Sirens can be heard in the distance, as Stick, Jazz, Tia and Ghost arrive in the SUV. After a quick look around, they head into the back yard. Jazz is limping, and massaging out a nasty Charlie Horse. Stick walks over to Polly, who has just found Griswold’s pouch of zip ties, and is gleefully hog-tying him. “What happened?” Stick asks Polly. “You just vanished, right in front of my eyes!”

“I don’t know,” Polly answers, “I was wiping down my sword, got lost in thought, and then POOF! I was here, and Griswold was shooting me.” She adds ”He scuffed the paint!”, gesturing at the intricate artwork on her body armour.

Agatha arrives at the back door, carrying a cast-iron frying pan and a butcher’s knife. “Is it over?” she asks. Ben nods, and she retreats back inside.

Green is tending to the badly damaged Azalea, using her powers to encourage it to grow back. Brawn and Brain are nearby. Ben walks over, “You three should go back into the house, before the cops get here. You can deal with the plants in the morning.”

Brawn looks at him defiantly, with that “You NEVER let me participate!” look, but, after a brief hesitation, he nods and heads into the house. The other two follow. They meet Lucky and Shine on their way out, and redirect them back inside.

Ghost says, to Ben and Stick, “If they’ve found this house, we need to move the kids. They’re not safe here. We need to keep their involvement here quiet.”

They’ve stripped the villains out of their various tech gadgets, discovering Griswold’s auto-injector in the process. It has four drug vials, one of which is empty. Ben removes one and pockets it. They’ve stacked up all the gadgets for transport, but Ben takes one suit and squirrels it away.

The cops start to arrive. Ghost heads for a corner, and becomes invisible. Polly notices a van, parked in the alley, that doesn’t belong. She walks over to where Ben is going through Griswold’s stuff. “Are there car keys here?” she asks, quietly. Ben pulls out a set of keys, on a rental agency fob, and slips them to her. She looks around to see if anyone is looking, and then slips into the alley, and moves the van. She spies a laptop in the van. Stashing it under the seat, she returns to the back yard.

The police are packing up the prisoners and their gear, cataloging everything. There are many cops here now. A fire truck is on scene, with big fans to ventilate the tear gas from Brain’s bedroom. A number of cars and officers have set up a perimeter, and they are scanning all the vehicles with a License Plate Reader. They get a hit on a white van with Telus logos, but owned by a rental agency. “1 Able 12 to dispatch, we have a suspicious vehicle at 1685 Broadview Rd NE. Please send a tow for impound.”. They park behind it and wait for the tow truck.

Back in the yard, the lead investigator gets a text message. He grins, and walks over to Stick, who is standing with Polly, Ben, and Slammer. “We’ve found what we think might be their vehicle. Hopefully it has some clues” he says. Then he adds “Were all of you present, and witnessed the incident?” he asks.

Polly responds “No, just myself, Psyclist and Hammer”. She gestures at the other two as she gives their handles.

“We’ll need the three of you to come down to the station and make statements.” the officer says. “We might as well go now, and let the forensics crew do their work in peace. I’ve got a car out front.” He turns and starts towards the front yard. Ben and Mike follow.

Polly edges over to Ghost’s last known position. “Ghost!” she hisses quietly. Ghost touches her shoulder and whispers “Over here.” Polly turns towards her voice. “Griswold’s van is a white Ford Econoline, one block south and two blocks east” she hisses, slipping her the keys. “There’s a laptop under the seat.” Polly then hurries after Ben, Mike and the police officer.

Ghost takes the keys, becomes desolid as well, and flies over to the van, finding it watched by the police. She slips invisibly in through the windshield, and becomes solid-but-invisible once inside. She feels around under the seats and finds & removes the laptop. Clutching it to her body, it disappears. She takes the keys, and tucks them behind the sun visor. She goes desolid again, flies out of the van, and back to the house.

She finds a quiet room with nobody around, and pulls out the laptop. There is a “Property of Peterborough Pharmaceuticals” on the bottom. A few quick hacks and she’s in. The “lo-jack” software did not trip, and she disables it. There is system-level encryption, but that was defeated by her entry hack. There are files for the current op, but nothing more.

There are dossiers on Mike and Ben, tying them to the Posse and listing their (official) home addresses, offices, studios, friends and family. There are GPS tracking device logs for all the Wheeler family vehicles and Della Rhodes car. The track for Agatha’s car shows an anomalous cluster at the safe house. There is a property search for that address, showing the owner to be a trust fund administered by a law firm. A list of other properties owned by that trust turns up a short list, all properties used by The Posse as safe houses. There is another search for other trusts run by the same law firm, but it is a massive list with entries for thousands of other clients, and is useless. Other property searches reveal addresses for Wheeler family friends, business locations and customers.

There is evidence they attempted to breach the law firm’s servers, but were unsuccessful, and intended to try again. They have gigabytes of video from cameras on the Wheeler home, Mike’s office, Della’s apartment, and the safe house. There are records of hundreds of cell phones, from a Stingray they placed behind the safe house, including Polly’s, Stick’s and Ben’s phones (which were ID’d from comparing the Stingray records with the video surveillance).

Ben rides his bike, with the suit of powered armour stashed in the side-car and the stolen vial of super-sauce in his pocket, down to police headquarters. Polly rides with the officer, and Mike flies along behind. The officer leads them into the office, places them in separate interview rooms, and provides paper, pen and coffee. They finish, and turn their statements in to the officer.

Ben asks “Would it be possible for us to talk to the prisoners?” he asks.

The officer looks thoughtful. “Normally we don’t allow that”, he says, “but you’re with The Posse, which makes you kind of semi-deputized. Let me see.” He disappears into the maze of cubicles and offices. He comes back in a few minutes. “Legal isn’t available to get an opinion” he says with a smile. “The prisoners are awake, but not talking. Our guys are getting nothing, so you might as well have a go. We’ll have an officer in the room, and others observing from outside.” He adds the last while looking at Polly.

Ben converses telepathically with Polly and Mike, to come up with a plan, while the cop takes them into the interrogation room. They start with the henchmen. Mike asks the questions, but they do not respond. Ben scans them telepathically for surface thoughts, probing deeper when he thinks there might be more. He also inserts mental illusions periodically, to get them thinking that it was he, and not the kids, that were involved in the fight. Ben has a sketchpad, to draw faces he pulls from their minds. Polly decides to observe from behind the mirror.

After aggregating the data from all five, they learn:

• they all work for Peterborough Pharmaceuticals
• Head Office is in Peterborough, in the Greater Toronto Area
• the department is Genetic Engineering Advanced Research
• the department head is Sam Layton
• Clark Walter Griswold is his real name
• he was taunted incessantly about it growing up, and is rather sensitive about it
• may well be what turned him into a bully, and ultimately to his current job
• Griswold runs a Covert Operations Group, with just the 4 agents under him
• Griswold’s C.O.G. was originally located in Edmonton, but was recently transferred to Toronto
• Griswold personally recruited his men
• Griswold’s C.O.G. is attached to a project codenamed INCUBUS
• the powered armour is relatively new, they’ve had it just under a year
• training was provided by the armour vendor, name not known
• they carried a spare suit, and common repair parts
• the spare suit is at their hotel, the spare parts are in the van
• hotel is Holiday Inn Express & Suites, 1020 8th Av SW
• INCUBUS is run by Dr. Ryan Francis
• INCUBUS and Dr. Francis created the tailored virus for Steve Porter and Polly
• Griswold delivered the virus in both cases, using a surreptitious sprayer
• Griswold and his men are immune to the mutation virus (vaccinated)
• the virulent spread within targets families caught them completely off-guard
• despite the vaccine, Griswold’s team refused to go in to clean things up then, which allowed Polly & Steve Porter to escape
• there are other C.O.G.s attached to other projects
• one other project Griswold knows of is TWOFER, headed by Dr. Tompkins
• Griswold heard that when TWOFER failed, Tompkins was “sent to the Gulag”
• Griswold has worked for Peterborough Pharma for some time, working his way up
• previous “dirty jobs” included cleanup up after failed experiments
• was tasked with acquiring experimental subjects, he often hunted in Hobbema
• on a recent trip to the Ottawa office, he and his men were “loaned out” to the PMO
• hunted down Miyati, killed the journalist who sold him out when he got away
• no operations planned beyond the current one
• experimental subjects for INCUBUS stage III have already been acquired
• current operation is to kill Polly
• plan was to kidnap Green, extort a ransom from Polly, and kill her when she delivered it
• they had prepared in case the entire Posse arrived at the ransom drop
• the ransom drop was set for an abandoned house in Victoria Park
• Griswold wired it with 12 claymore mines, and 4 pallets of ANFO in the basement
• claymores rigged with electric eyes and motion sensors
• ANFO rigged with a remote detonator

Ben makes copies of his notes, including the sketches, for the police. Ben arranges to pass on the notes he has about the “disappeared” people in Hobbema to native authorities. The police roll the bomb squad out to the rigged house. It is now about 5:30 AM. Ben, Mike and Polly head down to offer their services. Ben helps them scan the evacuation zone for people who were missed, using his mental vision. Ben also tips off his reporter contact (Brianne Labby). Once it is clear, they send in the robot. The tech operating the robot successfully defuses four, but on the fifth one goes “Aw shit”, as it goes off. Fortunately, it does not trigger the ANFO. Ben has cobbled together a mock umbrella from bits of kit on his bike. He ducks under it. The robot is not badly damaged, they repair it and finish defusing the explosives. Then they have to move it all out of the building, and away for disposal. This takes until noon, causing major disruptions of the morning commute. The three heroes do not stick around to help with the cleanup, they head back to the safe house for some sleep.

The evening news leads with a split-screen image of Ben under his umbrella, beside Wile E. Coyote doing the same thing.

Experience points (all non-combat):

Polly: 2 Ben: 2 Ghost: 2 Hammer: 2 Jazz: 1 Tia: 1

-DCZ