In media res - INCURSION (All players in Team Bravo)

[Dave Syrinx]

Hale responds in the comm, "Should be enough to get inside the mall, the stairwell should do." She puts the scanner away and gets the MP5 ready and approaches the emergency doors. Crawford
covers the doors while Hale prepares to open the doors. Using the stairs seems to be the wise option when dealing with an automated system set to kill any threats.

Crawford checks her watch. It had read 120 when they all touched down, now it flickers and then its 119.

Outside the climate bunker, Collins produces a syringe from the medical bag for a sample of the civilian´s blood for analysis.

[Dave Syrinx]

"Good job, Weiss. He seems mobile enough - he´ll have to follow us. We can´t leave him up here. We don´t want anyone compromising our way out. That is if he shows clean. If not put one in his head. Weiss, as you tagged him, he´s your job to care for. And the cooms are out, remember?" Weiss tries to reach the heli, but the comms seems out. The comms of the suits still work, though.

Barry grunts as he´s cuffed and braces himself at the probing needle when the syringe extracts a sample of his blood.

Collins examines the sample and reports, "No viruses and squeaky clean, this one!"

Inside the climate bunker, Larsen hacks the main frame of the mall. Larsen does not need too long to access the video surveillance system. He installs a program which lets him download directly and monitor images from the security cameras in public areas on the second and first floor of the mall, in real time to his laptop, using the wifi in the building. All they show now is images of people lying all over the place. Apparently asleep or dead.

"Bravo! Meet at the entrance of the emergency stairs, with Crawford and Hale. Larsen! Do you have these images? I want to see NOW. Hale damn, do you have the position of the targets or not?"
Nohman barks from the roof.

"Negative, sir" Hale lets out as he opens the emergency doors. He starts in, covering the inside with the flash mounted on his rifle. The beam jumps from left to right, up and then downwards.

Crawford watches as Hale disappears through the doors. The area is dimly lit by emergency lighting, shadows that fill up the stairs. According to building plans, the next landing gives access to the second floor of the mall.

C.L. waits by the door, waiting for Larsen to get back up on the roof.

[shanaz]

Crawford pulls out her MP5-K for its flashlight and turns it on towards the stairwell to watch over Hale. "Don't go too far" she says cautiously, trying to keep eye on her and the rest of the team. She stands against the door keeping it open, waiting for Hale's results and the plan of action that will proceed after them.

[Mr. Handy]

"Here they are, Sergeant," says Larsen, running over to Nohman with his laptop. The guy was a lot more abrasive than Sergeant Ferrer. If this was how he acted normally, he'd hate to see how angry he got if someone screwed up.

[Dadde2819]

Weiss throught the Comm "Sir,my suggestion is to lock this guy somewhere on the roof.We can use the cuffs to lock him with a pipe and prevent him from moving.If we'll need a fast extraction ,a panicked civilian can become a big problem,sir".

[Dave Syrinx]

"Your baby, your call, Weiss!" Nohman retorts, attention on Larsen´s report and the laptop information. Weiss soon finds a suitable pipe close by the climate hub. Without any hassle he cuffs the maintenance guy to the pipe.

Nohman is ready taking in the scene on the laptop and offers, "Looks good. They are all down. Lets get that bomb planted! C.L. follow the others down the stairs! We´ll go in through the sealed off section, avoiding the fallen bodies in the main area. When we´ve reached the second floor, we should have a good ball on where the targets are."

Collins hesitates as he sees the civilian being cuffed, but follows the ladies down the stairs.

Houngan:

Spoiler:

I guess the liberation was short... Head back to the old thread, please. Locked up again...

Dadde:

Spoiler:

Anything else before heading down the stairs?

[Samuraiante]

Hale takes a step by step crawling walk down the steps with the MP5 firm against her shoulder as she tries to make out where she is going with the flashlight. While doing this Hale is checking her scanner for the targets

[Dave Syrinx]

Both Hale and Crawford begin to ask themselves whether this man is able to lead the team, but also know that according to the chain of command, they are obliged to obey.

Hale who sweeps her gun down the emergency stairs, sees something. On the landing below, next to the wall, wrapped in shadows, a body sits hunched and prone on the stairs. Someone dressed in what looks like a blue work suit, who remains perfectly still.

Hale´s scanner shows a strong signal, now, inside the stairwell. On the screen three-dimensional maps are loaded from the shopping mall and, bingo! First, she can see her own position as a blue icon. Then a second after the icons appear representing the objectives in red-orange color.
First Dr. Luisa Sanchez, whose icon appears in the private area of the first floor in a room you identify as the point of entry to the hive from the mall. It seems that the doctor has not moved much.
As for Dr. Carl Smith, his icon puts him somewhere in the first basement (parking area), but Hale can not fix the signal.

Yet the vital signs of both are something disconcerting. Those of Dr. Sanchez are very weak, as if he were in a coma, and Dr. Smith´s are completely out of control, as if he´s subjected to intense stress or exercise, or rather, as if he had had an overdose of amphetamines.

Crawford spots the worker down the stairs when Hale stops to check the scanner. Larsen, C.L. and Weiss remain topside with Nohman. Collins stop at the top of the stairs and shines his flashlight down towards the landing. "We have a body down here, sir!"

[Mr. Handy]

Larsen isn't surrpised to hear that there's a body on the stairs. It makes sense that someone would try to get to the roof to escape from the mall when the Red Queen started exterminating people, and it also makes sense that whoever it was didn't make it.

[shanaz]

Crawford begins to wonder what she has gotten herself into. Ferrer has always been here for the team, guiding us. He would know exactly what to do now. "Sir, what's the plan?" she says over the comms.

[Dadde2819]

Closing the coloumn ,Weiss try to spot the body behind his teamates,but his attention is focalized on covering the back of the team.

[Dave Syrinx]

"We´ll get down as fast as possible and plant the bomb. Then we get out. If and when we get a beacon on the targets we´ll deal with them there and then. Now move it!" Nohman replies over the comms. He continues after Hale and Crawford. Collins hurries after the lead trio to check if the subject is alive. Larsen and C.L. are right in front of Weiss, who shuts the door to the roof and watches the rear.

"Hey! You!" Nohman yells, using the PA of the comms. "Make sure he´s not faking it, someone shoot him in the leg." Nohman whispers over the comms. To everyone else the man looks dead, very dead. It is a white man, about forty years or more, of slim build, thin face and straight blond hair.His blue eyes are open, staring into infinity, and his mouth is stained with vomits, which has spread all over the front of his overalls. His body is frozen in an almost fetal position, his face is fixed in a grimace of agony.



"Fuck, no." Collins says and moves between the team members and the immobile man on the landing. He kneels behind the man in blue overall and shakes his leg to see if there´s any response. There´s a name tag reading Gerald Jenkins. A pack of cigarettes are lying next to the body. He´s seen people in extreme environments, apparently dead, but yet alive. That and the fact that a shot fired in here would certainly alert the Red Queen of their whereabouts.
Collins produces a syringe and makes a cursory examination of the body. No signs of trauma to the head of any other part of the body, visible form the current angle. He draws blood from Jenkin´s lower right arm. "No need for a leg-shot, guys. This one´s down. Checking for viruses and temp. Will take a few seconds."

Nohman mutters and holsters his .50 which he had half way readied. Behind the mask he´s sweating profusely.

Down the stairs a bit further is another hallway which ends in a set of double doors leading to the second floor. The stairs continue down.

"Hale, Crawford! Check that the entrance below is secured!" Nohman barks at the two women next to him.

Collins places the sample in the medical scanner to verify what happened to the poor janitor. Most likely he suffered a seizure of some kind...

The scanner confirms the guess. According to the scanner it´s a neurotoxin, inhaled by this poor soul and who knows how many more people in this mall. The data continue to fill the screen of the scanner: in particular it is a neurotoxin type NT-056 produced by the division of biological weapons of Umbrella Corporation. It´s a lethal agent when released into the environment, but its half-life in the atmosphere is less than an hour.

And there's more, the scanner is processing data and blood cell samples from the corpse, but still not seeing any results.

It´s rare the scan takes this long...

"Should have a full report soon... So far it says the toxin released here is gone since three hours. But the scan is still running... Yet, it´s an NT-056 agent used here. Quite bad, I´d say." Collins stands up and waits for the scanner to leave a final result.

Walking down towards the landing, Larsen sees the alert light of his laptop signal. Something is happening in the mall, somewhere...

Weiss sees how the team leader is clearly off balance.

[Mr. Handy]

"I'm getting something here," says Larsen, checking the surveillance feeds to see what's going on. "Some kind of activity in the mall. I'm trying to pinpoint it now."

[Dave Syrinx]

Laptop data:

Spoiler:

On his laptop, Larsen runs the program he has plugged into the central system, and immediately, the screen splits into four, to show random images from three security cameras of the commercial property on the second floor. The last screen shows the parking garage on sub-level one in black and white. There, a Lamborghini races up a ramp on to the street outside the mall. Backing the frames up, he can see that a man in a grey suit and a gas mask is jacking the car and boosts it after having attempted to leave the garage on foot. He was stopped in his track as he took one step up the ramp. Then he went car-jacking. This screen stops moving as the car has left the garage.

The other three images are also in black and white, without sound and don´t have the option to zoom (in Larsen´s eyes a video surveillance system totally outdated and obsolete) but those images are still operating, panning left and right.
The second floor of the mall is a wasteland of life. Bodies are scattered about without rhyme or reason, tens, hundreds, all the people who had come to the mall on Friday night, are scattered everywhere on the floor. Larsen doesn´t see anyone moving, only stillness, as if they had remained static images, but no. It´s real and they are live from the other side of the emergency doors, down the stairs from the landing.

Larsen holds up and gets showed a bit by C.L. who continues down to the landing, covering the next bit of stairs.

Collins look up at Larsen and waits for a recap. The viral scanner is still processing the sample.

[Mr. Handy]

"A guy in a gray suit and gas mask just stole a car from the garage and escaped," says Larsen, showing the others the footage on the laptop. "It's a Lamborghini of all things. Pretty sweet ride there. That's a loose end that will need tying up. I wonder if this guy is Smith. Does anyone know if he had the skills to hotwire a car? There are also more bodies on the other side of those emergency doors."

[Dave Syrinx]

"OK! We´ll head for the room on the first floor to check on Dr Sanchez. And seal the entrance to the hive. Then we go down to the parking area and plant the bomb. I have no idea who that was bolting outside." Nohman says and upholsters his .50 again and gets it out, pointing it to the ground, away from anyone close by.

Collins keeps his head level as he takes a step away from the team leader and declares the viral scanner´s result. "Inconclusive? How can it be inconclusive? This scanner is capable of detecting any type of disease, toxic pathogens and viruses that exists, and it does not know what has happened to this man. Apparently, the body does not follow the typical pattern of rigor mortis of newly dead. The rate of blood clotting is abnormal, it´s a process of cell mitosis end, the body's electrical load is increasing rather than decreasing... and finally, it has detected a virus with a protein strain labeled as "unknown" ... We know for a fact that the neurotoxin released here was NT-056, but the effects should not be this!" He points at the scanner and waves it at the corpse of the dead janitor.

From outside, muffled by the stairwell construction, heavy automatic fire can be heard. Four distinctive bursts of ten rounds each at least.

[Mr. Handy]

"That's probably perimeter security shooting at the Lamborghini," says Larsen. He then responds to Collins. "Perhaps it's this unknown virus that caused the Red Queen to initiate the lockdown in the first place? That would mean it spread to the mall when the directors breached containment and left the Hive. The Queen herself released the NT-056."

[Iggy_Pop]

C.L. remains with Hale and Crawford, .50 pistol in hand and at the ready after hearing the gunfire.

"If the NT-056 was released then shouldn't everyone be dead? Larson's probably right, rookies trying to get a kick out of shooting a beautiful car." joked C.L.

[shanaz]

Crawford takes a deep breath and holds her gun firmly, pointing the light over the area. "Blowing up a shopping mall. How hard could it be?" She turns her head toward C.L. "ready?"

[Iggy_Pop]

C.L. returned a look of amusement, stating with a distinct smirk "For a rookie like you, pretty hard, for me though? A walk in the park."