Kadel shrugs. "We're just people trying to prevent Seattle from being blown off the face of the planet."

He eyes the terrorist. "And unless I'm mistaken, you're one of the guys who are trying to do that blowing. I think you better start talking. Considering that you just tried to kill yourself, we might not be the enemies that we both thought we were."

He shrugs and looks away, then he winces suddenly and remembers his wound.

"Why not. That which doesn't kill me is just postponing the inevitable anyway. My name is ... well, it doesn't really matter. The nuclear warhead is real, but we are here for a very different reason than you might expect."

Another explosion rocks the building. Both teams could just feel the superstructure of the Ritz Star barely withstand whatever explosive force that hit the building's middle floors.

"Something is on with this building, something is very wrong with this place." He looks about the ceiling, speaking to no one in particular.

Kadel nods. "Start from the beginning. Why did you guys take over the building to begin with? Who are you and what was your objective?"

"You wouldn't believe it, but what the hell. I was part of a mercenary group, Black December contacted us, offered us a fair bit of money. They had connections, I don't know how or why, but they were promising a fair bit of nuyen...for a suicide job, at any rate. The rest of us terrorists here are indeed true believers in Black December's supposed cause.

They said they were looking for someone here. The nuclear device, I don't know how they got it in, but it's real, and it has an Ares logo marked on it. They needed a distraction, they told us. We were to find and extract a boy, heard he was a night one, Ezekiel Colloton."

The lift dings. Someone's called the lift up. The man inside staggers to his feet and out the lift doors just as they close behind him.

"A lot of details they left out, as always. It was a high risk, high reward job for me, but it looks like we failed."

"You brought a nuclear warhead into the building just to stage a distraction for a kidnapping? Why can't you just nab him or something?"

The job sounding stranger and stranger from mercenaries tale, the sudden ding of the elevator once again stirred suspicion in Reaper. "I'm gonna follow dat." Slipping back into Astral, he keeps up easily with it, spirits in tow, interested in who was calling.

"WE didn't do it. It wasn't our plan at all. Black December insisted on this. For what, I have no idea. We were to make sense of the chaos, find the kid, exit via tunnels in sewers. End of mission. They have ulterior motives, to be sure. Even a terrorist group can't be this idiotic. But whatever it is, I wasn't told."

"So what went wrong?"

"Everything was on plan for the most part. We expected the retaliatory forces. We even suspected the megacorps might send in teams to 'diffuse the situation'." He snorts. "They all want that nuclear weapon."

"But something...well, our base of operations was on the 60th floor." He eases his injured body down on a nearby piece of debris. "An hour ago, our mages who were astrally projecting around the building said they sensed something was amiss on the astral plane. I know a bit about magic myself, and so did my leader, but they couldn't determine any source of disturbance. Soon, they found it harder and harder to cast magic to heal our wounded comrades. For one, a spell backfired. The other..." he shudders.

"That's not all of it. The 60th level was attacked by these...these...strange humanoids. They were wearing full black body armour and faded in and out of the environment. I had seen Blackspec before, even they don't employ technology like that. That's what went wrong. My leader and the rest of the heads of our forces are now dead."

...The hell?

"So you're saying these guys just popped out of nowhere and slaughtered you? What exactly do you mean by 'fading in and out of the environment?' Did they have an astral presence?"

"I'm not a mage, I don't know, I'm just a well versed merc. Could be Ruthenium, could be a spell, your guess is as good as mine."

The lift heads up and stops at the 60th floor again. Now that you look, the entire room, including the elevator door, seems to hold an extremely powerful ward.

Kadel frowns. "So where's the night one kid now?"

"We didn't find him yet. Since the time we've been here, we've managed to scour most of the lower floors. No go. I'm worried some of the fanaticals that Black December sent here would kill all the metahuman hostages, even the kid, on sight, but so far we haven't seen him, alive or otherwise. ...Why?"

"Well, considering that you guys are risking the annihilation of an entire city to find him, I'll have to guess he's pretty damn important. What floors haven't you searched?"

"62nd to the...I think it was 75th floor. There's an elevator which bypasses that area, I believe. Not too sure According to the mages, there was some serious magical disturbance there. They didn't say, though I think it was a ward of some sort. They wanted to beat feet the moment they did their assensing. You're looking for this kid too, heh?"

"Well, now we are," Kadel replies flatly. "By the way, which tower did you guys move the nuke to?"

"My team wasn't in charge of the nuke, but I think it's on the West tower. They moved it about the towers quite a fair bit, so I can't say."

"Look, I'm bleeding kind of badly here, and as much as I'd like to stay and help, my survival instinct is telling me to leave. So...what are you going to do with me then, hmm?"

Kadel shrugs. "Sure, you can leave if you want. Can I get your leader's name first?"

"Nicholas Klein. He'll answer to that, if he isn't already dead. Now..."

He picks himself up off the debris slowly, staggering to his feet and holding the wound on his side.

"My thanks. I should leave now. I hope we don't meet again." He says, stumbling off towards the elevator back down to the basement.

Kadel watches as the man leaves, then opens up a radio link to Team A and any remaining members of BlackSpec.

"Bravo 2 speaking. We've attained a bunch of information from a mercenary working for the terrorists that we just met. One, the nuclear warhead is likely in the West tower of the building. Two, there's a third enemy in the building, one that 'fades in and out of the environment.' Sounds like something out of a cheap sci-fi movie, but they've managed to kill off all the heads of Black December's operation. And three, the night one boy is probably somewhere in floors 62 to 75. Something pretty damn fucked up is going on here, so watch your backs. Bravo 2 out."

Turning to the team, he says, "Looks like we'll have to go up to find the kid. We should move out as soon as Reaper is back from his astral recon."

Axe is listening to the comm, for once, and ends up being the one to radio back, "Alpha 3 to Bravo 2, we just got shot up by a helicopter and what might have been a possessed rigger. Lot of mojo on the thing, but it was Delta before something else got ahold of it. Be advised, we saw it go down, but we didn't hear a crash and we sure as drek didn't stay around to find out what happened to it."

He sighs and speaks aloud, "Alright, guys, West tower it is."

Striking out from the shadows, Slash dahses for the third terrorist, swords leading the way.

The Terrorist finally gets a grip on himself just in time to prepare himself for Slash's charge. His hands, already half-wrapped around a Colt America on the table before him, came up instinctively to shield himself from the deadly blades. He took a blind lunge at you, and you can tell he doesn't know what he's doing. You reflexively catch the end of his gun with the tip of one of your right swords. He stumbles forward, and you easily score a dead hit on his midsection, cutting your way through his armour right through his entire torso.

The bloodied bits of his corpse hit the ground like the others, causing the bound hostages to look at you in fright and terror. Some of them puke, though the dreadlocked man, with his eyes hidden behind tinted shades, actually starts to laugh heartily. He tries to free himself from the ropes tied around his wrists and ankles, but isn't getting anywhere.

"My friends." His voice sounds cheerful, even though he's just been beaten to a pulp by one of the terrorists you put down. "Could you lend me and my associates a hand here?"

Blackspec eventually responds in the comms again.

"We read you. Currently scouting out East tower-"

The roar of something non-human drowns out the operator's voice, quickly follow by five extremely loud gunshots.

"Running into some ...unexpected resistance. Will head for west ASAP. Blackspec out."

Team B: which way?

Reaper returns to his body after the quick Astral recon. "Elevator's gone up to da 60th floor. Dey's got some serious wardin' on dat entire level. It's not gonna be easy ta take dat one down."

Kadel nods. "Looks like we'll have to head up with the other lift. I think we should make a beeline straight to the 62nd floor and hope we don't run into the Faders. All the better if we can get the kid out of the building without having to fight them."

With that, he walks through the opened doors of the other elevator. After the team assembles inside the lift, he presses the glowing button marked "62" and watches as the doors slide closed and the elevator starts moving up.

After traveling a considerable distance, the lift slows its ascent until it finally stops. A second later, the doors open again and Kadel steps out, gun in hand.

The moment the lift doors swing open, the magically active members of the team feel a strange knot suddenly twist around their stomachs, and barely keep themselves from fainting over.

You take a step forward into what looks like an art gallery of some sort, but something is definately wrong with the place. The whole room is lit only by the moonlight streaming in from the windows, and the paintings on display...their images constantly seem to warp in your minds. A hollow echo resonates through the area, and...wait...are those pots floating?

The entire room is filled with hovering pieces of sculpted pottery.

There's one glass display at the end of the room which seems to be frozen solid on the inside. It's a rather large display - about 2 metres cube. The inside of the glass is totally frosted over and can't be seen. Strange, the room doesn't even feel cold. In fact, it's getting warmer.

Two doors out of the small room - according to theo's maps, one leads to another art gallery, and one to a broom closet.

Welcome to a Force 7 Mana Warp.

The rapid ascent of the elevator was always enough to turn one's stomach funny - even a troll's, but the sudden visceral sensation from the Mana Warp was magnitudes worse. Instinctively, Reaper gathered his magical power around himself in an unconcious defensive response to what seemed like a magical assault. Yet, that was insufficient to hold back the wave of nausea that washed over him. Tightening down, he manages to force down his rising breakfast. "Dere's sum bad mojo here," he mutters through gritted teeth to his companions.

"Yeah, I feel it too man."

Kadel looks around the room, and scratches his head. "We don't really have the option of leaving, so we might as well start our search."

Gripping the knob of the door that leads to the second art gallery, he suppresses a shiver and turns it, swinging the door open.

DT moves behind him, gun at the ready for what might present itself when the door opens.

"This place is hurting my head., I don't give a drek what this building was supposed to be, but I gaurentee it was never a hotel. What the hell kind of craziness could do this?"

The lights on the door's maglocks turn a bright red when you try to open the door. A single ACCESS DENIED message is displayed on the smallish trid screen located above the handle. Suddenly the red lights blink and you hear a slight organic chittering sound, which slowly grows louder. Then the red lights stop flickering, and the chittering dies down.

The next Art Gallery appears even stranger than the last. You are standing in an oval chamber carved of distinctive, attractive brown marble. Surrounding the chamber mounted on walls are paintings, all masterworks from the sixth world's leading artisans. The ceiling on the chamber is dome-shaped and in one corner, a single large window floods dim light into the room. You hear the sounds of pouring rain - and yes, it has begun to rain heavily outside. It's an incredible downpour, nothing like you have seen in the past. The occasional flash of lightning illuminates the room and as the light of the lightning bolt reflects off the surfaces of the paintings, their images distort and morph into something entirely else, always a sinister, corrupted version of their normal look. Once the light from the flash fades, they return to normal.

The room's sole source of light aside from the window is a single red candle in the middle of the room, slowly burning out. Despite the room being empty for the most part, humanoid shadows dance about the room from corner to corner, utterly surrounding you. A shadow moves along the walls, they seem to be coming closer, closing in slowly almost in front of every one of you, you can feel a chill running down your spine, and it's not just fear

...and a dozen pairs of glowing red eyes appear simultaneously in front of you. The shadows open their mouths.

And they scream.

Kadel's hand blurs down to his side as he draws his pistol and aims at the shadow closest to him.

"Chew on this, freakazoid."

His finger pulls back the trigger and a flash of muzzle fire hails the spray of bullets that come tearing out of the gun towards the monstrosity right in front of him.

The three bullets fragment and explode on the swiling shape before you. It starts to break apart into smaller shards of shadows but continues it's roaring charge. The whispy form of the shadow looms over you, then shrieks horribly and breaks into hundreds of shards of wispy shadow. The shards dissipate into nothingness as they fall past you.

Immediately the shadows in the room start to dance again in wild patterns. It is suddenly filled with strange ethereal low whispers, as if you were in the middle of a great council of invisible watchers, talking amongst themselves, speaking in hushed tones. The red candle in the middle of the room flickers in a nonexistant breeze, and the red eyes of the remaining four faders suddenly flare up, their screams echoing louder across the empty room.

Kadel kneels on one knee as his pistol swerves to aim at the thing nearest Theodor. A second pull of the trigger lets loose another volley of bullets searing out of the barrel towards the shadow.

Three more bullets exit Kadel's gun and tear towards the Fader looming over Theodor. They shatter and fragment against its' mist-like hide in three brilliant flashes. This time no scream, no reaction, no bloody effect. The shadow continues at full force towards the white coated scientist.

The whispering rises to a clamour and quickly dies down again.

Despite being in imminent danger, the prof seems pretty distracted. (Well, if you have a map display floating in front of your face, you would be, too).

He seems to be curious at the shadow's appearance.

"...Hmm. Display is malfunctionink?"

He taps the display input jack, but nothing seems to change, at least not what he sees.

"...Is not. Interestink...."

He STILL does not panic. Funny, you always thought he was the jumpy sort....but it's just that the gravity of the situation takes a little long for him to process at the moment. It eventually takes hold of him.

"Hmm. Vat did Eldritch say is rule of thumb ven dealink vith beinks of night? Ah, yes...AIEEEE!!"

Instinctively, he whips out another frisbee with a white band across it's face, and presses a few buttons....

"AM-THROWINK-LIGHT-SVITCH-EYES-AVAY!!"

He drops the frisbee like object right in front of the shadow's face and runs back to the door leading to the last art room...

Slash leads his team down towards the 75th floor.

Downtown screams back, lifting his rifle to his shoulder he fires the weapon. Fire and death leap out of it's barrel as the inhuman screaming echoes in his ears.

The appearance of the fading creatures was disorienting. Even as his mind speeds through his old studies trying to remember anything about these shadows, Reaper brings up the business end of his Halbred and slices it through one of the Faders.

Shards of shadow break off the fader as downtown fires dual three round bursts into it. One hits centre mass and fragments as it passes through its' wispy form and another clips it slightly below the right shoulder area. It continues its' ungodly shriek and doesn't even flinch as it's black hands continue right for your chest...

Reaper draws his halberd to deflect the shadow. The blade slices cleanly through the form of the fader. It screams again as its' red eyes flicker. When your blade clears its' body, the fader's form collapses into hundreds of shards of shadows and scatter onto the ground. The muttering of the shadows on the wall grow ever louder, some faint, wicked laughter is heard when your killing blow is dealt.

The three remaining faders lunge at you, an incredibly chilling aura begins to surrounded them as their forms spread wider, each of their incredible roars ending with a gigantic swipe of a wispy claw.

Before Team A can descend further down, the dreadlocked man runs up to you.

"Wait, wait, you're a rescue team, right? I'm Miles Griffin, I'm one of the owners of the building, I can help you. You helped me, eh?"

Roland grimaced as we watched from his position as he brought up the rear.

What the drek is going on here? This has gone downhill fast!

He brought his rifle up and began to draw a bead for anything he had a clear shot on. Hopefully the rest of the group can handle these creatures, especially if they are spirits. Roland doubted he can be much help against the magical creatures as it is more of Downtown's specialty.

I guess I can blast away, try to stay alive and then patch the survivors up...

Roland takes aim and opens fire on one of the creatures.

Slash turns to Mr. Griffin. "Do you know what these terrorists want? Their list of insane demands was an obvious smoke screen."

Carrying through with his swing, Reaper uses the momentum to move towards the Bow attacking Roland where he attacks again with his Halbred.

Burn begins astrally perceiving and looks around the room for lurkers.