Infection Site [IC]

[trollthumper]

Union Rail Yards

Friday, May 30th, 2014

9:32 PM

There was a wound in the world.

Nick Cimitiere admitted that he wasn't the most science-minded individual in the world - his talents lay in the arts, the arcane, and perhaps an espresso machine. Which meant it was kind of hard to describe the sight before him. He'd been catching up with some of the ghosts that lurked around the neighborhood when a bright flash had caught his eye. Trailing it, he found the anomaly - a dark, blue sphere of light that hung two foot above the ground, neither flickering nor fading. It was almost the color of midnight, and it appeared as constant as any object - save, that is, for the occasional dark blue spark that crackled off of it.

He planted his feet before the sphere. This might not be his department, but he had a feeling he didn't want to take his eyes off of it. Who knew what might emerge from its confines...

[RobRX]

Twenty seconds passed. Nothing but the barely flickering sphere hanging there, floating in the air. Then distorted, screeching noises erupted from the sphere, like grinding metal mixed with thunder as the sphere's flickering grew dramatically more intense. For a brief moment, it was as if a thunderstorm had suddenly erupted. Cracking blue lightning struck all around the sphere.

 

Then a bright flash of white light.

 

Followed a small shockwave.

 

Now there was a blanket of dust and smoke, with some sparks briefly lighting it up. An atrocious smell filled the air, like a mixture of ash, ozone and rusting metal and the overall smell of industrial decay. However, perhaps that was just a side effect of the burnt up crater that had just formed. Slowly, a figure began to rise in the smoke, standing up from it's curled up fetal position. The shape was human, or at least human-like. In the smoke, a red point lighted up.

Edited June 1, 2014 by RobRX

[Tiffany Korta]

Lucy didn’t have a problem with vampire as a whole, just the bad ones. Once she had discovered how she was created by the meddling of an Elder vampire she had felt that it was her duty to protect people from there sometimes baneful influence. She knew that the vampire had there own society and tended to police themselves but she was also there outside the system to stop those that stepped well out of line. Whilst most vampire avoided her like the plague she had made a few allies among the better examples of their kind, it help that the story of how she helped Nora find an almost normal life had gotten around.

THat was the reason why she was here in the Rail Yards a vampire seer had told Lucy that she had foreseen something monumental about to happen on this night, it could be nothing but she thought it best to check things out just in case. Planning on it being a bust she had arranged to meet Fred and Harry here to go off on another of their crazy cases, she tried to keep the two part of her “life†separate but apparently fate had another plan for her tonight.

As soon as she saw the flash of light she was racing towards it arriving just in time for some of the smoke to clear enough for her to see the human form. Approaching carefully so as not to startle whoever it was, or incase they were trouble, she knelt down a short distance from the form.

 

“Hello there are you alright?â€

[RobRX]

From the smoke emerges a rather...gruff-looking, vaguely discolored man with red eyes in a vaguely futuristic oufit, something some commando would wear if he had some odd fashion sense, that has clearly seen some better days. Strapped to his back is a large futuristic blaster. As he heard someone call out to him, his face twisted, seemingly tense or worried as one hand reached out to grab and ready his oversized weapon.

 

"Who are you, people?" growled the man as his eyes began to look left, right, up and so forth. "What are you doing here?!" His eyes showed some slight hints of confused and his walking was ever so slightly wobbling. Apparently, whatever mean had had used to travel here must have had some slight side-effects and disoriented him.

 

'Where am I? Hrm, better put this thing to non-lethal before I shoot someone I shouldn't.' thought Bloodline to himself. His other hand reached for the side of his weapon as he tapped a button. With a small noise, the small neon-like display on the side of his weapon went down to a few bars, down to a merely concussive setting.

Edited June 2, 2014 by RobRX

[Tiffany Korta]

Lucy stood up and held her hand up to show that she was no threat to this strange man. Again she was a little surprised at how unshocked she was at the weird and wonderful things that Freedom City threw in her general direction.

 

“Hello there I’m Revenant, but you can call me Lucy if you want, you not in any danger hear you’re perfectly . You’re in Freedom City now.†She was her normal friendly self, not expecting any kind of trouble.

 

Though there was that nagging feeling that maybe he was what the seer was going on about.

[Supercape]

"Ahm telling, ya that broad gets crazier and crazier" said Harry "the Hound" Hound, munching on a pretty low grade hot dog as he strode in. 

 

"She saved out asses from some serious whuppin, and she handles the accounts better than both of us put together. And hey, she;'s a pretty face..no no...jes being honest. Even if she, you know, differently alive..."

 

Harry the hound had crumpled hair, crumples shirt, and crumpled mac. He even had a piece of gun stuck to his shoe. He looked nervous and wound up. In short, he looked like he always liked. 

 

His Partner was shorter, only five foot, dressed in jeans and a t shirt that fitted his form. He was a wide as he was tall, big spade like hands and muscles that looked like balloons with bulbous veins running down them. For all his unsual experience he looked pretty friendly, a big smile on his face. 

 

"Hey there Lucy! What have you got for us this time? A electric monkey? A zombie with a chainsawn?"

 

Eddie "The Mess" Furlong liked watching bad movies. 

 

"Hey, who da hell are you?" he asked Bloodline, with a jabby finger that could have been used to hammer in da nails. 

 

"Shes with us! Dont ya lift a finger on a dame! he spluttered, almost a reflex. 

[RobRX]

"Freedom City, huh? Not exactly looking like the sh**-hole I remember. Not that that's really a bad thing." Bloodline said, while continuing to look around, his red eyes shifting about as he looked up to the sky, then to the shape of buildings in the distance. Then he breathed a sighs of relief. "Well, part one of the plan worked. Now for part two..."

 

His ramblings were interrupted by the newcomers. "Just someone passing by, doing his job. Maybe saving the world in the process, we'll see how that turns out." He replied to Furlong. Then, his nose began to twitch as he sniffed around, before turning to the so-called Lucy, snarling and revealing a mouth full of extendable, messy fangs.

 

"Should have known, with a name and a face like that. Not to mention the smell, or lack thereof. You don't sweat. No pulse either; you're a vampire! Give me one reason not to shoot you. You got ten seconds."

[trollthumper]

Nick stepped between Revenant and the gun. That would have been a fairly foolish proposition in most cases, but he was angling his body so that the Styx-toughened leather would be more likely to catch the blast than the simple work shirt under it. "I can give you one," he said. "I know Revenant. A vampire, she may be, but she's not some ravaging beast of the night. I don't know where you come from, but I'd be interested in hearing about it, if you'd just put down that gun."

He cleared his throat. "So, in any case. I'm Nick Cimitiere. What's this you're saying about saving the world?"

[RobRX]

Bloodline's snarling stopped and the fangs retracted back into his gum. His eyes darted around once more, trying to assess the situation. He didn't want to fight them but the presence of the vampire amongst them changed the whole equation. Not to mention how they knew about his arrival. Had he failed and arrived too late? Did the passage through time scramble his undead brain?

 

With a clanging noise, the blaster dropped to the ground. "Allright, I'm disarmed, are you happy?" His gaze shifted from Nick to Revenant, then the others then back to Nick. "I'm not going to waste time; if you want use to trust each others then open your mind and let me see You don't have anything to hide, don't you?." said Bloodline as he put a hand to his temple, staring down Nick, eyes glowing.

 

Then the undead man begin to wince, his brow heavily furrowed. Something was clearly wrong.

Edited June 7, 2014 by RobRX

[Tiffany Korta]

“More like the vampire equivalent of a little Miss Havisham locked away in the attic.†she gave a little smile “I’m not exactly a vampire but I do have vampire in my ancestry. If you want we can wait until dawn or any of the other tests for vampire, except maybe for beheading and fire especially as they’d affect most of us.â€

 

She took another step toward the man showing no fear of the man despite the fact that he towered over her.

 

“Or if you want you can read my mind, I’ll do what I can to allow you access.†her statement was the truth, with no hint of deception in her voice.

[RobRX]

Once more, Bloodline put a hand to the side of his head, focusing his mental powers, a gift he had even before being turned. His eyes glow again, before blinking and flickering, his face twitching. He then lets out a sigh of desperation as he break the connection. 

 

"No, no this isn't good at all. Damned machine must have scrambled a few things in here." he says, tapping the side of his head. He knew time travel likely had it's risks, no doubt it had taken a toll on him and he hadn't quite recovered. For a moment, he worried it might end up permanent. After all, that machine hadn't really been tested before. "I guess for now I'll unfortunately have to rely on your words. Look, no hard feeling lady, but where I come from suspicion is what keeps you alive for another day."

[trollthumper]

Now that the tensions had cleared ever so slightly, Nick found he had the time to truly study the man standing before him. He was most certainly dead, and not that far removed from Revenant - the fangs made that pretty clear. But the traces of magic were faint, almost like background radiation; there wasn't the general necromantic current he'd observed in other vampires. He was a variant - in a species he'd found had more menu options than a Chinese restaurant - with his own distinctions. Nick had seen quite a few vampires, but he hadn't seen many in camo with a blaster that looked like it came out of Aliens.

"I understand," he said. "But... I think you may be in a slightly softer place. I'd be interested in hearing more about where you came from, though."

[RobRX]

"I come from forty eight years in the future, give or take, assuming this is the right years. There is going to be an epidemic, soon. A virus. And it is going to change everything you know about vampires" explained the man, and his facial expression change as he seemed to gaze past everyone else. Something like an old soldier flashing back to horrific events. "When people will realize what's going on, it will have already been too late. The speed of the infection and the transformation is astounding. It will not take long for the infected individuals to reach critical mass."

 

Snapping back to reality, the undead declared; "They call me Bloodline; it isn't a name I really like, but it stuck I suppose; I am here to make sure my present never happens."

Edited June 17, 2014 by RobRX

[Tiffany Korta]

Lucy had experience time travel before it was never an easy experience, and she gone back to a time that she knew well. And she didn’t doubt what he was saying her own existence was due to someone trying to alter vampires biology. Long ago she had gotten, more or less, use to how the weirdness of Freedom City didn’t phase her.

 

“I can’t speak for the others but if I can I’ll help you stop this happening. And if you don’t like the name than just change it, Freedom a city ripe for people reinventing themselves.â€

[Supercape]

"Vampires! Holy Mary mother of Jesus! As if this city ain't got enough damn troubles!" cursed the Hound, throwing his half finished limp cigarrette the floor and stamping on it. Vexed, he immediately reached into his mac and lit another one. 

 

He sniffed the air. 

 

"Well, Bloodline, you certainly got a funky smell to you" he said. "As in, that kind of differently alive smell, like, err..." his eyes flicked to Lucy, he reddened, and flicked back to Bloodline. 

 

"Anyhowways, If you are a prophet from the future, sounds like that means you can stop all that end of the world stuff happening, right? right?" he encouraged, opening his hands imploringly. "So best of luck with that and everything! I'm off to find a cave and some garlic!" he said, wiping his brown and turning. 

 

The Mess caught him by the Mac, and, with uncharacteristic thoughtfulness, scratched his head. 

 

"I guess that means me and my partner here better save the world, yeah? Don't want no bloodsucking bozo's in this here City!" he explained. He stopped a moment, the veins in his massive arms crawling. 

 

"...they don't call me Bloody Mess for not nuthin' My blood, its like turbo charged, y'see....whats that gonna do to some vampire?"

[RobRX]

Bloodline gave all of them a glance. Strange people. Once more, Bloodline started to fiddle with his weapon, making sure it would remain on a non-lethal setting, going as far as to lock it into the setting by default. "Hrm, truth be told I...don't quite know what's my next step now. Nor do I have complete information. Your presence here change the equation. Well, I guess you can all just tag along, because I'm going to go cause quite a mess. A bit harsh, but I have to make sure that virus is never created or completed."

 

His gaze shifted to all of them, one by one. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have my own history to go rewrite. That's assuming I haven't failed and went back too late."

Edited June 27, 2014 by RobRX

[Supercape]

"Hey, I like a Mess" grinned Bloody Mess. 

 

Harry wiped his brow. "Good...I mean great...stop the virus. No end of the world. That sounds swell. That whole apocalypse thing was really gonna put me off my dinner, you know what I mean..." he said, voice wobbling and canine gruff. 

 

"I wish you all the best in destroying a lethal plague virus thats about to destroy the world then!" he squirmed, backing out of the group. 

 

His mac was still caught in the Mess' huge fist. The Mess was only a shade over five feet. But that was both his height and his width. 

 

"Stick around, buddy!" he smiled. "We need your nose on this one!"

 

He turned back to Bloodline. There was a caution in his approach, but a genuine willingness to help. After all, the world was at stake. Even if Vampires, and maybe Bloodline, might dine on him like the finest wine. 

 

"Me and my partner here, and the lady" he said, referring to Revenant. "We are detectives. The Bloodhound Detective Agency. We usually find crooks and thieves. but I reckon we could find a Vie-Ros too" he said, pausing over the unfamiliar word. "An' my partner here, he is real good at following a scent!"

[trollthumper]

Well. Nick knew his experience with vampires was somewhat limited, but they usually weren't the kinds to come dancing out of the coffin with a massive plan to turn all mankind into their kin. Oh, sure, every so often some upstart lord of the damned or ancient undead nightmare with his widow's peak screwed on too tight would find an ancient blood ritual or devise a massive necromantic invocation to make everyone their brothers and sisters in death... but at that point, someone amongst their number would pull them aside and have a very long talk about demographics, reproduction, and sustainable agriculture. And if that didn't drive the point home, there was always being chained to an eastern-facing wall.

But just because the undead community was self-policing 99% of the time, there was still always the chance of that one guy who got through. And Bloodline's world was not the kind he wanted to see come to pass.

"All right," he said. "Dead things are a specialty of mine, so I hope you don't mind me joining in the vaccination attempt. Where do we start?"

[RobRX]

Bloodline simply flashed a short, small and compact metallic object at Nick and then handed it over to him. "This is basically all I have on the subject; I'm not exactly sure what can read that thing but I think that metallic thing has something called a...um..." He hesitated for a moment, trying to find the right word. "USB port, I believe. Everything I have and the fate of countless people depends on what little scraps of information is on this thing. Well, assuming it hasn't been accidentally overwritten by one of our tech guys. We had some weirdoes, sometimes, who would save stupid **** over our databanks. It was annoying."

 

The vampire then laughed somewhat at the whole notion. Even after the apocalypse, people still used computers for stupid things. "So don't blame me if it's either full of questionable content or pictures of vampire cats. And yes, I made that up. Vampire cats don't exist." He paused for a moment. "I think." Bloodline had never seen the internet but he had heard stories about what it was used for and full of.

Edited July 4, 2014 by RobRX

[Tiffany Korta]

Lucy listened to all the other options and it was obvious to her that she could going to volunteer to help. But Bloodline attitude made her a little nervous as to how he would be able to deal with how things worked in Freedom City, somewhere that he wouldn’t know at all.

 

“I can help you, I know some of the friendlier Vampires. But remember that this isn’t your city or time and definitely not you kind of vampire. There are a few bad sorts but more than a few good vampire, Freedom City seems to have an effect on people.â€

[trollthumper]

Nick nods in agreement with Revenant. "Well, if it turns out we need to kick in some fangs, I know where a few people lay their coffins," he said. "But, as it sometimes seems there are as many types of vampire as there are flavors of Baskin-Robbins, I think we might want to find somewhere to crack open that USB drive and see what kind of knowledge we're dealing with.."

Greenbank was still a downturned area, the place that gentrification forgot - but that didn't mean there weren't attempts to make it something slightly hospitable. There was a small, dingy Internet cafe in one of the more commercial conners of the neighborhood - not much more than a copy shop with an espresso machine that likely fell off the back of a truck, but it still provided a valuable service to those who needed a connection. Nick grabbed a badly adulterated latte and tried not to grimace as he came over to one of the stations.

"All right. Let's plug this thing in and see what we get. Is there a password we need, or is it just plug and play?"

[RobRX]

"I don't know, I'm not one of the tech guys. Beside weapon maintenance I have no clue how most of the technology I work with." explained Bloodline. Which was true, he had no idea how these things worked or what security measures could have possibly been put on it. Especially one full of potentially sensitive and history-altering information. "Just plug it in, we'll see what's on it. Hopefully there will be something useful."

[trollthumper]

The JumpDrive slipped into the computer, and the corresponding icon soon popped up on the desktop. Nick wasn't exactly a computer guy, so he didn't know what to expect when he popped open the drive - the future filing format could possibly make the system crack in half, or maybe Microsoft Word 2018 would just refuse to open. But, whoever the tech guys of the future were, they'd done a lot of tweaking - no hideous future malware, no computer-breaking system fault, nothing. Just a handful of documents in .doc and .pdf format.

Some were hard to parse - some even looked like they'd been scanned long after water damage had done its duty. A few of the PDFs contained pale, emaciated corpse-like things on their feet - perhaps early victims of the plague. But one stood out: a map of Freedom, with the corner of Wembley and Lark circled. Just a few blocks from the coffee shop.

"X marks the spot?" asked Nick.

[RobRX]

Bloodline's red eyes skimmed over the various documents. Whatever he briefly saw in there was certainly awefully familliar and not one bit surprising, as it was mostly what he was expecting. The information was old (by his standards), date and incomplete and yet it had likely taken the resistance years to assemble all of it. And yet despite all their efforts, that was all of it; the entirety of the resistance's knowledge on the vampire outbreak: a mere few incomplete and damaged files.

 

Then he smiled as he saw the map. "Heh, yeah, sounds like it. And pretty simple too. Let's get to it!"

[trollthumper]

Nick had expected to find something like a broken down factory or an abandoned warehouse at the address. Instead, he found an office building. It wasn't one of the newer models, one of the desperate transplants of polished steel and glass that tried desperately to yank up the neighborhood's economic levels around it. This was a place of scuffed glass, chipped stone, and empty offices. But it was still a place of business, even if it was quiet as the grave tonight.

"Doesn't really look like the herald of the apocalypse," said Nick, "but looks are always deceiving. Just ask the man with a skull for a face. Anyway, I didn't see a company name listed anywhere, so we may need to do this the old-fashioned way. I know this is going to look weird, but just keep watch and don't let anybody rifle through my pockets."

Nick lay down on the asphalt, and swiftly went completely slack. No one saw as his self climbed out of his body and went flying through the air. The walls of the building were like air as he entered the darkened hall. Of course, at this time of night, the lights were mostly down, and being purely astral, he couldn't exactly flip a light switch. He would just have to rely on his other senses as he went from office to office. Accounting firm, tech start-up, textbook firm, tax consultant...

It wasn't until he slipped down into the basement that strong sensation began to register. He couldn't see a thing, but he could feel death all around him. It was faint, somewhere between a morgue and a really old murder scene, but it was still there. He pulled the ripcord and flew back into his body.

To the others, Nick's eyes flew open. He pulled himself up off the ground, brushing some stray dirt off of his jacket. "Basement's full of death. Feels like the best place to start."