Church's frown deepened as Anna explained everything at the Teahouse. "Surely if there was a spell…" The Russian looked over at Hela, apparently comfortable enough with the vampire to include her fully in the plan-making. Bishop had crashed as soon as the retelling started, apparently easily bored to sleep.

"There likely would have been a fingerprint astrally." The vampire crossed her arms and tipped her head back. "Chameleons are rare. Maybe there's something we're missing. I've heard of Paladin. He doesn't seem the type to sell out."

"They do have a mind mage we haven't met. Maybe she's one?" Anna glanced down at her comm when it buzzed to see a familiar bishop icon giving her puppy dog eyes. The mage looked over, but Bishop appeared out like a light on the couch, one hand still resting on her open deck. The farming sim was still playing on the screen, a little figure running back and forth between strawberry patches.

Text popped up under Bishop's icon: Send me the vid files pls?

Anna hesitated for a second, then sent the file from Fuse to Bishop. The farming sim minimized itself and then the video file started to play on screen. It went all the way to the end, but then Bishop pulled it back, slowing it to frame by frame. The screen split into dozens of different images, each one a still from the fly spy's video. "Huh," Bishop mumbled aloud, lifting her head.

That immediately caught Hela's attention. "What's up, babe?"

"The file showing Gemini's street sammy buddy and the blood mage has been edited. I mean, it's alright, but I could do better. Probably ran it through a program, but didn't bother to do the full retouch and detail check. Maybe they were pressed for time." Bishop tapped on a couple of images, bringing them to the forefront of the screen and enlarging them. "These are composites, separate video feeds spliced together to form an artificial set of images."

"Are you sure?" Anna asked, an uncomfortable twisting in her gut. "It looked real to me."

Bishop nodded vigorously. "It was a quick little snippet of video, but when you break it down and tease it apart, you can see inconsistencies you wouldn't get from a quick glance: like the shadows and lighting don't match perfectly. The program tried its best, but they're only as good as their user…who was good, but y'know, not me good."

"So someone wanted to make it look like Paladin turned traitor," Church said.

"I mean, it got Gemini to ditch him. That means they were both on their own, easy to divide and conquer."

Anna felt sick. "So they could have grabbed Paladin?"

Church was silent for a long moment, weighing that. "Whoever edited that video knew that he would be escorting you, which was last minute, not planned," the Russian said carefully. Her lip curled. "We are going to have a talk with them and find out what happened to Paladin. He has information about us that would be valuable to the enemy."

"We'll come with," Hela said firmly, grabbing an armored blazer off the back of her chair. She grabbed the sword next. "There will be an ambush waiting, since they know Gemini slipped their net. They won't be expecting you to have an extra set of hands."

"Besides, I could use another payday like the last one," Bishop said, bouncing up. She swept her deck into a bag and slung it over her shoulder. "So plan is we hit your safehouse, then hit theirs?"

Church nodded. "I would rather take out any forces they have laying in ambush first, so we don't have to watch our backs for a response team. Hela, will you be alright?"

The vampire checked her watch. "We've got eight hours until sunrise and the forecast says heavy rains. That will suffice."

Bishop gave an enthusiastic fist pump. "Woot! Band is totally back together! Except Smokey and the Bandit." She winked at Anna. "Got your jaguar stomping boots on, Gemini?"

"We could ask Smoke for some fire support and a ride," Hela said to Church quietly.

Church checked her sidearm, then tapped a few mags in her pockets to be sure they were there. "Ask him if he'd be willing to do an extraction from Chiphead Row, just in case. He likes it when you call him more than when I do."

"Then you're driving," Hela said, tossing a set of keys to Church. "Don't scrape off my side mirror this time."

The Russian looked offended as she snatched the keys out of the air. "Would you have preferred a direct hit? An APDS round hitting a vehicle is usually incompatible with life."

"They're always like this," Bishop stage-whispered to Anna. "You should see it when Hela really starts back-seat driving. The old married couple dynamic is real."

Hela glared. "Mute it or you're sleeping on the couch."

Anna could have sworn she saw Church smirk slightly at that as the Russian held open the side door off the supply room for them. The Vory contract killer waited until Hela had already passed through to mutter at Bishop, "Whipped."

"Hey, just because I get laid better than you do is no reason to start kink-shaming, Church," Bishop said with a grin as Hela pulled the cover off the vehicle parked in the garage. "If you knew what she could do with one of those, you'd drop Sergei like a hot potato."

A pale pink rose formed in Hela's cheeks as she glared back in their direction, apparently fully able to hear the conversation. " Bishop !"

Anna laughed despite her nerves and the danger the vampire represented. It was strange to see, almost jarring, but this was the most personality she'd ever seen Church display. Maybe because these were old enough friends that they called back to a time when the Vory enforcer had enough essence to still care about people.

"What? Is it my fault that my brain defaults to gutter?" Bishop said, pulling open the passenger door for Hela before the vampire could formulate a good response. "Besides, I have this audio file—"

"Evil even for you," Hela said with a withering glare, getting into the car. It was a retired police car not unlike Paladin's, but someone had taken the time to armor it and replace the old, trashed engine. The way it purred when Church turned on the engine was plenty of indication it had long ago been upgraded into something meant to outpace cruisers.

"You know she's a vampire, right?" Anna said as she passed Bishop, walking around the car. "You've got a lot of essence to be mouthing off like that."

Bishop laughed behind her respirator. "Mouthing off is why she keeps me around." She waggled her eyebrows for effect.

Hela twisted in her seat to glare back at the elf. "Will you get in the fragging car before Church and I ditch you?"

Anna took the seat behind Church, sitting next to Bishop in the back. She could see Hela steaming with embarrassment, wheels clearly turning behind her eyes as Church hit the opener for the garage. The door opened to a back loading bay that clearly angled up to main street level, probably something constructed later than the Looking Glass itself. "Do we have a plan for dealing with the ambush?"

Bishop cracked her knuckles and opened her cyberdeck. "That depends on what we see. Hela will do an astral peek when we get close since she doesn't have to step out of her body, but I'm gonna start camera skimming. You got the address of the safehouse?"

Anna rattled it off, drumming her fingers on her knees. "They'll see me coming," she warned.

"If there's a mage, I promise you, all they're gonna see is Vic," Bishop said cheerfully. "C'mon, you can watch cameras with me until we get there."

"The spirit?" Anna said nervously.

"Yep. Trust me, even blood mages tend to freak out a little when a wraith shows up."

"A wraith ? That's what that thing is?" Anna's eyes fixed on the back of Hela's head. "You bound a shadow spirit?"

Hela turned her head, eyes reflecting like a predator's in the flashing of passing street lights. "It is more complicated than that. What matters is that she's on our side."

Anna's skin crawled. "Tell me you have some control over her," she said, horrified by the thought of an evil spirit running around unleashed.

"We have an understanding."

Anna did not feel reassured, no longer as confident she was siding with anyone better than Kier herself. "That's dark magic."

Bishop shrugged a little. "You must be pretty new to the shadows, Gemini," she said as she started hopping into camera feeds on her deck, attention more focused on her work than the conversation. "It's all dark down here."

Hela sighed and looked over at Church. "How are things with Sergei?" she said, changing the subject.

Church shrugged as she drove them along back streets in Redmond, quickly approaching Renton. "Same as always."

"And you? We haven't really talked since you left. I thought you were going to stay out of the shadows."

That comment surprised Anna, though she knew better than to say anything. She turned her head to look at the camera displays on Bishop's computer, but she was listening intently to the conversation. This was a window into Church she might not get again.

Church's expression didn't change from what little Anna could see in the mirror when she glanced up. "I left for as long as I could."

"Loyalty's a real bitch, isn't she?" Bishop said reluctantly. "Y'know, I could always get you that fake SIN and you could peace out to the Eurozone or something."

"Seattle is home." Some undercurrent of unsaid words seemed to run beneath that statement, but whatever it was, Hela and Bishop seemed to hear loud and clear. Anna felt awkwardly on the outside of the conversation, at least for the moment.

Bishop glanced over, clearly noticing the dynamic. For a decker, she seemed awfully people-savvy. "So where'd you get all mixed up with the Ice Maiden of Moscow, Gemini?"

"I used to work at Ikon," Anna said, taking the offered lifeline. "I was just a club girl until a Mr. Johnson asked me to pick up something for him."

"Milk run?"

"Yeah," Anna muttered darkly.

"That's about how they usually go," Bishop said with a laugh. "Church, Hela, and Smoke were on one when they met yours truly, and that thing was fragging spectacular in its FUBAR nature. Talk about snatching victory from the jaws of defeat."

Anna smiled despite herself. "What happened?"

"We were supposed to be picking up paydata from a lightly secured research facility," Hela said. "It turned out to actually be an Evo black site and the 'paydata' was actually an experimental subject on the inside who wanted out."

"Look, sexy, is it my fault you were easy to catfish?"

"You're lucky you're cute enough that we kept you is what I'm saying," Hela said, rolling her eyes. "It was an underground facility, so we didn't know what we were getting into fully because Smoke's contact half-assed his research. We got in alright with everything that Bishop leaked, but then when we made our way to a 'server room' that supposedly had the data in it, the biometric reader fragging lit everything up like a Christmas tree when Church tried to use a corpse's hand to open it."

"Smoke said it would work," Church said with a shrug.

"Well, it was all fun and games until the turret dropped down. Smoke managed to hack the steel lynx that deployed, but Hela took a machine gun burst from the defensive emplacements before I could get the turret," Bishop said. "They had us on a closed Matrix node, but I'd spent months chipping away at the defenses before I even made contact with the team. Fortunately, Hela had vampiric regeneration, so it mostly just pissed her off in time for the guards to show up. Vic manifested, Smoke blew my door open, and we were out on our merry way under a hail of gunfire."

"And Bishop was kind enough to actually have some paydata worth selling, once it was sanitized a little," Hela said. "Plus, Smoke stole their steel lynx. I suspect that's part of the reason Bishop kept calling it the Bandit."

"And I like my dated references," Bishop said with a laugh. "We had a good few years after that. Got on some watch lists, pulled a lot of jobs, even iced a blood mage. That was a lot of heat, though, so we agreed to split up and let things cool off a little. At least, Church and Smoke did. Hela can't keep her hands off me long enough to split."

The long-suffering sigh from Hela brought another smile to Anna's face despite everything. "So why were you in an Evo black site, Bishop?"

"Uhh…" Bishop rubbed the back of her neck. "I guess you haven't figured it out yet, then. Most mages probably don't get that run down, though. I'm not exactly a decker. I can interface with the Matrix wirelessly. Like, not even a deck or commlink needed."

"How is that possible?" Anna asked, wide-eyed.

"I guess you'd call me a technomancer. I didn't really know there was a word for me until I got out. I was just Subject 121." Bishop nudged her with an elbow. "If it's all the same, let's keep that between us. Lots of people are still looking, you know?"

"So where'd the name Bishop come from?"

Bishop's expression seemed distant for a moment. "At the facility, I kept having dreams where I would play myself in chess. At least, I'd see someone who looked just like me and every time I would see her, she'd ask me, Do you remember? " Bishop shrugged a little. "Besides, I always felt a little like a bishop, moving at angles when everyone else was going in straight lines."

Silence descended for a few more minutes of driving, like Bishop had lost interest in the conversation and no one felt the need to press. Eventually, Church pulled the car to a stop a few streets down from the safehouse, parking with a house between them and the main approach. "Bishop, anything on cameras?"

"Totes, Church," Bishop said, focusing down at the screen. "I see eight cylons waiting behind cover near the front and back doors in four man teams, and a big, ugly drekhead with jaguar guard tattoos."

"Hela?" Church asked quietly.

The vampire undid her seatbelt. "Two powerful fire spirits are in the area. I can only assume they are not friendly. They have enough favors on them that they are likely bound…and would be difficult to banish. We need to be careful. If they notice us too quickly, we will be in a world of hurt."

"Where are they?"

"Watching from the windows of the house on the Astral Plane. I assume their summoner is inside, which means there may be more guards," Hela warned. "They are being much more careful about the placement of their mage than they likely were in your street brawl."

Bishop slapped her hands together. "Well, that sounds like I'm on distraction and overwatch duty."

"If Fuse is working with them, they have a decker as well," Church warned, getting out of the car. "Be careful, Bishop. He'll have defenses."

"I'll give him a case of gremlins he'll never recover from if he rolled on you two," Bishop promised. "I've got everyone's commlink secured. Also, Gemini, we're buying you a new comm after this. Yours is embarrassing."

Church looked over at Hela. "Gemini can cast invisibility on at least herself. Can you and Vic get close without notice?"

"We can mask well enough that they won't know what we are until it's too late," Hela promised. She looked over at Anna seriously. "Keep close to Church. I expect you to watch her back if we get separated. Vic and I will deal with the fire spirits, but she'll need help with the cylons."

"And if the jaguar guard comes to party?" Bishop asked.

Church shrugged. "We'll reconnect as quickly as possible. That one will need all of us if he's anything like the last few."

"Cool beans," Bishop said, rolling down her window and sticking her head out to steal a kiss from Hela, replacing her respirator over her face afterwards. "Kick ass, sexy. I'll have the ride waiting when you guys are ready to bail."