Episode 1: The Slaver

Prologue

After team leader Syd Norman's side-dealings sent his team to their destruction in Rio, Emily Bay — sole survivor aside from Norman himself — was called to a non-optional debrief with Alex Abel himself. Also present were Violet McIntyre, Eponymous, and a young woman in a gingham dress who looked like she from the Ozarks but was obviously a Plutomancer. And Syd, of course — handcuffed to a metal chair, Eponymous hovering nearby.

Abel carefully interrogated Emily, who answered with scrupulous precision. After studying a spread of bills as if they were tarot cards, the Plutomancer confirmed that the side-dealings had been Norman's alone. Abel then passed a file folder to Emily, explaining that Norman had sold the team to a greoup called The True Order of St. Germain. He explained that although she did not appear to have any complicity in these dealings, Emily now represented a security risk. Aware of Emily's abilities as an Ascending Avatar of the Merchant, Abel offered to buy back her B-level security clearance back to level C in exchange for not sharing Syd Norman's fate.

Meanwhile, Eponymous calmly punched Norman in the throat; after the sick cracking noise, Norman started rasping and turning purple, unable to breath. Abel continued to speak without missing a beat, and Emily carefully kept her eyes trained on him, giving him her full attention. Nevertheless, she could not agree to the deal without trying to negotiate something a bit better; she asked to keep her current salary level. Abel smiled, and offered instead to give her the leadership of a brand new cell.

They shook on it, and Emily suddenly found herself in the presence of Alex Abel, without memory of what she was doing there or of ever having met him in person before. Seeing Norman's now-dead body cuffed to a chair jolted her, but Abel urbanely explained the situation. Emily was returned to her room, soon receiving a few memos.

New Team

January 20, 2007: Seattle. Brandy Alcaraz, Jane Seymour, LaTerian Jones, and Carlos Fruentes had been waiting for various intervals in one of the comfortable but locked rooms at the TNI facility. They each received a memo announcing that they were assigned to a new TNI team with the mission to go find a certain individual in Pakistan, assassinate him, and retrieve two sets of unspecified assets in his possession.

One by one, they were brought to the meeting room where Emily Bay was waiting for them. It would be greatly exaggerating the matter to say the group hit it off. After asking each of them to talk a little about themselves, their abilities and their ambitions, she briefed them on the mission. She mentioned that one expected team mate had had cold feet at the last minute and would not be joining them.

The target was a man in Peshawar called Saquib Rau, known as a sweatshop owner depending on child labour. The children at his two factories were the assets to retrieve; they were to be recovered and transported to a school where TNI had arranged to have them protected and educated. Rau was to be executed in a visible location and his death must look intentional; no evidence of the team — not a hair, not a drop of bllob — must be left behind. Emily added that she would also like the death to be discovered only after the team's departure. They had exactly one week to execute the mission. Questioned about the language barrier, Emily assured the team that it would not be a problem.

They would be flying in pairs, leaving Monday the 22nd: Brandy and Tear through Toronto, Carlos and Emily through Chicago, and Jane by herself through JFK, connecting to Pakistan International Airlines. Brandy, who had already taken a dislike to Tear (the self-described killer), was less than pleased. Asked whether they had any requests before leaving, Jane asked for her travel library; Brandy requested travel brochures, to familiarize herself with the destination; and Carlos asked for skate or gym time.

Pakistan

January 23, 2007: Karachi. After a long day of travel and a few hours of sleep, the team assembled for breakfast at the Marriott Airport Hotel. They briefly discussed logisitics; Emily apprised the team of the equipment list that was waiting for them in the parking garage, including a motorcycle, an SUV, and a bus (to transport the children).

When the question of language was brought up again, Emily cautiously explained that she was able to make bargains of an unusual and extensive nature. She then paid the bellhop to smuggle in five beggars (the bellhop had handled more bizarre requests in his career), and through him made an agreement with the beggars to learn everything they knew of Urdu in exchange for the biggest breakfast they could eat. Unspecified was the detail that the beggars would be giving up their own knowledge of Urdu... Emily told her team mates that the beggars would be learning English in exchange.

The exchange worked in the case of Brandy, Tear and Jane, though Tear was creeped out. But things just didn't work for Carlos, and as for Emily... her words started coming out of one of the beggars' mounth. Miming her intent and waving dollar bills, she managed to get a new deal working and finished the transactions, but the bellhop, spooked by these events, ran away in terror. The rest of the team was not very happy with being lied to, and Carlos – and to an extent Brandy and Tear – seemed uncomfortable with the beggars' fate.

At last, the team collected its equipment in the parking garage, bought some clothing that would not attract attention, and got on the road.

January 24, 2007: Peshawar. After a gruelling 17-hour drive and a few more hours of sleep, the team decided to case known locations associated with Saquib Rau: his house in a posh neighbourhood where he lived with his wife and three children, his downtown office where he occcasionally appeared, and one of his factories in a slum area. Unsurprisingly, Brandy was unable to find a wifi network on a drive-by; but Jane used her art of bibliomancy to obtain Rau's schedule for the day, as well as security details.

The team discussed approaches for breaking in; Emily and Tear favoured grabbing Rau at his house and forcing him to open the gates of the factory and reveal the location of the second factory. However, Tear suggested that there might be an arrangement with local gangs to defend the factory.

Since there was a redlight district not too far from this factory, Brandy, accompanied by Tear, approached some of the local street girls under the pretense of looking for "her sister's son" who had been kidnapped three years ago and she had tracked to the factory. The women told her to stay away and just have more kids; there was no way a kid would have lasted three years there. They reported having frequently seen children's bodies smuggled out, with handcuff marks, malnourished, and their hands swollen. They said the place was a nest of smugglers, drug runners, and terrorists, and confirmed that the local gangs were on the payroll. About twice a week but not on a regular schedule, a truck would come in at night and merchandises would be loaded and unloaded.

The team regrouped. Brandy, reminded of Schindler's List, suggested that maybe children were needed because of their small hands; the dead bodies with swollen hands suggested nasty ideas. Jane used her abilities again and obtained the location of the second factory, which was not very far from the first and in the same kind of neighbourhood.

After a few hours of sleep, the team gathered again for a night operation at Rau's house. Brandy went first, scoping the perimeter to evaluate the security. In the back of the house, she found the security cameras deactivated — someone had gone in before them! The rest of the team scrambled; a quick sweep of the house revealed that all the servants had been shot. Rau and his wife were found in the master bedroom, half-dressed as if they had just got up in a hurry; they too had been shot.

In one of the other rooms, Rau's three children lay dead as well, but their throats had been cut. Tear immediately checked for occult activity, and confirmed that something powerful had taken place; the children's souls had been stolen.

And in the master bedroom, Carlos noticed a package with a numeric clock reading 0:06...

To be continued next episode.