NationStates Jolt Archive

The rain poured down onto the pavements of the city, a trade centre - one of many in the world. Parked between two rundown and dismal warehouses a food distribution lorry waited, temperature regulation and liquid helium stickers denoting it as a potential hazard.

Five men were with it, one in the cab, two waiting on the corner under a hotdog stand doing a raring trade, and two more in a car observing it. They looked a little pale, but then everyone's skin was waxy from the wet. Underneath their nondescript, dark long coats small pistols nestled, and knives.

But they weren't here for a fight, were just here waiting. For a contact.

A single man came out, raindrops pooring down his synthetic hooded jacket. He had nothing remarkable about himself - average hight, average age, average everything.

He approached the hotdog stand, got a hotdog, which immediately became wet and then approached two men standing in the corner.

- It is raining on Manhattan, eh guys? -he said with a grin.

"But it is sunny on Derebasovka," replied one of the men eating a hotdog. The stand owner was ducked down, out of sight, grabbing some more dogs to put on the covered-over grille. As he did so, the second man handed the newcomer a newspaper, containing money and giving the contact the opportunity to pass him a key.

"All the stocks are up this week," he said.

- Ah, good to hear! Time for some long term investements...

The man then walked away, with a single move gliding the money into the interior pocket of his Jacket, the move was so fast that it was qutie unseen and disguised by the opening of the newspaper, which he started to read...
He took the direction he was taking before buying the hotdog and vanished out of sight pretty soon...

On the key, handed to the two men on the corner was a writing: 13B. It looked much like a warehouse key, nothing extraordinary...

The two agents finished their hotdogs, warm with onions and smothered in mustard to keep the chill from their bones - or at least, that was the appearance. They were used to a country where rain only fell from the sky in liquid form on the warmest and most bountiful of days, and so were not really cold.

They headed off the street in the other direction, across a few sets of street lights, and into an alley that lead to docks. A quick radio message relayed information to the waiting lorry. It revved up and began to follow their route.

One of them looked at the key again, and then turned it in the lock of the warehouse door.

The lock made a rather loud 'clang' and the agents opened the door...

The stepped carefully in, ready to grab their weapons and react accordignly to the situation. The interior of the warehouse was dark, only for one single exception - a patch of rather bright light, in which they happened to stand. They felt the attentive gaze of around half a dozen persons around the warehouse...

It laster for two or three seconds and then a voice was heard from the dark.

- Turn on the lights, they are confirmed...

With that, soft lights lit the warehouse, chasing the shadows.

The warehouse was rather full of people - at least 6, or so it would seem.
Armed with conventional weaponry - silenced guns and SMG's.

The one who appeared to be the head of the group stepped forward.

- Welcome to our little "meeting place". Pardon for the reception, but the circumstances demand such measures...

With that, he invited the two men to come over to a lorry that was standing in the other end of the warehouse...

They slid the doors further open, allowing their own articulated lorry to find them and follow them into the warehouse. It did, its loud diesel engine growling. The doors ground shut.

The two men then walked across the warehouse floor, their shoes clicking loudly, to the other lorry, the one that awaited them. They stopped just otuside the back doors.

"Alright," said one. "Let us see the merchandise."

The head of the team gave an order, and two of his men opened the back doors of the truck.

There appeared to be several rather large wooden boxes, which they took out one by one.

The last, they took out with a lot of care, and put it on the ground. One of the men opened the top. There was a layer of some small merchandise, which was immediately taken off, revealing a containement-refrigerator, with a body in it.

The man pressed a button on an edge of the container, and it took off the ground, starting to hover.

The head of the team motion towards the container.

- One of the best our teams have recovered. Meaning - one of the least "damaged"...

The man grinned evilly...

The man who was eating the hotdog grins, and passes a small electronic device - a DNA sampler - over it.

"Fantastic. We've got it. Break out another please?" He watches as his counterparts do so, waves the device over a second body. "As we expected - an almost-exact match, as one would expect from clones. Close them up, we'll take the undamaged one." He grinned, wolfishly.

"Excellent work, comrades. With something so simple, it will be childsplay to cook up all manner of interesting toys." The hovercrates - two of them - were loaded into the back of the refrigerated food lorry, and its doors shut. The engine - which hadn't switched off - shifted into first.

"Do svidanya!"

The head of the team nodded to the counterparts.

- Do svidanya! Maybe we will meet each other again...

With that, he turned around to his own men.

- Tak, vse po mestam! Otchalivaem.(Okay, all to their posts! We are leaving.)

With that, two men got into the truck, others got into two cars and the procession rode out. The truck and one of the cars rode into one direction, while the second car went into the opposite one...

And the deal was done. The artic headed out, cars following it, to rendezvous with a chartered flight and take the bodies inside - the Sentinels, recovered from Tiltsitsin - to the laboratories.

Meanwhile, a heavily guarded jeep is driving about 5 miles south of the airport...

"Do they have it yet?"

"Yes sir, we've just recieved word from agent Shadow. They have the box, but only one, as the other one got damaged"

"Excellent. Can we have our SAM's set up in the desert anytime soon?"

"Already being done, sir."

"Good. Then load them with... Venoms."

"Roger sir. We will breach the plane for sure. Recovery squads are assuming that the box is nearly unbreakable, as well as agent Shadow."

"Good. Better than destroying it... recovering it. PREPARE ALL NAVY VESSELS AND AIRCRAFT!!! WE'RE GOING CODE GREEN!"

The airbase was heavily guarded. Normally abandoned, it had been chartered from its owners not five hours before - just before their computer systems "took a dive", rendering all plans possessed of it in obvious places inaccessible whilst the maintenance men ate the corporate dinner that had been fielded out of nowhere, unwilling to abandon it and the subsequent strip club to go back on an off-day.

Local military personnel, armed with pistols, manned the borders. Their orders were to let none in and none out for a period of twenty-four hours after the flights took off.

The lorry drove into a hangar. The first part was simply a wash area, designed to hose the vehicle down ... and as it was, it was scanned for bugs ...

"She's clear, sir. Not a tag on her. Same with the building, we've been monitoring constantly."

The young operative saluted his not-much-older team leader, who smiled. The lorry driver was waved through into the hangar ... where eight identical small planes waited. Small, fast planes - Jesusopters, in fact, recently bought from ChristiCorp, their rotors currently tilted.

The hangar was a closed system - the metal too dense for IR. The lorry drove up to one of the planes, and the two coffins floated out and were pushed up the ramps by the operatives. They followed it in, as did all the other Whispering Voices employees. A siren blared, and the blindfolded pilots - each being given the Jesusopter they were in as a reward (hermetically dusted, not a scrap of evidence) - took their blindfolds off. One by one, the planes taxid out of the hangar, and one headed in each cardinal point direction, rapidly accelerating toward and over Mach 1.




OOC:

Whilst it would have been nice to give some warning or speak to us first, Kamata, we'll play along. Just don't expect to have it easy :-)

The lorry and the car progressed through the industrial zone of the city.
The second car turned around at a certain distance and was far behind...

Too far indeed... it would seem there was a fourth vehicle in the procession, trailing the lorry.

One of the operatives in the rearguard car sent a highely coded transmission to the first TDI car, in front of the lorry...

- Attention, possible 1T, take measures...

And measures were taken...
The doors quickly opened and two operatives jumped out and vanished into the shadows. The lorry hid their moves from the trailing vehicle.

And just as the hostile vehicle passed by, two simultaneous shots were heard. The front right and rear left tires blew up, the car making a twist and stopping...

OOC:

I concur with WV on that one and have nothing else to add :twisted: