Who is watching the watchers...

In pursuit of their estranged former teammate Doctor Jackal, the EIS team of enhanced individuals have discovered that renowned physicist Albert Einstein has not only met with Doctor Jackal, but is also an enhanced. Having watched him for a couple of days the team have made contact with Einstein. 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

Einstein invites us to sit down to coffee with him and so we do. Madeline explains to him that we are seeking Doctor Jackal and he asks us who we are working for. We tell him that we are not working for anyone, but that we are friends from his past and we are worried about the path that he is travelling. Madeline asks Einstein if he is aware of Mr Hades, when Einstein shakes his head Madeline continues to explain the good Doctors alta ego. We explain to Einstein that we are concerned about what he is building and tell him that we believe that it is connected to the brass spheres that he had been building. At the mention of the brass spheres, Einstein admits that Doctor Jackal had gifted him with one.

Having rushed to his desk, Einstein proudly presents Madeline with his brass sphere. She asks him what he does and he methodically prises out the key and slowly winds the device. After a brief moment of clicking the sphere begins to open like a flower facing the sun. Einstein tells us that at first he did not believe what Doctor Jackal was telling him, but once he had seen the ball, and the intricacies of its mechanism, he began to change his mind. Einstein elaborates that as he got to know him over the short period of time that they talked to each other, he appreciated Doctor Jackal's innate pacifism. Madeline asks if he was still a pacifist as he had been working with some very dangerous individuals in London and Einstein responds that he believed that the Doctor was working under the impression that the ends justifies the means, but that eventually they had a disagreement and so the Doctor left.

Einstein continues;

I thought that the ideas the Doctor Jackal was theorising were an impossibility, but then he cured me of my disease.

Madeline raises an eyebrow and asks what disease and Einstein replied that he suffered from an abdominal aortic aneurysm. I reminded everyone that Einstein's strongest enhanced ability was regeneration, and this time it was Einstein's turn to raise an eyebrow. He asked how I knew that and I explained my ability to sense enhanced and what they could do. Madeline asked him if he knew what other powers he had and Einstein replied that he was not aware of any, and that he was sure that he did not have the ability to mimic others enhanced powers. I asked if he would let me see what his powers were and he agreed. I pushed out with my senses and eased past the open doors into his psyche. The first power that I sensed, which should have been his strongest, was the ability to mimic enhanced powers. I pushed again and discovered the Einstein was now immune to disease, and when I pushed further I found nothing.

I discussed out loud what I was finding, and then pointed out that the last time I pushed Einstein his strongest power came back as regeneration, and that it was very confusing that that now didn't show up. I start to make the connection that somehow my power is reflecting back on me when I am pushing my senses at Einstein. Madeline asks Albert if he is aware of having any new ailments since he had become enhanced and he replies that he is not aware of any. Madeline next asks Einstein if Doctor Jackal injected him to give him the enhanced powers and Einstein answers;

No! He just touched me on the hand with his brass sphere. I believe that he called it Veränderung.

I mentally translate it from German to English, it means change. That is a little ominous. Madeline asks if Einstein has any means of contacting Doctor Jackal but Einstein says that he does not. Madeline then asks if they spoke about anything in particular and Einstein says;

We spoke a lot about my theories and his, we discussed the nature of geometry and so I suggested that he speak directly to Velikovsky and he must of done as Velikovsky also has one of the brass spheres. We also spoke about Oppenheimer and Doctor Jackal was very interested in the bomb sites in particular. We also discussed Jonas Salk and his work.

Einstein looks about at all of us and lights his pipe, he then points with his pipe at Alfie and asks him what enhanced powers he has. Alfie replies that there is more than one of him. Then Einstein turns his gaze to Sven and says;

That means that you must be the bird then?

Sven nods and replies;

I can be!

Einstein continues to question us about our abilities and how we gained them, we sit and discuss brief glimpses of our past with him and by early afternoon agree that we should continue the discussion over lunch. Einstein agrees and so we head out to a local restaurant for a good meal. Later that afternoon we drop Albert back at his home and wish him well, as we pull away Alfie spots a black sedan car parked a couple of doors down from Einstein's house. In the front of the car are sat a pair of black suited men and as we pass Alfie notices in the rear view mirror that the car has slowly pulled out into the road behind us and is following us.

Madeline tells Alfie to drive to the nearest diner and we park up outside and sit in the window having coffee. Sven spots that the dark sedan has pulled up across the road and they are attempting to keep a discrete watch on us. Madeline and I head to the toilets and while we are in there Madeline transforms into her shadow form and then slips onto my body under my coat. Three people walk out of the diner and climb into the hire car and pull away waiting for the dark sedan to follow us. They do and so Sven directs Alfie to a large cemetary on the outskirts of Princeton. We pull into Cedar Hill Cemetery with the dark sedan following us at a distance, I push out with my senses and do not get any returns which eases us a little. While the rest of us climb out of the car and start to walk along the grave markers, Madeline slips into the shadow of the trees and heads for the rear of the dark sedan.

Madeline slides up to the rear of the dark sedan and slips in through the rear doors into the back footwell. She lays in wait listening to the pair of dark suited men for just under an hour, there is very little discussion between them but both are definitely American. Around five in the afternoon one of them radios in that they are still following the unknown individuals but that nothing of note has happened. Madeline slips out from the rear of the car and slides underneath the vehicle, she locates the fuel line and uses her ability to manipulate temperature to freeze the fuel within the pipe. Once done, she heads back to us and lets us know that it is time to leave. We get back into the car and drive away, smiling to ourselves when our tail pulls out behind and then stops dead in the road as their car stalls, starved of petrol.

Alfie finds a quiet spot a couple of blocks away from our motel and parks the car. Sven transforms into a bird and takes flight, he arrives back twenty minutes later and says that he believes that the coast is clear and so Alfie drives the car to the rear of the motel and we quickly load all of our belongings into the boot before Alfie drives us towards New York. We pull into Brooklyn and find a low rent hotel, parking our hire car out of sight at the rear of the building. I put a call into Mr Shannon and at nine o'clock that evening we are notified by the reception desk that our taxi has arrived. Mr Shannon drives us around the streets of Brooklyn while we carry out the debrief, we make sure that he is aware that Einstein is not a threat but that he may well be an asset. Shannon tells us that we need to keep a low profile and that he will sort us out some new identification papers.

As we head for our rooms, Madeline suggests that we could get ourselves some cover identification by stealing them from some of the hotel residents. And so I find myself distracting the night porter in a form fitting dress while Madeline gets a look at the guest register. She discovers a couple of likely targets and after midnight she and I head back out into the darkened corridors in shadow form to hunt for passports. The first room that Madeline sneaks into is that of Mr and Mrs Beaux, a French couple on holiday in America. After a brief search she finds their passports laying on the bedside table, and just like that the identities of Jean and Amiliene Beaux are added to our ledger.

Madeline then leads me to another room on the floor below and while I stay on watch she slips in under the door. There is a single occupant asleep in the bed and once again Madeline starts her silent search. She discovers what she is looking for in the inside pocket of a jacket discarded across the back of a chair, she pulls out the passport of an English traveller by the name of Alister Shipley and slips back out into the corridor where we agree to call it quits.

At ten in the morning a taxi arrives for us and Mr Shannon drives us to a run down undercover car park on the outskirts of Brooklyn, he hands Madeline a set of car keys and four passports and then drives away. The keys are to a Ford two door sedan and the passports are for two English couples, the Hill's and the Fraser's. Alfie drives us back to the hotel and we load our stuff into the new car. Alfie then dupes out Charlie who gets into the driver's seat of our previous hire car and drives it back to the run down car park while the rest of us follow in the new car. Charlie parks the car, leaves the keys in the ignition, leaves the door open, and removes the number plates before he re-integrates with Alfie.

A couple of hours later Alfie parks the Ford in a quiet spot a few blocks away from the residence of Immanuel Velikovsky. Sven transforms into a bird and does a fly by to make sure that the coast is clear. He finds Velikovsky in his kitchen listening to a Russian speaking radio station, confident that no one else is keeping watch on Velikovsky Sven returns to the rest of us and we prepare to head in.