"About fifteen minutes ago this all happened," Jeffrey answered. "I put up the disruption field, but apparently the modifications were enough that all it could do was hold it off. It slid in to try and attack me, I put up the disruption field. It fired an energy blast at me, knocking the chair over, I rolled over and started modifying it. The hologram next to it looked somewhat concerned that I was doing something technical and said—let me see if I can get this right—'We'll get you another time! Let her know that we're coming for her!' I was so threatened, except for the fact that they had this thing ...."
     Hans, in an understandably absent-minded moment, dialed Lucky's number.
     Ring. Ring. He had begun to put it down, realizing his error, when, "Where is he?" a male voice answered. "You're running out of time."
     "Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?" he asked, recovering from his startlement.
     "Where is he?"
     "He has gone to Los Angeles. You will not find him there." Random.
     Click.
     "Hm. Why don't we try to call Chandler now?"
    
     "Hello again," I said cheerily.
     "Hello, how are you?" he inquired.
     "Been much better than this, but the day's looking better than it started. How are you?"
     "Bad things are happening."
     "Yeah, no shit. How's your knowledge of the Orient?"
     "Sketchy. Why?"
     "We just captured a Chinese wizard of some description."
     "What's he look like?"
     I dug up the name and a brief description.
     "Yeah, I know him. He's a nobody. He's not really a wizard, he's a dealer in antiquities."
     "Well, I don't know when you knew him, but he's not a nobody now."
     "He's not a wizard," was the firm reply. "He didn't have the spark for it then, I doubt he's got it now."
     "He's got something."
     "I mean, in his area, he knows his stuff, but..."
     "Well, he was in a room full of wizardly paraphernalia when we found him, so I don't know what he's been up to. You haven't seen Lucky, have you?"
     "No, but she just called asking me to do something really disturbing that I'm going to refuse to do, and I'm afraid it might permanently sour our relationship."
     "Well, I think mine has gone sour already. If you see her—"
     "What happened?"
     "We got our asses kicked last night," I informed him succinctly.
     "That probably explains it."
     "She doesn't deal with that sort of thing very well."
     "And I'm just picturing Mr. Skeet-Shooter being in a wonderful mood?"
     "He's got much better discipline than she does. Well, I have to go out and look for her, then. If you see her, let her know the Blood Boards are trying to kill her."
     "Good luck."
     "Thank you."
     Hans went to bed; he got pounded on a lot worse than I did last night. Scott put up a new door and started looking up files on our new friends; nothing came up on them under the variant criminal lists. On a hunch, he tried cross-referencing missing persons from the Chinese community around the time of the Fimbulwinter showdown. Bingo. Five more names, and descriptions matching the people we had faced the night before.
     I dragged myself upright and went out to look for our straying teammate.

[Perspective switch: Lucky]

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