Extraction (TWS)

Your team moves fast once the order goes out, converging on Gale City within the hour.

Blaze

arrives first, beating you to Ponente West Police Station. He's sitting on the front steps with a woman you don't recognise, standing sharply to attention.

Blaze would be a physically intimidating guy with better nutrition and a less traumatic past; his face is gaunt and his posture one stimulus shy of snapping back into something predatory. You've kept him well clear of the Uprising's front lines, sticking to guard duty around bases at most.

His hair's grown in, evened out over the scar tissue. It's done wonders for his appearance, really, since you last saw him.

"Director." He greets you, voice low leaning in and pressing a battered envelope into your hand. "The lady says she's a friend of yours. Got a letter with your signature and everything."

You glance at your handwriting, the "M" squashed into more of an H like it's scared of taking up too much space, look at her. She's like high cloud personified, colorless and wispy against a cool blue sky. You'd have remembered someone like this. She motions for you to open the letter, reminding you as you read in an out-of-practice voice.

"One of your men, Leiche, aided me in something of a snarl. I promised to return the favour - the letter was his idea."

She's a ghost, or more accurately, a ultra-high-range wideband psionic. Her Power wipes memories of her clean off the face of the earth and the minds of anyone with an inkling of her identity. Smart of Leiche to get you to pen a letter - by the sounds of it, they'd be no better at persuading you this wasn't a sprawling hyperrecline of the flattest of flat jokes.

"I wrote- it says here, you can cloak an object... 'inhibit sensory processing.' And long-term memories of people caught in it aren't erased like your main ability?"

There's a flicker across her face like an almost-smile. "Cautious. But correct. If the Association still stood, I could be talking of frequencies and discrete mental harmonics, or other foolery."

Somehow, you doubt she would. Miss Monday strikes you very much as one to forsake society, were it still extant in any meaningful sense. The fact she's got morals enough to square her debts, though, leaves you at peace with letting her drift beyond the clutches of whatever civilisation you help rebuild. You've got men in your ranks with fewer scruples than she's shown in these few minutes, that's for certain.

Rook and Leiche

arrive in short order, on a motorbike that doesn't belong to either of them. You calm Leiche down about the stranger in your ranks (don't joke about it being their idea in the first place, they're a little too paranoid to see the funny side of an unreliable memory), and they seem surprised that Eirie's not around. The old coot apparently last checked in from within Gale City itself.

Rook interrupts, and you look up to the oddly comforting sight of phantasms flitting to and from the hospital roof. The mechanical gridwork of the Vault's undercarriage, high above, warps imperceptibly.

Eirie

has beaten you to the helicopter, nodding in greeting as ghosts scatter upon your group's arrival. The helipad around Eirie shimmers with shades.

"Entries still where m'friends last espied them. Not that they despise the place no less since." He gives Miss Monday a look, then says to you: "Didn' think we were still recruitin'. Right slog of a mission, this 'un, to cut your wispy teeth on, innit?"

"She's helping us with safe passage, Eirie."

"Whatever you say, boss."

You pile into the helicopter. Leiche takes the controls, Eirie hunkers down in the back, and Miss Monday demands zero distractions. You direct her next to Rook, who doesn't need to exchange words with the sensejacker to tell Leiche you're ready to roll.

The background noise rises with the chopper, settling into a shout-overable thrum as you level off with Stratoscorp's old highrise headquarters. You scour the streets for upturned faces, but the few souls you see are focused elsewhere.

Leiche is grim - they look like that, when concentrating - following the ghost-lined path Eirie is tracing out for them, nodding minutely like they do when things are in order. Rook's influence on the crew is already pretty clear; Blaze looks positively serene, and Eirie's behaving when Leiche would've cursed him out for messing around by this point.

You've got ten loud minutes to chat with someone less busy, if you don't mind shouting a bit over the engine.