Who is Zoe Meadows...

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, and have discovered a hidden facility containing enhanced buried deep beneath the Institute. The team having broken into the facility and are investigating. 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

Madeline pulls out her compact and dusts the key pad beside the door for prints and discovers that the numbers 3, 6, and 8 have been used regularly. She stares intently at the keys and realises that the number 3 key has been used more heavily than the other keys and she deduces that the code required to open the doors is four digits long and that the number 3 key is used twice. She tells me everything that she discovers and I quickly use the cryptanalysis skill borrowed from Special Agent Philby to calculate that there would be twelve possible combinations to open the door.

Madeline shifts back into her shadow form and slips up to the ceiling where she discovers that there is a very narrow void between the ceiling tiles and the concrete shell of the room. She realises that we would be able to hide within and potentially observe those coming and going. We discuss doing so, but agree that we would be better off retreating and coming back in better equipped. We retreat back up the elevator shaft and reunite with Sven, and then head back to the boat to find that Baldrick has failed to catch anything with his fishing gear. Sven dives over the side of the boat as a sea lion and successfully catches an eight pound cod that when he returns I cook up in a lovely kedgeree, but the others don't like it. We move the boat and drop anchor off of the lighthouse for the evening.

As the sun rises the following morning Sven transforms into a bird and flies back to keep watch on the transmitter building. He spots five civilians, that he assumes are scientists, heading towards the front entrance. They walk up to the door and open it and enter. A moment later he hears the machinery on the roof of the building power up and start to clank as the elevator descends. Sven flaps over to one of the overlooking trees and settles in for the day.

The rest of us sail the boat back into the harbour and I ask Baldrick to head back to civilization to pick up more of the components that I need to build more of the locking mechanisms bypass devices. While he is gone Madeline and I take the time to sun bathe on the deck of the sail boat. Baldrick spends most of the day trying to find the items on my list, but just before he is about to give up he discovers a hardware store specializing in electronics and manages to pick up everything on the list for $30. He arrives back just before six in the evening, Madeline and I had picked up provisions and Baldrick found a lovely meal ready for him.

About the same time as we were sitting down to eat, Sven was watching people leave the transmitter building, as well as the guards rotating shift. He picked one of the scientists and followed him back to the mess hall, and once he left the mess hall he followed him back to his room in the barracks block. Sven then keeps watch until ten in the evening before he decides to fly back to the harbour and rejoin us. Sven tells us everything that he has seen and then heads to bed to get some well earned rest, while we get Alfie to drive us to the lakeside before the pair of us transform into shadows and slip back onto the base.

As we are sliding onto the base, we take a wide berth through the woods and Madeline manages to disturb an owl, but we manage to reach the transmitter building undetected. We slip into the elevator shaft once more and drop to the hidden sub-basement where I push out with my senses and discover that six of the enhanced are still in the same locations, but the seventh is further away than the first time. With Madeline's encouragement I check all of the enhanced to try and determine what their strongest powers are. The shapeshifter is still in the same location, I then discover that the next one along is gifted with heroic strength.

I then sense one with enhanced timesense and one with pheromone control before the fifth one that I push with my gift proves to have mental defences too strong for me to breach. I move on to the sixth and final enhanced that has remained in place and discover that their enhanced power is that of resurrection. As I am relaying this to Madeline I hear a voice in my head;

Hello! Who is this?

The voice I hear is female and has an American accent. I think;

Can you hear me? Who are you?

The voice returns, rising in pitch as if the speaker were becoming agitated;

Who are you? Where are we? Please can you get me out of here?

I think to the female enhanced that she must remain clam so that she doesn't raise an alarm. Using the psychology skill that I borrowed from one of the doctors from Hanslope Park I manage to talk her out of her downward spiral and as I do so the mental connection becomes clearer. I continue to question her but she seems unwilling to divulge any information and becomes agitated once more and starts mentally screaming about needles. I manage to talk her down again and finally convince her to tell me her name, Zoe Meadows. She also divulges that she is from New York but then she becomes frightened once again and Madeline and I agree that it is time to leave.

Before dawn Sven flies back to the transmitter building to keep watch over the transmitter building again. At six in the morning a jeep turns up and two guards change shift with those inside. A few minutes later a truck arrives and ten guards climb out and head into the building. Several minutes later a different ten guards exit the building and the truck drives away. Sven notes that there are clearly more guards within the lower levels and that they seem to be on a twenty four hour shift pattern.

Just after dawn I put in a call to Mr Shannon and he informs us that he will be with us around three in the afternoon. We give Mr Shannon details of everything that we have found and he wonders aloud if the Americans have discovered the process of creating enhanced. He also asks us if we are going to be able to uncover any further information and we agree that we are going to attempt to do so. We ask Mr Shannon to see if he can discover if there are any missing Zoe Meadows within New York and he agrees to do so, as well as finding us a workshop to carry out our tinkering.

Sven shifts his shape into that of a squirrel and settles down to rest. At six o'clock in the evening there is another guard change for the pair of guards on the ground floor of the transmitter building, he also sees around twenty civilian scientists exit the building at the same time. Midnight brings yet another guard change for those on the ground floor and the pattern repeats at six in the morning where the ten guards from deeper within the facility change again. At that point Sven heads back to the boat.

Just after eight in the morning a taxi arrives in the harbour and Mr Shannon informs us that no one by the name of Zoe Meadows has been reported either dead or missing in the New York area.