"There must be a reason why he has it, it is very difficult to acquire. Perhaps he stole it from the facility he blew up? Stupid, stupid, stupid."

Nova holds her hands up. "Don't look at me. You wanted to touch that stuff."

"Does regular anti-bacterial disinfectant work on this? I guess so. Should have some in the medkit..."

"Medickit it is, then shower, then whatever the brainiacs say. Worst case, I'll spend a few weeks without looking at the astral.
I can do that... " she says trying to convince herself. let's open the medickit, and do something."

Eliza chose this moment to make her appearance again: <<Muhme just informed me that we will have to leave Worms within the next two hours. bnc, if you could start cracking the data on the chip that would be most helpful. There is a lot of bleach at the safehouse. Get what you need from there and the drones will start to slather the place.>>

>> Alright Eliza. We'll bolt quickly.


Thinking about her situation Anna had the beginning of a plan. "When we get there, I'll cast mana barriers around the car. The bacteria cannot pass through the barrier so we should be disinefected. Then showers and stabilization of all our equipment and clothes, just to be sure. Remember I may only be the one affected from this bacteria, we do not get the car inside the garage until we leave because the car would remain infected, but the Bacteria would remain contained in the mana barriers. We'll likely need to keep it out of the garage until we're ready. Please take it seriously as this bacteria can permanently hurt me."

Unless someone object Anna would cast a series of increasing force barriers when they arrive, and then follow her own plan to get rid of the bacteria.

The car returned to the garage, but didn't pull in.
Moving Rabe without a gurney was tricky, but between Nova and Taurus there was enough raw strength to carry him. Anna's trick with the mana barrier worked - no glowing clouds of bacteria followed her out and as soon as the team was clear, the car tore off, subsequently smashing the bacteria in an intersection. Only a few traces remained inside the barriers. The drones with their bleach sprayers soon had smothered that part as well.

Eliza gave an update: <<The incident at the hospital has caused an investigation and has blown your deception. The information on the chip is vital to determine our next destination. What are your plans for Rabe?>>

Once they arrived at the garage, Nova handed bnc the data chip and the partially melted comlink. "Here. This is your area of expertise."

Angström was, once more, connected to the savior medkit for the time being. Nova asked Alex to help with one of the cots in the garage to have a makeshift bed for the dwarf at least.

<< @Eliza: Rabe is in critical condition. He requires constant medical attention, ideally by an autodoc. All we have at the moment is a savior medkit, to which I hooked him up again, when we disconnected him from the Valkyrie module. But we need some place where we can let him regain his health with the proper installations. Do you know a discrete clinic or street doc on the way with the proper equipment to treat critical patients? >>

Anna says >>Eliza, magical interrogation is possible but hard. Anything in particular we're looking for? Difficult to ask the right questions when we do not have perspective of what we are interested in. As for Rabe, if he has relatives or people that care about him we can deposit him there. Else, can you find some shadow clinic for him to recover in.

<< @Anna: Who do you want to magically interrogate, exactly? >>

Eliza replied: <<I don't know much about him - he has a base somewhere around Frankfurt where he lived with his team. I can take care of him though. I'll send over a Dustoff drone for pickup.>>

>> I don't think we can interrogate Rabe with mundane methods, but perhaps his memories are accessible with the mind probe spell.
Given his medical condition, and magical resistance I am not sure if it will work. I thought it was worth mentioning in case you have something very important you want Rabe to tell you. Otherwise, I'd be happy to avoid this spell.

"Let's just try to remember he is on our side. I don't know how local any of the rest of you are, I just know I have pretty much burned myself on the local front. As a former corp, that blood sample is going to mean my SIN is officially trash. Not a real loss, but I haven't gotten around to setting up any fake ID's yet. We need to get gone, maybe we should head back to Muhme's tent in the sticks?"

<< @Anna: We have the data chip, which probably contains the information we are looking for. There is no real need to interrogate Rabe at the moment, I believe. >>

>> I actually agree. We got the job done already. Now we need to not get caught.

"Getting the cops to Muhme's doorstep is not prudent for the relationship. Let's find a safehouse of our own, I am sure Abdecker has something for us. Or perhaps you guys know someone else for that kind of arrangement. Taurus burning his cooperate SIN is a big event, and deserves at least a drink, if not a party." She looks at Taurus and says "This Abdecker can also hook you up with a new SIN."

"I was kinda hoping Eliza would be doing that, but I wouldn't mind raising a glass or three." Taurus said smiling.

Eliza replied: <<I will see what I can organize for you. For the moment, avoid getting spotted or using any digital service.>>

bnc nods to Nova as she hands her the chip and then sits down on her bench, crosslegged. First, she slots it in a Fairlight-slaved burner link lest the chip is infected with a virus or any other harmful code. If the data is directly readable, she'll read it from that link, otherwise she'll run a short analysis program and then slot it directly into her datajack.

"Damn elf bitch. I'll try and find out some more about her as soon as we can breathe a little bit more freely here. Meanwhile I'll take care of the chip. Ah, Nova, do you still have the bricked link? I might be able to fix it and acquire any data stored from it."

While she's working on the chip, James dutifully packes together what little of bnc's equipment she unpacked into the garage so they can leave any second.

>> @Eliza: going dark contact bnc if you need me

Anna goes wifi dark, clean up as much as she can, and disinfect the equipment. She loads the bike, and says to bnc "Want to ride with me?"

If Anna asks her in a way she can receive, bnc will answer that she'd prefer a ride where she can close her eyes and focus on the file, but thank you.



bnc breaks the encryption and reads the chip's contents.

The decrypted file unfolded in bnc's VR window like an endless Mandelbrot tree. It quickly became apparent that this was a world map - but not an ordinary one.

The globe was covered in an obscuring and confusing mass of coloured lines and plots. It took her a few seconds to find the map key and start to filter the available data.
Apparently someone had gone to the trouble of charting out background counts and leylines around the globe - and had also set them in correlation with influence of time and date from stars, moon and sun.
Zooming in, she found that Worms was at a comfortable 0 to 1 BGC at the moment, but there were some weaker leylines running along the Rhine that in a few years time would gain quite a bit of power.

There were even calculation fields designed to receive input for artificial alterations of the mana field at a given location and how that would change the overall field.

Whoever had created this map must have occupied whole server farms to work out this program.

Anna says "We have two bikes and need to GTFO we are five. So we need more wheels. How do we do that? Also where are we going?"

"Yeah, jeez, wotcha.
Uhm, well, sure, I, uhm, I can take a look at this ... in a few minutes I guess. Holy shit. This ... this stuff is hot."

bnc quickly stores a copy in her Cloudless store. "Anyone got a good smuggling compartment?"

"Yes, I do." Nova offered to put the chip back into the smuggling compartment inside her cyberleg.

"Probably shouldn't have gotten rid of that limo, I don't have any local contacts beyond Eliza, I have some corporate scrip so I should be able to get out of the area, we need to get paid too. I still think we should head back to Muhme's."

Eliza chimed in: <<I can answer several of your questions once I receive the data from the chip. It's content will tell us where we need to set up our next staging grounds.
If you lack transportation I'll organize something for you now, but I do have limits. Are you all able to drive? In that case I can get you individual transports - as soon as I bring Sharkboy back.>>

Indeed Sharkboy was picked up by a robotaxi that showed a suspicious lack of advertisement inside the cab and in general felt as if it had been hacked quite thoroughly.

bnc hands over the chip to Nova. "Don't die. Don't lose it. It's the only copy as far as we know", bnc lies.

"I don't know ... do you really want the data to just go via matrix? I'd rather send it in a more secure way. For the moment, suffice to say that it's got to do with ley lines, and that some of the nearby ones might become important some way or another. Will that do?

"As for transportation. Anna can give me a ride and I think Nova has a bike on her own. You got Shark covered already so it's really only Taurus. I can drive him, too, if I have a vehicle. Which I can steal if we don't have better options at hand."

Anna says "and Shark picks up Taurus... Let's not steal anything when the police may be looking for us."

Nova nodded to bnc. "I don't die that easily."

She packed her stuff and got ready to drive off using her bike.

<@Team <Probably better to let someone else drive. I've grown up around public transport and basically used that my whole life.">>

Eliza replied to bnc: <<The opposition has more interest in keeping that file secret than us. Nevertheless, you can deliver it directly to Muhme as well. But we need to use the file to pinpoint the coordinates for the next mission.
Sharkboy should arrive momentarily.>>

True to her word, the taxi rolled up outside, providing Taurus a ride.

Taurus will get in the cab, fully expecting to be crushed and uncomfortable sharing a seat with the wrestler. "Be aware of the horns, they will draw blood completely without me noticing." The warning is delivered factually, any pity inferred is completely unintentional.

"Yeah, great, where's my gear?"

Anna, already in her leather biking clothes points to shark at a bag in the corner of the room. She wipes the astral from traces of Chaos magic that may indicate that she was there, and then when she is finished, she picks up her helmet, and holds it in one hand, eager to get going, and feel the thrill of driving a powerful bike. She says I am ready to leave, bnc you riding with me? Where are we riding to?"

bnc smiles to Nova, then shrugs. "All right. If Mrs. Johnson is satisfied by getting the files over the matrix, please, Eliza, create a secure line to Muhme and we send her the file right away. With that, our job is done.

If she wants to meet us in person, then Muhme is where we go now.

I suggest we go in a loose group, not less than a 100, not more than 250 meters apart, and start going in a different direction, lest we lead anyone towards her. Once we decide we're not being followed, we head directly towards her."

James repeats the words to Anna, who isn't part of the team channel anymore.

To her, she says.
"Yes and no. I will drive the car for Sharkboy and Taurus, as both of them don't seem to be used to driving and I don't want to send our destination to the car rental service or ALI. But can you please take James with you? He doesn't grope unless you want him to."
She winks, then adds. "I'll be connected to him, though we won't be able to talk while driving anyway. If need be, I can easily cut the direction.

One last thing, out of professionalism. bnc programs her deck to delete the Cloudlessly stored file in case her vital monitor shows bnc is dead. Her condition was to leave no bopy behind. As long as I'm alive, we haven't let it behind.