By Any Other Name

Nicole Taylor

While the encounter with their contact in the Spy's Demise ended rather violently, they picked up some important intel. Combined with earlier surveillance and information gathered from contacts, the team pieced together how they could eliminate Sakura Takimura, despite the latter's penchant of coming back from the dead.

Turns out, like many high-level technocrats, Sakura cloned herself. Unlike most, she had several - spread over the world. To eliminate Sakura, they'd have to take out the clones - preferably without being noticed.

First though, they'd have to eliminate the source of the clones. As it turned out, that was easier than it might first appear - they were originally sourced through regular Technocratic requisitions. In fact, all they had to do was visit an old friend in London. And while a visit to a rather excitable Progenitor is never *safe*, the task turned out a welcome reprieve to the team - including a night out in the town.

The rest of the task would not be so easy or pretty, however. The team decided to take out the clone in Australia first - hoping that the remote location would prove an easy early target.

Initial reconnaissance picked up the likely location of the target, and it certainly fit - a coma ward in a hospital in Sydney, a perfect place to hide a clone. And indeed, followup scans showed a strong Correspondence link from a body in the ward to the likely location of Sakura.

The scans revealed something less expected as well - the body was walking around.

It didn't take long for the team to track down the individual on camera, and it turned out to be a nurse named Rose. Rather than an "empty" clone, Rose turned to be living a *mostly* normal life - although perhaps a rather dull one, likely due to her imposed role as essentially a body double. In fact, Rose's nature seemed quite different from Sakura's, dedicating her life to helping people. While simply killing her would accomplish their mission, the team felt that they could not do that to essentially an innocent party.

Instead, they set out to do some more investigation. Analysing the link to Sakura from a safe distance, they determined its likely function - at the moment of Sakura's death, the link would trigger and "overwrite" one of the clone's personality with her own - essentially killing the donor. While appalled, the team figured out they could turn this method to their advantage.

A master of Mind, Patricia devised a plan to construct a new, fabricated "mind" for Sakura to take over - one without its own body, and without a way out. The team - with ample expertise in various forms of Correspondence, could then "transfer" the link to this new target. That would free up Rose from the burden of the link - giving her her own destiny - and trap Sakura should she ever try to jump to this clone.

And so the team set out in the dead of night. Circumventing the mundane surveillance - Sakura seemed to have chosen security through obscurity for her clones' protection - the team entered Rose's apartment. What followed was a rather long in-field brain surgery by Patricia, with Salisbury performing the necessary Correspondence bypass. Nicole stood by to assist, as well as veil the existing Correspondence link long enough so the other side - Sakura - wouldn't notice anything on her end.

After a night-long surgery, the procedure turned out to be a success. Swiftly cleaning up after themselves, the team left Rose alone to greet the dawn - and for the first time in her life, with a destiny all her own.