bnc curses silently, while she frantically searches for the elevator in the matrix. She doesn't waste a split-second to join the conversation, only a curt nod indicates that she has heard Wraith.

Nyan replied: <<Junkcat is busy keeping you hidden and the alarms surpressed. But I can see the elevator icon. I'm passing that one on to you, bnc, and also another machine sprite to help you out - finally managed to compile a good one.>>

And indeed, bnc found a rather curious looking icon moving next to her, looking like a cross between an octopuss and a bunch of extension cords. When she let it touch her, she felt the thing charging and distributing processing load on her own deck to itself.

while bnc works her matrix magic, Anna carefully examines the nearby surrounding, looking for items of interest - perhaps Rosenberg forgot something important. Besides... if they broke into that office, then Anna wants a souvenir.

bnc swallows hard when she sees how well-protected the icon was. This is so not gonna work. Frag, this chink knows what he's doing!

bnc drops to the floor, needing every bit of calculating power she can drain out of her deck. When Nyan sends her a sprite, her spirits rise. To her, sprites were at least as mythical creatures as spirits, mystical, wondrous - and powerful. She had already some experiences with spirits - never with sprites, though. Eat that, Rosenberg!

And then it happens. Completely thrown off-balance by the influence of the sprite, bnc dotches the simplest of attacks, thus not only failing to get the icon under control, but also revealing herself - again. This time, however, she doesn't take the time to reboot or wipe the mark off. Instead, she tries a different angle, not yet accustomed to the sprite, but also not surprised anymore - and passes the defences.

Luckily, the MARK that the elevator received did not immediately come to Rosenbergs attention, so bnc's second attempt actually worked, giving her access to the lift's controls - and just in time, as the interface showed that the lift had nearly reached the surface.



Anna looked around, but found only a standard office space - albeit a very luxurious one. A possible source of interesting stuff was the secretary's handbag:
Inside she found a Hermes Icon commlink, various hygiene and make up products as well as a keycard that might very well fit the Keycard reader next to the closed door leading to Rosenberg's office.

Anna picks the bag, and then checks the keycard at the reader. "Open Sessami"

bnc exhales inaudibly, when she realizes that the her blotched attempt went unnoticed - yet. Suddenly, a surge goes through her: She's back in the water, flinging code, reacting in split-seconds, feeling the drive of hot-sim. More yet, after mere seconds the sprite's support began to feel natural, in fact, it felt, like nothing before has ever been as natural as this experience. For a moment, bnc feels invincible. It takes only the barest suggestion to send the elevator back down.
"You better hurry, Rosenberg's a-comin'," bnc announces, not without pride in her voice.

"We may need him alive and mostly untouched to unlock stuff, right?" Sharkboy said, reaching for his bow.

"First of all, we do know that he is a powerful mage and tampers with the infected. Who knows what kinds of self-experiments he has performed. I would say, take him down hard and worry about anything else later," Nova said.

Anna agrees "I agree, he can be very dangerous, even to our combined effort."

The door lock clicked and the buzz of the mag lock diminished as the little lamp on the card reader turned to green. The door to the office was unlocked while the door was still closed.

Anna says "Everybody, take cover and a safe distance - I will try to open the door with magic." Once everyone is away from the door, Anna would try to open it with the magic fingers.

Sharkboy strung and drew an explosive arrow as Anna attempted to open the door.

Wraith nodded and activated his Combat Focus while moving away from the injured woman, taking cover behind the office desk.

Before bnc returns to her meat body, she hides from Dr. Rosenberg, just as a precaution. Then she changes to AR and goes into hiding. She has no part in a combat.

While bnc unsuccessful tried to get rid of the MARK from the elevator, Anna pushed the door open with her spell.
Just as the spell passed the threshold, Anna felt a kind of feedback, as something small and fragile cracked, immediately afterwards, the room was crossed by a magical shockwave.

At the last minute Anna notices the bomb, and completely dispells it with her advanced counterspelling. Her initiation, and advanced study of military conterspell paid off. Thogh, nobody will ever know. From now on, she make sure to keep it active, on her team members at all times.



Moment after she says "Spell defense." looking at wraith.

The office beyond was lavishly decorated with very fine and old furniture. Long rows of bookcases were filled with beautifully leather bound books as well as really old looking pieces.
The heavy desk, dominating the room seemed to be carved from one enormous piece of wood. It had been moved on the expensive Persian carpet to reveal a floor save under the fishbone parquet.
Behind the desk a wall panel had swung aside and revealed the private elevator. A single digital display showed the cabin was about to arrive on this level.

The doors began to open, revealing an empty cabin...

"Uh, huh"

Sharkboy used his electroception to try and sense what his eyes, couldn't.

Although his eyes might have been deceived, Sharkboy could quite clearly make out the shape of the man's electro magnetic field in the elevator

Wraith quickly nodded Anna's sudden reminder about Spell Defense. She was right, of course. Focus, Raph. You gotta stay alert.

With one last reluctant look at the secretary's head wound, he followed the others into the impressive inner sanctum - things had priority.

As they zeroed in on the elevator, he kept his gun and Combat Focus raised and aimed at the door, his heart racing as he awaited the 'ping' that was supposed to bring them Rosenberg...

When the elevator cabin shows up empty, Nova switched to her ultrasound sensor, in order to check it more thoroughly.

The ultrasound received nothing - for the sound based sensor the elevator appeared to be an endless void where no sound was reflected.

Anna and Wraith felt as the mana was drawn in - lots of mana - for what was certainly another magic attack.

Anna blocks the mana in order to sap power from the combat spell, giving it all she has. Her counterspelling drastically weakens the spell, but it take a short while before she can do that again.

Like standing near am electrical field, Wraith felt a tingle like when something - or someone - was harnessing the mana around him. There was powerful magic about to be unleashed, that was for sure.
Lord, hold your hand over us and keep us safe from peril. , he prayed silently.

The Lord must have been listening - the combined efforts of Anna and Wraith nullified the gathering mana. And what would have been a powerful ball lightning was snuffed out like a candle. That left the whole team to act against the invisible Dr. Rosenberg.

Anna peers into the astral to locate the mage and then marks him with the trid phantasm spell for her friends to see. She spends a bunch of reagents on the low powered spell just in case Rozenberg tries to counter her. Her intention is a cartoonish person man, with arrows pointing at him, and the words "shoot me!" on his torso.

She mentally texts">>Marked him! go!"

In the astral, Rosenberg's form was obscured by a compact but quite strong sphere of 2m diameter. Casting an illusion through that was hard, but Anna managed to do so, despite having to guess where exactly Rosenberg stood inside the sphere.

Shark meanwhile had no trouble pinpointing the man's location thanks to his electroreceptors - a sense neither an invisibility nor a silence spell could block.

Sharkboy lined up a shot, aiming center of the mass of electrical signals sent out from the elevator.

The arrow hit something for sure in the confines of the elevator cabin although no sound could be made out from the arrow exploding.

Nova couldn't see anything in there, even her ultrasound sensor was blocked somehow, so she waited for a moment.

When Anna managed to outline where Rosenberg, who was most likely still in there, was standing, she raised her rifle, aimed for center mass, and fired.

Despite all the obfuscation, Nova's shot hit true. Suddenly all the spells were gone and the dead form of Dr. Rosenberg lay slumped with a massive, dead center chest wound in the back of the elevator. At his side a heavy brief case.

Anna feels alive like never before, but she could also feel the revulsion of leaving another dead body in their path. Yet, she was a thief long before she was a mage, and she quickly glances the astral to see what magical wonders Rozenberg has. It turns out that any focus she finds belongs to a corrupted, overly confident mage. Perhaps foci are shortcuts to power, but who can resist.

>> bnc, Nyan join us quickly. What is the best way out of here? Can you find Kerstin and Splitterbruch?
"Shark, fetch the vampire if you are serious about magical body armor." Then she approaches the briefcase and says "Let's hope its the darn cure.".

She activates her spell defense and assense the briefcase in case it has another preparation on it.

Nova was glad they could overwhelm Rosenberg quickly. She was quite sure, that he could have caused them a lot of trouble, otherwise.

"Thanks for the target assist there, Anna. That really helped! I guess we want to take that moment and make sure what we are looking for is actually in there, right? Just be careful with it, who knows what kind of self-destroying trap he might have built into it."

Anna says "Best I could do in the situation. Your gun is bigger. I am checking the suitcase for magical traps as he had on the door. Rozenberg was a dangerous mage and a gifted alchemist."

"I'll go grab the vampire, and whatever else we want to bring with us. Make sure to search the dead doc's pockets for his commlink and get that to bnc. I'm sure she'd love to get better access to this place." Sharkboy headed back out the office, stringing an SnS Arrow and poking his head through the door before heading down to collect the vampire.

"Should we blow the place before we go?"

As could be expected, the dead mages had several foci on them:
The whole FBA was a Qi-Focus - made for adepts. There were also three rings on the dead vampiric mages hands that also looked like powerfull foci - likely sustaining and/or power foci.
Rosenberg himself had a gold rimmed obsidian pendant around his neck, that nearly glowed with power. On each of his ring fingers were solid gold rings that glowed in the astral.
The briefcase didn't have any traps on it - at least no magical ones. But it was certainly a blast proof, air tight container. The briefcase was locked.
Both mages had carried very high end commlinks, no obvious weapons and no convenient cred sticks.

"Okay, let me see, if I can open that lock."

Nova carefully placed the briefcase on one of the desks in the office and pulled out her lockpicks.

bnc gasps but when the commotion ends, she turns around the corner, finding the person who did all this to her and her sister lying in a pool of blood. Just like that, Sharkboy and Nova had felled her nemesis within split-seconds. She feels numb, for a reason she cannot explain herself, and only when Anna addresses her directly, she awakes from her temporary stupor.

What does she mean by 'Can you find Kerstin?' Shouldn't she ... oh, yeah.

"We still have the map of the base. Here!", she says, shoving the map ARO towards the fighters, while she herself checks on Kerstin.

Two well placed shots and the powerful Rosenberg lay in his own blood, like a marionette whose striings had been cut. Crumped on the floor, the doctor looked a lot smaller and less intimidating than what Wraith had imagined.
The fight had been over before Wraith had even joined th fray.


"Bloody good work.", he commented. When he thought back to their botched first attempts at teamwork in Munich, he really had to acknowledge that they had turned into an efficient team by now.
"Anyone checked calling Nacl or Kerstin since the connection got disrupted?"
As his companions were already on the tasks of ckecking the corpses and the briefcase, Wraith took to inspecting the office around him:
He started by activating his astral sight and sweeping for any magical activity and then continued to quickly check for objects of critical usefulness and/or value. Rosenberg wouldn't need it anymore.

Anna quickly pockets the magical loot, and hands it to Wraith. "More expensive foci." She does not trust herself around such trophies, so she hands them away before she is tempted to steal one. Then she looks at the map and tries to figure what the best way outside should be, should they go back the way they came or up with Rozenberg's elevator. Rozenberg's seemed like the fastest route, but Anna feared that more security may be present there top side.

The lock of the brief case yielded to Nova's expert manipulation and revealed quite a few interesting items:
A small case of data discs labeled research. Beside that there was a case filled with a series of small vials, labeled only with barcodes. Finally, there was also leather etui with a row of 20 certified credsticks, each valued at 20.000€. Rosenberg had obviously decided to take the petty cash with him.

The map didn't show the private elevator, but the location allowed for an estimation: This was likely an escape route should the facility be compromised or overrun. So it stood to reason that it would go directly to the surface of the Kapuzinerberg.

That's where the good news ended as neither Nacl's nor Kerstin's commlink were to be found online. The most likely explanation was that they were either jammed or had switched them off as not to be tracked...

Nova whistled. "Jackpot!"

She removed the etui, in order to seperate it from the rest, in case something happened to the briefcase, and stashed it inside her faraday pocket for now.

Once bnc related the news about the communications attempt, Nova said: "I'm not surprised, if you cannot find the comlinks online. The previous connection ended pretty abruptly. They were being pursued at that time. My guess is they are being jammed. Let's take the elevator. There is little reason that it won't get us out of here."

To Anna and Wraith she added: "Maybe your spirits can find them?" And then to bnc and the technomancer girl: "And what about tapping into some security lines. Surely, a high-speed chase within the city limits is raising some eyebrows."

"Spirits are pretty limited in this facility, there is a ward every few meters and the spirit would get stuck. I may be able to locate them when I am outside of this facility. "

"Well, we have to get out, anyways..."

"Alright, let's gamble on the elevator here. she says and waits near the elevator with her superwarhwk in her hands.

Sharkboy carried the dead vampire over his shoulder back into the room and into the elevator.

"So yeah, should we torch the office before we go?"

"I don't want to kill the assistant."

"Right, spirits.", Wraith agreed after having made sure they hadn't left and data disks or whatever behind in the open safe.
"I'll ask a bound spirit to look for them, but it can't interfere. That'll be on us."

"I'd rather leave quickly, they might well be under attack as we speak. There's no time to lose getting the secretary out and setting a fire.
Oh, and let's not forget about the girl. Guards will swarm here soon."

"Nyan, hurry to Doc's office, we're leaving from here."

Sharkboy considered vampire body he had slung over his shoulder. "Well, if we're going to wait for Nyan, might as well get this armor off the corpse. The trophy won't be as useful for promotion without a head attached."