster and a scorpion, appeared and lunged at the first creature. They began to fight, and it seemed to Marta that the lobster-scorpion was trying to keep the other creature from getting to her. She woke up screaming. The others asked her what was wrong, but since she was unable to explain what she’d seen very well because she was so frightened they dismissed it as a simple nightmare. Marta, however, had the feeling that it meant more than that.
The next night, everyone piled into the cars and went back to Gower’s, providing cover for Marta while she turned on the camera, activated her powers, and went back into the secret rooms in the nightclub. She saw the large room with the desk and the telephone, though no one was there that night, and another room where many Asian men (all registering as not human) were sitting around a table talking seriously in Chinese. She captured all of this on film before finally re-entering the room where the real activity was going on. She watched for awhile, still unseen, before determining that one vampire and one human always went into the small private rooms in the back. She knew she had to get into those rooms, so she waited until another pair went in and followed them. The interior of the room was entirely dark, though, and though they couldn’t see her she also couldn’t see a thing that was going on. So Marta took a major risk—using Illuminate, she lit up the entire room so that she could clearly see (and record!) the vampire feeding on the human, who was apparently trading blood for drug money. Of course, this meant the vampire could clearly see her as well, and he didn’t look very happy about that.
Quickly, Marta opened the door and radioed for help from the rest of the group, who rushed toward her only to find that the door to the room was locked. Barely dissuaded, they began unscrewing the hinges in an attempt to get in. Meanwhile, one of the vampires who appeared to be in charge tried to grab Marta, but she ducked out of his way and succeeded in activating Hide again. Unable to see her, he started groping around the room as Marta made her way toward the door. Unfortunately, the vampire apparently decided to go for backup and went that way as well. He opened the door…and was very surprised as it fell off its hinges. His confusion gave Marta the chance to escape, and the hunters ran to the cars with a ridiculous number of vampires in pursuit.
Chet and Saria were waiting in the alley with the getaway car. Everyone climbed in, and Saria began to pull away. It looked as though they were going to get out—until, accelerating too quickly, Saria lost control of the car and began scraping it along the wall of the building. The vampires were quickly closing the distance. But Will looked out the back window and, with a glance and a wave of his hand, froze them in place with Burden. Saria got things under control and peeled out. The hunters made it back to the apartment building safely, with a video of vampires feeding and at least one small victory under their belts.