Farmhouse

<snip>
After some searching in the empty house Cass found the cellar. It was dark and spooky and quickly made Jade very nervous. Jaxx looked down the dark stairwell and ran his scanners and replied, “Not sure what it is Jay dude, but I sense slight movement and faint echoes.” Jay looked at the crew and said, “Ok guys we don’t know what is down there but it will most likely be a trap. If you have any concerns now would be the time to bring them up. They were interrupted by a voice on Katrina’s radio.
<snip>
"Hello? Is anyone there?" Jamie came over the radio, Katrina picked up the radio and tuned it to phase out any static. "Hello? Jamie?" "We took out the first node. Artie says to use electricity to overload the brain. Also, Jacky says that the infected are going to converge on the next node if you don't take it out soon. We're too far away to be any help, so we'll hold down here for now" "Alright Jamie, Katrina out"
</snip>
</snip>
“Okay people!” Kat turned to her companions with an expression of concern on her silver moonlit face “We’ve got to move! – We’re in for trouble!”
“What’s up?” Jay asked, immediately on edge, his eyes scanning the shadows of the parlour the group found themselves in
“That was Jamie” Kat reported “The other team killed their node by overloading it with an electric charge, but Jackie seems to think the rest of the hosts will be converging on our position”
“How’s he know that?” Cass asked in the silence that followed
“Dunno” Katrina shrugged “But that’s a good question”
“Oh, hey…” Jade hissed, the tension in her voice immediately apparent “There’s someone over there”
She pointed though the open door to the adjacent room where a sudden movement in the moonlight caught their eye
“Shit” Kat whispered, raising her pulse rifle to sight through into darkened room
“There’s another” Jay murmured, hurriedly bringing his own rifle up to aim at another one of the silent figures that were creeping stealthily into the room “I don’t think he sees us... Shit, there's more!”
“I count five” Cass breathed, her voice barely audible above the susurration of her impractically long dress as she gingerly shifted her position to peer through the door, her nanosuit’s light amps giving her the edge over her similarly unequipped compatriots “Two more in the shadows”
“Okay” Jay whispered “We’ll take the cellar, let’s...”
“Baa!” Jaxx’s monotone warning came too late as a window shattering behind them made everyone else jump, Cass and Kat wheeling as one to fire a shot each into the body of the burly man who had just smashed a woodsman’s axe through one of the rooms sash windows
Jay fired his own weapon almost immediately, as the occupants of the next room, suddenly alerted to their presence, tore through towards them. His first shot missed the pretty young woman, armed with a hedging bill, who dodged into the room in a flurry of ghostly, moonlight white, blonde hair; but his second found it’s mark and blew the side of the girls head out in an explosion of black blood and brain, as he whipped his rifle across to train it on the other two men who were following her
Cass wheeled to shoot an old man who had smashed his arm through the glass of the other window while Katrina squeezed off another couple of staccato shots to kill the two shapes that had risen out of the darkness to take the place of the dead axe wielder
“Woah dude!” Jaxx intoned in his speak and spell voice “Stay close by me Eve babe; this is like totally intense!”
Heedful of the sound advice, Evelina remained close by the skutter’s side, her rifle raised and ready to shoot, but unable to match the skill and speed of the STCP trained enforcers, as they summarily dispatched each of their attackers
Darting forward towards one of the windows, Cass peered outside
“There’s dozens of the fuckers out there!” she screeched as she hurriedly fell back, her rifle trained on the windows “We can’t stay here, we’re going to be overrun in minutes!”
“The cellars!” Evelina yelled above another burst of gunfire and started making her way down the stone steps
“No!” Jay shouted, not turning away from the doorway where another two of the hosts were busy clambering over the bodies of their fallen comrades “Jaxx first!”
“What!?” Evelina was aghast as Jay fired another couple of shots killing the two
“Makes sense” Cass snapped “Machines are bloody tough to kill, I can easily fix any damage and he’s short; we can fire over him”
“Are you okay with that baby?” Evelina asked Jaxx
“I’m like totally cool with it Eve babe” the skutter said in its monotone voice “Mrs Jones knows what she’s on about”
“It’s Miss Jones” Cass grumbled under her breath before raising her voice “Okay. Fine. Get down those stairs!”
Jaxx shot down the stone stairs into the darkness without another word, leaving Katrina to glance at Cass, who mutely nodded to her, before Kat broke and wheeled away to follow the skutter with Evelina in hot pursuit
“Jade. Go” Jay snapped above three shots fired by Cass in rapid succession as he began retreating backwards towards the cellar steps
“I...” Jade croaked as she gazed down the cellar steps, surveying the inky blackness of the cellar in mute horror “I... No”
“Fuck’s sake” Cass broke and turned to clap an arm around the doctor and bodily drag her, kicking and screaming, down into the darkness, as Jay opened up with a full automatic burst before following them at a sprint and banging the cellar door closed behind him to bolt it from the inside
Jade’s panicked screams quickly subsided into terrified wordless moans as she curled in Cassandra’s arms and sagged, whimpering to the floor at the foot of the stairs
“Here!” Cass snapped, moving against her and pulling something down over her head “Here! Open your fucking eyes!”
“No” Jade moaned, her eyes squeezed tightly shut as she fought to control her breathing
“You’re wearing light amps” Cass said firmly, as the infected started hammering at the door at the top of the stairs “You can see”
Gingerly opening her eyes, just a fraction, Jade gasped in shock as she gazed up at Cassandra’s grey -green lit face, her eyes two pools of ghostly darkness
“Oh, gods” she whispered, gingerly reaching a hand out towards her
“Keep alert people!” Jay hissed, pulling a flashlight out from his utility belt and flicking it on to cast a barely adequate pool of illumination around the room “They’ll be through the door in minutes – We need to find that command node!”
“Try a jump with the Time Drive Jay” Cass gave Jade’s hand a friendly squeeze and disentangled herself from her friend to rise and address the man
“No way!” Jay snapped “We’re not abandoning the others”
“We won’t have to” Cass protested “You’re all entangled in the paradoxes as well now, so if we’re able to do a jump, the drive that bought you here should drag everyone along regardless of their location”
“What about France!?” Jay asked “Didn’t these things come from there?”
“Fuck ‘em” Cass shrugged “It’ll give Brittany something to do instead of tracking me”
“We’re talking about thousands... maybe hundreds of thousands of people’s lives” Jay near-shouted “We can’t just abandon them!”
“We exist in an errant timeline right now - A pocket reality” Cass soothed “Once we leave, all this gets fixed; it never happened. Nobody dies”
“You sure about that?” Jay demanded, turning to glance back up at the door at the top of the stairs as something heavy, probably that axe, impacted on the other side of it
“Absolutely positive” Cass said earnestly “Trust me... Please”
“You’re a bloody menace” Jay sighed, shaking his head as he pulled the time drive out “Where to?”
“That’d be part of my charm” Cass smirked, training her rifle up at the door at the top of the stairs and squeezing a shot off through the timbers, to be met with a shriek of pain from the other side “Set the drive for the time and place you departed; we’re not going to get there immediately, but I don’t want Max missing you”
“Okay...” Jay keyed in the coordinates and executed the jump, only for nothing happen “Shit” he hissed as the hammering renewed on the door above “We’re going to have to find the command node and…”
“Wait!” Evelina interrupted in a panic “Where’s Jaxx?”
With that a massive flash of light lit the room from one of the cellar’s adjacent chambers, followed by a weird squelching explosion and a cacophony of screams from the hosts on the other side of the door at the top of the stairs
“What the actual fuck!?” Jay snapped, wheeling to train his rifle towards the entrance to other chamber, in unison along with Katrina, Cass and Evelina
A wet, dripping noise filled the silence that followed until a monotone speak and spell voice broke the tension
“Whoa dude, I like set my holowhips on max, and totally fried that creepy alien thing” Jaxx said as he trundled back into the main chamber “You should...”
With the paradox resolved, the Time Drive engaged, tearing each of the Dwarfer’s out from their respective locations and flinging them across time and space to materialise elsewhere...


Cass stumbled out of a time gate in a solid brick wall, and onto a pavement to collide heavily with a man and his wife, out for an evening stroll down the neon lit palm tree lined boulevard, she suddenly found herself on
“Hey!” the man shouted “Watch where you’re going!”
“What!?” Cass glanced around in confusion, wondering where the hell rest of the crew had got to “Oh, shit! Sorry...” she apologised to the couple, before trailing off and gazing up in astonishment at the huge neon lit buildings surrounding her
“Are you friggin’ stupid!?” the man demanded angrily
There was no way she could be sure of what year it was, but the place was immediately recognisable from the pictures she remembered she used to look at with so much fascination when she was a little girl
“Honey!” the woman warned in a shrilly panicky voice “She’s got a gun!”
“Whoa shit!” the man backed off as Cass turned on the spot, to look up in amazement at what could only be Las Vegas

<tag>
So where did your character materialise?
Are they with any of the others?
We’re all somewhere in Las Vegas, but what year is it?
Did everyone pack a communicator?
</tag>