[1447, August 4th, 2075; Mechanicals' Complex]

The woman did all she could to make herself smaller against the wall. She mostly looked down at her knees, only occasionally braving a glance up at the imposing form of her interrogator.

"We are forty-six. Soon forty-seven," she added, caressing her stomach. "We will lack but twain for expotency." She paused, but the looks from her captors told her they were not satisfied. "Our home is our protection, but watchmen will be on the roof. Of the main building. Your friend will be in the main building. Until morning."

Tears started to run down her face. "They will not come for me. Though he is a sixth. This place is too far, and they don't know it. But your friend will die. It is essential, more essential than any or all of their lives. Mourn him, but do not throw yourselves against the inevitable. Vee is a seventh, and wise. Guns and mana will await any who interfere. I would not like to see you hurt. Can I…can I ask your lineage?"

[1510, August 4th, 2075; Mechanicals' Complex]

Once they felt they had gotten all they were going to from the pregnant woman - at least for the time being - they filed out of the cell and found a dredlocked South Asian Mechanical waiting for them. He had shiny chrome hands and a matrix of tats spanning his unshaven face, and members of the gang knew him as Easter.

No one knew why he was called that. But they knew he could build cars and drive them.

"Silkie," he said, extending his hand, and nodded to the others, "this whole things sucks man. But we'll get him back. Come out here for just a second."

Following him outside, they found what looked like a lunar exploration vehicle. "Worst timing, but the Golden Dragons are getting uppity, and powers-that-be can't assign you much back up, but you got me and my latest ride. Heard we're headed for the ash-hole of Puyallup, pun intended, and this baby will get us there."

The contraption had a good sized body that sat amid four spread-eagled pinions, and at the end of each was what looked more like a huge gray beach ball than a tire. "This girl will go faster than anything on the ash - skim right over - but she's got the shocks and the tread to handle rough spots too. Best, she's electric and all silent, thermo-baffled, too. Downside, she's gotta be light - you lookin' for small arms protection, you'd be better off in a pup tent. So they told me I deliver and then stand off until the shooting's done, and I won't say I argued. Lover not a fighter, me is. I've got some adjustments to make, but you won't want to go until dark anyway - bus leaves at twenty-three-hundred."

[0001, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The masks made it a bitch to breathe. But the air here was literally toxic without them.

The locals wore them.

It was dead dark, but vision enhancements showed one on sentry duty to the rear of the school, and careful observation turned up another two in the miniature bell tower that rose from the middle of the roof of the dilapidated three-storey building.

All three floors were lined with windows, but all were boarded up. There was one back door, within easy sight of the sentry.

As they watched the rear of the building, the one they were assuming Steamer was still alive in, a minor version of hell broke loose around the front of the place. Small arms fire - at least a dozen weapons - was joined moments later by several more. Unable to spare more trained fighters, the Mechanicals leadership had dispatched a team of, well, anyone that could point and pull a trigger. Their orders were to keep a safe distance off and draw the attention of whoever was inside.

The two in the tower had certainly turned their attention in that direction - backlight from their muzzle flashes were visible - and the sentry blocking the rear entrance was heading in that direction when the rear door opened briefly. It was dark inside, but an authoritative voice - muffled by his mask - shouted at the man to hold his position and stay sharp.

Then the door closed again.

[0001, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

With a curt gesture Cam waved them forward and, crouching low, he lead them towards the rear exit and the unfortunate guard, relying on the crap in the air and the distraction on the other side of the building to keep them unseen until it was too late...

Reaching into his pocket he drew out the small clockwork fairy and released the small drone up into the air ahead of them...in his right hand the cavalry sabre was carried tucked in against his side, the blade dulled by the pervading stink of this place. These people had snatched one of theirs, it was not time to play nicely...

***

Silkie stepped ahead, eager to be out of the exposed waste that surrounded the school...her synthleather suit was grey from the ash and she had to keep smearing the gunk off her goggles... she also vaguely wondered if her taser would even work in this...but it was her voice that was her real weapon, and although the respirator would muffle it slightly it would be enough...

[0001, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Moving as quietly as possible, the trio of would-be rescuers approached the rear of the building, trying to stay on the guard's blind side.

Then Silkie stepped on a twig - it broke with an audible snap - and they all froze, exposed in the middle of what had once been the school's playing field.

But the sentry showed no reaction, and Cam moved up alone, now within spitting distance...

[0001, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Silkie winced at the noise but they so far seemed to be unseen. At Cam's nod she reached out with her Gift to read the poor fool ahead of them. She felt his doubt, saw how he moved through the Pattern

"Don't move a muscle" Her Voice was barely audible over the wind, but the harmonics made use of the layers of sound, reaching into the guard's ears...

[0001, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The nervous man whirled at the sound of the Voice, but by the end of the phrase was standing still as a statue, Colt Cobra half raised.

With his respirator on, his expression was hard to read in the dark, but his eyes widened at the sight of the approaching Cam.

[0001, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Then Silkie stepped up and tasered the immobilized cultist, and he went from a frozen statue to a spastic pile of helplessly spasming limbs.

[0003, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Silkie winced as Cam knelt down in the ash, his other knee pressed viciously into the throat of the poor unfortunate guard. He twisted off the man’s respirator and watched long enough for his eyes to roll back in his head. Then with a whispered command he sent the clockwork fairy into the building with instructions to seek out Steamer. Opening up an AR window on his ‘link he followed the projected view from the small camera on the drone’s housing…

“Don’t get spotted little one…” he muttered to himself…

Meanwhile Silkie pressed herself to the edge of the door and tried to peer into the gloom beyond while speaking to Maus, her tone laced with just the right amount of affection and warmth

“Thank you for being here with us! I know this is not your fight but I trust that you know that the Tribe’s gratitude is valuable! Is there anything you can do to keep us unseen by that lot in there, or serve up a distraction if we need one…?”

[0004, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Looking in the door, Silkie saw a long hallway extending along the back of the old building to both the right and the left into the gloom. Cautiously playing her low-light flashlight down its length in either direction, she saw nothing threatening - boarded windows on one side, and doors with small windows in them spaced at wide intervals along the interior side. Occasional alcoves hosted jutting pipes that must once have fed drinking fountains, but the fixtures were long gone. Dust swirled about even inside - there must have been recent traffic, but there was no movement now. From the roar of gunfire coming from the other side of the building, a lot of people must be responding to her fellow gangers' distraction. It couldn't last forever, though.

Outside, Cam watched his screen has the drone, running dark, made its way rapidly down the the corridor to the right, skimming along the wall near the ceiling. Once it reached the end of the hall - the extent of the building in that direction - there was a left turning blocked by double doors. Out of options in that direction, the mechanical bug's dog brain turned it around and began to double back.

[0006, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The mechanical bug made it back to the mid-point of the corridor where the team waited outside the door, then proceeded down the laft branch. It was about halfway to the end when one of the doors opened and a small figure burst out, a little boy, maybe six - it was hard to tell with the respirator across his face.

He lit out down the hall and then a woman emerged, whispering as loudly as she dared for him to come back. She gave chase, but couldn't catch him because she was so pregnant.

The boy made straight for the outside door.

[0006, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

From her vantage point at the door Silkie caught sight of the child’s movement just before Cam’s muttered expletive at the same view on his AR feed. She slipped inside and crouching, opened her arms wide to intercept the boy…

“Hello sweetie…” she pitched her Voice to encompass him and the lady, presumably his mother, “Please don’t make a sound, we are not going to hurt you…”

[0006, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The boy caught himself up just a meter shy of the strange woman, looking wide-eyed at here geared-up appearance. His mouth hung open soundlessly.

The woman also took a few more faltering steps, then stopped. "Please don't hurt the children. We have fives, sixes, even two sevens."

[0006, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Pulling the respirator away from her mouth Silkie stood slowly, careful not to spook anyone, and faced the woman.

“I said we wouldn’t hurt anyone and I meant it. Now, tell me, the orc, Steamer, who was brought in earlier…TELL ME WHERE HE IS”

She laced her Voice with the subtle harmonics that would force the woman to respond, even unwillingly...assuming she knew of course...

[0006, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The child ran back to the pregnant woman and wrapped himself around a leg.

The woman answered Silkie: "You mean the Culmination, don't you? His Reaping has begun in the ritual chamber, in the old boiler room. Through those doors," and she indicated the doors at the end of the rightward passage, the ones that had stymied Cam's drone moments earlier, "and down the stairs to the left. If you are his friends, you should go and be with him. Though an honor, it is not an easy passage."

[0006, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Well this did not sound good, not good at all…

“Ok, go back to your room, take your boy and go. Tell no one that you have seen us.” Silkie gestured to Cam and he and Maus slipped inside to join here “You heard? Doesn’t sound good. Let’s see if we can slip the fairy through the door or up through the ceiling void…we need to see what’s going on in there before we rush in blind…”

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The woman obediently whisked the child back through the door they'd come out of, and Cam led the trio to the right to the end of the corridor. As they had seen on the drone's first pass, there was a set of double doors.

They looked like solid fire doors, but there there had been emergency push bars to ensure they stopped no one, now the bars had been removed and the latch augmented with a keypad maglock.

Above the doors was a narrow, filthy glass transom that did not appear as though it were designed to open.

Overhead, the gunfire was becoming more sporadic.

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

"This might not be pretty..." Cam muttered to himself as he inserted the tip of his sabre between the maglock and the decaying wooden door. With a screech of protesting screws he levered the device out of the door and frame, catching it before it could make any further noise hitting the floor. Levering the door just enough to get clearance he nudged the fairy through "Find Steamer..."

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Just behind and to the right of Cam and Silkie, Maus stood at the ready, swallowing hard as she could feel the energy she was ready to call just licking at her senses, prepared to answer anything that came through the doors besides the fairy. When nothing immediately came through, she relaxed only slightly and waited till Cam had something from the drone to act on.

Idly, she turned her attention to the dirty transom window and wondered how many alarms conjuring a spirit in this disaster of a building would set off.

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Again staying near the ceiling, the tiny drone moved along the corridor, now heading towards the front of the building. Its auditory sensors were picking up the gunfire more clearly the further it went, though there was steadily less of it.

There were numerous doors on either side of the corridor, but it wasn't long before one on the left had a guard outside it. He was a ragged looking human in the usual black clothing and respirator. He gripped an old AK carbine, and was fidgeting nervously, glancing alternately toward the front and the rear of the building. The door he stood in front of had stenciled paint on it - faded over the years, by blowing up the resolution Cam could read Boiler Room. The door was shut.

Then just about the time the small drone approached, the nervous guard could contain himself no more. He knocked on the door. It was obviously a special knock - three fast, two slow, two more fast. It opened just a bit, and a gruff voice queried, "What?"

A text message appeared via Cam and Slikie's comms, from the leader of the distraction team: <<Running low on ammo.>>

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Cam gestured quickly for the others to move through the door after the rather irrelevant signal for keeping quiet and an indicator of two opponents beyond. Silkie would have arched an eyebrow but the gesture would have been lost behind the half helm visor anyway...the time for subtlety was running out anyway...

Although the person in the doorway remained out of sight and her gift was best used against those she could see Silkie still poured every ounce of command into her voice

"Drop your weapons now!"

As she and Cam, and hopefully Maus, rushed towards the boiler room, hopefully before the person in the doorway could block the door from the inside...

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Even as the three rushed forward, they heard the clatter of at least two weapons as they hit the floor, including the AK of the guard within their line of sight. But even as they closed the distance, he was bending over to retrieve it, and the voice from within the darkened doorway was growling, "What the fuck?" His voice sounded odd at first - it took a moment to realize that, unlike everyone else you'd encountered here so far, he probably was not wearing a respirator.

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Silkie hugged the wall whilst Cam moved forward purposefully, the steampunked pistol was almost as long as his forearm and looked like some antique matchlock weapon, but there was nothing outmoded about the roar of the modern explosive tipped round…

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

…which struck the befuddled guard square between the eyes, and then he didn't have eyes any more, or even much of a head.

Rushing up to the door, Cam and Maus saw the second guard - nope, no respirator - also picking up his weapon. The arcane energy that flew forth from Maus was a like a punch in the face, leaving his call for help a strangled gurgle in his throat, but then he caught a breath and shouted again - "They're in here!" - as he raised his automatic weapon.

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Silkie practically snarled out the words "I said DROP YOUR WEAPONS..." the multi overtones of her gift sounding like a chorus of voices all willing him to the same end...

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The confusion intensified on the doomed guard's face as he dropped his weapon a second time nanoseconds before pulling the trigger. And then Cam's pistol blast rendered his visage a dead mass of tenderized meat.

Hoping to press their initiative, knowing their time was up, the three rushed through the door - Silkie scooping up the dropped AK as she went - and down the obvious staircase. Emerging from the stairwell into a dimly lit gloom, they stopped short in dismayed amazement.

Around the edge of the huge basement chamber, with too few faintly guttering torches afixed to the walls, stood seven figures in voluminous black robes, faces enshrouded by billowy dark hoods. All but invisible in the ebony-frosted air, their sinous gyrations made them nonetheless easy to spot. They appeared far too lost in their ritual dance to have taken any notice of the commotion at the top of the stairs or the entry of three strangers.

That was the good news.

The bad news was the huge pit dominating the center of the room. It's bottom was aswarm with tiny red dots, a hundred reflections of the failing torchlight in the eyes of dozens of huge devil rats. Direcly above them, suspended from the ceiling by seven chains on pulleys afixed to his flesh by vicious meat hooks, hung the naked form of Steamer. Blood drizzled steadily from his wounds, sending the demonic rodents below into a feeding frenzy, climbing atop one another in a futile attempt to reach the nectar's source.

But it would not be futile for long, as some sort of unseen mechanism was steadily lowering the hapless ork downward, and with each inch closer to the pit, the expression on his face spoke new volumes in terror.

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Swallowing back the horror of the scene, the three started scanning the room for any way to stop the fatal descent or get the upper hand on the chanting figures in robes. The guttering torches provided plenty of illumination for the low-light enhancements with which all three were equipped.

It was obvious that what had once been a large boiler room serving the school had been completely stripped out and redone, from the giant pit in the center, to the medieval system of chains hanging from the ceiling. Silkie could see that all seven chains came from one large hole in he ceiling, spread out in seven directions to the walls, and there fed through seven large pulleys before reconverging on Steamer's body. More and more slack was slowly being given the chains - when they had entered, chains from the pulleys were nearly taut, perpendicular to the doomed ork's body, but as they lengthened the angle steepened, now approaching about thirty degrees. At about seventy, Steamer would be in reach of he most energetically leaping rats.

Looking for anywhere the mechanism might be controlled from, Silkie finally spotted a single door. It had once had some sort of letters stenciled on it, but the words were long faded to illegibility. The door was shut, and at just about the furthest point from them, on the other side of the pit, reachable only by circumnavigating the meter-wide walkway around which the seven cultists were evenly spaced.

Meanwhile, Maus was focused less on the mechanics and more on the opposition. She didn't have a lot of education, but it quickly became clear that the various figures were not all chanting to the same rythym - or even in the same language, as far as she could tell. She was no linguist, but knew something about magic, and this didn't sound like any sort of ritual she'd ever heard of. Slipping her gaze into the astral she was hit across the nose by the emotional stench of the place and the overpowering despair or Steamer's fear, but it was also clear that the chanting held no arcane power whatsoever. In fact, a quick glance revealed that only three of the seven were even awakened.

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Silkie pointed out the door to Cam and he nodded in turn

"Frag this, we don't have time for subtle...shoot the bastards, I'll do something about the rats..." and he unlimbered the shotgun from his back and twitched the choke to its widest possible setting, the green of the laser sight jumping over the bodies of the seething rats

Silkie braced the borrowed weapon against her shoulder "let's rock" she muttered to herself as the weapon spat a burst of fire in a great sweep around one side of the chamber

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The blast of the shotgun and the explosion of rat blood were as one event, shattering the pinnacle of the swarming rodents that had been straining to reach Steamer, buying the ork a few precious seconds.

The pop-pop-pop of Silkie's recently confiscated AK was equally effective in scattering the ritualists on one side of the chamber - one spun and fell, one dropped to the cement floor, narrowly avoiding an inadvertant tumble into the rat pit, and two just stood in shock.

And then Maus's spell hit.

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

As the shooting started and the towering swarm of rats covered his face in an spatter of noxious blood, Steamer looked up to see Cam and s flicker of hope shone in his exhausted eyes. Only a flicker, though, because he was then - along with all seven of the ritual chanters - caught up in Maus' confusion whammy. On the side where Silkie had fired on four of the cultists, the two that had been left standing both grabbed at their eyes and ears, clearly impacted by the magic - and one staggered into the rat pit.

On the other side, another ritualist dropped to his knees from the sensory overload. Another, however, not only kept his wits, but placed a protective hand on the shoulder of the man next to him. The first man leveled his free hand and the three intruding gangers, while the man he'd protected pulled a Steyr TMP from his robe, laser sight fingering its way up Silkie's slender form.

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Silkie put all of her Gift into the next burst of Voice...the weird overtones of multiple voices speaking to the part of the brain that wants to obey...

"Jump into the pit"

Cam racked the shotgun again and sent another spray of shot into the writhing mess of rats below him...

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The shooter took a half-step toward the rat pit before coming to his senses and pulling the trigger, spitting a stream of bullets at Silkie's slender form. The rounds thudded into her armor in rapid succession, the tight grouping knocking the wind out of her and sending her flying backwards. She landed on her back, skidding a good meter until the staircase stopped her.

In the meantime, Cam's shotgun blasts were tearing into dozens of devil rats with each cartridge spent, though the boom of his weapon was nearly drowned out by the screams of the cultist that had fallen in as he was devoured alive.

Then he felt something unseen smack him across the face, the shock made all the more disorienting by the distinct sensation that something was somehow unsmacking him, pushing back against the blow, and he realized that little Maus was countering the magical cultist's wizardry. And then her own spell went flying....

[0007, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

Even knocked on her ass, Silkie barely took her finger off the trigger and Cam shifted his hips as they both directed their weapons at the two men who had clearly made themselves the ones to deal with. Both dropped instantly to the cement floor, though Cam was almost certain he saw a spray of blood somewhere in the barrage.

In the pit, the man that had fallen in screamed hysterically as the devil rats swarmed over him devouring his soft tissue, giving Steamer a moment's reprieve.

[0110, August 5th, 2075; Wilkeson Elementary School, Railroad Avenue, Puyallup, Seattle]

The Steyr chattered again, this time from the floor, and then there was a small flash in the rat pit, quickly followed by a billowing cloud of red smoke laced with red hot particulates that rendered most of the team’s vision enhancements useless. Silkie’s AK clicked empty, but Cam continued firing, if only to give their foes something to think about. The Steyr did the same for a while, and then it fell silent. And so, after a short while, did the screams of the man that had fallen into the pit.

And that left the sound of the mechanism in the roof, relentlessly continuing Steamer’s inch-by-inch descent.

Maus summoned a small air spirit, which quickly flushed away the hot smoke. Now they could see the far door again, and the two men that had fought back were gone. Some others still lay on the floor, but all still seemed overwhelmed by the chaos enchantment that Maus sustained. None offered any resistance as Cam raced to the machine room door, shot the lock, and went in.

The first few bold rats were now leaping up, nipping at Steamer’s inviting flesh, but there in the room were what appeared to be the controls. Trying a red button first, the mechanism stopped. But still too close - the rats were rebuilding their tower of bodies, and would soon reach the suspended ork en force. Quickly scanning the controls, Cam made one more guess, and the hooks tore at muscle and sinew as they painfully reversed, lifting Steamer out of harm’s way.

The question remained as to how they would get him down, but the outside team was reporting that return fire had become sporadic at best. Sending her spirit to scout, Maus reported that all above was in chaos, with most fleeing or cowering. It seemed that the retreat of their leaders had left this odd colony altogether headless.

Cam took a chance and called the outside team in. They were short on combat training, but could have started an engineering school with the combined mechanical know-how between them. No one opposed them after that - most of the people that didn’t flee were women with children. Lots of children. Some apparently were fives, with a six here and there - about the only information anyone seemed interested in sharing.

Maus remembered the locket she’d found. The picture of seven children, an ork that she now recognized as the adult Steamer apparently the youngest.

Soon they had Steamer down, and although the hooks had left hideous wounds, none were life-threatening.

They got started patching him up during the long drive home.