Chapter 2:
(03/09/01)
After James, Jennifer, Kyler, Maria, and Teal had been living in the chantry for about a week, a number of other mages moved in as well. Apparently, they were also working for Gabriel. They were: Cameron “Saxon” Williams, a teenage Verbena from New York with strong connections to the hobo community there; Wan, a Chinese bureaucrat and Akashic Brother; Ripple, a Cultist of Ecstasy dancer; and Dr. Kenley Chial, a Son of Ether biologist who had recently been fired from a Technocracy-controlled company called GenCoTech. Gabriel and a mysterious (and very attractive) man named Marcus also moved in.
The night after everyone showed up, the entire group had dinner together and began the process of getting to know one another. Gabriel announced that in three weeks we would raid the GenCoTech headquarters. Everyone agreed that it was a good idea, but the only person who began preparing for it right away was Kyler, who immediately went to her computer and began looking for floor plans and other information on the compound. She asked for and received Jennifer’s help in researching the place, but Kyler did most of the planning and analysis.
The next day, Maria also sought out Jennifer, to ask if she would help her research multiple personalities. Jennifer agreed and asked why Maria was interested. Before she could get an answer, Carlotta (Maria’s evil personality) took over and walked away. Jennifer called after her but couldn’t keep her from leaving the house. Teal saw her leave, followed her, tracked her through the city for most of the day, and eventually brought her back just as Maria took over again.
During that day, Wan struck up a conversation with James and the two of them began a friendship. Kenley went looking for Saxon, found him, and asked him for wolf sperm so she could attempt to impregnate her pet puma and create a puppy. Confused, Saxon agreed. Jennifer spent the day networking the computers in the house and installing security cameras and an intercom system. While she was doing so, she struck up a conversation with the notoriously antisocial Kenley. Despite some extreme differences in their personalities, they discovered they had many interests in common and soon became friends.
That evening, Ripple announced she was having a hot tub party in her room, and everyone eventually everyone showed up. Gabriel immediately got naked and started hitting on everything that moved, particularly Jennifer, Kenley, and (especially) Maria. Ripple decided she wanted to “enlighten” James and kept trying to pass him a bottle of tequila, which Teal spent the entire evening trying to keep away from him. Jennifer drank all the tequila that Teal wouldn’t let James have (and more), flirted shamelessly with Gabriel, and danced spastically around Ripple’s room. Wan surprised everyone by passing around some opium, but no one but him seemed very interested in taking it. Kyler stood on the sidelines fully clothed, scowling at everyone and occasionally grumbling about how no one was getting any work done.
As the party wound down, Ripple and Marcus (who had apparently gotten to know each other beforehand) went off to have a night of Freaky Circus Sex. Disinterested by the events of the party, Kenley returned to her room early to find a man sleeping in her bed—Dr. Joe Mau, her mentor and lover. Taped to his chest, she found a note that said, “You can thank me later,” and was signed by Gabriel. Naturally, Kenley woke Joe up immediately for another round Freaky Circus Sex.
Later that night, a very drunk Jennifer returned to her room to find Gabriel naked in her bed. She barely maintained the presence of mind to remind him that she’d rejected his advances before, and tonight would be no different. He continued to flirt, showing off a not-terribly-tempting array of sex toys he’d brought with him. Frustrated, she opened the window and threw Gabriel and all of the sex toys into the yard. Secretly, however, Jennifer didn’t know how much longer she could keep denying her attraction to him.
When Saxon found the sex toys in his yard, he immediately returned them to Jennifer’s doorstep, where they were waiting for her the next morning. Thinking Gabriel had done it, at breakfast Jennifer presented him with an empty Jolt Cola bottle and a note saying, “In exchange for the sex toys. It’s the closest you’ll be getting for a long time.” Ten minutes later, he returned the bottle to her filled to the brim with an unmentionable substance. She put it in the refrigerator. Teal threw it away.
Later that day, Gabriel interrupted everything news that the raid on GenCoTech had been moved up. Due to their recent invention of a mind-controlling nanotech pill, the cabal would have to strike immediately before the pill could be disseminated. After some brief preparations (and a lot of Kyler’s “I told you so”s), everyone piled into Gabriel’s car and set out for the compound. Once there, Kenley rigged up an invisibility device that would be able to hide about half the cabal. Feeling rather unready, everyone entered the building.
Once there, the guards instantly recognized Kenley as a traitor to the company and tripped the alarm. Gabriel was forced to kill them. Any chance at subtlety completely gone, everyone took off running for the lower levels where the drug was kept, but the elevator was broken. A well-placed Forces effect brought the cabal down the elevator shaft. At level 9 tjeu encountered an invisible barrier and had to resort to the stairs. On level 11 they ran into four Men in Black, fought them, and killed them.
Afterwards, half the cabal set out for level 12 and found nothing except some very frightened employees. Everyone else proceeded to level 13, where the drug turned out to be kept. Gabriel tossed a thermal-detonator-type device into the room and succeeded in destroying it. However, two bizarre metal emerged from the room and began chasing him down. Deciding it was best to get out of the compound, everyone retreated and evaded the creatures long enough to get to the elevator shaft.
One creature stayed at the bottom, but the other morphed into a catlike thing and started climbing after us. Jennifer tried to put up a ward to stop it and failed miserably. Everyone made it back to the ground level just ahead of the thing, but Wan stayed behind trying to kill it and keep it from coming after the others. He managed to incapacitate it, but it fell on top of him and Kyler had to push it down the elevator shaft before everyone could make escape.
The next morning, the front page news story was an exposé on the horrors of GenCoTech’s new drug...but the obituaries also contained details on the people the cabal had killed, which made everyone feel pretty guilty. The cabal took the next three weeks to recover from some truly bizarre Paradox flaws and consider what they had done.