Just Like Clockwork: Scene VIII - Caelan, Erin, Ilkin, Rakesh, Rose

"All right, let her go and put your weapon down," Ilkin said, not lowering his gun for a moment. He still had a lock and wasn't going to drop that. "We won't hurt you but we're turning you over to the police."

Persuade
Spatial Map

"Done." Aleksander said, releasing Caelan at the same time as he gave her a sharp forward push, enough to make her stumble. Without looking at the vampire any more, the Russian put his hands behind his head. In a calm voice, he proceeded. "I have a gun in a holster in the small of my back, two more smoke grenades in my left pocket, and there is a knife strapped to my right leg. There are also handcuffs in my back pocket. See? I am cooperating?"

"Twilight, I can do that." Whim said, casting a glance at Seventeen. The senior Mage nodded, and the green-haired girl continued. "Bit of warding to keep the ghosties away, and we're set."

Ilkin's cellphone began to ring now.

Ilkin kept his gun pointed at Aleksander and gestured to Rakesh and Rose.

"Get Caelan and disarm the Russian," he ordered.

It was about then that his phone rang. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled it out.

"Hello?"

Erin sighed and lowered the sniper rifle further. Now that the confrontation had ended, she didn't really feel terribly happy. She could think of no good and a lot of harm that could come from leaving Aleksander alive. But there was some small part of her that she knew would have broken if they'd killed him - a small, insignificant part, perhaps, but a part.

The mages would probably blow his head off if he tried anything, so she took the opportunity to walk over to Cuchulainn. He looked really good for a man who'd been impaled recently. She took a moment to examine the bloody hole in his shirt, and the lack of bloody hole in his torso.

"Um... excuse me, sir," she said, politely and tenuously. "But is there anything you can do for Miss Rose?"

Rose had no idea if she shot the bastard or not because right before firing she had scrunched her eyes closed. She heard other people arrive and didn't bother looking at them at first.

What the hell did it look like was happening?! "You know, the usual, discussing the arts, wine, oh, and getting shot." Rose stopped herself from cursing at the numbers man since she still had no idea what it was he did besides screw around against the mafia.

Holding her breath she made a lovely attempt at getting up slowly and after several more mutterings of unique words managed to while hearing bits and piece's of what was going on.

An almost gleeful inhuman shriek.

Everyone was busy with everyone else. "No, its fine, we're fine. Don't worry your pretty little heads about the poor chick who got SHOT!" she said through gritted teeth holding her hand over her ruined shirt. "Everything's fine, really..." she realized that was slightly true, she wasn't about to die because GeGe's worry and anger had dissipated a bit. He was now basking slightly in the glow of his new friends though his card fingers were all skulls and he had shoved his dice into his empty eye socket temporarily showing them both as snake eyes. "Your one creepy little shit, you know that..."

Apparently at some point Cae had molested the Russian or something... Rose seemed to have missed out on quite a lot in a few minutes while watching GeGe be disturbing, trying to get up and cursing ever so colorfully.

Rose blinked as Ilkin made a motion for her and the dog man to do this. "**** you." there was no humor or anger in her voice, just a very blunt statement. She was still partially figuring out who to blame for being shot but this ass was on the list of top three suspects. The only thing that started her moving forward was the thought of kneeing the Mafia freak in the balls or getting a chance at taking his wallet. "This jerk off owes me." she felt compelled by the geist inside her to take everything she could get and maybe sell it later, this briefly made her wonder what kind of life he had had when he had one since this was typical GeGe reaction. "Sure, well just sell it online, hand cuffs, guns, granades and a knife..." actually she would probably keep the handcuffs for herself and various notorious reasons.

"Drop the Miss." Rose snapped behind her before realizing the small woman had been attempting to do something nice and immediately felt slightly bad, she would have probably felt more bad if GeGe wasn't, now that immediate danger was gone, rattling dice around in his eye socket. This small woman always reminded Rose of someone but she couldn't place it till just now, just in this moment "Jinkies!" she exclaimed to her geist referring to the Velma chick from Scooby-doo. The thought was so oddly placed that she must have sounded quite insane but then again the whole situation was insane so whatever. "At the very least if you could fix my shirt or get me one of those wet napkins for my hand." blood was always such a bitch.

Rakesh didn't bother to wait for Ilkin, moving to help Caelan up. The werewolf had one of those extremely specific thousand-yard stares, at once both somehow flat and yet so very intense. He took Caelan by the hand and helped her up. "Are you alright?"

"I can try..." Cuchulainn said dubiously, looking at the cursing woman. The grizzled man looked up at Aleksander. "But not till that's settled. No witnesses."

"Oh, thanks, I get to have the Abyss tear up my spell. I'm going to get you for that one, Cu." Whim faux-threatened, then made her way through the slowly dissipating smoke cloud. She took out a knife, a Malaysian kris, all wavy blade and pistol-styled grip, then began to cut a circle in the open air.

"You picked up, thank-- Jason, this--" The connection was horrifically static-ridden, but even despite that Ilkin could make out Robert Hammond's familiar voice, albeit rather less calm than usual. "--ardians that Wormwood has fini-- Schafer has material-- peat, Wormwood has finished his transpla-- terialized. They're-- something, the whole building is changing-- Jason, it's spreading-- coming down here-- Ja--"

The connection went dead. No sooner had it done so than Seventeen spoke up, his voice a little more brittle than it had been before. The Guardian of the Veil stood back and pointed up towards the windows of the Museum of the Industrial Revolution with his cane.

"Much as it galls me to have to ask for advice, but you have been through this before." Seventeen said, voice on edge. "But what is that."

It was hard to tell at first, but as you looked you could tell. The lower windows of the Museum of the Industrial Revolution were no longer showing exhibit halls and staff break rooms. They had changed. Changed from the modern painted walls to the cold brick and hardwood of that Genevan basement, turning into storage chambers, workrooms, places that did not exist in the modern world. Even as you watched, there was a brief, greenish-white shimmer in the upper stories, and museum offices were replaced with yet more of the same, places from a past time.

In the distance, you could hear the far-away wail of a police siren.

"Sorry..." the changeling's antenna drooped, and her shoulders slumped, somehow making her look even smaller.

"You could take his shirt," she suggested. Or the armor he's wearing under his shirt, she thought.

"It's Hippolyte Schäfer," Erin stated, looking up at the building and biting her lip. "It's her demesne. When she materialized before, the room changed around her. Now it's the entire building. Looks like she's come back stronger this time."

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"You should probably know something," she added to the others, once they'd finally gotten rid of the Russian. "When Schäfer's ghost killed Mr. Meade and the others, she didn't just take their brains, she... she gave them new ones. Took out the old ones, and gave them shiny new clockwork brains..." Erin stopped here, and was very silent for a few minutes, staring down at her own fingers as she flexed them back and forth.

She continued. "And they moved. Afterwards. The Russian guards were partly there to keep them from escaping. But they were... alive. It's just... the brains were made of Schäfer's ectoplasm. When she dematerialized, so did it... so they died for real. Wormwood set up the cameras in the place to watch her do it. And he had the bodies shipped back to him in Russia so he could look at them. He wanted to know everything about what happened to them... that's why he had his guards keep tricking people into touching the brain. More victims. More research. The first time someone who tapped the brain was alone, she'd appear and strap them down..."

"That's what happened to Miss Rose. But she reacted to us differently. Usually she avoided other people. She knew we were different." Erin bit her lip.

"He wanted as many people as possible here tonight. The Russians were locking the doors and covering the exits. Not just keeping us out. Keeping people in. It sounded like he was planning a massacre." Erin took a few more steps towards the building, hefting the sniper rifle. "I don't know why they were still out here when only Mr. Cuchulainn showed up. I don't know what he intended to do with the crew. Obviously them being gone didn't stop him."

"I'm worried about Mr. Hammond," she said, quietly.

Cae couldn't look at Rakesh again. Instead she leaned against him, listening to his heartbeat. This calmed her. Contrary to what one might think about such a heart, it was the one thing she didn't want. She wanted it to keep beating. Never would Cae think of sinking her teeth into that, or of Ilkin's, for that matter. Friends were friends, and their mortal shells should never be violated.

That's right. She wasn't a mindless zombie. She finally glanced to Rakesh's sharp eyes. "I'll be okay," she muttered. Sorry, Cae added silently.

Then she perked to the sound of sirens. "The police? They'll be in danger if they get close..." She had absorbed the words around her vaguely, and she could see the shift in the appearance of museum. Not good news.

But she wanted to know, once her head was clear, where the fox with golden eyes could be.

"Robert? Robert?! Damn!"

Ilkin swore and shoved his phone in his pocket. He turned and saw the transforming museum and swore again.

"Robert's been cut off," he said, "We need to go save him. He confirmed that Schafer's rematerialized, as if that --" he gestured at the altered building "-- wasn't proof enough. We'll have to get in there, dodge clockwork zombies, and find Robert. Then we might be able to stop the ghost and Wormwood."

The Acanthus cast about, looking first at Rose, then Aleksander, then Seventeen. "Take the Russian's shirt off," he said, "He was miraculously unhurt by the gunshots. If he has kevlar, it might be useful."

Then he looked back at Seventeen. "Can you or one of yours head off the police?" he asked, "They have no idea what is going on and will likely go insane if they try to get involved."

His heart pounded in his ears. He really didn't want to deal with this tonight but it seemed like whenever he went somewhere with Rakesh and Caelan, the world went crazy.

Oddly, it made him feel sorry for Gary. The director had no idea what he'd gotten himself into. He might've been killed, or worse. He was a good guy, an honest sort of kiss-ass. Not the smarmy bastards that ran through most of the film industry. Marduk made a mental note to give Gary a boost for his movie once this was all over.

"We'd better hurry before Wormwood and Schafer get Robert."

"They shouldn't even be coming. We're filming a horror movie. Miss Karlova screams her head off all the time," Erin grumbled. "They wouldn't have their sirens on for just a noise complaint. I hope Wormwood didn't call them to replace the cast as victims."

"I don't think Wormwood and the ghost know he's there yet... I hope." Erin shifted her weight around. "It sounds like he knew where both of them were. I'm sure he would have said something if he was in danger. We'll just go and fetch him."

It didn't really quell the urgency, but it was a bit of a ritual to say. They didn't go back and rescue changelings, in the Grand Library. Any worker that was taken was gone, and that was that.