Prison break...

The EIS team have launched their mission to liberate Albert Einstein from a Russian facility within the walled city of Kurchatov, Eastern Kazakhstan. 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

Sven Hyse bends over the prone body of the Russian guard and pulls his axe from the dead man's chest, he then checks through his pockets and finds his identification papers as well as a small bunch of keys. He picks up the two pistols and AK-47s and places them on the small table within the room before grabbing a flashlight and stepping towards the door of the gatehouse.

As Sven steps through the doorway and out into the cold night air he transforms into the image of Stalin and crunches quietly as possible through the snow to the main gates. He reaches up and lifts the securing bar gently from its holding grooves and lays it carefully against the wall. He pushes the main gate open slightly and looks out into the snow storm but can see no sign of his teammates and so he whistles into the wind.

One of the Mimi's with Alfie hears the whistle over the howling wind and tells Baldrick to move towards the gates. Both Mimi's slip off of Alfie and slide up the wall and across the roof to drop in behind the gateway. Alfie creeps quietly forwards until he can see an old Russian soldier looking outwards, not recognising the image of Stalin he freezes in place, that is until he realises the the old Russian soldier is holding a bloody axe in one hand and a bloody tomahawk in the other. Guessing that it is Sven in disguise he continues forwards and slips through the gateway. They replace the bar just as the Mimi's join them. Sven tells them about the movement in the other gatehouse and while Sven leads Alfie and one of the Mimi's back into the first gatehouse so that Alfie can arm himself, the other Mimi slides along the outside of the wall and looks in through the external window. Inside she can see the shape of two bodies laying on makeshift beds, apparently asleep. She relays this information to the other Mimi and the team agree to let sleeping soldiers lie and head as a group for the air strip.

Inside the institute, Madeline and Mimi hide within the deep shadows of the high vaulted ceiling and look on as more guards rush from the southern side of the complex towards the security room that so recently saw the pair of female agents wreak havoc. Leaving Mimi in place, Madeline slips silently through the shadows towards the entrance to the lower levels that she had scouted on her previous visit. She listens carefully at the doorway and when she can hear nothing she slips beneath the door and discovers that the room is empty, the guards that she had seen previously, presumably having rushed off to assist with the attack. On the ceiling of the atrium Mimi uses the enhanced ability borrowed from Baldrick to duplicate, and then five shadowy figures descend the wall following Madeline.

Madeline finds a poorly lit staircase descending downwards. It drops about twenty yards and the six shadows slip quietly along the ceiling until they reach a room that is the mirror image of the one at the top of the stairwell. Madeline attempts to slip through the single doorway but finds that it is airtight and so she becomes solid and slides her lockpicks into the locking mechanism. It is then that she realises that the door is not locked and so she turns the handle and pushes it open just a crack, releasing a slight rush of air, before transforming back into her shadow form and sliding through the gap, closely followed by the five Mimi's. The room beyond reminds her of the airlock room beneath the Montauk Institute on Long Island and Madeline finds that the opposite door is locked. The British agent once again picks the lock and the door behind them instantly seals and locks automatically.

Madeline looks through the newly unlocked door and can see a corridor in heavy shadow running off into the distance, she looks at one of the Mimi's and signals for her to push out with her senses, one of the Mimi's does so and signals back that she has not got any enhanced within range. The team push further along the corridor passing several closed doors some of which are laboratories, including one labelled as a 'Mechanical Physics Laboratory'. When they reach the end of the corridor, the Mimi that has been concentrating on pushing out with her senses signs to Madeline that she has a return from an enhanced one hundred yards directly west.

The corridor doglegs to the left and along the wall Madeline two sets of heavy double doors as well as a window looking out onto the corridor, she slides along the ceiling until she is in a position to look in through the window and can see a large, well lit room with banks of technical looking machines along two of the walls and a single guard sat watching a bank of screens just below the window. Madeline glances back at the doorway and the sign reads 'Security Room' but she slides past it across the ceiling and on to the door at the end of the corridor which is labelled as 'Executive Security', she slips in under the door and finds herself in an office with one wall dominated by several filing cabinets. Madeline returns to the Mimi's and they agree to leave one posted outside the door into the security room as well as one in the executive security room searching through the files for any clue to the location of Einstein.

Madeline slides back to the two pairs of double doors, one is marked as a 'Loading Bay' and the others as 'Secure Storage', Madeline checks the loading bay doors and finds them to be open and so she slips inside. The room beyond has a second set of loading bay doors which Madeline passes beneath  and finds herself in an arrow straight tunnel heading west. At this end of the tunnel is a set of railway buffers and the floor is lined with a railway track heading off into the darkness. Followed closely by three of the Mimi's, Madeline proceeds up the tunnel but halts when one of the Mimi's tells her that she can sense the enhanced that they have been tracking is to the south of them and not directly ahead. Madeline retraces her path back towards the secure storage doors. One of the Mimi's with Madeline informs the Mimi's approaching the air strip what is happening.

The Mimi on Alfie tells both him and Sven that the team within the institute have yet to locate Einstein, Sven just grunts and turns to Alfie:

We carry on with the plan. Full auto is acceptable against these foes.

Baldrick nods and holds up his Kalashnikov showing that he understands the order. Out of the snowstorm a large grey shape reveals itself into the outline of a Lisunov Li-2 passenger cargo aeroplane, the Mimi's slip off of Alfie and slide towards the aeroplane. As they go, one of the Mimi's uses Alfie's enhanced power to duplicate, and by the time they are sliding into the aeroplane there are five Mimi's ready to carry out all of the pre-flight inspections and get the crate into the air in a hurry if need be.

Alfie and Sven circle around the aeroplane taking a wide arc towards the control tower using the heavy snow to cover their approach. When the get to the single door at the base of the tower they are pleased to find that it is unlocked and Sven quietly opens the portal and they slip inside. The pair stealth up the spiral staircase to the single door three storeys up, Sven tries the handle as silently as possible but is disappointed to find that it is locked. He pulls the ring of keys that he took from the gatehouse guard and shows them to Alfie mouthing:

Which key is it?

Baldrick doesn't hesitate and just points to one of the keys, Sven slips it into the lock and turns it. The door unlocks. Baldrick always was a lucky son of a gun. Sven pushes the door open and can see three men sat looking outwards towards the air strip, all three of them are wearing bulky headphones and appear to be monitoring radio communications. Sven holds up his axe and points at Alfie's knife, Baldrick nods his understanding and draws the long blade. Sven counts down from three silently before throwing his axe at the central of the three Russians. The man slumps forwards with a clatter and an axe protruding from the middle of his back, this somewhat startles his two companions, but they don't have time to react before Sven is hacking at the right hand one with his tomahawk and Alfie is stabbing the other twice with his blade. Both airmen drop dead to the floor and the two EIS team mates look around, seeing no one else present Sven finally speaks aloud:

Efficient!

Alfie grabs the three pistols in order to arm more of his duplicates and Sven checks over the bodies, he discovers that the first to die was a senior officer and then a memory strikes him:

Maps! We were asked to look for maps! Get to it!

And so the two of them start to thoroughly search the control tower for any maps that they can find.

Madeline pulls out her lock picks once more and unlocks the doors marked 'Secure Storage', she then opens them just a crack and slides in, closely followed by three Mimi's. Inside it looks like a controlled entrance where one set of doors needs to be locked before the opposite ones can be unlocked. There is also a security window looking into the room from the security room next door. Madeline also spots a stationary camera in the upper corner of the room, but the room is dark and there are plenty of shadows for her to hide in and so she slips to the opposite set of doors and readies her lock picks once again.

In the Executive Security Room the Mimi working her way through the filing realises that all of the records are separated into two groups, and she further understands that one set is for those with security clearance and the other is those without it. She starts to focus on those that do not have any security clearance in the hope of finding anything pertaining to Albert Einstein.

Madeline sticks her head through the doorway and can see beyond a space with a barred cage blocking the passageway into a large open area. It is very obvious that this is a prison complex and so Madeline gestures to one of the Mimi's to push out with her senses to check for Einstein, the Mimi does so and signals back that the enhanced is still in place. The team push onward in the direction of the enhanced, leaving one Mimi on the edge of the large open space to make sure that they are not caught in a trap. They pass several cell doors, which Madeline looks in and can see that each contains a prisoner asleep on a rough bed. When they reach the cell containing the enhanced they can see from the doorway that it is Einstein by the shock of white hair.

Madeline slides in under the door and looks around, she spots a camera in the corner of the room above the doorway and so she slides onto the underside of the bed and curls around until she can whisper into Einstein's ear:

Professor can you hear me?

Einstein jumps at the sound of the disembodied voice, but seems to regain his composure very quickly and lays down again, facing away from the camera. Madeline continues:

Professor, we met once in America, my name is Madeline and we are here to rescue you.

To Madeline's surprise Einstein replies:

What kept you? I was expecting you earlier. Doctor Jackal was here and he told me that you were coming.

Madeline calmly asks how Doctor Jackal is but Einstein just stifles a laugh and explains that he didn’t really get the chance to have a proper conversation, given the circumstances. Madeline doesn't miss a beat and continues:

Professor, I need you to mimic my ability to turn into shadow so that we can get out of here.

There is a moment of quiet.

Professor, you have the ability to mimic enhanced abilities.

More silence, and then Einstein says:

What are you talking about?

Madeline tells Einstein to stay where he is and heads back out into the corridor to let Mimi know what she has discovered. When she explains it all to Mimi she finishes by saying:

This has just got a hell of a lot more difficult!

As Mimi slips under the door and into the cell, Madeline starts to unpick the lock. Mimi instructs the Professor to grab his blanket around him and get up and walk to the door, where there is a blind spot beneath the camera. When he does so, Mimi grabs the blanket off of him and then imitates Einsteins walk back to bed where she lays down taking his place. Mimi bunches up the pillows in the bed, roughly in the shape of a body and then transforms into a shadow again and slips back to Einstein. Madeline slides along the passageway unlocking cell doors as she goes, hoping that the escape of several prisoners will act as cover for the team. She then heads back to the two Mimi's and Einstein to check if they are ready to move. When she knows that they are she tells them that she will have to put darkness over the camera at the end of the hall to get them past.

As soon as Mimi hears this she lets the two Mimi's either side of the security room know. They both stop what they are doing and slip quietly under the entrances into the security room and up onto the ceiling just as Madeline throws darkness over the camera. The guard stands up and hits one of the monitors on the side and that is the cue for both Mimi's to frost blast him. The Mimi's are now where near as accurate as Madeline with the frost blast, but one of them hits and the security guard drops to the floor frozen solid. One of the Mimi's with Madeline says that the guard has been neutralized and so the rescue team continue forwards.

As they are moving quietly forwards Einstein asks Madeline if they can rescue some of the other scientists that are prisoners, Madeline shakes her head knowing that it is going to be difficult enough just getting Einstein out. She then stops and turns to Einstein and whispers:

What have they had you working on? Do we need to destroy your research?

Einstein just smiles and responds:

Oh no! I've taken care of that. I believe that I may have set them back at least twenty years. As I said, I was told that you were coming.

Madeline then asks if they knew that Einstein was enhanced, and he tells her that they did and that they had taken several blood samples but that they had been taken somewhere else. Madeline shrugs, knowing that there is not much that can be done about that. And continues forwards. 

One of the Mimi's stationed within the aeroplane heads towards the control tower to inform Alfie and Sven that the team have located Einstein and are heading out of the institute. Inside the control tower the male half of the EIS team are looking through all of the maps that they have located within and Sven smiles as he finds one that covers the area that the team plan to head as part of their escape. He rolls it up and stashes it in his pack.

Having clothed Einstein in the dead guards winter coat and managed to get as far as the upstairs guard post without incident. Madeline slides out into the corridor and can see that the guards are still focused on the security room across the atrium, she slips back inside and makes sure that the door is unlocked before slipping back out into the corridor and throwing up a wall of darkness to make sure that the casual observer will not see Albert Einstein crossing the corridor. Madeline takes point with two Mimi's providing covering support while one Mimi turns solid and leads Einstein, who seems very interested in following the petite French agent, and the final two Mimi's cover the rear. They make it as far as the first of the canteen spaces trying to remember where they saw a vehicle to steal.