The rescue...

In pursuit of their estranged former teammate Doctor Jackal, the EIS team of enhanced individuals have followed a trail of clues to the mysterious Montauk Institute on Long Island. Having discovered a hidden facility containing enhanced buried deep beneath the Institute Madeline and Mimi attempted to infiltrate the base but were captured. Now Alfie and Sven are attempting a daring rescue. 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.

Long Island, New York, United States of America, October 1949

I regain consciousness in what is clearly a different cell and immediately push out with my enhanced senses to try and work out where I am. I quickly realise, based on the location of the other enhanced around me, that I am within the cell block with the other detained enhanced individuals including Madeline to the left of my cell. I attempt to mindlink with her but once again my borrowed power slides off of her redoubtable mental defences. Looking around the small cell I spot the half inch pipes near the ceiling that I assume must be the system used to gas us, and so knowing that Madeline is in the next cell along I start to tap on the pipe:

-- .- -.. . .-.. .. -. .

Unfortunately, unknown to me, Morse code was one of the few skills that Madeline had not learnt during the war. And worse than that, hearing tapping within the pipes Madeline quickly uses her enhanced power to lower the temperature dramatically in an area to freeze the air within the pipes solid, blocking them. She then paces her cell like a caged tigress assessing her options for escape.

On the ground floor of the Transmitter building Alfie pushes out all of his duplicates, and within seconds there are ten Corporal Baldricks in the reception area. Two of them grab the dropped M1 Carbines from the two guards while another pair search the reception desk for the door codes, but they fail to discover anything. While the Baldricks scatter, Sven walks along the corridor in the guise of one of the guards. He looks in through the windows of the doors that he passes and discovers a number of laboratories, a couple of which contain loan scientists working, until he reaches the end of the corridor and finds that it ends in a number of small office spaces that each contain a small put me up bed. Three of the rooms contain sleeping scientists, while a fourth contains what looks like an off duty guard reading.

Sven steps up to the guards room and presses four numbers on the key pad at random. The key pad makes an error noise and the guard within looks up from his book, seeing the image of his fellow guard at the window he gets up and walks over to the door and opens it. As the door opens the guard finds that his fellow guard is pointing a silenced pistol at him. Sven speaks:

Stand easy soldier or die. The choice is yours!

The surprised guard put his hands up and backs away from who he thought was his friend:

What are you doing? What do you want?

Sven smiles a wide smile revealing razor sharp fangs and replies:

I am going to need your assistance. You have a single choice to make. And I promise that I will not kill you if you assist.

The soldier is somewhat startled and stammers:

Who are you? Who are you working for?

Sven reminds the soldier that he is the one asking the questions and gestures for him to exit the room and head along the corridor back towards the reception area. They get parallel with the toilets and meet one of the Baldricks replacing a mop and bucket. The soldier is taken aback and stammers:

Where is the other guard?

Baldrick says that they have been secured, but the soldier keeps on insisting that he sees them before he will help. An annoyed Sven bares his fangs once again but a steely look enters the eyes of the soldier and he stands up tall to attention and barks out:

Corporal McLoughlin, 407653, US Marine Corps! I shall say nothing else!

Sven walks around behind the Corporal and presses the barrel of his pistol to the back of the soldier's head. But once again the Corporal just shouts:

Corporal McLoughlin, 407653, US Marine Corps!

Sven squeezes the trigger and splashes Baldrick in the blood of the soldier. The other nine Baldricks rush into the corridor and make short work of cleaning up the crime scene while Sven searches the small office that the Corporal had occupied. He discovers a couple of small notebooks full of sets of four digit numbers next to dates. Sven returns with the notebooks to the Baldricks and they both flick through them and come up with five four digit numbers next to that days date. Attempting to test the codes in a controlled way, Sven punches the first of the numbers, 6664, into the keypad next to the soldiers office door and is pleased when the door clicks open. They then test the code on another of the empty rooms and it works again.

One of the Baldricks picks up the guards carbine and they all head for the elevator, before entering Baldrick de-duplicates and dons one of the US Marine Corps uniforms. The pair of EIS agents enter the elevator and Sven presses the lowest button on the inside panel. The elevator starts to descend.

Sitting in my cell, avoiding touching anything that is metal and trying to keep my mind occupied, I push out with my senses once again and attempt to track the lone enhanced. I keep it up, tracking their movements to try and learn anything that I can, I manage to deduce that they are moving around a large room and surmise that they are working in some kind of laboratory or medical facility. But something that I was not expecting happens while I am tracking the lone enhanced, two more enhanced enter my range. Slowly dropping from above in the direction of the elevator. I push deeper into the mind of the first of the new enhanced and discover that their most powerful enhanced ability is duplication, I smile to myself and reach out with my borrowed mindlink power.

The doors to the elevators open and Alfie and Sven find themselves looking out into a brightly lit, white tiled lobby space. They step out into the area and then Baldrick stops dead in his tracks as a French accented woman's voice speaks within his mind:

Is that you Baldrick?

Alfie looks at Sven and then says aloud:

Yes Ma'am!

A very confused look crosses Sven's face as he looks back at Baldrick, until Alfie says:

It's Mimi sir. I can hear her in my head.

Alfie's face screws up in deep concentration as he thinks hard of what he should say, he finally decides upon:

Are you alive?

The voice in his head says no. But undeterred, or burdened by great intelligence, Alfie continues with his questioning:

Are you alone?

Yet again the voice in Alfies head responds in the negative and so Alfie asks if I am free, and this time he is answered with a yes. Baldrick relays all of this to a more and more confused Sven, until Sven looks at Alfie and says:

Ask Mimi, what her name is!

Baldrick does so and the voice in his head responds:

I am Amiliene Beaux.

Again, Baldrick looks confused as he is sure that the voice sounds like Mimi's, but he pushes on and asks if I have the codes for the doors, and of course the voice answers that it does.

Sitting in my cell, I cannot stop myself from lying to Alfie. Every time that he asks me a question I think about telling him the truth but it just seems more fun to lie to him. And the more I lie, the more fun it is. I realise that the enhanced powers that I have borrowed from my fellow detained enhanced individuals must come with complications, as those of the London gangsters had. Even more evidence that Doctor Jackal is involved in the Montauk Institute. But I still want to be rescued and so I use my mindlink with Baldrick to ask:

Are you coming to rescue me?

Alfie quickly responds:

You said that you were free. Do you need rescuing?

Once again I am compelled to lie, and so I do:

No I don’t. I’ve joined the Americans and I’m now working for them.

Alfie shakes his head like a dog trying to dry itself and pushes out his nine duplicates. Alfie starts to ignore me and he and Sven head for the staircase and try the number 6664 in the keypad next to the steel door blocking the stairwell, but the number fails and nothing happens. They move to the first 'air-lock' door and Sven punches in the next of the four digit numbers from the notebooks, 5089, but again it fails. Starting to get a little nervous he hands the books to Alfie and asks him to try. Baldrick looks down at the three remaining numbers and decides which one he likes. He taps in 5894 and with a his of escaping air the door opens. Baldrick smiles and hands the notebooks back to Sven.

Leaving two of the Baldricks on guard in the 'air-lock' room, the others head back to the stairs where Sven punches in the code 5894 and is pleased when the reinforced slab of steel slides upwards into the ceiling giving access to dimly lit stairwell rising upwards into the darkness. They head back to the 'air-lock' room and Sven peeks through the slit window, carelessly left open by one of the guards, and can see an armed guard stood within a large room. Leaving two Baldricks on guard by the staircase the rest of the rescue team gather in the 'air-lock', but just as Sven is about to tap in the door code the alarms start to sound.

Acting quickly Sven taps in the door code and as the doorway slides open he raises his pistol and fires three times hitting the guard with all three shots in his central body mass. The guard drops to the floor as Sven and eight Baldricks rush into the large open space, with one of the Baldricks grabbing the fallen guards carbine. As they look down the wide corridor they see six more guards running in their direction, but eagle eyed Sven realises that the guards are not running at them but are heading for a wall to the right that seems to be unnaturally bowing outwards.

Sven points at the wall as the eight Baldricks raise their various guns and aim at the distracted guards, but they can both see that there is something pushing it's way out of the wall. All six guards take aim and fire at the creature pushing out of the wall, they all seem to hit but the creature seems unphased. The creature, which looks like it has stepped straight from a nightmare, steps clear of the wall and looks around. It stares straight at Sven and the Baldricks and the whole of it's head opens in quarters and it hisses loudly before ignoring them and rushing across the corridor towards the opposite side. Sven gives Alfie a signal and the one man rifle section opens fire on the guards.

Billy opens fire with one of the stolen carbines and hits the nearest of the guards in the chest twice and the guard drops to the floor. Next Harry hits the second of the guards twice with his pistol and again the guard drops to the floor. Sven unslings his rifle and tracks the creature, while shouting:

Hold your fire!

The remaining guards open fire at the creature again, but the bullets seem to have no effect on it. The creature steps up to a large reinforced door and starts to push at it as more guards rush forwards and start to fire at it. Sven shakes his head and signals to the Baldricks to resume shooting, Georgie shoots one of the guards three times, but the Marine stays on his feet. Billy drops a second guard with a burst from his carbine and then the corridor is filled with a hail of lead as the other Baldricks fire. Within a second a further six guards lay dying on the floor and the last guard standing is silenced by the booming sound of a shotgun. His body is thrown backwards down the corridor, and then the Baldricks rush forwards and grab as many weapons as they can.

Within her cell, poised ready to strike if needed, Madeline stands listening to the sounds of gunfire and alarm. It is then that she hears a third sound, the sound of a woman screaming in one of the cells.

By the time that Sven and the Baldricks get an angle to see the reinforced door there is no sign of the nightmarish creature. Sven dispatches two four man Baldrick teams, one to the large room across the corridor and the other to a room towards the end of the corridor. The first team report a large circular room full of scientific equipment and machines, but otherwise empty. The second team discover another large room, this one with several items of lounge furniture, as well as some cowering scientists. Sven tells the Baldricks to question the scientists and find out what the creature was. And so they move into the room and threaten the men of science with guns.

The scientists prove to be less than helpful and so Baldrick herds them towards Sven, as they get close one of them steps forwards and asks:

Who are you? What is the meaning of this?

Sven looks him up and down and says:

What is your name?

The lead scientist straightens himself to his full height and replies, his strong German accent coming through:

I am Professor Oppenheimer.

Sven questions him but again he is unhelpful at best. With a growl building in Sven's throat he says:

Your usefulness is waning. Can you open this door?