Liam nodded. He hadn’t understood most of what had just been said. Making his way out to the garage he reclaimed his uniform from the night before and put it on.

“Does this still pass muster?” He asked, turning back towards the two women with his arms spread wide.

Robyn paused a moment. "Well, it's less conspicuous than a burned up coat, but let's not put it to scrutiny. I think I'm going to fit you both with some spritzers."

She opened a kitchen drawer, and tossed Liam what appeared to be a blue plastic dollar store spray bottle full of clear brown liquid. Because that's exactly what it was. "Any thralls give you trouble, just spray them in the face with that. Might disorient a Tremere or Sabbat, too. It'll sever their bond to the collective."

“What, like a cat?” Liam asked, amused. He looked the bottle over and then tucked it into his coat. “What happens to them when the bond breaks? Do they remember everything at once?”

He headed for the car.

"They've always known," Robyn said. "They've just been prevented from processing or reacting to it. It can be a lot to handle at once. Some go quiet, some go berserk. But they're not actively ratting you out or trying to kill you, so it's an improvement."

Pockets grabbed a bottle herself, checked her battery, and grabbed a pair of exquisite twin katars and diametrically disgusting coach gun from the inside of her road case. Thinking better of it, she also grabbed a roll of duct tape, and applied another wrap around the barrels while she rode in the back seat.

For all her reckless speed, Robyn was an excellent driver. She was quiet as they rolled toward Riverhead.

"Pockets, you better go invisible," she said as she spied the situation in the road ahead. Without looking up, Pockets was gone.

"Fuck me," her disembodied voice said from the back of the car.

The police were out in force. Worse, Liam could see men with armbands prowling around the street corners. Fortunately for them, they blended in. Roadblocks were in place at the entrance of town, but they were able to drive on through. They appeared to be combing the town.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:05, Tue 16 June 2020.

“Seems we made quite the impression last night,” Liam remarked as they were waved through the first blockade. Gone were any considerations towards visiting other sites of personal importance tonight. There was simply too much risk. All they needed was a generic big box store with a pet care aisle and a men’s apparel section.

"There's a logging road that bypasses Riverhead," Robyn remarked. "We'll take it from now on, at least 'til things die down."

There was the telltale ping of a phone recording from the backseat. "Tonight's our lucky night, boyos," Pockets said. "If they're here, they're not in Verdant Falls. I better tell Cockknuckles and Dicklock."

"You make a good point," Liam concurred. "We should head into the city. It'll be quieter there, and who knows when we'll get another opportunity like this."

Robyn relaxed visibly as they moved through the next checkpoint and out of Riverhead. Liam had taken this stretch of road too many times to count. He was comforted to see that the Holloway Home for Wayward Children was still in operation. It appeared the mental hospital had been renamed yet again, and was now the Mountain Road Wellness Facility.

"I wonder how the fugue affects people with mental illnesses," Pockets wondered aloud. "Turns out my blood bond was all that was keeping Mike together for so many years. Maybe... maybe some people are getting some peace from all this."

“I doubt it. They’re just screaming on the inside where no one can hear them,” Liam observed.

“Just like everyone else.”

And when the fugue broke and those voices were heard for the first time in the better part of a decade, the shout was going to carry around the world.

"We better swing near the waterworks," Robyn remarked as they came close to the city proper. "It was a fortress back in your day and they've fortified it since. But if we get a jerrycan of my special sauce into the main reservoir... Well, adios muchachos."

"If we want to speed that up," Pockets said. "Whenever the Camarilla needs to push a critical instruction to the mooks in the city, they flush the pipes. Takes about an hour, but the whole process is automated. Then they send out a mass text with a single instruction: Drink. Otherwise, it's gonna take a good week for the city to wake up, and it won't happen all at once."

"Lets see who's watching it tonight then," Liam concurred. "But we are coming home with dog food. I can't let the poor boy down three nights in a row."

"Perish the thought," Robyn said. They were driving past the suburbs now. Very little had changed since Liam's day. Vampires didn't care much for suburbia, and it had always served as little but a hunting ground.

"Safest place to get a meal," Pockets commented. "Just watch out for bloodwagons. They're harvesting all they can right now. Covid has them scared. Though I can't say I blame them."

“If that’s the case, anyone you find is likely to be running on empty as it is. How closely guarded are these blood wagons? And where do they take their cargo?”

"They take everything back to the Alhambra," Pockets said. "Or what they're calling the eyesore they built in its place. The bloodwagons are pretty well-armed. Grenade launchers, mounted 50 cals, and battle rifles for the kiddies. But the people behind the equipment are mostly green as fuck. Mostly. They usually don't even send the Redwatch out on patrol anymore. They can't replace century-old killing machines, and we've been pretty consistently chipping away at their numbers."

“Do we have any idea how many Gangrel are left in the Old Guard?” Liam asked. Without them, the Camarilla would lose its capacity to produce new scouts and police the skies.

"At least one," Pockets said with a shrug. "You'd need to ask a Cam insider for that. Scouts have pretty high turnover. Now they just train 'em enough to change into a bat or a bird, give 'em a cell phone and a flare gun, and call it a day. They're practically shovelheads."

Outside, cheap mass-produced houses gave way to expensive mass-produced houses. Eventually, those gave way to estates. They were entering Rosewood, once playground of the city's wealthiest citizens. It was also home to the city's Tremre Chantry.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:39, Wed 17 June 2020.

"The ones we dealt with last night certainly were," Liam said, recalling the horror struck expression on the young scout he had quite literally ripped to pieces the night prior.

"Marty would know," Liam added after a moment. "This is probably as quiet a night as the Lantern ever sees, don't you think? Did Jack have a backdoor to Marty?"

11:56, Today: Liam O'Farrell rolled 4 successes using 5d10 with the World of Darkness 3rd ed system with a target of 7 ((10,6,7,10,9)).

"I mean, the shipping entrance, sure," Robyn replied.

"I wouldn't visit him empty-handed, though," Pockets replied. "He's susceptible to bribes, but he's nobody's friend."

Robyn was travelling in a northern arc around the downtown core. VFU would be her next stop.

"That's a good point, and I most certainly didn't expect to be going into Verdant Falls tonight. We'll see if they're still crawling all over Riverhead tomorrow."

As the campus drew into sight Liam frowned. "What does the Camarilla do about out of town students? Thousands of kids must have come and gone in the past decade. They must have seen something."

Pockets winced. "Sleepers, mostly. Programmed to forget what they saw, talk up how good the university is, and encourage others to go. And to wait for a project to start up in their respective hometowns. I've maintained a database of infected students past and present, but up until now there was nothing we could do about 'em. Besides killing 'em, that is."

VFU's campus was officially closed, but the facilities appeared to be open. Or at the very least, had lights on. There were cars parked everywhere.

"When the lockdown started, this is where they started taking the folks they rounded up," Pockets continued. "They're trying to improve the Fugue to the point it'll resist COVID. I don't think they'll outpace a vaccine, but they kinda let their asses show to the High Council and they're smarting for it. Buzz has it that the Cam is starting to look for alternative solutions to the information crisis.

"Then we'll have to beat them to it," Liam replied. "They don't get a mulligan on this one. After what they've done in Verdant Falls they're going to have to learn how to live in the real world again alongside everyone else."

"How long do the effects last once they've been off the ground water for a while? Is it enduring?"
This message was last edited by the player at 18:49, Wed 17 June 2020.

"Indefinite," Pockets said. "They can't receive new instructions, but they follow their old ones. For all I know, they're instructed to pop by on vacation, or buy water from the bottling plant. But all the information I have on their programming is through the messages they send out."

They passed a troop truck parked my the medical sciences building. They were unloading a shipment of citizens destined for some nefarious purpose. They were lined up and glassy-eyed, like cows at the slaughterhouse. Liam spied four uniformed mooks and two kindred, one of whom was wearing an armband.

"I wish we knew how many people they've stolen," Robyn muttered.

"Since the lockdown, we do," Pockets replied. "They're publishing them as covid losses. Gives you an impression of how good their survival chances are."

Liam stared in stony silence reminded of similar scenes across Europe some eighty odd years ago. Kindred weren't the only monsters to be sure. Vitae amplified the darkness that already lurked in men's hearts. And the worst among men were destined to become the worst among kindred.

"That armband - that's only Redwatch, right? The old company? None of the new blood gets promoted into the ranks?"

"Oh, they can," Pockets said. "You gotta pass a rigorous physical and mental test, and you need to be the best of the worst. You also gotta speak fluent German, but you'd be surprised how many redneck white boys picked it up long before they were recruiting. Or, maybe you're not surprised."

"Goddamn undead Proud Boy motherfuckers," Robyn exclaimed, and slapped the steering wheel.

"They also employ specialists, but they wear yellow armbands and don't get the nifty lapel pin. They get pull in this town, just not as much. Some are collaborators, others are slaves. And they get shit on by the OGs, either way."
This message was last edited by the player at 00:34, Thu 18 June 2020.

Liam nodded, watching the glassy eyed kine file complacently into the science building. His stomach knotted and his fists clenched tight until his knuckles were white. "Who's in charge of the push here at the university?"

He could save them, of course. He could step out of the car and kill the two kindred supervisors. The kine would turn on him as their training dictated, and he would be forced to spray them. In an instant the spell would be broken. And then there would be bedlam. And the Camarilla would kill them anyway. Then they would round up another dozen specimens and ferry them into the laboratory under heavier guard.