Who: Alicia, Pamela, & Max What: Uncovering the production center When: Jan/Feb 2018, sometime after Pamela and Alicia arrive Where: Semi-creepy basement in Chicago, then other places by accident Warnings: Nothing too wild.
The first part was easy. The security detail was bound in stasis. And assuming their intel was good they had a solid two hours to figure out exactly what they had stumbled upon. The room, a cold, dark basement really, was supposed to be the linchpin in this whole ordeal. Alicia was pretty sure all she found of use was a few loose pages and some spiders. Hardly thrilling.
Then again, this part wasn’t exactly her strongest suit.
Alicia took another loop around the long workbench in the middle, once more counting the insects. Spider. Spider. Spider. Oh a silverfish! As she watched the bug scurry away, he sort of vanished as he got closer to the far corner of the back wall.
“Strange.” She cast a lumos and took a step closer to examine the seams of the wall, but still kept a safe distance. “Pamela, this wall look a bit off to you?”
Pamela was checking on the security guards, but she came to her feet at the question and joined Alicia. "Hmmm, there is something off about it." She pulled a No-maj pen from her pocket, dangling it down the backside of her hand like she meant to toss it at the wall and looked at Alicia. "Want to find out?"
Alicia grinned. “Maybe a gentle under handed toss to start?” There was no saying what could be on the other side. If there was even an otherside. But she had seen Platform 9 ¾ enough to wager a guess, not that she was quite willing to run through just yet.
"I wasn't gonna flip it haaaard," Pamela mock-whined and tossed the pen at the odd patch of wall, hoping that if there was a protective enchantment it wasn't one of those that only did terrible things to organic matter. It sailed right through and hit the floor with a clunk on the other side, audibly rolling a little ways on landing.
Pamela grinned at Alicia. "Well, whaddaya know?"
Alicia nodded. Presumably, the silverfish and the pen made it through. “Brilliant to know we didn’t land a cold lead. Now, unless you have any fruits on your person, one of us is going through. And I will volunteer.” Wand at the ready, to hex or apparate, Alicia walked straight at the wall where the pen went through.
And she too disappeared.
But only for five seconds before she popped her head back through, holding out the pen. “I think we might have found exactly what we were looking for.”
A grin spread across Pamela's face. "Excellent. Let's do this." And she too stepped through the illusionary barrier. Here was the actual working part of the lab, and what looked like a small grow op with lights and a humidifier, or maybe a dehumidifier, inside a closed area covered in clear tarp. There were runes covering the door. In fact there were runes all over the place, and Pamela could read the general intent pretty easily: Stay Away. Unfortunately reading more than that was beyond her at the moment.
Okay, there wasn’t a big hex battle, but it was something. Potentially evidence or really just further proof they weren’t on the wrong track. Alicia followed carefully around the room. The air felt heavy. And there was something about the writing literally on the walls that bothered her. “I think those runes look like the ones we found out at Pelham Park. And that one -- doesn’t that look like one from the McMullen file?”
Pamela squinted at the runes again, and they definitely did look familiar. "You know who our runes expert is? Who was there at Pelham and in Salem, too? We should show this to Max." She snapped a couple of photos and sent them to Max for urgent evaluation, with the warning that they were on site with a limited window.
Max looked at his phone. Pamela always had the fun cases. "Where are you? I'm way, way out of pocket, but those look like someone was angry or scared when they made them. Which way are they pointed, can you tell? Keeping you out of something of keeping something out of you?"
Before Max had finished typing, the first answer came back: "Chicago."
After a moment, "I think."
"OK," Max replied. "So not 'Sumeria', good. Good. Wait. Chicago? Did Ben tell you I was here?"
"I'm on assignment here. You want to see in person?"
As long as I can put your case code on my time card, I'm good.
"Yeah, give me 5 minutes to put on some pants." Significantly less than five minutes later, another text came in. "Safe to Apparate? Send me a good 'apparte here' photo…"
"Check your POP IN for safe coordinates outside the building. Come in, we're in the basement, through the right side of the wall as you come out of the stairwell."
"[audible sigh] I hate that app. Oh, crap, I left transcribe o-- Sorry, Pamela, I just know the guy who wrote POP IN and he's not very good at apps. See you soon."
Max stepped through the wall. He did choose to wear pants, and a warm sweater. He looked around the room and took out his wand. "Lumos!", he encanted, brightening up the dank basement that's only probably in Chicago. "Hello Pamela. Spinnet, I didn't know you were here. What are we looking at, aside from the obvious?"
While Pamela was texting, Alicia was trying her own hand at a bit of investigation. Really just trying to sort out the quite literally gravity of it all. It mostly involved jumping and short distance apparition, all of which seemed to work as expected, but it didn’t quite feel right. But worst case she supposed it would hold up in a fight.
Alicia looked over at Pamela when Max arrived, seeking that nod that he was someone to be trusted. “Knight and I were following a lead on a ergot and bone dust production center. We went through a wall and I’m pretty sure those two locations are not physically connected. However, we did seem to find what we were looking for, everything still in tact.” She had been in Pelham Park and remembered well the feeling of failure, of being a step behind. This was better.
Max nodded. That explained the slight discomfort he felt when he stepped through. And the Ley lines were different. He wished, for the first time since Salem, that he'd finished that mapper. He now had an idea for how to read a signature and identify which line he was tracing, instead of just reading the gross strength. It made a difference when you were the detector and the conduit yourself.
"Have you all tried to determine where we are, or should we concentrate on what's here and work that out later?" Max looked back at the wall he'd so blithely walked through a moment ago. "We're still on the Wiz-net grid, so same continent, which seems promising. I hope that's two-way."
"Yeah, um, I didn't think to check that until you asked. Sorry," Pamela said sheepishly. "So if you can tell us how to figure out where we are, you can look at the runes."
“That way is north.” Alicia pointed toward the area of one of the more elaborate rune inlays. Which she was pretty sure included dagaz reversed, which could signify hopelessness or an ending. “Or at least that’s what my magic is telling me. We have about an hour window. So I will defer to you on where you want to start and what we can accomplish.”
"We've seen runes before on this ergot investigation. Somebody likes Elder Futhark. These are the same set we've seen before. I'll have to pull some files from New York, but I think these are the equivalent of an amplifier." Max moved to the center of the room, equidistant from the four main runes on the walls. "Definitely amplifying. This is how they're making the ergot magically infused, so it's not just a hallucinogenic." Max looked at the walls. "It's clever. They set up these runes so that they could pour power into the ergot over time, but no wizard had to sit here and do it themselves. And it makes it hard to trace."
Max frowned. "Ritual, rune-based magic has got to be a pretty esoteric field, how many people can there be who can even do this?"
Pamela shook her head. This was not her field of expertise. "What resources do you need to find out, Max? And--I didn't know you and Ben were here. How long have you been here?"
Max ran his fingers through his hair. "Ben's here for family stuff. I'm here because … well, if I could explain Mysteries, we wouldn't be Mysteries. Part of an investigation, anyway, just not one I'm the primary investigator on.
"I'll have to send a memo to one of the research librarians. Fairlight, most likely. None of them will use a phone." Max stared at the runes.
"So, either this is a transitional form and I'm totally missing the subtle nature of what they're doing, or this is badly done. It's not just the shapes of the runes being slightly off, it's that some of the overlaid runes are working against the goal.
"I want to try an experiment, but I'll need some help. If this goes badly, we may need shielding in a big hurry. And we may want to gather any evidence we can here before I try this." He looked at the runes again. "I'm going to try making the Ley lines visible, so we can see the energy flows between them.
Pamela sighed. "Let's get the evidence first before you blow everything up, Rivera."
“And no disrespect,” at least Alicia contained her own sigh, “but this is supposed to a covert op.” It was quick work to get pictures of the walls, copying over any formula notes still sitting around. A bit more difficult was going to be obtaining a sample of the ergot. And then setting up further containment wards in case anything happened.
“Should we get eyes on the security detail before he tries … whatever he plans to do?”
She had to think about that, but then she looked at Max and thought about all the trouble they'd had in Salem with things getting overloaded, and the body-switching, and and and-- she nodded. "Yeah, better safe than sorry."
Alicia nodded, handing over the evidence. “You go, I’ll keep an eye on things here.” Covert op or not, she was just a little curious to see what happened next. “Okay, Rivera, what happens now?”
He grinned. "Not much, I hope. I insert a few little visible particles into the ley stream and I either show how elegant and well-constructed and misunderstood these runes are, or they show me that it's a hack job by someone who doesn't understand what they're doing. And then, we decide what we do next.
"Don't worry, it's kind of like dusting for fingerprints." Max opened his long coat and reached into one of the oversized pockets. "I just need a few things…" Max pulled out and returned a few items from his pockets until he came up with a bag of powder. He closed his eyes, attuning himself to the ley lines, feeling the ebb and flow of energy in the room.
Max had to dampen his newly-augmented power here, and he was glad he'd had a reminder to do so before he cast the spell. He blew the powder at the symbols on each of the walls--North, East, South, West, and he watched with satisfaction as the dust followed the lines of energy through the room.
Alicia put her hands on her hips, watching Rivera. She appeared casual, but truly was a tightly wound spring ready to respond in anyway needed. Only nothing happened. Well, nothing in terms of the previously mentioned explosions. Instead the room seem to glimmer, a flicker hitting her wards, and then bouncing back to light up little trails around the room.
“It’s kind of wonky to actual see this, to see ley lines. They don’t look very stable.” Not that Alicia was any judge. “And then seem to be converging at the greenhouse.” Although that was probably the point.
"Do you see how the runes work against each other?," Max asked Alicia, pointing at different lines. "Daeg is indeed reversed, which makes almost no sense, since it means "growth" when proper. And Eoh nearly undoes the whole thing. This is poor workmanship.
"It's like someone learned how to do this ritual from a book, with no instructor. That's good and bad. Lots of criminals can get their hands on a spellbook. But the better question is what you want to do. We could destroy it, or we could sabotage it, or we could try to set a trap here. What did you have in mind?"
Alicia’s study of rune was dated back to Hogwarts. She could recognize some of the shapes, but too often her brain tried to read it as Korean. “Best outcome? We’re able to taper with things so the ergot isn’t viable, but stay undetected. That something you can manage?”
“And before we go mucking around with poor experiments, I’d like to confirm we’re still in the same place and that Knight is doing okay. Reckon you can delay few?”
Max snapped a few pictures of the visible Ley lines. "It'll take a few to set anything up in any case. It's too bad that they canceled the WitchFinder app for the phone, we'd be able to see where Pamela was and she'd be able to find us.
"So, here's what I learned when I was on the first ergot case last fall. Ergot is hard to cultivate. It takes a cold winter, but not cold enough to freeze the plants, so 0°-5° for about a month, then a wet spring, followed by a harvest season. All of that can be simulated, but time is hard to muck with successfully. I want to look in that makeshift greenhouse and see where in the lifecycle they're at to figure out what we can do.
"It would be easy to disrupt the lifecycle, even do so in a way that makes them think it was an accident. They might just set up a new secret lab we don't know about if that happens. I've got an idea to make it traceable. Both to allow us to detect laced baked goods and also to catch people 'red-handed' as it were."
Alicia nodded, giving Max the the go ahead to start whatever tinkering he was going to do while Alicia tested the doorway. She picked up one of the measuring devices on the table and rolled it through the doorway. Hopefully Pamela would see it and they weren’t somewhere else.
Nothing happened.
Alicia counted six seconds to herself before poking her head through the doorway and then back. “Rivera, we have a bit of a complication. That does not connect back to the basement.”
Max frowned, and pulled out his phone. "What does it connect to? And shall I text Pamela?"
“Not sure. From what I could see, we’re high up, maybe one of the sky scrappers?” Alicia stayed in the portal, but she was willing to go further. “Shall I venture for more data?” He seemed like the type to appreciate such a question.
Max looked up. "Yes, that sounds useful. Take pictures--landmarks, buildings, rivers, height of the moon, that kind of thing. My tentative working theory is that they have a way to control where they come out and we don't. That would be very useful if we were raiding this place. Hmm. Have to think on that one.
"I'll be fine, I've already spotted where they have the knife-trap. You go ahead and find Pamela, and I'll call you in a half-hour and see we'll get back together and compare notes."
Alicia gave him a salute before exiting through the portal. “Please don’t blow anything up, mate.”