#nolabn

It's 11pm. Do you know where your children are?

Ira is with some of the Malkavian fledglings and neonates at the sensory deprivation Malk shelter: an old home that's been converted into a soundproofed library. The babyMalks are exposing him to a VHS recording of Halloweentown. One of the neonates gets worked up about something going on outside. Ira activates Heightened Senses and hears a distant commotion--people shouting, and the thump of heavy footsteps moving in the Malkavians' direction. Rapidly. Ira insists the others stay put while he goes to check it out. He opens the door just in time to see an enormous sandy-brown wolf barrel past him.

Klay is hosting a party outside the pawn shop with his ghoul, Missy. He's not having fun and she gives him shit about being such a sourpuss. She tells him to get his head out of his ass and check his phone, because his friend and clanmate Chess is starting to blow up hers. Klay checks his phone to see a flood of missed texts and calls from Chess Giovanni. He calls them back and they're in a furious panic; their best friend, Gangrel Bellamy Hollis, was just attacked by the scourge and hauled off to Elysium. Klay says he'll meet them there and leaves Missy to handle the festivities.

Jules is partying on Bourbon Street when she bumps into her great-great-granddaughter Eden. Eden is plastered and beyond elated to see Aunty Jules out on the town. She insists on doing jell-o shots together and drags Jules into a dive bar. When they emerge back onto the street Jules sees a disturbance in the crowd moving their way--people seem to be falling over each other trying to get out of the way of this enormous mass plowing through the crowd. Jules locks eyes with the frenzied, panicked, hugely dilated pupils of a Crinos garou racing toward her on all fours. She yanks Eden out of the way but not before the girl sustains a slash to her shoulder. Jules determines it isnt life-threatening and gets her in a cab to the ER.

Walter is having a quiet night at home, listening to Bellamy's radio show Calling All Creeps. Bellamy is about to cut to commercial when the broadcast is interrupted by an unknown voice. The voice announces that Bellamy's show is a farce, that there is currently a beast rampaging through Bourbon Street, and that the monsters who control the city will try to cover it up. "Do not let them. Wake up." The broadcast ends and Bellamy's voice doesn't return. Walter is unsettled. A text from clanmate/sherrif Jellybean urges Walter to get to Elysium ASAP.

Walter and Klay arrive at the same time. Chess is already there and explains what's happened. She was at the station with Bellamy, he got hacked, and not 2 minutes later Tremere scourge Tobias Kearns kicked down the door accusing Bellamy of a Masquerade breach. Bell bit off Kearns' hand and Kearns blood boiled him before dragging him to Elysium. "Fuck that guy," Klay says. Chess and Walter agree.

Jules calls the Toreador primogen who's doing damage control among the mortals and tells her to get to Elysium. She cuts through some alleyways and comes around the corner to encounter Ira just as the wolf runs past. It's heading toward Elysium. Ira and Jules take off in pursuit.

Walter and Klay turn to see the wolf heading right for them, with Ira and Jules not far behind. Wolf is making a beeline for the front doors, which are glass. Walter and Chess get the doors open and the wolf's paws lose traction once they hit the freshly waxed flooring. It goes flying into and through the concession stand. Walter grapples it, Klay calls on wraith Charles to help subdue it, and Jules activates Entrancement; she sings it a lullaby while Walter chokes it into unconsciousness. The wolf reverts into human form, a blonde man in his mid to late 20s. Jules notices a tranquilizer dart lodged in his spine and removes it.

Thinblood primogen and Ira bestie Florian Foster is here! He's weirdly consistent about being right where you need him, right when you need him. Ira tells him to have their garou friend Cameron come pick this guy up now, before scourge Kearns gets here and kills him. Florian calls Cameron. Ira also asks if Florian can analyze this tranquilizer sample. Flor says he can try.

Coterie wakes up the wolfboy so they can interrogate him before the wolves show up to take him. He's loopy and delirious but mutters about needing to find the monster. There's a monster, he needs to find the monster. He promised the rabbit he'd find the monster.

Ira goes apeshit. Petit monstre, mon lapin. His and missing husband Max's pet names for each other. Wherever this wolf came from, that's where they'll find Max. He interrogates the wolfboy--Silas, is his name--but doesn't get very far. Silas says he was in some kind of lab facility, but he doesn't know how he got from the city into the lab or back out again. He was on the street, he smelled blood, and suddenly he wasn't on the street anymore. Same thing on the way out. He didnt pass through any doorways, he was in one place and then he was in a different place.

Cameron shows up to collect Silas. She's alarmed to hear he was in Crinos form. She's about to elaborate but Ira insists that she leave, now, before the scourge arrives. Florian asks her if they can trace Silas' scent back to find the lab. Cameron promises to try.

The wolves depart and the PCs + Florian (Chess stays outside) go upstairs to speak with Malkavian Prince Tatiana Wint. They ask to speak with Bellamy and vouch for his innoncence. Prince Wint says that scourge Kearns is quite convinced of Bellamy's guilt. Everyone else says yeah well that guy's a moron who sucks at his job. The prince implies she may not disagree. Kearns and the sheriff will have their hands full cleaning up tonight's mess, but if these 4 want to investigate on Bellamy's behalf...say, Ira, haven't you been looking for a coterie?

The newly-formed coterie is permitted to speak with Bellamy in his cell. He and Walter suspect hunter involvement in hacking into his show. Ira and Klay think it's suspicious that Kearns accosted Bellamy within 2 minutes of the live broadcast; how did he get there so fast? How could he have gauged the situation and determined Bellamy's guilt so quickly? He doesn't even listen to the show...

The coterie agrees to help clear Bellamy's name and get Kearns sacked. They'll also help Ira track down Max in this lab he's allegedly being held in.

It's 2am. 4 hours to sunrise.

Ira is adamant that Max is wherever Silas came from, and therefore connected to the Masquerade breach at the radio station. Silas said that he'd been in some kind of lab; Klay wonders if it might have been hunters who had him, messed with him, turned him loose, and hijacked the station to draw attention to it.

Klay spends a point of Resources for a contact at a medical supply warehouse and asks if there have been any unusual requests lately. Nothing out of the ordinary, but the contact reads off some of the item descriptions and a shipment of microchips catches Klay's interest. He asks for the address for that delivery: it belongs to one Biograde Technologies, located in the biomedical district. Klay knows that name--the Hecata primogen, Sergio Giovanni, works for Biograde.

Klay explains microchips to Ira, who realizes Silas may very well be chipped. Florian is sent to rendezvous with Silas and Cameron to warn them while the coterie pays Biograde a visit.

Klay asks wraith Charles to knock out the external cameras that Ira and Walter identify. Ira notices several more inside. The office is closed but the lobby lights are still on, populated by 1 receptionist and 2 security guards--all mortal. Jules and Klay easily disarm them with an Awe + Cloud Memory combo and the coterie is in.

Jules finds a building map on the wall:

5: Employee Lounge

4: Data Lab

3: HR, Marketing, Legal

2: (You Are Here) Storage, Supplies, Labs

1: [unlabeled]

Unlabeled basement is weird. The water table in NOLA doesn't really allow for building underground. The coterie pokes around on Floor 2 (sure enough, mostly medical supplies and empty labs) and Klay liberates some bleach, some sedatives, and 3 syringes. Just in case. Then they head into the basement.

It's a large concrete room and it's completely empty. No furniture, no decor, no equipment, nothing. Klay detects no wraiths in the vicinity. Jules sings to test the acoustics of the room but detects no abnormalities. Even with Heightened Senses, Ira can't hear anyone else in the building; nor can he hear the vibrations or beeping of any fancy machines. There's nothing here. Just a big, empty slab of cement.

Walter can tell by scent that there was something here recently, though. A number of mammals, and they were here no more than 48 hours ago. He and Klay also notice something sticking out a bit from the floor--what seems to be a pressure plate.

Ira intentionally triggers Premonition and notices a faint swirling residue, almost like an afterimage, of some sort of magical...energy? signature?

Walter steps on the pressure plate. The basement door autolocks behind the coterie and the room starts to fill with water. Sewage water, by the smell of it. Coterie isn't too bothered on account of not breathing air and Klay sends Charles to open the door from the outside. Charles warns them to watch their step on the way out; as they come through the doorway the coterie sees a long cable suspended from the ceiling and snaking under the doorway. The end is frayed and sparking.

Ira sees that same afterimage on the wall; fresher and more distinct here. He commits it to memory so he can paint it later.

Ira and Walter each know a bit about mages; enough to know that mages tend to specialize in certain fields, and that Space is one such specialization. Maybe that's how they're moving their test subjects undetected...

Ira is starting to unravel. He's convinced that Max was here, and that whoever has him moved him tonight, maybe mere hours before the coterie arrived. He tells the coterie he met some mages at Cafe du Monde shortly after waking from torpor; an older woman who called herself Nana and a young redheaded girl called Lily. They'd said they had a message from Ira's sire, Mary, but that in order to hear it Ira would have to allow them to temporarily sever his connection to the Cobweb. He refused, suspicious of both the mages' intentions and Mary's. Mary notoriously loathes mages, a bias she instilled in Ira as well; the idea of her cooperating with mages is unheard of. And on the off chance that it really is her, well, maybe she shouldn't have stuck Ira in torpor for 80 years if she wanted him to return her calls.

Ira doesn't know how to get back in touch with Nana and Lily, though, only that they play chess together every Sunday at the cafe. That's still two nights away. He isn't sure they're even related to Max's plight, but they're the only true mages he knows.

Jules, Klay, and Walter convince Ira to let them poke around upstairs to see if they can find some more tangible leads. Florian calls Walter and tells him they did find a microchip in Silas, and that the coterie should probably come meet them on Basin Street as soon as they can. That's where everyone's gone missing.

The coterie raids the employee lounge (Klay steals some top shelf tequila for his ghoul Missy and Jules loads up on Biscoff cookies for her touchstone Eden) but no one is good enough with computers to hack the desktops there. Walter steals hard drives from 2 of them instead, and a couple from the data lab desktops for good measure. Some of his clanmates will be able to sort through those.

Jules and Klay hit another Awe + Cloud Memory combo on the receptionist and security guards, and the coterie leaves Biograde without issue to go meet up with Florian and the lupines.

Silas is more lucid now that he's had a few hours for the sedatives to wear off. There are still gaps in his memory, but he remembers being out here near Basin St, smelling blood, talking to a sad brunette girl with a long braid down her back, feeling a weird tingling in his feet, and suddenly being in a big cage. After that he was out for awhile--he doesn't know how long--and when he came to a dashing French dude with a magnificent beard was cutting him loose and demanding that Silas go find a rabbit monster. He bit Silas, who frenzied, and next thing Silas knew his paws were tingling and he was outside again.

Only an hour till sunrise. There's nothing more that can be done tonight. Klay offers for Ira to stay at the shop with him so he isn't alone overnight, but Ira declines. He needs to go home and paint. He needs to. Florian will go with him for emotional support.

The coterie plans to meet up the following night to strategize and debrief. Walter will have some intel on the hard drives by then, Florian on the sedative and microchip, and the lupines will try to wrangle up some muscle.