The walled city...

The EIS team have made their way to the outskirts of Kurchatov, Eastern Kazakhstan, hoping to liberate Albert 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.

Kurchatov, Eastern Kazakhstan, USSR, January 1950

Sat within the concrete storage building by the dock at the edge of the frozen Irtysh River, the EIS Team discuss their priorities for the coming day and agree that they need to first locate Albert Einstein, then identify any potential weapons caches and in particular gain access to explosives for use as diversions, and finally to inspect the cargo plane to assess if it is a viable escape option.

With this in mind, and with the sun setting, Sven offers to fly both Madeline and Mimi into Kurchatov to see if they can locate their target. He transforms into a sea eagle and the two ladies slide onto the impressive bird before he takes to the skies. Sven crisscrosses the airspace above Kurchatov at a height of approximately eighty yards but after an hour of flight Mimi has not been able to locate Albert Einstein with her gift for locating the enhanced. But as they have travelled one building has stood out from all of the others. It is an unusual shape and has a sculpture in front of it that resembles an atom. Mimi suggests that Sven land on the roof of the building and that she and Madeline will then investigate the building further with no other obvious targets.

As Sven comes into land Madeline gets the opportunity to look into some of the rooms along the top floor of one of the arms of the building, they appear to be offices. Sven alights on the highest part of the building which seems to be some kind of light well into the central open space within the building.

Madeline and Mimi slip off of Sven and reconnoitre the edges of the roof space, Madeline spots several rough metal ladders leading up onto the roof as well as what might be an hatchway into the building buried deep beneath the heavy snow. The sea eagle that is Sven cranes his neck over the roof of the light well and squawks at the pair of shadows, indicating the louvre windows leading into the interior of the light well. Madeline and Mimi manage to slip in through the slatted openings and slide along the ceiling to get a clear view of what lays below. What they see is a large open space dominated by a huge statue, and when they circle around for a better view they can see that the statue is looking down at the twin sculpture of the external atom.

When Mimi sees the face of the statue she realises that it is the likeness of famed Russian nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov, the man that the walled city was named after. The pair of shadows slide quietly down the length of one of the supporting pillars, and when they reach the ground Mimi pushes out with her enhanced senses but again she gets nothing. The pair slip back up to the first floor balcony and investigate a stairwell that they spotted as they descended, but it only drops as far as the ground floor. They continue to search along the first floor corridor and can see several photographs of scientists and scientific equipment, Mimi stops in front of one of them stunned by what it shows. It is the photograph of a scientist stood in front of a tokamak, a theoretical device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the process to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power. Mimi informs Madeline that this is far ahead of anything that the Americans are capable of. Madeline quickly produces her camera, and using her ability to create darkness shields herself while she takes several photographs.

The pair of agents continue anti-clockwise around the first floor balcony until they reach a second set of stairs descending down to the ground level, they stop just outside the door to the stairwell and Mimi takes a moment to push out with her senses once again. This time she is successful and discovers an enhanced at the very edge of her range to the west and slightly downwards. They quickly head back up to Sven and he flies them to the area, which appears to be a green space with trees between the buildings of Kurchatov, smaller, but similar to a park.

Mimi pushes out with her senses again and discovers that the enhanced has moved, she follows the return for a while and it seems to be restricted to a large area beneath the parkland, she takes a risk and pushes deeper with her power and discovers that the enhanced's strongest power is regeneration. She looks up at the others and says:

We have located Einstein!

Madeline circles out in a spiral looking for air vents, but discovers none and so they agree to head back into the main building and look for a way down to the hidden detention area. Madeline and Mimi start with the southern most dogleg wing, they discover a large eating area with two small kitchens and Mimi helps herself to as much basic provisions as she thinks won't be missed. While she is doing that Madeline investigates a number of the office like rooms and sees blackboards in each of them with equations drawn across them. When she draws Mimi's attention to them the French women confirms that they are mostly chemical equations of a complexity that she doesn't understand. But they do not discover a way downwards.

Moving to the middle of the three southern wings they find a door marked security and when Madeline slips below the door she hears the sounds of a Russian radio playing music and a couple of guards sat reading. She also spots a rack of several bunches of keys, each clearly labelled for different areas of the building. She quietly slips back out and her and Mimi continue their search. The middle wing is most likely the area that specializes in biological studies, and in particular the effects of mutation. The third of the southern legs is clearly focused on physics, based on the equations upon the blackboards, and at the top of the wing Madeline discovers a room guarded by two armed men in security uniforms. Both men are alert and patrolling the small space, the first signs of active security and so the shadows retreat back towards Sven and get him to take them back to the storage building, and Alfie, so that they can eat and plan their next move.