Night 4
The Heist
The Heist
Tuesday, November 10th,
1992
Maya wakes up, darkness filling her vision. She had never
been in a place so utterly devoid of light, and could never have imagined
herself choosing to be in such place. But, she was alive and unharmed, and that
made the darkness something to welcome.
What wasn’t welcoming was the vague scratching sound coming
from somewhere close, accompanied by vague, half-heard mutterings. “He’s been
at it for a while now,” she hears Trent say, quietly. She shifted her head
towards the sound of his voice. “I woke up a bit ago, and he was already up.
Scratching at the door. Talking about how he hears their heartbeats. How they’re
calling to him.”
“That’s…not good,” Maya offers, lamely.
“Yeah, and check this out,” Trent said, and she could hear
the rustles of his moving. “Close your eyes, I’m gonna turn on the flashlight.”
The light momentarily seared Maya’s eyes, until they again adjusted. Ugh, how
come they got the enhanced sight. What kind of vampire needs a damn flashlight?
Trent aims the light at Daron, who was leaning with his face pressed again the
door, whispering quietly at it, while his fingers dig lightly into the wood.
And he looked horrible, his eyes almost completely sunken into his skull, his flesh
the color of pale, dead ash. His skin seems to have shriveled into nothing, and
could almost see each of his bones, straining to break through.
“Is he going to be ok?”
“It’s bad, Maya. I don’t think he’s going to last. Remember,
he hasn’t fed since Saturday, not like us. If he gets out, I don’t know what he’s
going to do. And if we stay in here…I don’t think I want to see what he’s like
tomorrow. Maybe it’s three days…maybe that’s the limit? Like, three days of
Christ being dead?”
“What? What are you talking about?” Maya asks, utterly
baffled by his train of though.
“How long we can last? Maybe it’s linked somehow with three
days. The Trinity? No, no, that doesn’t make any sense?”
“But it does with Easter?”
“Look, I don’t know, ok? I’m trying to figure this out!” He
yells, exasperated. The shouting takes Daron’s attention away from the door,
and his corpse eyes focuses on them. “The point is, I don’t think he’s going to
make it, we need to get him blood.”
In the light, Maya could see Trent's face, too. He was bad
off. Not as bad as Daron, maybe, but bad. Shit,
she thinks.
“Maybe” he says, his voice growing quiet as he looks at the
door. “Maybe we could share one. That way we only need to hurt one person.”
“No,” Maya says, firmly. “I get it, he’s hungry. You’re
hungry. Hell, I’m hungry. But we’re not killing, not anymore. We’re not
monsters. We still have our brains, we need to think our way out.”
“Blood” Daron says, in a harsh whisper. “All that matters,
is blood.”
Maya silences him, “Shut it, crazy. Ok, we need blood, and
we’re not killing anyone, right? So where can we get blood? Maybe…we go to the
hospital? I’m pretty damn sneaky, and you’re fast and Daron,” she says, looking
at the wreck her friend has become. “Well, Daron might need to wait with the
car.”
“Hospital?” Trent says skeptically. “Won’t there be, like,
cops and security and stuff?”
“You have a better idea?” She responds. He shakes his head, admitting defeat. “Ok,
get him up and let’s get out of here. “
Trent gets Daron to his feet, and looks at him, trying to
get him to focus. “Daron? Daron, buddy? Look pal, we’re going to go get some
blood, ok? But you gotta come with us? We need to be ready to go, ok?”
“Ok,” says Daron, his voice barely audible.
“Ok?”
“Yeah, I’ll be…ok,” Daron says, walking with the unsteady
gait of the drunk or the dying.
“Right,” says Trent, giving their haven a quick look over.
“Guess I’ll be driving.”
They sneak out, unnoticed by the neighbors, and pile into
Daron’s car, Trent and Maya up front, Daron laying in the back. Trent and Maya
debate which Hospital they should go to, or even where one is. Neither is from
Denver, so they stop at a payphone to look up where the nearest Hospital is.
While flipping through the Yellow Pages, Trent idly looks up “blood,” more out
of macabre curiosity that anything else. “Wait,” he says, looking at the
listings. “We might have another option.”
They decide a blood donation center will be a better target.
Not only will it be smaller, and thus easier to find the blood they need, but
many of them are closed at night—which means no staff and no security. Feeling
better about the new plan, they pick one on the opposite side of town from
where they’ve been staying. Looking over their meager supplies, they both
realize that they don’t exactly have the ideal tools for such a job.
They drive a bit out of their way to a home improvement
store, figuring that’s their best bet. The plan and activity helps them to push
their gnawing hunger deeper inside, as they finally feel some sense of control
and direction back in their lives. Trent heads in, while Maya keeps an eye on
Daron. He picks up a crowbar, wire cutters, and a few other odds and ends,
spending most of what little cash they have left. After they leave, they spend
the remainder to fill up Daron’s car. They have only a few dollars left between
them, but that’s a concern for later.
The one they choose was part of corporate park, practically
empty this time of night. Fortunately, the blood bank is on the outside of the
complex, facing a small group of trees with a small trail running through it.
On the opposite side of which was a thrift shop.
“You said you know how to pick a lock, right?” Maya asks.
Trent nods, having, maybe, slightly, overstated his abilities (Security 1). “Ok, here’s the
plan. I’ll go first, check the place out, make sure it’s empty. If there’s a
problem, I’ll come back. Wait, say, ten minutes. If I don’t come back and you
don’t hear anyone screaming you come over. Daron? Daron, honey? Daron, we need
you to stay with the car, ok? If anyone comes, just honk the horn, ok?” She
takes Daron’s vague grunt as an affirmation, and heads out across the sparse
trees.
Maya needs to make a Dexterity + Stealth roll to remain
unnoticed. I reduce the difficulty to 5, due to her ability to remain unseen so
long as she is still. With 3 successes, no one in the practically empty office park notices her. Is there anyone in the building? No. Is there anyone nearby?
Exceptional Yes, a police cruiser idles past. She is hidden by her Obfuscate, but Trent is not so blessed.
Trent is following behind Maya a few minutes later. He needs
to make a Stealth roll as well, but at a difficulty of 8, due to the presence
of the cop. 2 Successes—he sees a car driving through the parking lot, and
takes his time, waiting for it to pass, before he comes to the tree line.
Maya’s there, they whisper at each other, and then decide to go ahead with the
plan. The cop, they assume, is on a routine patrol, and probably won’t be back
for a while, if at all.
Is the building unusually secure? Unlikely. Yes. They do
have confidential information, after all, and don’t want to risk anyone messing
with the blood supply.
This is going to be tough for Trent, as I set the difficulty
to 10. 8 for the quality of the locks, and two more due to him using the wrong
tools. He fails, but he does get a good look at the security (5 success), and
notices the alarms. He heads back to Maya and reports what he saw, but he
thinks he might be able to disable the alarm. He tells her to wait while he
checks out the rest of the area.
As he creeps around the area, I roll Mythic to see if
anything happens—Altered Scene “PC Positive Dominate/Misfortune.” Well, what’s
bad for one is good for Trent, and he finds the junction box easily. Not
only that, but it looks like someone was working on this recently. If anything
goes wrong, they’ll probably assume that it’s just another short in the system.
His difficulty to bypass the alarms drops to 6. Intelligence + Repair: 3
successes.
Once back in the car with Daron, they tear into the packs,
depressed at how little the stolen blood satiates them. It’s still early, far too early to go back to
their haven. What do they next?
(Intolerance/Expectations) They fall into bickering, their ever-present
hunger urging them to say vicious and cruel things to each other, each blaming
the other for their current predicament. They consider robbing another blood
bank, but worry that they’ve already done too much to draw attention to
themselves. They drive idly for an hour or so, until they calm down and can
begin speaking again. Now what do they do?
(Develop/Rumor.) They need to figure
out what the hell is going on, especially with the investigation. Can they go
home? Is it safe? What exactly do the cops know?
They stay to the outskirts of the city and stop at a diner,
looking for some place to grab the news. There’s a couple of newspaper boxes
outside the restaurant, and they grab one of each of the local papers, but
decide to avoid entering the diner—they don’t eat, can’t afford to throw money
away looking normal, and could never explain Maya anyway. Sitting in the
parking lot, they flip through the papers, trying to sort things out.
On the plus side, they find out they’re probably only being
looked at for questioning. Their names haven’t been leaked to the paper, nor
their photos. They think, for a while at least, that they might be able to go
in and explain things. But, they also find out that Suzanne is alive, and that
alarms and terrifies them. FUCK, they had forgotten about her, and she witnessed everything. Another round of accusations and recriminations
follows. But…why aren’t they looking for them? They also find out that three men
were seen nearby the night of the fire, and the police are looking for them as
well. What do the players do?
(Refuse/Prison) It's too risky. Sure, they figure, the cops aren’t saying
they’re after them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not. And there’s too much to
explain—they don’t know what Suzanne told the cops, they don’t know what the
cops found, and they don’t know who these other guys are. What if the cops hold
them for questioning, into the day? What if they do even a basic physical
examination? None of them can stand up to that kind of scrutiny. No, they
decide, better to stay on the run.
One thing strikes Trent—Jacob Prestor. There’s hardly anything in the papers about
him. Sure, they acknowledge it was his house, and they blame him for a number
of things. But there’s no background. No relatives saying how nice he was, and
how it couldn’t have been him. No other relatives saying he always a bit odd.
Who the hell was this guy? What do they do next?
(Oppress/Randomness) They have a decent place to lie low, and they’re starting to
figure out what they are. No need to change things up now. The cops are looking
for them, but they’re not being actively hunted. They just need to stay away
from campus and their homes until they can figure everything out.
“Fuck this,” says Daron. “We should just leave, get in my
car, and go. Just get out of town, somewhere the cops aren’t looking for us,
somewhere safe.”
“No,” says Trent, cutting him off. “We need answers. Running
around blindly has made shit much worse for us. Besides, if there’s any hope of
undoing this,” he says, glancing at Maya, “the answer is here. And it starts
with us figuring out exactly who Jacob Prestor was.”
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