I1: Once Upon A Time In Madripoor

by **Rail** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 3:11 pm

About 20 minutes later, just around the point where John might begin to suspect that they have been tricked the door opens and Rail steps inside, carrying a bag full of John's stuff.

"Come on, hurry before someone notices what's going on."

by **John Hino** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 3:50 pm

"Lead the way," he answered, nodding.

by **Rail** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 3:59 pm

Rail hurriedly leads the small group to one of the elevators and up a couple floors to an empty suite that looks much more fancy than the one John and the other prisoners had been in. Including a laptop that's hooked up to the hotel's WiFi.

by **John Hino** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:49 pm

"Alright. First thing to try... Run a search for Mary Bell Escapes Muir."

by **Rail** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 8:13 pm

"Okay..." she says a bit dubiously and brings up a relevant article. "I suppose Muir is some kind of prison complex?"

by **John Hino** » Wed Mar 11, 2015 8:43 pm

"It's really two facilities. One facility is primarily for treating mutants with out of control powers or mental instabilities. The other is a maximum security prison. Mary Bell, AKA Melpomene, AKA Muse, escaped late last year. There's hopefully a photo of her from after that weird mask got fused to her face."

by **Rail** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 9:29 am

Rail quirks an eyebrow at the last bit and looks through the information that was released to the public until she finds a wanted poster issued by Interpol. It shows Melpomene in prison slacks and the strange theater mask on her face. Somehow the mask still looks vaguely unsettling, even in an almost sterile context like this. The poster says MUTANT in bright red letters that feels like it serves as a warning as well as a reminder of the humans' inherent mistrust of mutants in general.

"That could be her." Rail admits. "I've never really seen her face though." As she continues to read through the list of crimes the woman is wanted for she seems to grow increasingly angry.

by **John Hino** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 10:18 am

"Melpomene is the name for the Muse of Tragedy. She certainly causes enough. The truly sick part is that one of her greatest victims helped her escape."

His eyes widened as something clicked in his head.

"Oh hell... of course. That's Hereford's reason for helping her!"

by **Rail** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 10:30 am

"Care to elaborate for us slow people?"

by **John Hino** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 10:56 am

"Drew Burke, the victim Melpomene got her hooks back into. He's a shapeshifter. Hereford's sudden shift in activities... it's because the real Henry Hereford is probably dead."

by **Rail** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 11:02 am

"I hope you realize how crazy that sounds."

by **John Hino** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 11:24 am

"Why? A skilled telepath could make the replacement perfect. And taking his money and connections explains how Muse went from fugitive to this so fast."

by **Rail** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 11:27 am

"Okay, that does make sense. But it still sounds like Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

by **John Hino** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 11:32 am

"X-Men deal with crazier things than that all the time."

by **Rail** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 11:38 am

"Great, so I helped a psychopath who can read minds and is probably still in this building. What now?"

by **John Hino** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 2:05 pm

"If you decide to trust me... we get out and take whomever we can with us. Though there's still the matter I originally came for."

by **Rail** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 2:47 pm

"I think I do. What you've shown me makes sense and... The computer should be hooked up to the network. You obviously know your electronics, so see if you can find something useful. I'll get those three out of here in the meantime."

by **John Hino** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 2:53 pm

"I'm trusting you too. Good luck."

by **Rail** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 3:00 pm

She nods and waves for the three to follow her. "Once we get far enough from the hotel I want you to find a phone and call this number. It's someone who will come find you and help you, okay? She looks a bit scary, black like the dragon, but she will help. 拨打该号码并等待。有朋友会来帮助你。不要害怕。" she adds in Chinese so the two younger ones are sure to understand her as she leads them out of the room.

by **John Hino** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 3:37 pm

John took a seat and began trying to find information on the stock manipulation unit, Muse's operation, and the building itself.

by **Narrator** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 3:55 pm

The hotel itself seems to be owned by somebody unrelated, though they are undoubtedly receiving bribes for letting Melpomene operate inside. Technically she is renting three floors in total, one of which is the one with the reinforced walls and windows, the one below it which contains a bar or club of some sort and finally part of the first floor, which includes a conference room and access to the security and surveillance area. If she has a personal room it is not listed anywhere, though the hotel seems to have several long-term guests in the higher floors that all seem to be under fake names.

There's very little on Melpomene's operation available, though from what John has seen he can somewhat piece it together. Judging by what he saw in the basement of Hereford's construction site the goal seems to be to transfer operations over to it, allowing them easier access between the docks and where they are keeping people for conditioning.

No mention of the stock exchange unit either, but some digging reveals some emails indicating a change of plans and that something is supposed to be picked up from the hotel tomorrow in order to be installed in the basement of the construction site.

by **John Hino** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 6:48 pm

John tried to find out exactly when and where the pickup was supposed to take place.

by **Narrator** » Thu Mar 12, 2015 8:58 pm

In the basement parking garage tomorrow morning. It's reasonable to assume that by then someone will have noticed that John has escaped.

by **John Hino** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:24 am

Before he thought about hitting the transport, he worked back to other way to attempt to find the package's current location.

by **Narrator** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:31 am

The emails he had managed to get into don't mention where it's being kept at the moment.

by **John Hino** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:07 am

"Aaand I'm forgetting I'm supposed to be a genius at this," he said, rolling his eyes. He pulled a thumb drive out of his bag of tricks and plugged it in. Software tools now ready, he worked to break into the building's network and infiltrate the security grid.

"C'mon... roll over and beg."

by **Narrator** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:15 am

After a little bit of work he manages to gain access to the building's security network.

by **John Hino** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:28 am

He brought up the feeds for the floors Melpomene has rented, ignoring the club for now.

by **Narrator** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:59 am

There's plenty of camera footage to go through but after a while he manages to find the device. It's standing out a bit though next to the other random bits it is sitting next to in what appears to be a supply room of some sort. It seems to hold mostly food and general supplies, but also some weapons and body armor. Going by the hotel's blueprints it is on the first floor, near a small freight elevator that goes down to a separate section of the parking garage where one of the cameras is showing a truck similar to the one John and Rail trashed in their fight.

by **John Hino** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:26 am

"Bingo. Now how to get to it..."

He checked the room directly above the supply room, and how high the freight elevator went.

by **Narrator** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 11:54 am

The space above the supply room is taken up by the bar/club area, which also seems to be as high as the elevator goes. It seems to be solely for getting shipments out of the basement, where they're received.

by **John Hino** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 1:51 pm

He investigated which cameras he needed to loop to get there unseen and tried to gauge how long he'd have if he triggered a fire alarm for the bar/club area.

by **Narrator** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 1:58 pm

There's a couple cameras though as he's working on looping them there's some kind of silent alarm that pops up throughout the systems. It seems someone finally noticed the two empty rooms.

by **John Hino** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 2:11 pm

Shit!

He then just infected the security system with a rather nasty virus that would cripple the entire thing for a while.

Side-effects may include but are not limited to camera blindness, loss of outside connectivity, random alarms, and changing of door codes to 123456. Range depends on system capabilities.

by **Narrator** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 2:15 pm

The virus slowly takes down the system, but the alarm was presumably noticed by some people at least.

by **John Hino** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 2:20 pm

He took his thumb drive and hurried out towards the one elevator he told the virus to ignore. Hopefully he'd run across Rail on his way to his goal.

by **Rail** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 2:45 pm

When the elevator opens a somewhat hurried looking Rail is inside.

"They noticed you're gone. I told the guards I'd check the upper floors on my way back in, but it's only a matter of time until Muse catches on. It'd be safer to just get out through the roof."

by **John Hino** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 2:48 pm

"There's one thing I have to do first."

by **Rail** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 3:12 pm

"It better be quick."

by **John Hino** » Fri Mar 13, 2015 3:23 pm

"How many floors can you shoot something through?"

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