Polly and Green continue to work on the shelter belt. Polly lectures anyone who will listen on the virtues of Saskatoons and Apples; of layering tree plantations of differing heights to provide effective windbreaking, and of the sad deficit of decent shelter belts south of Red Deer. Sometimes Ben picks Green up from the house, sometimes Stick does. Agatha hasn’t had an opportunity to come down to the farm in a while, and likely won’t until the kids are back in school. The kids are making the best of the last days of summer vacation. Ben has been spending time at the maker studio, working on his latest art project.

Another meeting is called at McDougall Centre, but this one is more of a “this is what we will do” meeting, whereas the previous one was more of a “what can we DO!” type meeting. The Justice Dept. has placed Miyati into witness protection, and they have decided to keep the memo secret to avoid tipping anybody off that Miyati is here, and has talked. The document has been sent for forensic processing.

They also learn that intel believes Nancy Renfrew is still in town, and organizing protests, but hasn’t been seen publicly. There continue to be prominent “Free Elections Now!” protests, and the “Mutant Rule” people are starting to pick up their operations. They haven’t collided … yet.

More money has been moved into the account used to pay the Mutant Rule people who disrupted the parade. That have correlated the two deposits into the account with two visits to Calgary by the Russian Cultural Attache from Ottawa (a suspected FSB officer). They did to get good surveillance of him during this visit, as he was particularly effective at shaking his tails this time,

Stick had emailed Trilobite about DEADEYE, thinking that a high-end troubleshooter like this may have a military background. Trilobite writes back that there was a sniper in JTF2 with the handle DEADEYE, back in the day, but he was busted coming back from Afghanistan with several kilos of heroin. When he got out of prison for that, he started doing “contract work” for organized crime. He was caught again, and is serving life in a Quebec maximum security prison. His real name is Jake Chandler.

Stick shares this data with AISS, and learns:

• AISS has undergone a merger and is now the Strathcona International Strategic Studies Institute (SISSI)
• Jake Chandler does not exist, no public records, military service or criminal record

Ghost does an online search, including the dark web and all the government DBs she can crack, and comes up empty handed. They conclude that he has been “erased”. Ben suggests checking the physical archives, and thinks of contacting media sources about the old criminal trials. He contacts his contact at A-Channel, Brianne Labby, and in a rambling discussion asks about everything about Jake Chandler EXCEPT for any physical records they might have of the old stories. Polly takes the phone and corrects that. Brianne calls back a few hours later, reporting that there was nothing in the stations electronic, paper or microfiche files on Jake Chandler or the criminal trials, but by using the dates provided by Trilobite was able to pull the evening newscast video tapes, and found the stories there. She surmises that they were not indexed by his name or any of the keywords around his trials, just by date. She makes copies of the newscasts and stills of Chandler from them available for Ben to pick up.

Ben takes Polly with him to pick up the data. Enroute, Polly spots someone on the street that looks like Clark W. Griswold. Taking a second look reveals it isn’t actually him, but she gets out and confronts him, asking if he knows or is related to him. “What, the character from National Lampoon’s Vacation? I look nothing like Chevvy Chase!”. Polly is embarrassed, and returns to the bike sidecar. They continue with the pickup.

Ghost forwards a copy of one of the stills to Trilobite. The next day he confirms it is the guy he knew from Afghanistan. Ghost also shared the A-Channel data with ANWPP and SISSI. She then does a facial recognition search. It takes a while, but eventually she gets a match in a highly secure CSIS database for a high-powered ‘Government Agent’ named John Smith. Her searches also find a hit on an hidden “orphan” record in an Amazon.com DB, for a buyer named Frank Castle. There is a complete ID and work history, but it is all disconnected from the main data records and carefully threaded around so it remains in place and hidden. Ghost surmises it is part of Chandler’s go-to-hell plan, should he need to run out on his new-found buddies in the government.

But its been a long, stressful day in a long, stressful week. Jazz has had it and is “sleeping out” tonight, and winds up around the 14th St bridge. Ben puts in some time at the ACA studio, on a long-neglected project. Mike Hammer goes back to his office to catch up on some paperwork, but finds that a security video camera has popped up in the hallway outside his office recently. It looks to be self contained, but tapping power from the lights. It has an antenna lead that looks like it can be read from outside the building, by a passing car or even a drone. He eventually crashes on the couch there.

Polly, Tia and Stick remain at the Secret Base-ment. Polly and Tia go to bed, and Stick stays up, doing Sticky things in the Danger Room. Around midnight, Polly wakes up in a cold sweat from a nightmare. She’d been dreaming about being chased by Clark W. Griswold. She gets out her gear and heads down to the Danger Room to practice. She does a few exercises, but her heart isn’t in it. She keeps thinking about Griswold. “It was that damn bit of mistaken identity downtown today”, she mutters to herself. That probably triggered the dream. She starts wiping the sword down, and gets taken in by its beauty. She slips into a reverie, and sees Griswold in the depths of the sword, or maybe its just her imagination, but it seems like she can just reach out and … and then she is falling. Stick sees her vanish, goes “Oh SHIT!”, wakes Tia and speed-dials the group.

Polly finds herself, not on the floor of the danger room, but on some grass. She quickly stands up and realizes:

• she’s in the back yard of the Brat Pack safe house, over 10 km from the farm
• Clark W. Griswold is standing about 8m from her, looking almost as surprised as she is
• there are four men in powered armour spread out in a skirmish line a few metres behind him
• all have guns
• she hears the faint hiss of an air-spray auto-injector from Griswold, and the sound of machinery spooling up from his goons suits.

Then Griswold levels his pistol and shoots her.

Ben Wheeler has just loaded up his bike and is leaving ACA when he hears a shot, coming from the direction of the safe house. He cranks up the lights and pedals hard.

Jazz is sitting by the river, beside the 14th Street bridge, just a few blocks from the safe house when she hears the shot. She legs it as fast as she can towards the sound.

Lucky, Brawn, Brain, Green and Shine sit bolt upright in bed at the sound of the gunfire in their back yard.

We are at the top of twelve. Role playing experience for tonight is 1 point each, with a bonus half-point for Ghost, Psyclist and Gallowglas. Next gaming session is Sept 14 (skipping Aug 31 for the long weekend, and Sept 7 for the Thursday Thing).

-DCZ