Knock Knock

Tasha walks into their apartment, just getting back from the grocery store, lugging all twelve bags in one trip. "Hey, babe, do you think you could lend me a hand?" After no response, Tasha looks around to find Patterson standing at the sink, mindlessly washing the dishes before everyone arrives for their next game night. "Babe?" Still no response. "Hellooooo?" After a few more tries Tasha gets a little frustrated and grabs a towel off the counter, snapping it against Patterson's behind.

"OW! What the fuck?!" Patterson screams as she hurls around with a knife in her hand, prepared to attack her unknown foe.

Zapata quickly jumps back with her hands up in the air. "Woah there, easy girl, put the knife down. It's just me."

Patterson's eyes widen in realization, pointing the knife down, she says loudly. "Why didn't you tell me you were here?! You scared the crap out of me! I could have killed you!"

"I did, but you didn't respond?" Tasha replies with a confused look on her face.

"What?!" Patterson once again says in a loud voice.

Tasha yells back, "I SAID I DID, BUT YOU DID NOT HEAR ME!" She quietly adds, "What did you do, age sixty years while I was gone?"

"Oh! Wait!" Patterson thunders, deftly removing the earplugs she had forgotten to take out when she got home. It had been a very long week at the office; true to his word, Rich harassed her every second he could to try and figure out what she was rolling for at the end of the last game session. Her final solution was to put in earplugs so she could actually get her work done, they were trying to save lives after all, and she needed to be able to focus.

"Guess that means I'm back to the drawing board for Christmas gift ideas." Tasha says as she mimes crossing a word off a list, "Hearing aids, you are the weakest link, goodbye."

"Funny. I really could have killed you though! You're lucky I didn't just go in swinging."

Patterson's worried look hits home, but Tasha can't help herself. Before she knows it, she's retorting, "Please. One, you couldn't land a hit on me. Two, your hands were wet and soapy, and so was the knife. The likelihood you could even hold onto it for a killing blow is unlikely. And finally, you would never hurt me, and I would never hurt you. You don't hurt the people you love." As Tasha finishes she walks closer to Patterson, towel still in hand, and starts to slowly wipe off her wet and soapy fingers. "How long until everyone is supposed to be here for game night?"

Patterson feels her face heat up as a blush stretches from her cheeks all the way down her neck. She stutters as her heartbeat races, stepping closer so that she closes the distance to her girlfriend "I… I'm not sure. What did you have in mind?"

Tasha smoothly envelops Patterson's lips in hers, lightly caressing her chin with one hand, and pulling her closer by the waist with her other. They stand there, lost in each other's arms for a solid minute before there is a loud knock on the door. Tasha groans loudly in frustration. "Damn it. I guess next time we will have to be quicker, and maybe forego the foreplay." She gives Patterson a cheeky grin as they both try to catch their breath.

"Why don't we just table this until after game night is over? Then we can explore all of our options as we wish." Patterson says with a smirk and a wink before walking over to the door to see who had arrived for their next session.

As soon as the door opens, Rich can be seen on the other side bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. He quickly squirms his way through the small gap between Kurt and Jane so he can get inside and start setting up immediately. "Excuse me, pardon me, beep beep. We are finally going to find out what Patterson was rolling for, and my body is ready."

Kurt and Jane exchanged exasperated looks before rolling their eyes and following him in, greeting Tasha and Patterson on their way to the table. Reade steps in behind them as well, carrying the snacks for the night, and heads to the kitchen to lay out the spread. On his way there his shoe slides and he almost loses his balance. Looking down at the kitchen floor he sees that near the sink there is a sizeable puddle of dormant water. "Do you guys have a leak or something?"

"Oh didn't you get the memo? I thought instead of just having death traps in the game I would make it more 'real' by bringing it into reality. You forgot to roll to check for traps before you came in." Patterson quips with a smile as she goes to grab a towel.

Tasha turns to Reade and says nonchalantly, "She attempted to kill me earlier when she was washing dishes. Don't worry though, those roguish skills aren't just in the game for me. I was able to easily get out of range of her knife wielding."

Reade, Jane, and Kurt all exchange worried glances as they look between Patterson and Zapata. Catching the nervous looks, Patterson pipes up, "It's not like that guys. Rich was hounding me all week so I had to resort to using earplugs. I forgot to take them out when I got home, and Tasha scared me since I couldn't hear that she was here. There may or may not have been a threat of physical harm, but we got it all sorted out and everything is fine. It was just a misunderstanding."

Everyone immediately relaxes a little after hearing the explanation, except for Rich who seemed to get more animated. "I warned you last session that I was going to ask you repeatedly about those die rolls if you did not tell us what they were for. I gave you knowledge of what was going to happen, and you ignored it. That's not my fault. You know I don't like not knowing things." Rich crosses his arms and after a moment's contemplation quickly adds, "Though now that we are all here, I don't see why we are still standing around clucking like a bunch of hens. Let's get into the game so we can finally hear what Patterson rolled for last time."

Everyone finished getting their drinks and snacks ready then headed over to the table. They were in no hurry, but made sure they were all sitting down and ready to start before Rich got even more impatient.

"Alright, where we last left off, you had encountered the group of criminals and pacified who you believe to be their leader. Currently he is under the Charm Person spell for an hour. Under that spell, he took your advice and was able to get everyone to come over by him so you could handcuff them for interrogation, instead of getting cursed by The Mask of Tutankhamun. As they were sitting there, you guys were discussing, out of character, what to ask them etcetera. That is where we pick up for tonight." Patterson sits back in her chair and waits for them to start in on the interrogation.

With a furrowed brow, Rich looks over to Patterson, "Aren't you forgetting something?"

"Hmm, nope. I don't believe so."

"What about the rolls. The ROLLS!" Rich exclaims, getting agitated that he still hasn't been able to scratch the itch of not knowing something for a whole week, again.

"Oh, those rolls." Patterson says with a sly smile and a shrug of her shoulders. "Yeah, they were nothing. I just needed you guys to start quieting down last game so we could wrap up."

"Wait. You're telling me… they meant nothing?" Rich's face starts to contort in anger and annoyance. "All week I was worried about another set of criminals, or a trap, or something we did not foresee; and now you're saying it was all just to get us to stop fighting? Why didn't you just say so this week? Put me out of my misery? I got more gray hairs thanks to you!" Rich emphatically points at a couple hairs on his head to drive his point home.

"I did consider it, but then I started thinking about all the times you called me Pat Pat or Patty Cakes or any of the other names you know annoy me, and thought this might be a good way for you to reap what you sow. Plus, it helped put the pressure on you guys to figure out your interrogation before something else happened. You guys will need to be concise since you're trying to beat the clock of the spell you have over King Tut." Patterson nods sagely as she says this, hoping that the group takes the hint. For emphasis, she stands up to grab the hourglass off one of their bookshelves and sets it down on the table, flipping it over. "Your time has begun. When this sand runs out, we will say the Charm Person spell expires."

Rich drops the 'woe is me' act immediately. He knows that as soon as that spell ends, they will be hard pressed to actually get any quality information out of the criminals. By the spells description, when it ends, the person you charmed knows that they were charmed and manipulated by you - which usually makes them very untrusting of anything else coming out of your mouth. He looks back to the group text thread that he, Kurt, Jane, Reade, and Zapata had created this past week to talk about what questions to ask, and in what order. The most important question they could come up with was, "Who do you work for?"

Patterson imitates King Tut's British accent once again, "I never said we work for anyone."

Rich cocks an eyebrow at this before replying, "You let it slip earlier that you were sent on this job to steal The Mask of Tutankhamun. If this was your own idea, you would not have said you were 'sent' to do this. So, I'm going to ask again, who are you working for?"

Patterson takes a steadying deep breath, knowing this may be difficult to roleplay since she will be speaking as multiple characters at once, to each other no less. "As you ask this, you see King Tut start to grin. Nefertiti, Cleopatra, and the man in the toga all look worriedly over to their boss who seems, to them, to be cracking under pressure. 'Boss, you know the rules. We can't say anything or we're dead.' Nefertiti tries to drive his point home, by nudging King Tut's comparatively smaller shoulder until he looks him in the eye. 'Do you hear me?' You all watch as King Tut slowly turns to Nefertiti, a small laugh bubbling up, 'Don't you get it? The boss set us up. These people were the ones to warn us that The Mask was cursed. Why were we not forewarned about that?' Nefertiti continues on, and you get the feeling he may be second in command in this group, 'How do you know THEY told the truth?' King Tut laughs at this, 'Because they are our friends! They would not lie to us!' His three other companions all exchange worried glances, as they have never seen nor heard about any of you before. Before they can get a better grasp on their predicament, King Tut speaks up once again, 'We do not know the name of who hired us, everything was done over the internet. We mainly post on a message board with coded messages, and have only ever talked to one other bloke. This bloke was the one who got us the in, made sure we knew how to make contact to get our marks, and the one who made sure we understood the rules of our contract. Even he did not give us his name, just his card.' King Tut nods down to his pants pocket, encouraging you to take something out of it."

After a lengthy pause, Rich looks around to the rest of the group who are all nodding at him and moving their hands in a 'get on with it' motion. With a sigh Rich speaks up, "Ugh, fine, I check his pocket to see if he has a card in there."

"You are able to find the card easily. You look it over to see that it is just a plain business card with very little text." Patterson stands up to get the card she made out of her back pocket, and hands it to Rich.

Looking the card over, it did indeed look like a normal business card. It was very sparse, only having a metallic looking monogrammed 'V' inside of a circle centered on one side of the card. Flipping it over, Rich could see that the other side had a very small print URL address as well as what looked to be a very miniscule QR code. After studying it for a little while longer, Rich finally told the group what he saw and passed the card to them, just in case he had missed anything.

"We should probably take this back to the office soon so we can get Pike to trace this URL and maybe see what this code leads to as well." Jane says as she is looking over the card for herself.

"I agree, but we already have the criminals in custody and cooperating. Is there anything else we need to get out of them?" Kurt asks as he looks to Reade and Zapata.

"I'm not sure. He gave up that card so quickly that I'm hesitant to believe anything he says." Tasha says as she bites her lip in concentration. "Maybe see if they will tell us whether they were the same people for all the heists? It would be good to have that confirmed so we aren't arresting only four people when there should be countless others."

"Zapata makes a good point." Reade interjects as he looks over some of his notes. "We know they look similar, thanks to Rich, but we don't know for sure yet until we can see the screenshots of all the heists side by side."

After a lull in the conversation, with everyone being deep in their own thoughts, Patterson breaks the silence. "I will say by now you can probably ask one or two more questions before the spell ends."

Rich emerges from his musing, he forgot all about the spell. "We need to get them in a police car before the spell ends. They may become hostile, and even with handcuffs that could cause us some problems."

"Ok, let's get them headed that way and ask them about the other heists on the way." Kurt nods his head in agreement.

Patterson waits for the assent from the group as a whole before continuing, "As you walk them to the police vehicles, the remnants of the spell just barely holding on, you ask them whether they were the people from the other jobs. They confirm that, yes, they were, but that the other guy had made sure to impress on them how replaceable they were if they were to mess up. As you get them pushed into the back of the police cars and shut the doors, the spell fades. You watch as King Tut's face goes from pleasant affability, to confusion, to rage. He immediately turns and locks eyes with you Rich, yelling something from the car and trying to bang his head against the window hard enough to break it. One of the cops immediately administers something from a syringe into his arm, and he quickly becomes docile and unconscious."

"Well that escalated quickly." Rich quips. "Anywho, back to the FBI?"

"Yeah, let's get back to Pike and have her work her magic on the card. That seems to be the next lead to whomever is in charge of this whole thing." Reade taps the card against his hand thoughtfully. "They said they talked to this guy, right? I mean he handed them his card. Did they say anything about what he may have looked like?"

Patterson shakes her head, "You guys did not ask that question, I'm sorry. You can attempt it now, but one of them is knocked out, and the other three know their boss was hoodwinked due to his reaction after the spell faded. I'm afraid you're not going to get any sort of quality information out of them now."

"Shit! I didn't even think about that." Jane says, banging her fist against the table.

"It's alright guys, we still have the card. This has at least two quality leads on it, the website and the code-thing." Kurt reaches over and rubs one of Jane's shoulder to comfort her. "In the end, it won't matter we didn't ask what he looked like, we will find him, and stop him, all the same."

"Ok, back to FBI headquarters it is. Let's go see the gorgeous Pike again." Tasha grins widely and winks across the table at Patterson.

Patterson rolls her eyes, but smiles warmly at the flattery. "You get back to New York with no problems. It's all over the news that the criminals involved in the heist was brought down by the FBI. You walk into the office to a standing ovation from everyone, as they think you have solved the whole mystery. Do you guys head straight to Pike?" After a second's hesitation, they all nod in agreement. "You get to Pike and hand her the business card. 'Woah, they just happened to have a business card on hand? That's kind of strange.'"

Jane responds in character to Pike, "We thought so too, but apparently Rich cast some sort of spell on one of the people, and they were really friendly towards us. I don't think they would have given us any information at all otherwise, so it was a good move on his part." Jane nods her head toward Rich, who is beaming with the praise.

"Well, okay. I can go ahead and run this through the system and scan it in if you like. That way we can see if there's any hidden messages or clues not visible to the naked eye?" Patterson, switching back to her own voice continues, "You watch as Pike goes over to the scanner and scans in the card. Images of both the front and back side of the card appears on the screen in front of you. She pulls up the URL and you all see that it is a message board on some kind of antiques website. As King Tut said, it is all in coded messages, but you think that they will be easy enough for Pike's system to crack. She then pulls up the QR code and scans that in." Patterson pauses for dramatic effect before proceeding, "As the scan completes, you all watch helplessly as every single screen in the lab immediately goes black, all you see is a blinking white underscore."

"Oh, man, Pike's gonna kill us!" Rich exclaims while running his hands down the side of his face.

Patterson switches back to Pike's voice, "Guys, what just happened? What was on that card?!"

"We don't know, that's why we brought it to you!" Rich's voice begins rising with every word, he is starting to utterly freak out.

"You watch on the screen as the white underscore begins to move across the black screen. It starts typing out 'Knock Knock' over and over again, each pair of words ending up on their own separate line. As this happens the lights in the lab begin to flicker. On the personal computers of the other lab techs, you see lines upon lines of code start zooming across the monitor. After another minute, the whole office's power goes out… and comes back on. As soon as you have power again, there is now a video placed where the white underscore was, beneath it lies another line of text 'Play Me'."

"Damn, are all the computers in the office still down? Or are they still running code?" Tasha inquires.

"They all have the same video and text on their screens that you do in Pike's lab." Patterson smiles mischievously.

"Well, no way to go but through." Reade sighs and says, "We press play on the video."

"The video begins playing. You see before you, Kurt, who begins speaking in a British accent, 'You have done well to capture my underlings, but that's only part of the game.' You see as Kurt morphs into Jane, now with her own British accent, 'They were the easy targets for you to pick off, I knew it wouldn't take a lot of brain cells to overcome them.' Jane morphs into Tasha, 'That's why you hire criminals who are replaceable. They are there to be used and thrown away when their value has expired.' Tasha morphs into Reade, 'They were playing too loose. They did not listen to the instructions they were given, so they had to retire prematurely.' Reade finally changes stature to show Rich on the screen, 'You should all be receiving news by now that a most unfortunate accident has occurred in Egypt. Those criminals from the world-famous heists have tragically all been found dead.' You watch as Rich pantomimes tears running down his face before turning into a human figure cloaked in darkness, all you can see is his outline. When he begins to speak, it seems as if he is using a voice changer as he says, 'The stage is set. You have all the clues you need to find me. Your predicament is whether you will figure it out in time.' On the screen beside the figure is a countdown timer. It is currently set at twenty-four hours and begins counting down. 'If you cannot find me in time, then you are not worthy to play my game. I will cripple your government to its knees. It is inevitable destruction.'" Patterson changes her body language, sitting back up from the forward snarling position she was in previously.

The group sits in stunned silence, seconds stretching to minutes, the only thing that can be heard in the apartment is the commotion from the street below. After a few minutes of quiet tension, everyone jumps from the comparatively loud noise of Rich's words, "What in Merlin's beard is going on? Hell's bells." He shakes his head in bewilderment. "Well guys, I think we have just found the big bad guy. Now all we have to do is try to piece together who he is and how to find him."

"We will have to do it the hard way, the systems are still down. It's only showing us the countdown timer now. We won't even be able to have Pike try to decode the voice." Kurt says in a gruff voice as he leans back in his chair with his arms crossed.

Jane bites the inside of her cheek, mentally replaying everything they have done so far. "If, as he says, we have all the clues needed to find him, then we just need to pour back over the previous cases. Every clue, every detail, needs to be reassessed. It has to all point us to one common end, him."

"We also need to think about what they were going to do for this last heist too. Remember, we caught them mid act. So they didn't get a chance to really leave anything behind to tell us what they were going to hit next." Tasha points out, while tapping her pencil against her lips thoughtfully.

"True, but they were wearing their get up. Maybe that would give us a clue in itself?" Reade says as he looks back over his notes, "We saw a small King Tut, a Nefertiti, a Cleopatra, and a man in a toga."

Rich retorts in a singsong voice, "One of these things is not like the other."

"So, you think the toga wearing man may be significant?" Jane asks before Reade can comment.

"I think it's the only thing that makes sense. In all the heists there was something correlated with their getup, or trinkets that they left behind, and their next target. We were already in Egypt, so I feel like we can rule out the ones wearing Egyptian garb; and as Tasha mentioned, we stopped them before they could leave any extra items at the scene." Rich shrugs, "I could be wrong of course, but who are we kidding, I'm rarely mistaken."

Reade rolls his eyes at Rich and turns back to Jane, "Ancient Romans and Greeks were well known for wearing togas. Maybe this person is in one of those countries?"

"I don't know. I feel like that's almost too easy, too on the nose. At all the previous heists there was a deeper connection to the next. The stuffed rat toy, Sherlock's hat, the tea set and pipe; all these things we had to look past the surface to understand what they were supposed to lead to." Jane explains while running one of her fingers around the rim of her glass.

Kurt takes a deep breath and supplies, "Well, he could be a famous Greek or Roman person, meant to lead us to some other place?"

Rich guffaws, "Too bad there's no short supply of famous Greeks and Romans throughout all of history! It's like finding a specific needle in a ginormous bag of needles."

With a shake of their heads, the group falls into silence again. All trying to mentally add up the clues from the previous encounters as well as somehow fitting in the toga wearing man. After a few minutes of quiet contemplation, Patterson is the one to break the silence this time, "How about we order pizza? Get some food in your bellies and maybe that will help you with the brainstorm?"

It didn't take long for their neighborhood pizza joint to deliver four large pizzas with various toppings, the group immediately diving in while it was still hot and fresh, thankful for the break so they can circle back to the problem at hand with fresh eyes and full stomachs.