Session 12

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The party squints at a building, and Colby has a date.

## Characters

* the party
* Nate (last name unknown)
* Tressa Gillespie

## Summary

Nyx has a foretelling of Sam being brutally murdered in the near future: mauled and torn apart, then thrown into a meat grinder.

### ♪**We're Great at Crime♪**

##### **Tuesday, December 1st, 542:**

At the building the party was directed to by Pax a few days ago, Colby is standing lookout on the street. Sam smashes the glass doors with Nyx's crowbar, allowing the party entrance to the reception area Nyx saw. It's completely empty, lacking even a computer or any filing cabinets. There is a door behind the desk, as well as one on each wall. The party decides to split up, with Asa and Nyx heading through the door behind the desk and Sam and Kuno making their way up the stairs that the side doors lead to. Nyx and Asa's door is locked, but Asa manages to channel his fire magic to melt through the lock. Through that door is what looks like a break room, which also contains an elevator. The two get in the elevator and push the button labeled for the 4th and highest floor. Meanwhile, Kuno and Sam go up the stairs, discovering two floors of open-plan cubicles which have empty filing cabinets and monitors but no computer towers.

The party arrives at the fourth floor at about the same time, with the elevator doors sliding open just as Sam and Kuno get to the top of the stairs. These entryways lead to an office door labeled Walz, which Asa melts open after Sam unsuccessfully tries to pry it open with the crowbar. The office is as empty as everything else in the building, with two monitors but no computer and a plastic potted plant, but the desk does have a nameplate that reads Ramona Walz, as well as some paperwork in the name of Walz Accounting.

### **Murder Basement 2/??? (Now 100% More Secret)**

Having seen nothing useful on any of the other floors, the party returns to the ground floor. Under a desk in the break room, Nyx finds a hatch in the floor. She texts Colby that they're going to the "secret murder basement", and he tells them not to die there. The stairs down from the hatch lead to a room full of shelves containing sundry office supplies, as well as a doorway to a room containing an elevator. The elevator has 5 labeled basement levels, one unlabeled button, and a red button.

The first basement level is a meeting room, with rows of whiteboards mounted on long tables, as well as a projector. The second basement floor is a combination lounge and kitchen, with a ping-pong table and several couches. A green windbreaker jacket is laid over one of the couches, with nothing particularly interesting in the pockets. A pile of boxes under the ping-pong table contain several cases of guns, and Kuno takes one of the guns. On the third basement level there is a row of tables, along with some filing cabinets and the machinery used to fill pill capsules. The filing cabinets are full of prescription bottles of the blood drugs, and Nyx takes a handful of bottles. The fourth basement level is a hallway loop, with heavy doors leading to empty padded cells. One of the cell doors is open, revealing a room covered in claw marks, with a few splashes of a dried dark liquid. Kuno cuts out some of the stained fabric, for later analysis. The fifth and final labeled basement level contains rows of metal chairs, each one with a hooded person hooked to an I.V. and being drained of blood. There is a small medical workstation in the corner. Having explored all the labeled levels, the party presses the unlabeled button.

### **Don't Minecraft at Night**

Meanwhile, Colby has been outside, playing Minecraft: Pocket Edition on his phone. He is confronted by two thugs who ask for his wallet--and aren't asking nicely. Colby still hasn't learned how to use a gun, so the confrontation doesn't go well, until Nate (who was walking by) hits one of the thugs over the head with a crowbar and slugs the other in the jaw, taking him out handily. He doesn't immediately recognize Colby, because it's been a very long day, but after Colby introduces himself again and is remembered Nate cites his M.D. and invites Colby back to his apartment nearby to patch him up. Colby accepts the offer, and gets patched up, as well as hearing Nate had a tragedy in the family that he's trying to get back on his feet after. Nate says Colby can visit or call if he ever needs more help, and Colby says he'll keep that in mind, before heading back to keep watch.

### **Putting the Murder in Murder Basement**

The unlabeled button leads to a level under the fifth one, with the elevator door opening to reveal a hallway with the lights on and a set of double swinging doors on each side. Through the left set of doors there is a room designed to dispose of bodies, with a concrete slab table in the middle of the room as well as shelves containing various sizes of bone saws and at least one chainsaw, a few covered vats, some bottles of bleach, and a meat grinder. The room on the right has the lights on, and from a brief glimpse through the doors it looks to be a med bay.

The party doesn't get a good look at the room on the right, because a woman in a lab coat pokes her head out, and then keeps the party in the hallway. Kuno tries to call the elevator, but it doesn't respond, and thus is on a different floor. The scientist stalls, and as soon as the elevator opens to reveal six men in paramilitary gear with guns she ducks back into her lab. The doors on both sides of the hallway lock, and one of the armed men starts giving orders. He tells the party to put their hands up and drop their weapons, which they comply with, and then to kneel and face the wall. The party recognizes that as an execution order, and they grab their weapons from where they had fallen and start trying to fight their way out. Sam goes after the one that had been giving orders. After the fight has dragged on long enough, the armed men reveal themselves as werewolves one at a time, the leader throwing Sam across the room in the process. Asa and his fire magic prove useful against the werewolves, and he takes two of them out.

On the outside of the building, Colby returns and sees a vehicle on the street outside, designed to carry people and with two people in the cab. He heads into the building after getting no reply to his texts, and finds the basement elevator. He heads to the fifth basement level, and while there hears a gunshot from below, and makes it to the unmarked level with the rest of the party. Colby manages to shoot one of the wolves twice, and the party isn't as outnumbered as before, but overall the fight isn't going well. Kuno, close to death, takes a nasty swipe that leaves his left arm out of commission, and Nyx starts dragging him to the elevator while Sam faces down the lead werewolf and Asa is not looking very well-off.

## Quotes

**Abby:** "We haven't murdered any people on purpose yet!" | **Kellen:** "That's you and Asa's whole deal!"

**James:** "We haven't murdered anyone, unless you count all the people we've murdered."

**Kellen:** "Oops! Our lookout got distracted by getting mugged."

**Abby:** "This is what I get for having the audacity to think about doing things."

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