Phone Call

Grace
[Securing these here communications, no spies allowed! Corr 2, Entropy 2, -1 diff for taking time (and I really should make a rote someday..)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Grace
[Extends!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace
A day goes by before Dr. Sepúlveda has the chance to feel the strange resonance of that woman from the bar again. True to Denver being Denver, it doesn't take long for the shit to hit the fan, as she put it. That winged message will arrive with the ringing of his phone. The one she said she'd use in case things were going down.

Things must be going down, eh?

The trick to this particular phone call is pretty neat, all things considered. Phone calls have shit for encryption. They were designed that way in order to allow Three Letter Agencies to listen in. Considering the circumstances, a bit of extra encryption with algorithms They don't know about are in order. So is a bit of extra hiding. Those attempting to listen in on this particular conversation won't immediately be cued in to the fact that something is off. It sounds like a butt-dial, from the outside. A recording of random sounds, coughs, a bit of a TV in the background will be what They hear should They be listening.

Ring ring, man. Ring ring.

Sepúlveda
Blame it on the time of day she's calling or the person who she is calling. Grace calls the number attached to the business card the man she met at Questor earlier in the week. It rings several times before he gets around to answering and when he does answer it the first thing she hears is the high-pitched whirring of--

Well she can imagine what it is. Some sort of power tool. The man is a forensic pathologist. For all she knows she just interrupted him sawing open a corpse's cranium.

"Yeah?" he says. The sound dies away and leaves his voice behind. "Who is this?"

Grace
"Grace, from the bar," she says. "Do you remember? Or did you get massively drunk after trying to explain things to your student? I wouldn't blame you."

Because, you know, Grace casually brought up the fact that the Technocrats were maybe about to try to kill them all again, and promptly left with his business card.

"I've taken some trouble to make sure this call flies under the radar. Something's come up."

Sepúlveda
Yeah yeah something's come up he's in investigation mode right now:

"Do you always start the call by having a whole conversation by yourself?"

Something squelches. He might have considered taking her off speakerphone but if she's going to be an asshole so is he.

Grace
Grace pauses, thinks. "Well, apparently yes."

Her own predilection toward running off at the mouth isn't the topic of discussion she really wants to get at though. It's a digression, a meaningless fork in the road, and doesn't merit an argument.

"Do you know if your student is safe? I would check on him, if I were you. We're checking on everybody."

Sepúlveda
This conversation is already boring the shit out of him. She can expect a few more branches in it if it keeps up like this.

"What happened?"

Grace
"Not sure yet. Couldn't get that much out of anybody. My business partner says he's worried about a guy not returning his calls? But that could just be Alex being Alex," she says, a bit dismissively.

"I do know that if Dan leaves me a message like what he left me, he means something serious. Like, the message he left when somebody got infected with Super Technocratic Engineered Ebola was similar."

Although, perhaps a bit more... informative.

"If we want to know what it is we're facing, there's a council meeting at the Chantry tomorrow for breakfast and actual news."

Sepúlveda
A cracking noise. The doctor makes a contemplative sound in his throat. Deep a voice as he has for being so small the microphone has no trouble picking it up. It isn't meant for this revelation Grace has just foisted upon him.

"Who the fuck is Dan?"

Grace
"Dan's the guy who leaves me messages from Sera, who sometimes can't use her phone? He's a... Consor, the Hermetics like to call it. Sera's with the Cult of Ecstasy. She's a seer. Maybe she Saw something. Maybe she's been kidnapped. Whatever it is, I Dan's judgement."

There's a sigh on the end of the line. This is still not Grace at her best, this is Grace at her exasperated. She wants to know what's going on, and keeps punctuating the fact that she doesn't know exactly everything with little jabs to her voice. Somebody is going to explain to her tomorrow or things will get messy.

"Usually, they're not so... closed-mouthed about things. The dread need of secrecy has me... I don't like it."

Sepúlveda
Now she's starting to talk about her feelings.

"Ay, ay, ay, relax, not liking a thing isn't going to change the thing, eh?" He's been dealing with apprentices the last month or so and he's got about a decade or so on Grace. She'll have to forgive him for slipping into teacher mode. Or she won't. Either way: "She can't use her phone because she's too fucked up, or what? Where's the Chantry? I thought the NWO blew it up."

He's thinking of the Chantry that once stood downtown. He has no idea about the one in Morrison. Or else he did know and the Arcane of the place has had its way with him. Either way.

Grace
"There's one outside of the city, with lots of freaking wards. I guess it's protected due to the fact that it's not in Denver proper, so it hasn't yet gotten swallowed by a storm of blood or raided or turned into an Umbral Lord's outpost. Although one did give that a pretty decent shot once," Grace says.

"Do you know, like, anybody else from here? I know a lot of the old guard got.... Well, blown up."

Somebody she might be able to check with, to see if Dr. Sepúlveda is really... okay to lead directly to their Node.

Sepúlveda
"You are like, a poet. Just, the way with words that you have, I am... inspired, right now, I can't even tell you how much so. Your conviction, Grace, and your sensitivity, it's really..."

He lets out a breath that sounds as if he's run out of the steam necessary to continue pretending to be sarcastic. He just doesn't have it in him. Something rattles in the background.

"Believe it or not, when I stepped off the plane, there was no one at the bottom of the escalator waiting with a WELCOME HOME sign and a personnel roster. I don't know who is still here that I might know. Your little lie detector app didn't give you that information, eh?"

Grace
"You don't strike me as the kind of guy who would want me to cover over everything with a layer of bullshit. Nor would I if you were, honestly, but..."

Another digression. A sigh.

"Well, no. But it also didn't tell me..." Anything more than what he said. Which was, actually a lot, considering. A dead wife with the Verbena, a Doctor with the Society of Ether.

And he let her do it to him.

There is a pause. Can she trust this guy she met in a bar last night? No. Can she trust her lie detection ability? Probably. There are ways to lie really well, and if anybody could do it, the Technocracy could.

"Do you want to follow me there tomorrow?"

If he says yes, that would give her like, at least a few hours to check on his 'credentials'.

Sepúlveda
One could argue that he either let her do it to him because he was convinced of the fact that he could out-lie her lie detector or because he didn't have anything to hide from her and figured if she wanted to know about him that badly she could go ahead and look.

They are not arguing right now. They are trading verbal blows sure but they're about as powerful as the blows cats give each other when the cats aren't aiming for blood.

"Why don't you pick me up?" If she wants to be paranoid then she can have total control over the situation. "At the federal courthouse downtown. I have to attend an inquest in the morning, but I'll be finished around, eh, ten o'clock, maybe."

Grace
"I can do that. Dan said breakfast time, but that's... I'm sure it'll be fine," she says. Dan and Sera are Cultists. That is breakfast time.

"I'll see you there."

Or not, depending. If nobody ever has heard of Dr. Sepúlveda, he'll be waiting on the steps of that courthouse for a very long time. And she'll bring him up in discussion at the council as a potential threat. Maybe she'll piss off an ally, but that's the price you pay, right?

Sepúlveda
If no one has ever heard of Dr. Sepúlveda he will hang out on the front steps of the courthouse for ten minutes and when he has finished his cigarette he will go on about his day. It will not strike him as an omen. He has no allies in this city. Their currencies belong to different economic systems.

"Yep!"

That and a clattering as something metal falls onto something else metal and then the call is over.