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[X] Ninara's ex was snooping around. Catch up before she can go too far.

"Didn't you say that student who was poking around in here was Ninara's ex?" She's already gone, but she can't have gone far.

"You think Shenla had something to do with it?" asks Selko.

"She was up to something in here and she knew the victim. She definitely knows more than we do. Let's find out what."

"Well I can look up her contact-"

"No, if she's involved she knows she's potentially under investigation, we need to move quickly. Juketta, could you hold things here?" Your friend nods and you dart outside with Reizay, Selko and Jessica in alarmed tow.

"Are we just going to chase her down?" asks Jessica.

You try to keep your voice calm and give an intellectual explanation for the two academics. "It's possible that she's one of the people who is covering this up. Dating someone is a classic way for a surveillance agent to get close."

"You think that she– Oh!" Selko nods and her poise returns a little. "I always thought she was a bit fishy, going after Ninara like that!"

At the end of the hallway you see Shenla's frilly white swimsuit vanishing through a doorway. You race to the exit and see her outside, picking briskly between puddles and sheets of rain breaching the shields. The noise of the crowd is rising. You estimate thousands of people now, no longer just students, standing in the rain as speakers yell at them. She's headed towards it and its anonymising mass.

She looks behind her as she moves, sees the four of you, tries to play it cool a moment and then dashes round the corner. You pursue, feeling subtly elated. You've spent the whole day dealing with politics and forgotten faces and now ancient academia. This kind of thing though, is something you know.

She darts into the edge of the crowd and you move to try to keep up with her. <<Reizay, you got her?>>

<<I'm into some cameras. I've got an overhead view.>> Reizay drops a red highlight into your vision, that picks out Shenla behind the press of bodies. She's trying to lose you but you get the impression she's not had good escape and evasion training because she keeps glancing up, which lets the cameras reacquire her, and she's having as much difficulty navigating the crowd as you are. A moment's bad luck with a conga line carrying some kind of giant worm puppet has you in striking distance.

"Hey-" you reach out a hand. She turns. She seems startled for a moment then frowns, as if she's figured out something unpleasant. She begins to back off, then sees Jessica pulling up behind. She half-glares, half-sneers at you and then calls to the crowd.

"Hey! Isn't that Jessica? From Archaeo-shorts?"

Someone looks around: "Wait, the source of the footage?"

Mara, you bitch. It's a pointless thought. It would have been impossible to edit Jessica out and she'd never have done so. It makes you worry. Even if you did the same thing, made the exact same calculation. That it would be all but impossible to remove Jessica without making the images a totally unconvincing medley.

Everyone nearby turns. And then everyone near them, in a wave of recognition and implosion travelling through the dynamics of the crowd. As everyone else steps forward to see the celebrity of the hour Shenla steps back and vanishes behind the press.

You mutter something foul, try to press after her, glance behind you to see the other three hopelessly trapped and give up on them. You set your feet properly, turn your shoulder and apply some real force to break through. You spot her again in the mass; she's moving toward the far edge. Fragments of noise crowd around you.

"-mercs are claiming they were attacked, bullshit-"

"-saying there's been tremors reported around a lot of big deep o- uh, Nereidi temples-

"-Chrysanthemum are clearly working with the River to start this war, there's only one ruling class-"

"-put that worm puppet away, this action isn't about the fucking worms-"

<<Reizay, do you have her?>>

<<No, but she can't have moved far. I've got angles on all the perimeter.>>

Behind you, you hear Jessica speak up. "Please! I'll speak! I'll tell you what happened at the temple. What's really going on!" She's linked into the speaker somehow. She's managing to sound confident. She's good at this.

"Get her up on the platform!" someone calls.

<<All quiet here,>> says Juketta. <<Except Academician Menti just came in. She seems rather annoyed to have company and she's pretending to have work to do.>>

Reizay gets a good match and the highlight comes back, flickering on and off, uncertain. You home in towards it. She glances back, and maybe sees you in the ocean of pale students, then redoubles her pace, reaching into her cleavage for something that twitches and unfolds in her hands.

<<Gun.>> Reizay says.

You escape the press and see her in the flesh again, ducking into a door and brushing past a pair of students with hasty apologies that you repeat as you step past yourself. Where's she gone? You're in a hallway. Displays of cutaway machinery and vehicles grace the walls and ceiling. A recruitment reel from an offworld industrial federation. You hear footsteps down a side corridor, she's no good at moving quietly. You follow and see nobody. It's a deserted part of the building. But one door has been pushed open.

You approach. On the far side there's a small room stacked with pallets with all the varied junk of an engineering department and on the far side a door to a waterlogged garden. There's also a perfect dead space you can't see on the inside of the door. And the faint whine that takes a moment to identify. Some kind of multi-action stunner. You're briefly surprised it's not something more serious, but with no true resurrection, life is more precious here.

She doesn't say anything but you know exactly where she is, held inside the door, having decided to fight rather than run. The moment you step through that door it'll be on between you.

The chase is over, one way or another.

[ ] Slam the door open into your quarry and disarm her.
[ ] "I know you're behind the door. I just want to talk. About what happened to your girlfriend."
[ ] "We know you're behind the door. We have people covering the routes out. Put the weapon down and nobody has to get hurt."

She has a gun, but you're close and know her position. She's clearly an amateur. You can startle and disarm her probably before she can fire. You put your hand on the door.

You pause.

She's clearly an amateur. Would a group who can secrete professional agents into a Chrysanthemum enclave use this clumsy child to cover their tracks? They'd send somebody who knew what they were doing. Who could subvert cameras and track a target through a crowd. Somebody looks suspicious here, that's for sure.

[X] "I know you're behind the door. I just want to talk. About what happened to your girlfriend."

There's no response.

"You've seen the video, right? I think the people shooting up the temple kidnapped Ninara. We're trying to stop them."

"So what are you? Chrysanthemum agents?" She doesn't sound like she likes that idea much more.

"No, we're independent. But what if we were? We're trying to stop the same people. They're dangerous and your suspicions about your friend were right."

You see movement at the edge of the door. Then she steps quickly out, gun aimed in a too-tight grip.

"Please lower the gun," you say. She doesn't.

"Stella! I've-" Reizay's voice behind you. Shenla shifts her aim, you glance behind, and see Reizay shriek and raise her hands.

She looks back and forth between you and Reizay. Wobbles the gun back and forth likewise. You wait till it's aimed at Reizay and then pull your own weapon and aim it back at her. You see her eyes widen and wonder if anyone has ever pointed a gun at her.

"If I wanted to hurt you, I could have. You can stay pointing that thing forever or we can work together to find some answers about what happened to Ninara."

She very slowly lowers it, making sure you do the same. "If you try anything I'll scream. Don't think I won't! There's tons of people around."

"Likewise. Now we have MAD." You reholster your weapon. Shenla lets out a breath does the same.

Reizay tries to laugh through the tension. "Maybe we should go get some coffee or something?"

"Something else than coffee," you say at the same time Shenla says something like "not coffee." She grimaces at you then lets out a long grit-teeth sigh.

"There's the Water Bar," she says. "It'll be nice and crowded right now, but we should be able to talk in there."

"Alright. Lead the way."

You weren't really expecting the Water Bar to literally serve water, but apparently that's its whole claim to fame. It's not quite on campus but near enough that it's filled with exhausted looking protestor girls with signs and waterproofs. You spot a group of the worm crew talking animatedly in a corner.

"What's up with the worms?" You ask Shenla, as you find a booth table.

"Keep your voice down. If they hear you they will never stop talking." She hunts through the menu. "Be careful of Russian Water, it's alcoholic."

"Oh." Reizay says. "Are students allowed to drink that?"

Shenla gives her an odd look. "Sure, why not?"

"Well–" Reizay says. "You know what, I'll try that."

You order a sparkling orange tea flavoured water, mostly because it's what Shenla is having and if she hates the local coffee she must be doing something right. You wait in awkward, silence until the drinks arrive with a tray of small heavily salted snacks and a pot of artificial caviar with a small gleaming knife.

Reizay takes a sip of her Russian water, then coughs and pours a generous glass of sparkling.

"So, who actually are you?" Shenla asks. "What's your interest in all of this?"

"That's a long story. We were kidnapped, possibly copied, by a clandestine organisation. They wanted to use us as a brainwashed operations team, but it didn't work out and now we're opposing them. We still don't know their real objective, but they had possession of a weaponised alien, that's also attested in ancient Nereidi inscriptions. So we came here, and found an effort to vanish research and smother it all in the fog of war.""

Shenla looks nervous. "Ninara was involved in something. She was well–" She considers for a moment. "I liked her, but she was pretty wild. I mean, dating a student, even a grad student isn't great, and she was always getting into scrapes." You don't tell her that it would be banned in many places. "Anyhow, she was involved with something with Academician Menti. Ninara told me that it was likely that there had been a far more developed Nereidi civilization than we thought. That they were more like our level of development, with post-nereidi and the like, but if this was allowed to leak it would be something else for the Chrysanthemum to use against us. Another way to try to remove the colony. But she was, well, she wasn't ever the wisest person. She was getting tired of not being able to reveal what she knew. When the Nereidi started to wake up, I know she and Menti had some huge argument. Then she vanished on this 'research trip'. She told me before she left, she was going to have to watch her back. Now I can't get in touch with her, and..."

You're a little impressed by Shenla. Even if she had no training, she has some talent and she was ready for a showdown. It's a rare courage. She seems like now she's decided to tell you that it all comes out of her, even if it's venomous. Even if it reveals bad things about her girlfriend, and her for falling for her.

"What were you doing in there?"

"I managed to get access to her identity token and passwords. I wanted to check if she had any evidence on her computer that I could use. Some kind of an insurance file or some knowledge of where it might be."

"Did you find anything?"

She glances around, then nods. "Yes. I have– I have some evidence."

Reizay sends an alert into your network. <<Someone just took over the club's cameras.>> she says.

"I think we should get out of here." You say.

"Did something happen?" Shenla asks, hand moving to rest near her stunner.

"Someone just took over the camera network." You look around for anyone out of place or watching you, but don't see anyone. Then again you probably wouldn't. That's why they're using the cameras to track you.

You should probably leave, but the question is, how?

[ ] Head boldly out the front and use the crowd to defend yourselves from a snatch
[ ] Head out of the back door into the alley and evade through there
[ ] Sit tight until Juketta and Luyu can arrive as backup
[ ] Fake breaking up angrily and then attempt to ambush the ambushers when they try to snatch Shenla