Learned a few neat things about elevators today. With Jewish prohibitions against operating machinery on the sabbath, some elevators in centers of large Jewish population have sabbath modes, which just go up and down stopping at every floor so you can use the elevator without having to press any buttons for it. Pretty sneaky, sis.
Still haven't figured out exactly how the elevator stuff is going to go, but I've made a lot of progress. Probably would have made even more if I hadn't screwed off as much as I did, but we've still got a couple thousand words in today, and every little bit counts. The goal is three thousand, but two out of three ain't bad.
number 10
Moone, not forgetting his position, simply stepped backwards, into the sigil-caused bubble of looped glamour. From the outside, it would simply look like he'd vanished, the two guards' stations at the desk here empty, with the Necronomicon safely in its [crystal case? something with magical connotations.]
"Alright, don't panic; he didn't teleport away, he just went invisible," said one guard.
"The suit can do that?"
"The suit can do that."
The suit can do that? wondered Moone. He looked down at the controls. On his way over here he had explored some of the mothman suit's high-tech functions, but apparently hadn't scratched deeply enough.
The heavy signaled to the other. They weren't bothering to secure the perimeter of the last place Moone had been seen, which made sense because with wings he'd just be able to fly out. What were they doing? Obviously signaling to bring in some kind of invisibility visor, maybe heat-based or sonar-based or even magical, aura detecting or something. With that probably being unpacked and set up even as Moone stood there, it meant that he would need to work quickly.
The suit was magico-technological, technology shrunk down via magical means to fit, the different gravity now allowing human flight because it's the same amount of force as 30-foot wingspan, shrunken down to five. And the way to get the suit entirely invisible, was that magic or technology? Examining the wrist panels and rows of buttons, the mothman suit indeed seemed to have special disguise modes allowing covert activity. Largely glamour-based, the magic mode that allowed things to disguise their true natures.
Moone flicked through the layers of glamour, noting each function- invisibility of the suit but not its host, invisibility of just the wings, total invisibility of suit and host, camouflage but not invisibility, disguise as human, disguise as animal, disguise as bug-eyed alien. He went full invisible, and stepped out of the bubble of glamour that itself was set up around the NOC list's nook, stepping around the security guards who were on alert, but down.
Moone had a vague understanding of where he needed to go, a vague understanding of the layout of the building, but it was enough to go off of. The exterior doors would be locked down, so he treaded his way inward, softly but not really caring about the sounds of footfall in the loud frenzy of activity around him.
The emergency protocols were snapping into place- soft targets getting escorted away, as if Moone presented a danger to them. Hard targets rallying into place to fight Moone. MacBeth was among the soft targets, receiving special escort as he was swept away to debriefing.
Two men arrived, joining the other security guards with a heavy-duty looking cratelike object slung between their shoulders like the Ark of the Covenant. They set the wide flattish object down onto a tripod, clanking it into place, and turned the machine on. The security cameras had some aura-reading power themselves, of course, but this technological-based paranormal scanner was very heavy-duty, and it being busted out here was serious business. It was an aura-scan, electromagnetic and able to detect the presence of even ghosts, and beings in adjacent realities. And it was between Moone and the stairwell he'd meant to get to.
He needed to go upstairs. The plan itself was always easy to come up with; execution of the plan was a different matter, always involving subplans and sub-subplans which typically got wrenches thrown into the workings of, causing Moone the need to reformulate things. This was a very big wrench.
The men swept the aura-scan around the room like a large spotlight, cutting through glamour and reading into the true nature of things. Moone backed against a wall, but the sweep stopped short of pointing at him. They had noticed the pocket glamour dimension around the Necronomicon display, the bodies lying in blood and the empty display case. A few of the men broke off to check it out, and Moone took this as his opportunity to make his way past the scanner- the safest place to make his way underneath the beam was right at the tripod where the beam was being generated, right where the squad was gathered around.
Moone backed away, opened the suit's wings, and lifted himself up off the floor with one powerful beat of the wings. He pulled into a dive, now; swooping low in the mothman suit, along the floor, his wings spread out, diving under the aura-scanning beam... Threading the limbo needle, making ripples and eddies of air, especially with the wing-generated air pressure so close to the ground (the amount of lift required not having much space to disperse in,) but there was a lot of chaos going on; no loose papers to flutter away, and the guards wouldn't feel any wind through their heavy duty slacks. He finished the swoop skidding sliding along the ground on his knees, spinning around mid-slide by spreading one leg outward, so that he could look back to see if the effects of his maneuver had been noticed. They had not, apparently; eyes were too turned toward the contingent reporting on the casualties.
They now thought that he had dispatched two security personnel. And also that he was in possession of the NOC list.
Invisible and working quickly, Moone stalked his way up the stairs, going up to the mezzanine floor. Turning at the landing, Moone saw almost too late that there, pointing straight down the stairwell with no blind spots, was a second aura-scanning unit set up at the top of the staircase. Moone cast his eyes about all around him, stepped back a bit. He had wings, and the second floor was a mezzanine level, but to fly back out required going back into the room where the first aurascan swept the area like the eye of sauron. The stairwell was directly adjacent to an elevator shaft, locked down in the emergency, and he'd have to maneuver around that if he wanted to keep going in the same direction... Maybe fly to the opposite side of the mezzanine, and work his way back behind the second floor's aura scanner from there? Great idea, run with that one.
There was the crack of a gunshot, and Moone realized he was being shot at by agents on the stairwell below him. The first floor's aura scan had caught him on the platform, apparently, and Moone was now being flanked. He jumped onto the railing overlooking the lobby area below, spread his wings, and jumped.
Bullets slammed into the suit; the flight controller jammed but he could still glide the rest of the way down to the lobby floor, trajectories zinging around him. Moone ducked away again, hiding behind a pillar as the security agents formed an offensive formation around him, closing in.
The suit sparked. Moone hid the fact that his wings were now damaged-- if he could successfully make his way to an upper floor, they would think he'd try to escape by making his way to the perimeter wall and jumping out a window.
Moone did a damage assessment. The wings were busted for the purposes of serving as anything other than a glider, and the invisibility function had been damaged irreparably, but he wouldn't have used it anyway. Especially with the aura-scan; the most conspicuous thing would have been an invisible flying moth shape. Moone decided the best way to hide would be in plain sight; he flicked to the disguise of a random civilian to prove that it would work, before shutting the glamour off entirely. Externally Moone's aura would still read as Unwin's, and Moone would have to hope that that gave him enough time before anyone noticed the invisible wing shapes or realized that Unwin was the Mothman and the Mothman was actually Moone. But for right now, he hid the extent of the suit's abilities.
Using the same low-swooping maneuver he had used to limbo his way under the aurascan, he peeled out from behind the pillar and swept at the legs of the agents; he didn't need true flight to perform this maneuver, but he still needed them to think he could fly, and maybe not bother with the aura scanner anymore.
Elevators. He needed the elevators to get working again. It was a judgement call, but he believed he could trust her on this one at least...
He needed to get to Lovecraft. [she had at one point in flashback said in passing something about control, possibly skeleton key, over elevators, which Moone wasn't sure he believed.] She would be one of the soft targets, somewhere on this floor if MacBeth's location they'd escorted him to was anywhere like where they were holding the others...
number 11
Swooping along the ground, wings broken but still able to flutter, and with a goateed security agent tangled up in the equipment from his swoop-under acting as a human shield, Moone pulled up to the aura-scanner and punched in. It had a wide flat VGA TN matrix LCD touchscreen interface, which Moone worked with one hand, his right hand at work and his left hand smooshing his hostage in the face with the suit's powerful fingers. In theory, the aura-scanner should have been able to pick up the bonds between twinned psychics; all he need do to find Lovecraft would be to locate the bond between her and Gef and follow it to the larger body of the two. He reset the scanner to find bond pair frequencies, discovered Lovecraft's location on that very floor, and rocketed out of there before the hostage crisis negotiator could even start addressing Moone, leaving the hapless security guard behind, spinning tipsily at his fortunate survival of the encounter.
The building had managed to call in heavier security at this point; Moone's window was closing rapidly, but he hoped to get the security to work against itself. In a blindspot away from the security, he shifted his glamour mode to the disguise of a random office worker, where he would be sure to get escorted to the rest of the soft targets.
They found him, and escorted him to the garishly lit office room where the soft targets were, Moone making sure that no one touched his back where his wings were invisibly stowed; everyone was sitting on the floor, and knowing Lovecraft's position, Moone shimmied his way over to her.
He found Lovecraft, and shifted the visor to invisible, to reflect his own face as he locked eyes with her; to the outside world, it looked like a generic office worker had suddenly had his face swapped with Moone's.
Lovecraft seemed alarmed, and Moone tried to tell her the truth. She was no Cloud, true, but she was a woman after Moone's own heart.
He tried to make it brief:
"Gef thought it was me. I thought it was Gef. But it was MacBeth, and now he's got the NOC list."
[also gets her to give him key which was real]
Lovecraft pursed her lips. Guards burst around the corner behind him, resuming the chase. "Remember that!" Moone shouted behind him, taking off at a sprint once more.
Moone ran towards the elevators. It was give-and-take, gaining ground and losing it, against these countermeasures, but Moone was almost in the endgame now. Through the elevator doors; agents probably scrabbling on floors above and surrounding the cab on this floor, Moone leaped up and squoze through the service hatch up top, swung through the hoistway and went down the empty shaft to the pit where the motor was housed.
The suit had been damaged in the attack, but... Moone tossed himself down the elevator shaft, and plummeted down the [number] stories to the bottom of the shaft. The wings of the moth suit unfurled, slowing his descent, and Moone landed roughly, yet safely, amidst the [coil and mechanisms and stuff.] Fluttering the moth wings as rapidly as possible, the remains of the wings were shredded all the way with the effort, but it was enough to get him up to the basement level door, which Moone also pried apart. Moone ducked into the parking garage.
Moone knew that at that moment, they wouldn't be pursuing him in there, but already trying to get a step ahead of him and place up roadblocks around the building.
That's exactly what Moone was counting on.
Having the parking position memorized from the keyfob, Moone found the exact spot in the parking garage: Jeremy the SUV. Opening the door sounded the car alarm, but it wasn't as though they didn't already know he was down here. Moone found he could sit comfortably in the seat, now the wings of the mothman suit had been completely shredded. Moone started up the car.
Then, instead of driving toward the exit ramp, he drove inward, toward the building. ...
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