Thursday morning, Milton detects the beginning of an exquisite pain as he drives to work, and sneaks into Mallory's where he waits undetected in a back corner. Miles comes down without noticing and receives a phone call just as he's getting coffee. It's Roger DeRada... Great-Aunt Matilda has died, and Soraya apparently didn't take it too well. She's been arrested. Roger doesn't know any more, he's going to the police station to find out what's up.
Miles then notices Milton and discusses things with him a bit. They note that Hell's phone number was also in New Jersey, the same exchange that Soraya was staying in. Miles calls the police station and after being on hold for too long gets a sympathetic (yet gruff) sergeant who tells him that Soraya was arrested for disturbing the peace, high-speed chase, and assaulting an officer. This sounds pretty plausible, actually. However, the FBI turned up and took her this morning: something about terrorism. The Sergeant gives Miles the name and badge number of the agent: Seymour Smitts. Milton does a little hacking and comes up with no such agent at the FBI. The badge number gives instructions to call DoD KOT department as before.
Magda also receives a phone call from the DeRada family and lets Bill know what's going on. This is followed by a flurry of phone communication between Miles, Magda, Milton, Desiree, Sir Ten, Sir Michael... almost everyone we know is consulted about this apparent MiB problem. Well, maybe not everyone. The plan for a while is for Bill and a mortal lawyer to go pry Soraya out of the clutches of the KOT, thus not exposing any more fae to danger, but as Miles is about to explain this to Bill, he instead says:
One alone will bring back half a wife.
Only all for one can hope to save her life.
After quickly hanging up with Bill, Miles lets everyone know that they probably all need to go down to have a hope of getting Soraya out in a non-mundane form. Performing some elegant mirror scrying, Miles determines that our heroes and Sir Ten need to go to the base. "Right, I'll pack my being kidnapped clothes" says Desiree. Miles also determines that Bill shouldn't come along (at least to the base) as he will ruin everything.
The next morning, everyone flies down to New Jersey. Milton, Desiree, and Sir Ten stay at a creepy bed and breakfast called Dark Pines Lodge. Miles and Magda and Bill stay with Roger DeRada. Miles feeds a line to Bill about the lawyer not being available until the next day, and thus Bill doesn't do anything yet... leaving our heroes free to sneak off to a bar where they all rejoin and plan. Miles and Magda will go in the front, taking Smitts up on an offer to visit Soraya. The other three will sneak in over the fence - Milton has rustled up maps to help. The keen observer will detect that these excellent plans for getting in aren't actually coupled with plans for getting out...
Miles and Magda, going in the normal way, are almost lulled into complacency, despite the large new buildings on the base, the huge metal-detector-like portal they pass through, and the sign they pass labeling one room "xenobiology lab"... upon sitting down in a conference room to meet with Soraya, they are ambushed and taken to a lab room. As they pass through the doorway, Miles slams the door while Magda breaks the arms of one guard and slams the other into some pointy lab equipment. They overturn a heavy lab table and Miles forces the soldiers out in the hallway to treat them with caution by occaisionally spraying some bullets in their direction. They can see Soraya strapped to a table through the window in a heavy metal door... there's some sort of bizzare machine pointed at her.
Meanwhile, the three sneaky people bypass the fence with some opening magic and disable a guard who notices them (Sir Ten uses Chackalshek's power of speed to get the jump on him). When they get to the main building Milton can hear gunfire inside. Milton and Desiree attempt to penetrate the building while Sir Ten runs about at warp speed keeping the outside guards busy. "They're coming out of the woods! They're coming out of the god-damned woods!" yells a soldier. Milton and Desiree discover that the windows are sealed armorglass, and start to make their way around to the lobby.
Inside, Magda has summoned up her troll fortitude to go into the room where Soraya is... the whole thing feels like cold iron, and it is excruciating. Miles keeps up suppressive fire on the doorway, and further lays a ban that no one who has not walked on the Harvard Bridge will pass through that door. Out in the hallway, soldiers are yelling about aliens having taken over the lab. Smitts makes it through the door and hides behind a heavy piece of lab equipment... apparently he went to Harvard.
Meanwhile, Milton and Desiree go through the lobby by blinding one guard by magic and shooting the other in a very ordinary fashion. They get to the hallway and see a pile of soldiers who aren't really expecting them, just as inside Magda rolls into the thing Smitts is hiding behind and slams it into the wall with troll strength. He's toast. Miles also leaps up and gets himself into a perfect position to be shot, but luckily by then Milton has cleared the hallway, routing the soldiers with an unexpected attack from the rear. Sir Ten catches up, and the three from outside go into the lab. Soon after the soldiers in the hallway reemerge and pin our heroes in the lab once again. It is at this point that we most notice the lack of a getting out plan.
Sir Ten tries to open a gate but the proximity of so much cold iron, or whatever it is, causes him to fail and he is almost undone by the effort. Madga contemplates ripping up the floor... Soraya emerges with the doorknob and makes a door just as two grenades come rolling in. Everyone dives for the door, including Miles carrying the body of Smitts for some unknown reason... Miles is the last through but Soraya, and she tells him that the door always opens to somewhere more perilous than the place left... unless someone is willing to stay behind and stand the danger. "I love you Miles..." she pushes him through the door and closes it. Everyone emerges in Mallory's, and realizes that the rescue mission has failed. Magda and Miles are gated back to New Jersey so that Bill won't realize what happened.
To sum up the aftermath, Bill and a lawyer try to sort things out the next day, but become convinced that terrorists arrived and broke Soraya out, leaving little doubt of her guilt. Smitt's body is thrown into the dreaming after being stripped of useful IDs and such. Miles believes that Soraya must have survived the grenades... that is her way, isn't it?
Player Notes:
"He had a chance to save his wife or a dead body, and he picked the dead body?" (Maggie didn't actually say this, but she thought it really loudly.) -MIN
Er... Miles picked up the body long before Soraya, who could easily
walk through the door herself, decided to betray the team by
sacrificing her life to save them. The moment she started leaning in
that direction, Miles tried to grab her instead but was thwarted by
destiny and got pushed through the door with the body. And a pox on
anyone who says different. -MJP