Ethnis Eats, Season 1, Chapter 6
With a sample of the disease in the pocket, and time running out. The party destroys the research (taking one disc for themselves) and sabotages the facility. They head back to the apartment, doing one more stream on the way back. It is an innocent episode shot on personal cameras, but Dancer uses the chance to in code tell the chat of things gone awry, and that any supporters in Francisco need to be around Teja’s apartment.
They return to the apartment to find their equipment destroyed, and a threat from Black Ops (Hinting at this being a rogue black ops faction rather than Somnolent).
"That fight left me famished" Dartesi grumbled, leaning against the wall and letting out a heavy sigh of dissatisfaction.
"How," Dancer hissed, wheeling around on him. "How can you be thinking of your selfish gut after all this time. We just lost the sample! All that work to get into the heart of the facility and the sample was broken! We can't get back into there, and we definitely can't do it with any hope of surviving alive!"
"We have a sample," Dartesi said, panting.
"That?" She ask, drilling her finger towards the shattered case on the floor. "That's broken. The hot-seal snapped to incinerate it. It's ash, nothing nada—"
Dartesi held up his hand and then slapped his rotund belly. "No. That was the distraction," he said, glancing around. "I ate a sample," he revealed.
This did not console Dancer. If anything, she only turned more pale, and her brow fell into a dark expression of anger. "You... idiot, you're going to get yourself killed. You saw what it's doing to people! That's going to make you sick!"
"It is, but they're going to have to kill me to get it out. The sample is in me now, so if we cure it, we cure me. Let's go before I start to really get hungry.
At last she relented, and they began to run.
"We can't let them do any more damage," Anton said as they followed the same routes out which they had taken in. Nervous eyes scanned the walls and roofs for cameras or worse dangers, and keen ears remained on a swivel as they listened for the potential of incoming footsteps. So far, they heard nohing. "We have to shut down the facility. Do as much damage as possible."
"And how would you recommend we do that?" Dartesi asked, holding his belly and grimacing as he tried to prevent it from jiggling too wildly as he ran.
"I saw a lot of those containers near the loading bay. If we can rig them and put a timer on them somehow, we could drop them into the processing chute, detonate them, and shut down production for at least a little while.
"I'll use a projection to trigger it," She said.
"Great thinking," Dartesi chimed in.
"But it's going to take time to prime them all. More time than we have, I think."
"We only need to prime one," Dartesi said as they peeked around a corner. "Ach, guard, next route."
"One?"
Dartesi shrugged. "Yeah. Just pull the charges from the rest and pack them together, right?"
"Good point."
"We're here," Anton said, throwing open the back of the transport. "Dancer, Dartesi, you got this?"
"Yep. I'll watch the door. Dancer can you turn those into a bomb?"
"I can try," She said.
"Good, Anton, can you stir up some shit?"
"That's what I do best, isn't it?" He asked, sitting down and resting against the back of the truck, eyes closed. A projection sprouted from him as several emerged from Dancer and began to sift through the petri dishes, removing the un-primed lids and stacking them back into their shipping cylinders.
"The metal shell should shape the charge," she mused.
Dartesi's ear flicked as he hear the zap of a shock pistol in the hall. He was by the door in an instant, holding the shock baton in hand and a grimace on his face.
"Got my projection," Anton mumbled, shaking his head. As with Dancer, losing a projection made him dizzy. "Coming through the—"
The man came in through the door at that moment. For a moment he balked, surprised by Dartesi's massive, ostentatious presence.
It was all the time Dartesi needed to clobber him. His eyes glowed with Monolithic power as Grace flowed through him, and his hand seemed to blur, landing in perfect chorus multiple times before sending him flying backwards to crash into a wall from the force of his own muscle contractions.
"Hah! Always wanted to do that," he muttered as another of Anton's projections ran past and down the hall. He knelt down, grunting, and grabbed the man's pistol from him quickly to aim it at him. He held up his hands.
"Nothing funny. I will kill you," Dartesi said, and given the flare of glowcoming from his eyes, the man decided not to test this strange man's resolve.
"Anton?" He called back.
"Mischief," he muttered.
"Dancer?"
"Yeah just a few more,"
"We don't have much time befo—HEY" Dartesi shouted and pulled the trigger, popping a stunbolt at the man, who again crumpled and rolled over. "I said sit still!"
"No you didn't," Dancer said.
"Close enough. So about that bomb—"
"It's done! Anton, which way's clear?"
"Right," he whispered.
"WHAT'D I SAY?"
"Dartesi, you're going to kill the guy," Dancer said as she heard the stun gun fire again.
"That one was next to him that time, he was reaching for his backup radio."
"Then shoot the radio,"
"No wai—hurgh!" the man yelled before Dartesi shot at the radio at his hip. The shockbolt to his groin made him crumple up and whistle pain through his nose.
"I'm really not sorry," Dartesi said, shrugging.
Anton spoke, voice sounding clearer. "That projection bit it, too, but I tugged wires and turned valves wherever I found them, including some in the roof. They're going to raise the alarm at any mi—"
The high pitched whistle reverberated through the facility, Dartesi gestured his gun at the man, who whimpered "not me, not me!"
Down on the production room floor, where belts all came together to converge on a set of spray nozzles on the underside of a tank, a duet of Dancers projections were causing havoc. They ran along the belts, dodging and weaving equipment and confused workers. One carried the canister under her arm like a football, and another pealed off to distract a guard who had just caught sight of them. He balked long enough for the carrying one to leap up, grab onto the canister, and cram the open end of the canister against one of the release valve nozzles along the side of the tank. The valve crushed into the petri dishes, setting off the bottomost charge. The canister shot across the room like a rocket, blasting her projection to pieces and blowing a wide hole into the tank with it.
Sixth Flavor poured out over the ground, splashing the belts as workers ran screaming.
Back in the garage, Dancer waivered, dizzy from the "death" of two projections. She flopped back into the truck and grunted at Dartesi. "Can you drive?" she asked as Anton picked her up and carried her to the cab.
The guard started to scramble to his feet as the truck began to back out.
He screamed as Dartesi opened the window, aimed at his ass, and unloaded. A couple even hit.
"Hey Darties!" Dancer bubbled into the camera. Dartesi sat next to her, trying to not look as sick as he felt. Whatever was in that sample was already beginning to settle in. Tejas took a hard turn, diving down into the underground. They had ditched the truck as soon as possible where Tejas suggested, and were just as quickly in his van as he got away as quickly as possible. As far as they could tell, they hadn't been followed, but Dancer was tracking all sorts of activity on the bands as they tried to organize to find them. "Our trip into the factory was cut a little short," she said, tilting her head and smiling widely. "What we saw was a little... piquant, if you know what I mean! Nothing too bad, but, well... we'll just have to put it on the B-roll!" Dartesi nodded emphatically, smiling softly as he caught the doublespeak in what she was saying. It was nothing that would get the stream autoflagged, but anyone up to date on the latest net humor would know what it meant. It was a red flag. The fact that she had also disabled comments—to prevent people asking questions that would trip flags—might also raise a few eyebrows. The update was sweet and short, and ended with "anyway, we're at the apartment now! Talk to you wonderful darties later!"
"Fuck!" Anton said, rubbing his face in his hands. The apartment was a mess, thrashed. Their equipment was gone, and there was nothing left but a mess of overturned tables and broken drives. The message it sent was clear—"we're onto you." It was a threat, the proverbial horse head on the sheets. But they weren't going to have any of it. Dartesi's brow furrowed, and a glow burned in his eyes. "Very well, this means war."
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