Totally inconspicuous

The sound of waves splashing against a hard wall can be heard in the background.

I can see it from here, just out of range for target practice, but close enough to keep an eye on things through the scope. The local Jakob’s outpost. Heavily guarded, likely full of corporation heads, and clearly they have been keeping an eye on us. In there, somewhere, is Min. Or so we think. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

It started with a simple enough task. Min and I were going to meet up with the medical transport back at the Gamera and then bring Penny back for surgery. Both of us could easily move through the crowds and shadows here without raising suspicions, or so we thought.

I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary as I headed out, joining the crowd of workers heading back to their homes at the end of the day. The sky was just starting to darken a little and there was a big enough crowd that it would be easy to slip into the wave. Min followed shortly after, keeping some distance to avoid raising extra eyes, using what we knew of the place to take an indirect route to the ship.

Sliding past the inspection patrols was no problem as I hitched a ride on the back of a kraken oil transport. As far as I could tell, nobody had seen me get this far. But it was then that I noticed I had lost sight of Min in the crowds behind me. I had hoped that she had somehow slipped ahead of me and assumed we would meet up later at the ship. If she wasn’t with me, there must have been a good reason.

I arrived at the ship just as the medical transport crew showed up. I let Fin know we were coming so that nobody started opening fire on our guests here and I really hoped we could slip in and out without them encountering Fin. No such luck though, as Fin greeted us all right at the cargo door with his big shark-toothed grin and aggressive cheerfulness. I’ve gotten used to it, but I could tell that Tim and the other guy, forgot his name, were a bit spooked. Luckily for all of us, Fin was willing to play some hide & seek, which bought us a moment to get in and pick up Penny, but on the way out I noticed that Fin was hiding on the roof of the ambulance, for some reason known only to him. I tried not to call attention to him for fear of spooking the transport folks again, but I knew this  was not exactly the easiest way to sneak through the city with a giant psycho with three arms hanging off the roof. 

After the Jakobs crew loaded Penny onto the gurney and into the transport, I tried to get Fin to stop his shenanigans by banging the underside of the transport roof, but he wasn’t taking the hint. Even sending Kaylee out to go say hello didn’t do anything. Fin was determined and that meant we needed to get through the city without attracting attention. Riiiiight.

There was still no sign of Min. She hadn’t met up at the ship, but I figured she could take care of herself. If things had been really bad she would have opened up comms, right? I should have probably gone looking for her right away, though.

As the transport took off, we all heard a wailing… the sound of a siren at full volume. Except the siren wasn’t on. Gotta give Fin some credit, pretty much just like the real thing! Not exactly helping us keep a low profile on this transport, though. I tried to help the crew ignore the shenanigans, but then we hit the inspection point. These guards weren’t buying Fin’s siren, nor his … exuberant… explanation of our emergency situation. We probably would have been in trouble except this guard made a mistake and made a move to grab at Fin.

Poor guy. I almost felt bad for him.

I heard the guard’s body hit the side of the ambulance as he was dragged up and slammed against the roof. Fin’s voice yelled for the driver to gun it, and the driver didn’t pause long. This time, the siren was real! Not exactly sure what happened to the guard, but it seemed like we got where we needed to, and everybody seemed to let us go. That’s a lot of luck on our side!

The Hunt for the Hunter

When we got to the lab, I was pretty focused on us getting Penny into the doc, but it seemed like Gibson and Zoe had been busy. Zoe had spent a considerable amount of time hacking into the Hyperion droids and seemed to have them under pretty good control now. Still not sure where those things are gonna fit on the ship… might have to dump a Loader bot to make room!

Zoe also shared an amusing story about Gibson. Apparently his charms weren’t all that effective with Darla at the front desk! Good to see there’s some limits to the man’s abilities. Unfortunately, that also meant that when some suits showed up from Jakobs asking questions, Darla spilled about us being there for the inspection. Cicero made up some story about the sad kraken and apparently those suits were buying everything he was selling. Cicero mentioned he used the name Jakob, which I’m supposed to remember just in case. 

So this is me, reminding me… Inspector Jakob, from Jakobs.

Fun fact: our boy ‘Jakob’ apparently threw Min and I under the bus to the suits, saying we were some Hyperion lackeys who left earlier. There’s an old saying I heard once from a traveler about tangled webs and lies. I’m losing track of all the strands.

As I headed with Penny into the back of the lab with Dr. Kael, I let the crew know that Min had gone missing. She never showed at the ship and that got folks worried. She hadn’t come back here either. Nothing I could do to help right then, but the rest of the crew started digging. Especially Gibson.

Gibson left a cryptic ECHO message with Min hoping to trigger some communication, requesting her to return back and sign off on the inspection. But there was no response. I sent Kaylee up to look for Max, but even looking through her eyes, I couldn’t see any sign of the Bloodwing. Zoe got on comms with Sparky back at the ship and had them run a sensor sweep for Min’s comm. Sparky did get a hit, but it was old. Seems Min’s comms are off. There could be reasons for that, but most of ‘em ain’t good. I tried to play it calm for the crew, but I’m real worried about Min. It ain’t like her to go solo like that.

With a comms lock, even if it was old, we had a general idea of where Min had been recently. Zoe started trying to hack camera feeds in the area, but there wasn’t much to see. Most of the cameras are outside the yard, over in the upper quarters, so not many good lines of sight on the area where Min disappeared. The team wants to head out and look for her, but I got something to do first.  

Scrubbing in

While all that was going on, Penny had been ushered in pretty quickly into the back of the lab, into some special room full of the strangest gear. I don’t recognize most of it, but it looks way more advanced than what you’d usually see for your usual checkup. Apparently this place is where Doctor Kael does her cybernetics work and I avoided asking how much consent is being given by her ‘patients’. The Jakobs transport folks got Penny set up on the bed and Kael was about to get started with her strange robot arm things for the surgery when she stopped.

Apparently somebody was going to need to assist in this surgery.

I looked around the room, saw folks being pretty busy with Min missing, and Fin playing Tic Tac Toe with a Kraken, and losing… and figured I probably had the most investment here. May not be a doctor, but how hard could it be? I mean, this was just brain surgery, right? No pressure.

In my coat, I still had that engraved timepiece that Penny gave me. I’d already brought her back to me once with it, it was worth another shot. With it pressed into her hand, I scrubbed in and got ready. I tell you what: those 30 minutes were some of the most stressful of my life as the doctor peeled Penny’s skull back and used needles to pull out small pieces from her brain. I did my best to follow orders, not screw anything up, and make sure the doctor had what she needed. Maybe this medical stuff isn’t too different from tracking, though, because from what I could tell things went pretty well. It was tough watching that happen to Penny, right in front of me. I thought for sure I would pass out, but instead I felt calm. Focused. Could be useful to pick up a few tricks here!

In the end, when Doctor Kael closed her up, I looked down at Penny’s calm face. It was like she was sleeping, slow breaths, no signs of pain. Is this finally over? She’s stable, but not conscious yet. Seems we’re going to have to let her rest for a lil’ bit.

Which gave us time to look for Min.

They’re going to take their face… off.

While I was in surgery, Gibson got a call from a Jakobs officer, some Lieutenant Remy Dubois. Cicero did his pretending-to-be-an-inspection-crew impersonation, but this suit wanted him to show up at the HQ. Apparently they have something we want. Either we come, or in an hour they’re coming for us.

That’s when the planning started. Gibson was pretty sure he could get in there and talk his way into finding out where Min was. And Zoe and Fin got busy getting the Hyperion droids to be an appropriate crew. Somehow, and I will never understand how, Fin managed to make reasonably not-too-creepy-looking faces for these droids out of left-over kraken skin and mops for hair. The man has a talent, that is for certain!

I am not sure I want to leave Penny behind, so I’ll do what I can from here. It’s going to be important we are all ready, just in case. Good thing I’ve got this scope. 

Zoe is going to get back to the ship and work with Sparky to bring the Gamera around, underwater, into the bay by the Jakobs HQ. With the comms there she should be able to control the Hyperion security droids.  

Looking through the rifle right now, I can just barely make out the details of their compound. I should be able to act as the eyes from the outside for the crew. If we can get that ship close enough, and Fin hangs out in the water nearby, we should be able to get Min to the ship in a hurry if we need to.

Cicero has some very specific code words. I have to record these right now, or I will forget them… Okay, what was it again:

• “Boy it’s chilly out tonight”… I think that one meant that Cicero hadn’t seen nothing yet.
• “My back is aching”… seriously, what is this one about? Apparently that’s the cue for us to bust in.
• “You know, Jakobs is a mighty fine company”. How is somebody going to not suspect that in a conversation? In any case, that’s supposed to mean that he has his eyes on Min.
• “Time to go for some flapjacks”. This one is basically the ice cream call we used on Promethea for when we need to bail the hell out.

Hopefully we can get Min out, assuming she’s in there. I’m looking right now and I just can’t see enough. We’re going to need Gibson to pull it off so we can find out if she’s there.

The question is… then what? Penny isn’t ready for an extraction yet. And I’m pretty sure some of the crew wanted to liberate that Kraken. And what about the doctor here? Should we help her to be able to leave? She seems… content? Hard to read that one.

We’re running low on time, hopefully Cicero can get to the HQ in time.

Image credit:

• Cover image: Generated art from bandygarnet.com  (Sourced from: https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S20230111a1fb51da95752/b93baa1e3f5fb.jpg  )