Operation Osiris: Scenes One and a Half & Two

As the team sped off into the night, with Booster at the wheel of Dom's rented BMW, a dozen motorcycles gave chase. The cars and motorcycles weaved throughout the crowded Ginza district, driving down alleys and side streets and around drunken businessmen and other cars. The vehicles were too far apart for gunfire, so the riders hung tight, with Ms. Chesterfield patching up Steel Wolf's katana wound in the cramped backseat.

Booster, displaying his usual level of vehicle skill, managed to lose the pursuers without much difficulty, and then pulled off into a parking garage so the team could plan their next move. Ms. Chesterfield offered up that she really needed a first aid kit to do Steel Wolf any good, and the team decided to "gear up" when they got the chance.

But first, Father Binary had to explain to them what was going on. He told them that he had found the information on them to be part of a legendary database called "The Black Book" which had all the information on their defunct Agency. He had discovered an access code, which he had broken up into three parts and included in their emails as a failsafe in case he was caught or killed before he could contact them. This access code, combined with old Agency codes that the agents possessed and software on Binary's laptop, would give them keyhole access into "The Black Book" to try and find out who had put a hit on them and who had the information. He had also discovered that the hits ordered on them were from something called The Rising Dragon, a terrorist group based in Japan and Chechneya.

The team arranged a tense but uneventful raid of Binary's apartment for his laptop and other equipment, and then went to old contacts and storehouses to gear up themselves. They eventually set up base camp in a houseboat that Dom owned in the area, calling in an old doctor friend of Steel Wolf's to patch him up and using the wireless access point near the boat's location for Binary to get online. He used the codes and discovered some important information about "The Black Book."

First of all, he found out that the "Black Book" was in the possession of the Rising Dragon, and was made up of three components: One was the software, floating about in millions of bytes across the Internet. Two was the hardware, a specialized terminal that could be used to download the information from the Internet. Three was the "firmware," a physical codebook that could be used to decrypt the downloaded information. There was a street address locating the hardware terminal in Tokyo.

A little research by Steel Wolf found that the address was attached to a secure government building, and that the terminal was on the 35th floor. The team did some reconnaisance and discovered some important facts. First was that the security was tight, including motion detectors, cameras and a password-protected vault door. Second was that the guards were police, and apparently legitimate, not foes that they wanted to use lethal force against if it could be avoided. They decided that the best way in was a bluff and disguise intrusion to get Father Binary access to the terminal.

The first part of the plan involved Binary hacking into a cult website to deliver a threat against the building. Binary also hacked into the phone systems to recieve the call for help from security, which went first through Ms. Chesterfield and then to Dom. Dom informed the security that they would send a haz-mat team over right away.

The team then loaded into a disguised van wearing fake haz-mat suits and carrying identification forged by Dom. They passed the security check at the gate with eased, but they were informed that the entire building had not been evacuated. Some of the levels couldn't be evacuated without an order from higher up in the government.

When the team reached level 36, they found two guards and made a show of looking around for a chemical weapon or a bomb. They then snuck down the stairwell and onto level 35. There they found two guards waiting at a security desk, decked out in tactical armor and carrying silenced MP5s. Dom attempted to bluff them into moving away from the vault door that sat in front of the secure area with the computer terminal, but he was unable to do so, and a botched attempt to fake falling ill resulted in a firefight touching off.

Booster managed to get off the first shot, pulling his own MP5 from underneath his clothes and shooting at one of the guards. The guard returned fire, and Steel Wolf attempted to bull rush the other guard, but was pushed back. Dom and Binary attempted to pummel one of the guards, and succeeded in distracting him long enough for Booster to kill both of them. None of the agents were happy about having to kill two policemen, but they were sort of stuck with the situation.

Booster attempted to disarm the security keypad, but found that it was going to be tricky, so he attempted to shut down the klaxon instead. That was even trickier, but his affinity for mechanical devices let him stop it from going off when his disarm attempt failed. He then went back and spent time trying to disarm the keypad. He got the vault door opened, but there was an alarm working its way through the system, so the team had to hurry with the rest of the security. Booster rushed to disarm the motion sensors and cameras so that Binary could access the terminal.

Binary discovered that the terminal in the room was not in fact "The Black Book" terminal, but it accessed the Neon Tigers computers, and had information on "The Black Book." The hardware and firmware were both in possession of The Rising Dragon, and they had used the information to send a hit team after another former Agency asset, the agents' former Control Harryhausen and his daughter.

Armed with this information, the team rushed out of the building just seconds before the alarm went off. Harryhausen had been the one who came and warned them of the Agency's downfall and removed their tracking chips so they could attempt to disappear, so the agents felt that they had no choice: It was time to arrange a rescue for Harryhausen.