"The good news is, I found the alarm system...." " Lex quickly scans over the other cameras from the virtual nurses station and looks at the two guards from the hallway camera, "...The bad news is, I might need to access it."

@Akuma
"Sit down man -- there's nothing in there. You're just getting jumpy," the second guard mumbles as he reads.

"Yeah, maybe your right," the second replies -- not sounding convinced at all. He looks left and right, shuffles his feet for a moment, sighs, and then settles down to finish out his shift --- it's only about 50 minutes till I'm off duty anyway.

@Rowan
Hanging out side the opened window for a tense moment gripping a grendade is not exactly your idea of a way to spend a comfortable afternoon. Where are they you wonder to youself ....

@Lex
You don't see too much out of the ordinary at the nurse's station. There are three people dressed in nurse's uniforms sitting behind the desk having a conversation. They don't seem to be paying attention to the guards or to room 508.

"All clear Rowan. Turns out catching them at the end of the shift was a good idea. Lazy bastards."

Rowan places the grenade back at her belt. With a sigh of relief, she counts to 50, then lowers herself back onto the ledge.
She debating weither or not its a good idea to go into the room.

Is the room really empty? How did they leave? Did they buy off one of the police?

She then slips into the room as quietly as possible and has a look around.

@Rowan
Moving silently into the room, you look around a bit, take a deep breath and peak around the curtain at ....

... another neat and tidy, unslept-in hospital bed. Looking around quickly -- even checking in the attached bathroom -- you find absolutely no one and no sign of anyone having been in the room for a while. The only sign that there was ever something important here is the black t-shirt that was drapped over the camera so no one could see into the room.

Rowan walks out to the ledge and leaves the room, after climbing away from the room, she whispers into the comm "Target's not there, Lex, check all the other rooms, Akuma, any thoughts on where to go next?

"Lets give Lex a few minutes to try and track him down. Mojo, how long can you hold these spells up for? You doing ok?"

"What do you mean he's not there? Drek, alright gimme a sec." You hear over the 'link, "Oh, and take whatever's covering that camera off. Make it look like it fell or something,"

Lex's icon starts panning around the other cameras at the virtual nurses station, checking other rooms and operating rooms.

As an afterthought, he goes after Gio's file, trying to see if there's any record of his being moved.

"Wait a sec, he's not invisible is he? Maybe he's still there in the bed, but we can't see him. Well it's a thought, right?"

@Lex

Glancing quickly at the hall camera and through the room camera shows you what I've written before -- no one in the room except for Rowan, who's looking at you through the camera with a look that says Hurry the drek up!. The hallway shows you the two guards ... one looking around seemingly more alert and the other still reading.

Heading back into the system, you begin your search for Gio's file, hoping that it will provide you his current room number. Sending your cards out into the system, you wait for one of them to turn up paydirt. A few moments later, you notice a familiar small syringe floating behind your left shoulder. With a sigh and a cocky grin you draw you hold-out and blast the Probe IC into tiny bits, once again gathering the code fragments with your hat.

Looking up and letting out a sigh of relief, you see the jack of diamonds returning with a glowing trail behind him. It winks at you and then begins to lead you to a file system node. Entering the node and pulling up the requisit file, it takes you a moment to scan through the medical history until you get to the relevant information.

"Guys," you say into the comms, "it looks like he's been moved to room 422 after the last time we peeked in here."

Akuma quickly scans the hospitol map through his knowsoft link. "Great, no window to the outside. Rowan, how do you want to handle this? You and I can go in and secure the room, then Mojo can join us and help us slip out. What do you guys think?"

Akuma then works his way back onto the elevator and takes it down to the 4th floor. When he gets off, he moves to the north and then west through the small hallway. From here he peeks around the corner and gets a good look at what is going on outside of Gio's room.

Rowan walks to the window, clips herself to the rope and leaves the room, attempting to leave nothing out of place. When she gets outside, she climbs up a floor and speaks into the comm "Should I go back to the roof first? I am carrying a bit too much ordinance to go into the hospital. Wait I have an idea, Alice or Mojo, there will be a pack comming down the side of the building in a minute, please pick it up for me."

Rowan looks for roof access somewhere, hoping that she can get in that way and avoid a lot of time consuming hassle.

"Lex, can you get the rooftop access unlocked?"

@Akuma
Peaking around the corner and looking down along the hallway toward room 422 you do not see any guards in front of the door. You can hear people talking at the nurse's station, though they are a little too far and a little too quiet for you to make out what they're saying. There are a few orderlies walking away from you and as you watch, they turn and move down the hall on the far side of the nurse's station, leaving your line of sight.

@Lex
Taking a deep breath and straightening your hat, you say quick over the comms, "Going to try and take a peak into the room and see where he's at."

Flexing some digital muscle you send out your query to find the camera in room 422. The search seems to be going well, more cards continue to probe the system than return in failure, but when about half of your deck has returned, the room seems to shimmer in a green light and you can feel the system begin to lock itself down. Things seem to get back to normal, but you do notice two green lines that seem to surround the camera node in which you continue your search, "Guys, I think the system just went to passive alert. Could mean that I've overstayed my welcome. Gonna try and get to the cameras so we know what we're up against anyway."

Continuing your search, it finishes shortly after tripping the passive alert status of the system. Looking into the room through the eye of the camera, you see the two hospital beds, both empty. However, the one further from the door looks as if it recently contained a person. More telling, perhaps is the chair that has been put in front of the door so that it can't open all the way and the fact that the bed closer to the door has been pulled away from the wall to put another physical obstacle in the way of someone entering the room. Oh, and you can see Sophia looking a little nervouse crouched behind the bed furthest from the door wearing an armored jacket. She appears to be doing her best to remain out of sight of the door, but unfortunately, she is within the line of sight from the camera.

<<OOC: I'll just assume that you relay all of that to the others and won't actually type out the conversation. >>

Considering the passive alert status but knowing that you're pretty well equipped to handle that which the system throws at you, you decide to take a peak into the fourth floor hallway. Running the search for that one starts off well and then, much like the previous locate slave operation, goes south quickly. Shortly after your deck of cards exits into the system searching for the fourth floor hallway camera data, a hospital janitor passes you with a mop and a bucket on wheels, you have only a moment to glance into the bucket and see a boiling mass of black, brackish liquid. Not sure if its a Tar Baby IC or a Tar Pit, you take offensive action and are able to dispatch it quickly. Gathering the fragments into your hat, you think to yourself, This system just doesn't know when to fold 'em.

Successfully finishing the search following a minor interruption you are able to look into the fourth floor nurse's station as well as the hallway at large. The door to room 422 is not in your field of vision, but you can see the rest of the station. Watching through the camera as Akuma relocates from the fifth to the fourth floor, you are able to watch three people who don't seem to be doing anything at the nurse's station. There is one person on either side that just seems to be standing there watching the end of the room that has the door to 422. The other person is standing behind the nurse's desk, leaning next to a copy machine and looking in the same direction. The one in the middle seems to be directing the other two and one of them seems to have been ordered to withdraw from your line of sight. He turns and exits your field of view heading toward the west end of the building. The other one stands ready, still watching the hallway in the other direction. The one at the nurse's station seems to be looking around for something, shrugs, and says something to the remaining guard. As he pulls a radio from his pocket, you say over the comms, "Looks like the guard in the middle is about to call for backup. Drek in motion towards fan -- repeat -- drek in motion towards fan. The forth floor seems to be a full house and all we've got is an ace up our sleeves .... Akuma, what do you want to do?"

"Shit. Guys, whats the plan? I can deal with the guards I'm sure, but thats gunna just call in more reinforcements. If you want me to start tagging the guards, just say 'Go'."

(oops, double post)

"An enemy of an enemy is a friend. It looks like those guys and Sophia aren't getting along right now, maybe we can use that. Rowan, is there any way of positioning yourself over room 422? Same window entry idea. If Akuma can keep the other players attention focused on him, maybe we can make the Jack of Diamonds and the Queen of Spades fall off the table, so to speak."

"Big problem guys. There is no window to this room, so anything we do will have to be from the inside. Have we located the target yet?"

"I can't see him on any of the cameras, but I can see Sophia, which leads me to believe Gio's holed up with her in room 422. The odds of winning go down with every additional player at the table, and it looks like we got ourselves a full house. What I'm trying to say is, it looks like the entirety of the 4th floor is swarming with guards, so unless you can phase through doors, it looks like we have some extra players to deal with."

@ Lex
As you watch through the hallway camera, the guard behind the nurse's station appears to be talking to someone in his radio. The other guard is listening in and seems to be relaxing as he does.

<<OOC: Good perception roll through the camera --- also, BUMP!>>

"You guys want me to get into the room? I'm already on the floor, I'll just need the doors unlocked if they are locked."

Akuma begins to slowly creep his way along the wall, towards the door to room 422. He keeps an eye on all the security guards on the floor to see if any seem to notice his movements. Once he gets to the door, he keeps himself off to the side and tests the doorhandle very slightly to see if it is locked.

Sweat beeds on Mojo's face, but he keeps the spells up.

@Akuma
Creeping slowly down the hallway in full view of the guards is not your idea of fun. However, it seems as if Mojo's mojo is strong enough to keep you hidden as you move towards the door to room 422. Coming into view of the hospital's main corridor, you can see the nurse's station in full. You can see the two guards that Elfie warned you about as well as what looks like a third moving into the far stairwell. Behind the nurse's station, you can see a cadre of three nurses maning this end of the station and two more at the other end. They all appear to be tense and watching the guards and the screens before them as they attempt to continue a normal work day. One of the three at your end of the station is arguing with the guard's leader asking him to be cautious and reminding him sternly that this is a hospital, not a shooting gallery.

Taking a breath, you reach out to check on the lock to the door and pull down on the handle. Bending it slowly down you find that it is not locked.

"Wait a minute ... " you hear the guard's leader say. Looking back towards him, you seem to meet eyes across the room. He squints intently at you and then his eyes seem to loose focus. Shit. you think to yourself, recognizing the look of a mage looking into the Astral plane. "We've got problems," you say over the comms link just before you here the guard say, "You there, by the door. Stop moving, stand slowly with your hands in plane sight, and drop the invisibility spell," as he moves his hand towards his belt. No weapons have been drawn yet, but that's may happen shortly.

The guard that hasn't spoken to you just looks confused. The other one, that entered the stairwell doesn't seem to be reappearing in the few moments you take to assess the situation -- maybe he didn't hear the other guard's shout after the stairwell door closed behind him.

<<OOC: You get to have an action before they'll do anything else. Also, if you want Rowan, Alice, or Lex to do anything, they're currently on autopilot. There's a lot of time that I can have Rowan acting in between the time you relocated while Lex did his computer search, so if you'd like to have her go anywhere you can. >>

Time slows down...

"Wait a minute..."

Shit.

Before the guard can even open his mouth Akuma's gun comes up, takes aim, and fires.

@Akuma
You pull the trigger and the gun makes the tell tale popping sound of a silenced pistol. The leader flinches barely and then slumps against a photocopier holding his throat and crying in pain as your gel round stricks in just to the side of his larynx. You think you can already see the flesh underneath his fingers begin to swell and bruise just before the three nurses -- the ones that you had to fire past to hit the guard -- begin to act.

A female nurse stands completely up with a shocked look upon her face blocking your line of sight to the guard. A male nurse drops from his chain and cowers underneath the desk. The third, another man, looks in your direction stunned for a moment. The other guard is looking around trying to figure out where to shoot with the rather large pistol he's drawn from an under-arm holster. Lastly, at the other end of the room, the final two nurses turn to see what all the comotion is.

"Lex, surpress any calls for security. Mojo, keep those spells on. Rowan, meet me in room 422. I'm hitting my Jammer to help insure the guards won't call for help. I'll turn it off when the floor is clear."

With that, Akuma hits the on button to his Jammer. He then, turns to the other remaining guard...

With uncanny swiftness, Akuma springs to action.

He aims his pistol at the other guards head and squeezes off a round, then takes a shot at the nurse that was looking at him.

((ooc: if you allow for movement on top of taking the shoots, he'll leap into the nurses station, if you don't allow it, I'll do it next action)

@Akuma
Your shot strikes the guard in the left shoulder and you hear an audible crack as his collar bone snaps under the force of the impact. From the force of the shot, he spins with his now injured shoulder leading and hits the wall behind him and seems to be slumping toward the ground. He cries out in pain as his shoulder hits the wall and jars his already broken collar bone.

The nurse on the other hand just looks at you stupidly for a few moments, and then he's not looking at anything at all. Your shot hits him square in the chest and he falls backwards, out of the his chair, onto the floor, and out of your line of sight.

The guard outside the nurse's station squeezes off two shots while he slumps to the floor which are wide and to your right, striking the wall be hind you in between rooms 421 and 422. You wonder why he didn't aim a little better than that and then realize that between the wound, and that fact that you're probably still invisibile to him means that he actually aimed pretty well!!

Looking quickly at the bullet holes in the wall you seem to feel a tingle all over your body which fades quickly looking up you see the guard's leader staring at you with a now glazed look as he slumps to the floor.

The other two nurses at your end of the station don't seem to be interested in putting up much of a fight and are both cowering underneath the station desk. The other two at the far end of the room are still looking around in fear and confusion trying to understand what's going on.

<<OOC: We're back around to your second phase 22. Technically you don't get to move while firing without altering the TNs to hit your targets, but now you can move if you want to.>>

@Lex
Backing out of the cameras, you begin to run your matrix search for the security grid. Sending your cards out to do their work you pause for a moment and get the feeling that you're being watched. You spin around and there behind you is another orderly icon, this one dressed in a grey uniform standing at the ready and just watching you. His hands open and close in a clenching action as you look at it.

Pausing for a moment, and knowing that your browser operation is already underway, you take a moment to analyze the icon before you. Straightening your monocle, you squint at the icon and it seems as if you can almost read the code running the IC program hidden behind the shape of the orderly. Looking for any tells that may give you a hint as to what the system has up its sleeve, your monocle returns the information you were hoping for --- before you stands a HospiTar 6.0 IC.

Realizing that a either of the Tar IC's could significantly hamper your abilities to continue your existence in the matrix at this point, you decide to go for it. Pulling your hold-out pistol from up your sleeve you take aim and fire a code bullet at the icon. The bullet is true and you see your code infect the operation of the IC as small blood pixels scintilate in your vision. The IC wavers for a moment and then bursts into shards which you collect with your hat and move on with your life.

Your cards return to you in a few more cycles and a glowing trail leads you to the security grid. When there, you quickly take control of it and supress any messages going to or from the security rooms on the first floor. Speaking over the comms, "Okay, looks like hospital security should be slow to respond, but I can't do much for the radio that the guard captain seems to have."

<<OOC: Damn -- takes like ten minutes of rolling to get to the security grid and then you get 6 successes on the control slave operation and the host rolled none. Stupid random dice. Oh well ....>>

@Rowan
Looking around and not finding any roof access, you call out over the comms, "Alice or Mojo: you gonna collect my bag?"

<<OOC: For the purposes of not looking too out of the ordinary but still being armed, Rowan is getting rid of everything but the Narcojet pistol. P. Fogg, when you get back, let me know if you think this is way off base, but it seems to be okay to me. This way she's armed, but not an arsenal of illegal paraphernalia!>>

"I'll get it, I can see it from here. That way Mojo can concentrate on those spells," Alice replies.

Holding the rope in front of you and wondering what you're going to do now, you come up with an idea. Looking over the wall you can see that the rope hands almost to the third floor. A plan begins to take shape.

Clipping yourself back into the harness, you rappel quickly down the side of the building again but this time PAST the window to 508 and stop above the window of 408. You peak inside and see two rather distraught parents sitting next to the bed of a small girl hooked into medical equipment. The girl seems to have been woken up suddenly and the parents are looking fearfully at the door.

<<OOC: This is what happens while Akuma takes his first round of combat and then shortly after. For the purposes of lining up the story lines, I'll say that Rowan was already working on the plan when combat broke out. From here on out is what happens while Akuma finishes his combat turn. I'll write it now only to save time later. >>

Moving down so that you're framed in the window, you knocks politely. The mother and father spin around and look incredulously at the figure suspended in space outside their daughter's hospital room. You pantomime opening the window and the father and mother look at each other, look at your and shake their heads. Sighing, you pull the narcojet with your free hand and point it at the daughter and shrug with an apologetic look on your face as if to say, "I gave you a chance to do this the easy way."

The father stands and looks frightened while the mother moves to put herself in the line of fire. The father looks back and forth during all of this and finally slumps in defeat and opens the window. You swing inside, "Sorry folks, just coming down to help out in the hallway. It seems that there's someone out there shooting or something."

"You're with hospital security?!" the mother asks, not yet believing you.

Taking a cue, you reply, "Yup. Now if you'll excuse me." You nod to both of the parents and move to the door. Opening it slightly, you look out from the crack into the hallway.

<<OOC: Stopping here because that's like 30 seconds or so worth of stuff and we're still only about 1 or 2 seconds into Akuma's combat turn! I'll line up the timelines after Akuma finishes his actions.>>

Akuma pumps one more round into the second guard, just wanting to make sure he is out of the picture, then begins to run along the nurses station, hunting for the third guard that was down by the stairs.

The guard relaxes into unconciousness as your round hits in in the center of mass. For a moment before his eyes close he almost looks grateful for the respite you provided him from the pain of his shoulder. With a quick glance behind you, the door to room 422 is still closed, and you take off towards the far stairwell. There are some people peaking out of doorways at the action, but usually the doors are either fully closed or totally open to allow easy access for the nurses to enter the rooms of their charges.

When you get halfway there, that same chill fills your body as before. Glancing behind you see the guard's leader on his feet -- barely -- leaning against the side of the station. His radio is in his left hand, and his right hand is outstretch pointing at you. He shudders for a moment, but this time remains on his feet. Playing opossum, are we.... you think to yourself.

<<OOC: That's what I asked for clarification on -- if you looked closely at the other guard you may have been able to tell he was faking unconcsiouness. Considering he can't get anything to work through the haze of pain throbbing out from his throat, it didn't matter anyway. >>

Akuma pauses, fires a round off at him, then continues on.

Your round hits him in the center of mass and the radio falls from his grasp. He slumps forward and hangs over the desk of the nurse's station.

All four of the conscious nurses are under the desks trying to stay out of sight, and your way is clear to enter the stairwell. When you open the door and enter the stairwell, you can't see which way the guard went. Straining to hear the sound of the guard, you hear the a door above you slide shut.

<<Double Post>>

Damnit! Too late. Even if I catch up, I'd have to deal with a bunch of people on that floor too... here's hoping that he didn't even notice anything going on here before the door shut.

Then the thought hits him...

Damnit! He is going to go get the Star from the 5th!

Akuma literally leaps up the stairs, taking them 3 or 4 at a time. He clicks the Jammer off for just a moment to say something over the Comm, "Team, I'm heading up the stairs to the 5th. One of the guards got away and I'm sure he is going for the Star. Lex, do what you can to stop any calls coming from there. I'm turning the Jammer back on."

He turns the Jammer back on, just as he gets to the top of the stairs and opens the door, stopping there to get a look at what is going on.

The fifth floor looks very similar to the fourth -- the room is layed out the same but some of the colors on the wall are different. From where you are in the stairwell door, you can just see the guards back as he moves out of sight toward where you know room 508 is. He appears to be hurrying and you can here him yell down the corridor, "Rob, Matt. Shit's going on downstairs. C'mon!!"

Akuma steps out of the doorway and takes aim at the back of the guards head, then fires off a round. He then watches the two Star officers to try and figure out which one is the Mage.

You aim is dead on -- so to speak -- and the guard is hit in the back of the head. He goes down as if he tripped over something, planting his face into the floor moments before his legs hit as well. You hear the high pitched squeal of skin sliding on the synthetic, plastic tiles of the floor and realize that he's going to have more than a headache when he wakes up.

Looking down the hallway at the guards, they're looking back in your direction with a stupid look on their faces. The one closer to you -- the one who was not reading a book earlier -- stands and draws a pistol pointing it at you but then opens the door to room 508 and stands inside of it, using the doorframe for partial cover. The other guard dives behind the nurses station for cover.

The three nurses on this floor are looking at the unconcious guard and the other two with confusion on their faces -- they don't seem to be taking any notice of you.

@ Rowan
Peeking out into the hallway you can make out some of the nurse's station. Almost directly in your field of view is a slumped man held up by the edge of the station. It looks as if he's dropped a radio beneath him. Akuma's having fun, I see ...

One of the nurses is trying to help out the guard and she is pulling him off of the desk, to make him more confortable, I guess. As he is moved, you can see a horrible looking purple bruise spreading across his neck.

Rowan walks out of the room, thanking her lucky stars that her bluff worked. She tries to stay out of the way and walks to room 422. Once in front of the room, she attempts to open the door (in such a way that if it opens she can quickly slip into the room and close it.)

Thats him...

Akuma raises his pistol, aims for the head of the guard who seemed to be more alert, and fires off a round.

Bingo.

@Akuma
Seeing you take aim at him, the guard down the hall moves to pull himself fully inside room 508. Turning to move in the room, your shot takes him in the arm as he moves to hid. Crying out in pain, he lurches the few inches out of your sight.

The other guard, who dove behind the nurses station pops up now armed with a pistol, takes aim and returns fire.

@Rowan
Pushing the door open to room 422, you are shocked when it stopes a few inches in. It seems as if something large has been placed behind the door. If you want it open, you're going to have to push harder than you just did.

@Akuma
Dodging fire, you are able to get fully behind the wall and you can't see what happens at the end of the hall for a moment. In general, though, you can hear the three nurses that were stationed on this hall screaming and diving to the floor as they see the guards draw their weapons. You also hear slamming doors, probably from those who are "living" on this floor beginning to take cover as well.

Akuma reaches into the pocket of his vest and pulls out a small mirror, he then crouches down and uses it to peek around the corner and see what the guards are up to.

Rowan wispers into the comm, "Sophia has barracaded the door, and I probably can't budge it, any recomendations?"

Thinking quickly, Rowan risks speaking aloud, hoping Sophie can hear it, "I'm a friend"

:: Sophia crouches behind the bed once more as she hears the door hit the chair she had barricading it. She tenses up as the action heats up nearby with the sound of distant gunfire jarring her nerves with each pop. She blinks once at the voice and narrows her eyes slightly, not trusting the obvious ploy. ::

"Friends don't usually come visiting with guns."

:: As soon as she's spoken, she drops down and goes astral, in order to get a eye on her "visitor" ::

"That wasnt me, anyways Gio can Identify me." Rowan says, hoping her gambit will continue to pay off. "Can you let me in?"

:: Her astral self floats through the insubstantial wall and takes a moment to assense the obviously combat attired woman. ::

((pause for OOC rolls))

:: Sophia then manifests behind Rowan and raises a daintily plucked eyebrow. ::

"He'll identify you as what?"