maskormenacelogs | don't look over here, look over there

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don't look over here, look over there

WHO: Jonas Kahnwald & Rupert von Hentzau
WHERE: An OTO lab in North Virginia
WHEN: Tuesday 12th November
WHAT: Meanwhile...
WARNINGS: n/a

The Masked Man stepping into this particular OTO base isn't anything out of the ordinary. He's been here plenty of times before. He knows their names (codenames, mostly) and they know how he likes his coffee (black with two sugars). A deceptively innocent-looking building, hidden in plain sight with layers upon layers of locked doors that the Masked Man navigates with ease now, given how desperate his OTO contact is to know what's happening at the ritual site. He strides with confidence through the last of the doors and smoothly sweeps the mask from his face as his contact - a white-faced, white-coated scientist with thick glasses and a tremor in his voice - begs him for news. Rupert smiles generously.

"It's all going exceedingly well," he lies as he pushes his hands through his helmet-hair, glancing into a polished chrome work surface as he drags his hair into something respectable. He shrugs idly. "The storm's just a spot of weather, isn't it? It won't stop your lot from hashing it out with the goddesses, I'm sure..."

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While Rupert works his charismatic magic, Jonas remains outside the building and out of view from every angle of the security cameras. With his overgrown hair and rumpled clothes and heavy backpack, he looks like any homeless kid who might be loitering around in hopes of a generous donation for a modest meal. He keeps his hood drawn and slumps against the chainlink fence that surrounds the base, waiting for his turn.

This is the part he hates. His very first step in this plan requires that the plan has already been executed successfully. If he's not greeted soon, it means they've already failed, and who knows what becomes of Rupert in that case.

The contact looks unconvinced by Rupert's reassurances despite Rupert's winning smile.

"It's more than bad weather, for God's sake!" The contact protests, shifting from foot to foot in agitation as Rupert idly hops onto his work surface and sits all over his research papers. "It's clearly some sort of anomaly, it could throw the whole of Project Changeling into--"

The artificial striplights of the lab flicker ferociously, plunging the lab into strobing darkness, and the scientist tails off abruptly. Even Rupert, knowing exactly what the flickering means, can't help but catch his breath at the eerie on-again-off-again dying of the light. Somewhere in the depths of the facility, a security alarm begins to pipe up.

"Power fluctuations," Rupert observes with forced mildness. "Must be all that weather out there."

***

Beyond the chain-link fence a noisy portal blossoms into life as a different Rupert steps through with a rare expression of harrassed annoyance. Triggering an alarm hadn't been a part of the plan.

"There are probably security droids," He says sourly by way of hello as he waves Jonas through the portal and into the depths of the lab. "They do so love security droids."

Jonas had no idea an alarm was even triggered. He steps from the quiet of the outdoors into the chaos beyond the portal, wincing apologetically. It's his fault, really. He should have accounted for the possibility that a surge would be enough to trigger the security system. But if Rupert's here to let him inside, that means the other Rupert will at least find him in time to travel back.

"We'll just have to work quickly," Jonas sighs. "If we run into anything, use me as a shield." Even if he's injured, it'll be inconsequential compared to what Rupert could potentially suffer.

Sweeping his eyes over the corridor, he has no idea how to proceed. It's up to Rupert to lead the way. "Where do we start? Anything we can grab, or did you find out where they're keeping the good stuff?"

"A human shield? I can't tell if that's gallantry or practicality," Rupert replies with a smile as his usual boyishness slowly begins to return, replacing his brief annoyance.

"But honestly, it shouldn't be terribly well defended," Rupert continues as he leads the way through the corridors, taking them deeper into the lab past flashing red intruder alarms. "This lab is rather lacking in security and I'm quite sure most of the staff have been called elsewhere..."

Rupert tails off with a frown and pauses at a door marked AUTHORIZED ACCESS and STRICTLY LVL 1 CLEARANCE. He can remember something that current-Rupert had heard...

"Then again, I do remember hearing gunshots in about--" He checks his wristwatch, an impossibly useless designer thing with no actual numbers on it. "-- Five minutes, give or take."

"From this direction?" Jonas asks, glancing over his shoulder.

The base seems practically abandoned, but there are a lot of doors that could open to surprise them at any moment. If the shooting comes from anywhere else in the building, however, there's only one target they could possibly be chasing.

And he's not worth sacrificing the success of the mission.

"This direction or something very close by."

Rupert had been too busy loudly coughing to try and cover the noise at the time. The authorised-access-only door is unsurprisingly locked and Rupert wastes no time in noisily peeling open a portal door of his own creating to see them past it.

"I'm not concerned, for the record. It just means we have five minutes to find a gun," He continues as they step into the room beyond the locked door: to Rupert's highly uneducated eye it looks like it must be a control room of sorts, lined with locked cabinets and storage crates. He rocks back on his heels as he gazes at it all.

"I suppose computer systems are the most useful, aren't they?"

Jonas scans the room as he steps through the portal, already in the process of slipping his backpack off. "Disks and hard drives," he says, unzipping the bag to rifle through his supplies until he finds a screwdriver. "We only need one console, but we should grab as many drives as possible. Anything we won't be able to find outside this building."

Information will be worth much more to them than hardware. He follows his own advice, crouching by the nearest tower to yank the power cord out and set to work prying open the case. "I can't believe I didn't bring a gun," he mutters to himself as he works.

"Don't fret, I'll handle the gun situation," Rupert replies cheerfully - of all the parts in this plan, accessing weapons is what troubles him the least. He hadn't been joking when he said he wasn't concerned. It's a shame he doesn't have access to his pistol anymore - thanks, stupid museum heist - but there's bound to be something around here that might help.

With Jonas busying himself with disks and hard drives - things that Rupert only understand in the most basic of terms - Rupert turns his attentions to the locked cabinets. If he was going to store guns anywhere in a fancy terrorist organisation's private senior level office, he knows he'd put them under lock and key. He approaches the nearest one and carefully peels away a layer of reality to peer into the darkness of the cabinet beyond, and sees...

"Maps!" He pulls out the folded documents, leafing through them quickly and casting an eye over each one. "The Porter cities, of course they'd be interested in those. Useful, do you think?"

"Yes," Jonas agrees without looking up from the delicate work of disconnecting an internal hard drive. "Maps, records, receipts... Anything that looks like a blueprint or a manual. Anything that only exists in paper."

Gently, he pops the drive out and sets it beside him. There's more than one in this machine, and he moves immediately to the next, though he takes the opportunity to glance at Rupert.

With a conspiratorial near-smile, he clarifies, "The information on these computers is probably backed up to a server, which might make it useless to us if the other imPorts discover it. The papers, though. We might be the only ones who ever see them."

"Good thinking."

Satisfied with Jonas's explanation, Rupert sweeps the contents of the shelf into his arms - sheaves of paper, maps, assorted files and folders - and casts about for somewhere to dump them. A likely looking table stands nearby, perfectly empty, and he wastes no time in dumping his armful there.

"Once you've filled up your pack you can put stuff there," He says over his shoulder as he seals that portal and opens a fresh one over the next locked cabinet in the row. "We can walk the whole thing through a portal, I should think. And I'd quite like a table."

Peering into the depths of the next cabinet Rupert tuts in dismay.

"Tasers," He says with all the dismissiveness of somebody who's never been tasered. "God! They must have real weapons in here somewhere..."

"A taser is a perfectly good weapon," says Jonas as he removes another hard drive and carefully sets it down. "I'll take one if you don't want it. I can use it in the detonation switch."

He slips the hard drives into his backpack and scuttles over to the next machine, repeating the process of powering down and dismantling the thing. Once he's packed away its set of drives, he checks his watch and frowns. Given his usual disposition, it's hard to tell whether he disapproves of the time or he's simply calculating his next several moves.

"It perfectly is not," Rupert scoffs with a laugh as he hefts the boxy, plastic taser-pistol. It's laughably flimsy in Rupert's hand, a far cry from the sleek, weighty comfort of a proper pistol. He extends the taser, sighting along his arm with a squint as he casually aims at a motivational poster, before tossing it to Jonas with a nonchalant shrug.

"Here. There are three in total, consider them yours."

Throwing the other two onto the pile on the table, followed by a few handfuls of paperwork found nearby, Rupert quickly moves on to the next cabinet - a metal one, locked with an intricate keypad that Rupert makes a mockery of as he peels open a portal through the heavily secured exterior. Miscellaneous equipment, discs, sim cards - he dumps them on the table haphazardly in a few short, quick trips.

"If you were going to store weapons," He says conversationally as he surveys the room, dumping another armful of equipment onto the table. "Real weapons, I mean - where on earth would you store them?"

Jonas examines the taser, switching it on briefly to watch it spark and crackle before turning it off again and packing it away. Rupert is a fool. A very handsome, very charming fool. Guns are loud and messy and largely ineffective unless aimed at precise locations. A good, strong electric shock will paralyze an opponent much more efficiently.

"I would put them somewhere less obvious," he replies as he moves on to the next machine. "A floor safe or a hidden closet panel. And if I really expected an invasion at any moment, I would make sure that everyone kept a pistol hidden in or under their desks."

"I forgot you were such a paranoid soul," Rupert replies with a grin. His thoughts on where best to hide weapons leaned heavily towards 'easily accessible in a hurry' compared to Jonas's secret stash idea. But Jonas is the expert here, not Rupert, and he crosses the room in a few long strides to a lone desk at the far end of the room. A managerial sort of desk, positioned to have a vantage across the whole room and the door, with a red telephone sitting on the surface. Rupert slips into the leather seat, spinning a little on the casters as he rattles the desk drawers.

"Locked," He announces with satisfaction before peeling a portal through the desk surface, peering inside, and crowing with delight as he withdraws a silver flight case the size of a sheet of paper.

"If this is a gun I may have to eat my words."

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