It has been quite the whirlwind of an evening.
After a brief meeting discussing Ultor, Germany, and Sangiovanni, and despite my better judgment, we once again followed a lead from Network Zero. This time, involving a series of ritualistic murders across Chicago. Also involving the word "Titan."
Arriving at one of the most recent crime scenes, we encountered not only relatively (to me) useless, coagulated blood, but also a chubby man named Todd Zenecki. He claimed to have been there for the beginning of the ritual, doing research for a game. When a woman entered the room, took off her clothes, and ascended the altar, he claimed to have left. The only reason he had returned was that he also claimed to have left his phone.
Finding his phone, and assuming he had no further use,he was permitted to leave, only to return fairly beaten and being dragged in by Oliver. After further interrogation, he revealed that he knew where they were headed - an abandoned courthouse. After sending Guillermo to corral everyone else back to the cars, I spoke briefly with Zenecki, lightly modifying his memory to make him believe he'd been robbed, but rescued by a stranger and given enough money to get safely home. I also received a text message from Marcus: "Something is up. The Ley Lines are acting up. If you are not working, you should be." A brief conversation later, and we were on our way to the courthouse.
Upon arriving (and dealing with the fact that there was a police cruiser out front), we made our way inside. Even Rose, whom I had told to wait outside. Once we were inside, I could hear chanting on the other side of a large, heavy door. Greyson opened half of the door just in time for us to see a man at the altar stab down at a woman bound there. Cue the explosive backlash - and an unexpected yell of, "Chicago PD! Drop your weapon!"
Excellent.
A hectic, touch-and-go fight later, and most of the cultists were dead, save two. Greyson had been repeated and violently stabbed, Guillermo had successfully used a door as a weapon, Nadya made a few people bleed violently, Chronos had run off to do God knows what, and Rose had hidden under a desk.
There was an understandable amount of consternation when Oliver approached the cop, but Guillermo and I were able to take him aside and explain things to him, giving him a slight awakening, with more to come later. While we did that, the others were apparently trying to get a handle on what we had stumbled into. It seems as though it was a ritual to "crack Tartarus" and "release the Titans."
Challenge piled on top of challenge, is that it?
We returned to the house to discuss our options and the meaning of what we found out. Over the course of the discussion, Mark, the cop, arrived, having been released from the investigation. We also found out that Task Force: VALKYRIE was sent to Greece, that Marcus was aware of the situation, and that we knew very little of what to expect of the coming days.
After a few different approaches at awakening Mark (with varying degrees of success), we were visited by two (what I later found out to be) Dukes of Hell - Malachite and Alizarin. They had brought with them a proposition - and a gift.
The proposition was that we would draw out Birkin for a real fight, rather than a cat-and-mouse game. Doing so would involve destroying God Machine infrastructure and making the Machine's presence in Chicago both untenable and unpalatable. In return, they would swoop in and eliminate Birkin. After getting them to agree to give us some locations of infrastructure, I inquired about their gift, a woman in a form-fitting red dress, that they had laid on my dining room table.
They demonstrated, by ripping one of her wings out of her back, that the gift was an incapacitated angel. After working out an agreement to the deal, they offered to dispose of her for us. Chronos wanted to keep the angel to study, but I wanted nothing to do with it, and asked them to take it with them and destroy it. Instead, the female, Alizarin, stabbed the angel through the back, destroying it (and damaging my table in the process - I wonder what would happen if I sent her a repair bill). Smiling smugly, safe in the knowledge that any attempt I, or we, made to kill them they could easily rebuff (as it appears happens with most whom we encounter), the pair left, in Nazi-esque lockstep and precision.
After the others had left, Mark and I sat down and had a very long talk about the events of tonight, what he's seen, what he's able to do about it, and so on. I then offered him a place to stay for the night and he accepted, making his way there. I, on the other hand, struck by an epiphany, went to my office in the remaining hours of daylight to redesign Ultor Corporation.
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