The scholar's house...

In pursuit of their estranged former teammate Doctor Jackal, the EIS team of enhanced individuals have discovered a connection to a colleague of Albert Einstein, one Immanuel Velikovsky. And so the team are moving in to search his house. The EIS team consists of Alfie Baldrick, the one man rifle section; Mimi Dubois, maîtresse of skills; Madeline Forsyth, the living shadow; and Sven Hyse, the Norwegian shapeshifter.

Princeton, United States of America, October 1949

We park the car near the rear of Immanuel Velikovsky's residence and Sven transforms into a bird before flying in to scout out the area and see if the house is under surveillance. We pre-arrange to rendezvous with Sven at the outbuilding at the rear of the property and myself and Madeline transform into shadows and slide across the road and under the fence to the rear of the outbuilding. After approximately twenty minutes Sven joins us and transforms into a minor bird and tells us that the coast looks clear and that Velikovsky has been listening to a Russian radio station. We agree that we will give the inside of the house a quick once over and that one of us will meet up with Sven within another twenty minutes.

A pair of shadows slide up the outside of the rear of the building and slip quietly in underneath the closed bedroom window. We quickly split up and get an understanding of the layout of the upstairs and can hear the sound of music drifting up from the ground floor of the house. While I stay at the top of the stairwell, Madeline slides out of the bedroom window, down the outside wall, and back in through the kitchen window on the ground floor. The living shadow then slides across the darkened floor using cupboards and other bits of furniture for cover as she draws closer to the sound of the radio and the light at the end of the corridor. She eventually gets eyes on Immanuel Velikovsky, he is sat in a comfortable looking armchair reading while listening to what sounds like a russian speaking radio station.

Madeline uses the dark spaces behind and beneath the furniture to slip around behind Velikovsky and slides up the wall so the she is above him to see what he is reading, but as she does so she spots something on the table next to Velikovsky starting to glow brightly. Madeline takes a moment to observe the object and can see that it is one of Doctor Jackal's brass spheres, and it is now shinning bright enough to attract Velikovsky's attention. Madeline backs away quickly and as she does so she notices that the intense glow dims slightly. The scholer reaches across and picks up the brass sphere and begins to examine it.

Madeline rushes back to me at the top of the stairs and tells me that we need to evacuate immediately. We do so and rush back to the outbuilding to rendezvous with Sven, where Madeline gets Sven up to speed on what has happened. While she is doing that I continue straight back to the car to inform Alfie of what has transpired. Just as Madeline is getting Sven up to speed a rectangle of light appears in the back wall of the house and the silhouette of Immanuel Velikovsky appears in the doorway. As Velikovsky walks forwards out into the garden the brass sphere that he is holding in his outstretched hand starts to glow once again and so Madeline and Sven leave the area quickly.

Madeline slides up a large tree outside of the garden so that she can keep watch on Velikovsky from a distance, as Sven flies back to the car, as Madeline watches the glow from the sphere diminishes until it is dark once again and Madeline realises that the distance that the sphere can detect enhanced, for surely that is what it does, is limited. Just as Sven arrives at the car I have finished getting the telephone tapping equipment out of the boot and am heading back towards the house. I slide up onto the roof of the house, and from her vantage point Madeline spots the bright light of the glowing brass sphere moving around on the upper floor of the house. I start the process of setting up the telephone tap when I notice that someone has beaten me to it. The signs of a duel wire tap is already in place, with the wires running off towards the nearest telegraph pole.

I rendezvous with the others back at the car and inform them of what I have found, Sven once again transforms into a bird and flies off to trace the wires of the wiretap. He lands on the telegraph pole and transforms into a squirrel before scampering along the wires following them to their source. He traces the line back to a main junction box where he finds that the tap links into a legitimate telephone line, meaning that it is impossible to trace from this end. After been told this by sven back at the car, Madeline heads for the junction box and opens it up. She finds that the line the tap is connected to is a dedicated line and not one that would go through a switchboard, clearly pointing to it being a government sponsored operation. She reaches in and disconnects one of the wires in such a way that it looks like it has just come loose, she then retreats back into the trees and keeps watch.

By the time that Madeline was settling down to watch it was about one o'clock in the morning, Alfie and Sven settled down in the car to try and get some sleep while I waited with Madeline. After a couple of hours Madeline decides to head back to Immanuel Velikovsky's house, this time she forms a blob of darkness on the outside of his bedroom window in the hope that he is now in bed and that it will cover the light of the sphere should she get close. As she slides in under the bedroom window she keeps a sharp eye out for the tell tale green glow, but sees nothing. The scholar is asleep in his bed and there is no sign of the brass sphere in the vicinity, and a search of the bedside cabinets does not find it either so she heads downstairs to search his office.

There is still no sign of the brass sphere, but she does discover that the scholar is reading a lot on Egyptian and other ancient histories and mythologies, but Madeline is unable to make any links to the work of Doctor Jackal. As the light of dawn starts to blossom in the sky we all head back to the car and wake Alfie and Sven, the latter of which heads back out to the tree to keep watch over the telephone junction box to keep an eye out for anyone coming to repair it. Madeline and I slip into the boot of the car as shadows and try to get some sleep. Around three o'clock in the afternoon, Madeline takes over watch from Sven and I head back into the house of Immanuel Velikovsky to search.

I discover a notebook and a telephone pad, but it is all written in Cyrillic script and so I am unable to decipher what they say and so I head back to speak with Madeline. By ten o'clock that night there has been no sign of anybody approaching the junction box and so Madeline heads in to have another look, she finds that it has been professionally repaired. Confused, she heads back to the car to tell us what she has found. It was some years later that we discovered that Sven had fallen asleep during his watch, but at that moment in time we were sure that it must have been an enhanced who had slipped in and repaired the pulled wire. Dejected at the failure of our best laid plans we leave the area and head for a low rent hotel on the outskirts of town, the Red Roof Inn, and book two rooms under the names of Hill and Fraser.

After a good night's sleep, and a large breakfast of pancakes and syrup in a diner recommended by the hotel receptionist, we feel a bit more positive. We head back to the house and Madeline and I slip in and start a full search of the property. Madeline allows me to borrow her ability to speak Russian, and while I begin to attempt to understand Velikovsky's research notes Madeline searches through his telephone pad. She finds contact details for both Einstein and Oppenheimer, as well as a curious note detailing the contact details for something called the Montauk Institute, but there is no sign of any contact number for Doctor Jackal or any of his known aliases.

Madeline picks the lock on Velikovsky's desk drawers and discovers a number of letters, none of which stand out apart from one dated over a year ago. It has an address in Long Island, and is a formal invite for Velikovsky to join the Montauk Institute.